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Lost Da Vinci sketch ‘worth €15 million’ found in France

A lost drawing by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered in the papers of a French provincial doctor, a Paris auction house said Tuesday.

Lost Da Vinci sketch 'worth €15 million' found in France
Photos: AFP
The dreamily sensual sketch of Saint Sebastian is thought to be worth around €15 million ($15.8 million) and is an “extraordinary discovery”, the Tajan auction house said.
   
It has been authenticated by the French specialist Patrick de Bayser and Carmen C. Bambach, curator of Renaissance drawings at New York's Metropolitan Museum and a Da Vinci expert, it added.
   
The dramatic study, which it is thought Leonardo did in his late twenties or early thirties after he was acquitted of sodomy, is one of eight he is known to have drawn.
   
The find is extremely rare, with the last Da Vinci drawing that came to market — a sketch of a horse and rider –equalling the world record for an Old Master drawing when it sold for $10 million in 2001.
   
It was then said to be the most significant drawing by the artist and polymath to be sold at auction since the 1930s.
 
 
Mirror writing 
 
De Bayser told AFP he came across the new sketch, done with a quill pen, during a routine trawl through material sent to the auction house for valuation.
   
He thought it was possibly by a 15th-century Florentine artist until he turned the torn paper over.
   
On the back he found a couple of scientific sketches about an optical experiment showing the shadow thrown by a candle and some “spectacular” back-to-front writing.
   
Da Vinci regularly used the technique so his writing could only be read using a mirror.
   
De Bayser then noticed that the shading in the drawing of Saint Sebastian, which showed the martyr with wild hair pinned to a tree trunk, went from right to left.
 
   
“That meant that it was drawn by a left-handed artist” like Da Vinci.
   
“I was immediately convinced it was by Leonardo,” he told AFP.
  
It is now thought the sketch may have come from one of the artist's famous notebooks.
   
Two other studies of Saint Sebastian by Da Vinci have survived, one at the Bonnat-Helleu Museum in Bayonne in southwestern France and the other at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg.
   
Carmen C. Bambach believes the newly discovered sketch came from the same period as the Hamburg drawing, from between 1478 and 1483.
   
The owner of the 19.3 x 13 cm (7.6 x 5 ins) sketch wants to remain anonymous, the auction house said.

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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