Hey, Italian art critics ----- STOP THE PRESSES ! In fact, these pieces of art were done by B. H. Obama, in his spare time while serving as a "Constitutional Law" professor. He could not lay claim to them as such a claim would have uncovered him as darker, olive skinned Italian, thereby eliminating him for qualification as President of the United States later on in life, the position which a traveling gypsy in the north of Italy had foreseen and passed the vision on to the younger Obama. Stay tuned. There will be other feats of Obama accomplishment coming as the election season swings into full force.

Dis, You sir are bona fide moron.

Obama is an American and he is the President of the USA.

GET OVER IT!!!

'DisabledVeteran, observer', .... more and more each day, Newsvine post by Newsvine post you illustrate that your disability is not of a physical nature but rather intra-cranial. And the content of your juvenile vitriol leaves no room for doubt that you are indeed, ....severly disabled.

I certainly hope that you are not an American veteran, because the mocking hatred you repeatedly display toward the President of the United States not only disrespects the Commander-in-chief of the United States Military, but also disrespects the office of the presidency and the United States of America.

If you are in fact an American veteran, I hope you will reread some of your own Newsvine posts ...and then reflect on what you have become.

i have a paint'n hang'n on wall...of my trailer...them card play'n dog's...in velvet...wonder how they'd trade...

Ma Courie,

You have thus unintentionally revealed the great depths of your profound ignorance. Perhaps you should pause and think for a few minutes the next time you feel the urge to put your words where everyone in the world can see them forever.

Even I can see the dramatic contrast between light and dark in this drawing and the contrast between that contrast and the non-contrastive plain gray blandness of the police artist's sketch, which may or may not even closely resemble the person it's supposed to be. Thus your comment is nothing remotely close to the cleverness that you thought it to be, but actually quite the opposite.

Full disclosure: I came here to comment because of a very recent encounter I had with the name "Caravaggio" which struck me as too coincidental to leave unmentioned in the commentary on this story. The shallowness of the preceding comment struck me as being a place as appropriate as any to put my comment. Certainly the contrast between these two comments is now topically fitting if admittedly self-generated.

Thus I submit my two cents because I was struck by the "lightning strike" timing of the coincidence: I just finished reading--as in: within the last 30 days--Margaret Truman's "Murder in the National Gallery," a suspense thriller about the world of multi-million dollar art theft and forgery. The former first daughter's novel centers around a Caravaggio missing for more than 100 years that was supposedly "found" in a remote Italian church by a disgraced priest, but actually (so the fiction went) supplied by old Mafioso to a certain Director of Exhibitions at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. On the way to a premiere public showing beginning in Washington the painting was made available to a master forger in Paris so that the formerly "staid, responsible" Director could "return" one forgery to the Italian Government, sell one to a wealthy gangster who had a private collection of stolen art, and keep the original to take with him when he made his planned disappearance from public view after the exhibition.

My ignorance was that, although I have a better knowledge of art history than most, it was gained entirely on my own and the name Caravaggio was not among the names I might previously have recognized. Had I not just recently finished reading that book, I would never have understood the importance, potential importance, or at any rate the earth-shaking significance of this story to the art world.

I had also never known that Harry Truman's daughter had written quite a number of books, including a long list of novels, before I found this book in a stack of freebies. It makes an interesting read from a very interesting perspective, as you might expect from a first daughter's knowledge about the inner workings of Washington and its diplomatic channels.

It also explains much about the artist Caravaggio, his sordid life, and his influence on the history of art.

Sounds familiar. It is thought by many that a "friend" of Vincenzo Peruggia--the carpenter who stole the Mona Lisa, posing as a museum workman after hours, from the Louvre in 1911, then held onto it for two years--who may or may not have been the con man Eduardo de Valfierno, had a bunch of fake Mona Lisas made up in advance by an art forger and "sold" for a king's ransom several times over to unknown wealthy dupes after news got out that it was stolen. Leaving Peruggia holding the bag, so to speak.

There is no actual, solid proof of this, however, and Peruggia himself insisted that he stole it out of patriotic motives to return it to Italy.

I find it very hard to take the conclusions of these two researchers seriously when they have never even examined the actual works. To draw these conclusions based solely on seeing photographs of the works is extremely dubious. One would think that the researchers would want to take a close look at the pencil and brush strokes used by the artist and other factors that just could not be examined in detail from photographs. I think that these two researchers are just trying to generate sales for their new book with these claims and have not done nearly enough detailed work to justify these claims.

And it should be noted that the NEA is a very wasteful entity.

And what does the NEA have to do with this? A: Nothing.

YOU might think it's wasteful, that hardly means that it is.

!

Couldn't leave the Fed out of it, could you. How sad for you.

In Italy? More likely Euros. But I don't think that they are worth that much. There has to be a market for them and they have to be researched first. You cannot take these two curators word for it.

You really rationally hashed that one out. To me it looked like a poor old chap that was cut at the neck while shaving. He sort of reminded me also of Alford Hitchcock. lol

Hai, Alai. How's it going?