Lifetime Portrait of Bard Found

Portrait of peasant found behind 1887 painting

(NEWSER) - European scientists today revealed a Van Gogh portrait of a peasant's head behind one of his paintings, LiveScience reports. Using a new X-ray technique, the researchers pulled out the portrait's brown and red pigments, which Van Gogh covered with Patch of Grass, 1887. The scientists, primarily from Belgium and the Netherlands, plan to uncover other hidden paintings with the new technique. More»

Debate over who really wrote Shakespeare's plays rages on

(NEWSER) - Did William Shakespeare really write the plays attributed to him? The question remains the subject of an intense academic debate, NPR reports. Those who doubt the “man from Stratford” penned his plays point to a lame rhyming epitaph on the supposed bard’s headstone, and to lack of documents tying him to his works—or even suggesting he was a writer. More»

California professor aims to unveil 'The Girl With the Pearl Earring'

(NEWSER) - A California professor is bringing CSI techniques to the art world: Conrad Rudolph of UC Riverside has obtained funding to apply advanced facial recognition technology to famous paintings like Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, the Guardian reports. Such mystery portraits could finally be identified—if, that is, measurements can match them to other depictions of people in paintings and death masks. More»

Showcases darker tones of earlier work

(NEWSER) - For the first time in five years, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has added a new piece to its collection—and it looks a little different from your standard Vincent van Gogh. This one is an 1882 watercolor whose tones are much darker than those the artist later adopted. The painting shows what van Gogh called a "lonely and melancholy" dead willow leaning over a pond near the Hague. The young artist immediately wanted to paint it: "I'm going to attack it tomorrow morning," he wrote to his brother. More»

Pablo Picasso makes 2 appearances

(NEWSER) - Following the record-breaking sale of Edvard Munch's The Scream , the Guardian takes a look at the other biggest sales of art at auction. The top five:

1. Edvard Munch, The Scream, $119.9 million.
2. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, $106.5 million.
3. Alberto Giacometti, L'homme qui Marche I, $105.2 million.
4. Pablo Picasso, Boy With a Pipe, $104.2 million.
5. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, $87.9 million.