The painting was rumored to be in existence from a mere etching by Hollar in 1650, and the piece called “Salvator Munti (Savior of the World)” had passed from hand to hand privately for five centuries until it was recently loaned to the National Gallery and publicized this past July. Where was this painting for five centuries?

Let us open the art history time capsule. It’s almost as potent as Ibprofren; however, its use is slightly different. Under recently applied varnish, specialists date the lost masterpiece from either 1498-1499 (in Milan) or 1500-1506 (in Florence). In the 17th century the painting passed from the hands of Charles I to the Duke of Buckingham 1688 until it was sold by his descendants in 1763 as a da Vinci masterpiece only to resurface in 1900. It appears in the 1913 Cook catalog, where Sir Herbert Cook attributes it to “contemporary painter of Leonardo’s School.” Specialists, however, have little doubt that it is the lost da Vinci masterpiece. After removing layers of discolored varnish and evidence of crude retouching, the style in which the work is rendered is nearly evidence enough for scholars.

Reportedly, the work turned up in a private American collection and is now owned by a party named R.W. Chandler. This November, the general public will have the privileged opportunity to view the long lost work in person. The National Gallery, as a part of this historical exhibition, also managed a record eight museum loans of priceless da Vinci works that usually don’t leave the museum wall. These works include “Leonardo’s “Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (The Lady with an Ermine)”, about 1489-90, on loan from the Czartoryski Foundation and the National Museum in Cracow, “Five character studies (A man tricked by gypsies)”, about 1493, from The Royal Collection and “Virgin and Child (The Madonna Litta)”, about 1491-5, from The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg,” according to The Art Newspaper.

Most fascinating about the “Savior of the World” painting, is da Vinci’s emphasis of power in hand gesture. This is second only to the Mona Lisa’s secret smile. Perhaps we can suppose she knew where it was hidden all along.

Camille Pissarro is often thought of as the forefather of Impressionism, which rejected the bourgeoisie and embraced nature and the expression of the immediate. Early works exemplified the hardworking peasant in harmony with nature, while later works depict more industrialized settings than any other painter of the period.  In the Industrial Age drastic changes shaped an anarchist Pissarro. How would the artist handle the Age of Information Technology, where Twitter is the breaking news source on everything?

He would have mixed feelings. Maybe it’s the anarchist itch. Not many painters before Pissarro showcased the working class as a prominent and intellectual figure in his true element. For most of his life this is seen in his depictions of rural life. The Hay harvest Eragny (1901) (above) is a wonderful example of a style consistent throughout Pissaro’s lifetime. The Impressionists rendered more than light. The loose brushstrokes of selective color represented a moment, and the style itself is aesthetically pointing out that it can fade at any moment. It didn’t help that a revolution was happening. The French Revolution (1789–1799) caused many artists to flee to England and paint the true color of the urban underbelly. Before the revolution the arts had been supported and controlled by the government and its select institutions (The Salon). The Impressionists were frankly sick of censorship and started their own movement, hosting several exhibitions outdoors.

Pissarro provided financial assistance to Jean Grave, the dominant figure in the French anarchist-communist movement. The movement held that life was best when left to its simpler elements with people working together in small communal groups as versus a national monopoly. Pissarro’s empowered the peasant in his or her natural environment in and through his artwork.

In the Age of Information Technology we are undergoing a myriad of changes. Caught in a worldwide recession, oppressive governments fall under dictators and wars rage over resources we have monopolized into scarcity. Our children play less, if at all. We still struggle to feed our families and keep roofs over our heads. The working class is caught up in a worldwide revolution spreading like the bird flu, and the breaking news is not broken by mainstream media or governments. It’s by Twitter and the like. Forget censorship. Wikileaks and Anonymous are our Impressionist painters, our Pissarro, Monet, and Renoir.

When Pissarro began painting cities and factories, he wasn’t a one-sided anarchist but more of an optimist. To look at one of these artworks, it is clear that though smog taints blue skies there is an allure and thrill attached to the urban fast life, a new and sometimes uncanny sort of beauty. Pissarro painted this allure. It’s present in many of his cityscapes. Some theorize that he hated and loved the urban sprawl. A melting pot of mixed feelings, the proof is the accuracy of the artwork. Nothing is embellished. It would stand to reason that Pissarro would feel similarly about the aspects of information technology that while they consume our lives like smog, empower the individual voice within the masses.

Last week, the Van Gogh Museum told press officials that a known self-portrait by Van Gogh isn’t really the artist, it’s his brother, Theo. Vincent Van Gogh’s brother was a major patron of his artwork, supporting Vincent throughout most of his life, morally and financially.

Art historians at the museum say that if this is true then the “self-portrait” will be the only known portrait created by Van Gogh of his brother, aside from casual sketches. Museum spokeswoman Linda Snoek said that the piece was rendered in 1887, when the brothers resided together in Paris. It seems this era of Vincent Van Gogh’s life isn’t well known, except through a few letters exchanged between the brothers.

The brothers are close in resemblance, but scholars say that it is in fact Theo for a number of reasons. A CBS news source shares the following comparisons, “The portrait of Theo shows he had rounder ears than Vincent did. The other portrait shows Vincent with long, angular ears, consistent with other artists’ paintings of Vincent. That is before he famously self-mutilated one of his ears in December 1888.

In addition, Theo’s goatee is more yellow-brown than Vincent’s dark red beard, and Theo has shaven cheeks, consistent with photographs of him from the same period, while Vincent painted himself sporting mutton-chop sideburns.”

Another Van Gogh Self-Portrait (1887), with “mutton-chops”

Van Gogh rendered this self portrait in 1887. He made the move to Paris to live with Theo in 1886, aged 32 years. This was at the height of the Impressionist movement, where he was inspired by and moved alongside Monet and Gauguin. He and Gauguin worked together in Arles, where Van Gogh painted sunflowers to help decorate Gauguin’s residence. Interestingly, the sunflowers are later found in several of Van Gogh’s artworks. The exposure to Impressionism inspired the use of dramatic color in his modern art pieces.

In 1888, mental illness began to become more evident. It was the year that he suffered from bouts of epilepsy, psychotic attacks, and delusions. In one episode he took a knife to his ear and severed it, and later offered the removed ear to a prostitute. This was the same knife he assaulted Gauguin with earlier in the day. Before the episodes became severe, Van Gogh dreamed of creating his own school with Gauguin and other artists.

Vincent left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1890 and regained contact with Theo. Though he viewed his life and work as a failure, he continued to paint a new work almost daily. Paint flowed through his veins. It was during this time that he created Starry Night, a beloved favorite for most in the world. Whatever fueled his artwork could not be rendered fast enough, like many artists who speak of death at the hands of their muse.

On July 27, 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest and survived the suicide attempt, but he died from the wound two days later. Theo was devastated and inherited the majority of Vincent’s work. Six months later Theo, too, died. His widow took Vincent’s work to Holland to advocate for the work of a brilliant artist and his most supportive patron, his brother Theo.

The recently restored Mona Lisa has the most regarded half smile of any master portrait, and archaeologists are close to discovering who may be the inspiration behind it. In 2008, researchers from Heidelberg University located a note scribbled by a Florentine clerk in the margins of a centuries old manuscript (1503) stating that da Vinci was rendering a portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, wife of a wealthy and prominent silk merchant. The lady became a nun after her husband’s death. Just a year before the note’s discovery, an amateur historian happened upon Lady Gherardini’s death certificate. She died at age 65 on July 15, 1542, and was buried in Florence’s Saint Ursula convent.

The convent dates back to 1309 where it was later converted into a tobacco factory in the 19th century and sheltered World War II refugees in the forties. The structure is three stories high, with catacombs beneath its concrete floor. Archaeologists officially broke ground at the site on May 9 and have unearthed a skull. Once the remains have been verified through DNA testing compared with that of her deceased children, the team hopes that facial reconstruction can solve this mystery once and for all. Interestingly, in Italy Mona Lisa is nicknamed La Gioconda (“light-hearted woman”).

Other candidates for the role of Mona Lisa have included da Vinci’s mother Caterina, Princess Isabella of Naples, a Spanish lady named Costanza d’Avalos and Cecilia Gallerani, who posed for an earlier painting, The Lady With an Ermine. More interesting theories emphasize masculine facial features of the sitter, suggesting that da Vinci based the portrait on his own likeness or that of his apprentice and possible lover, Gian Giacomo Caprotti. Caprotti was known affectionately to da Vinci as Salai, who inherited the Mona Lisa upon the artist’s death. Art historian Silvano Vinceti, who heads the team’s dig, suggested that Mona Lisa could be interpreted as an anagram [Mon Salai], meaning “My Salai.”

Along with the skull, ribs and vertebrae were discovered by the excavation team. The skull will be studied by paleoanthropologist Francesco Mallegni. The truth behind this excavation will not only put to rest a mystery, but let us learn more about da Vinci’s approach to art. However, the dig has led to an uproar among a few of the remaining Florentine noble families, yet the discovery is also said to be an intriguing possibility:

“At first the thought of the dig horrified me but now I am fascinated,” said Natalia Guicciardini Strozzi, a member of one of the oldest and most influential Florentine families.

Picasso defied any supposition that an artist had to practice one form of art or paint one type of subject matter over the course of his life. He took on many styles, but also fathered one — Cubism. Cubism to the the artist is much like the rendering of a map from a cartographer’s perspective. An expanse of various surfaces, textures, spatial depth, shapes, and sizes. How would you render that on a two dimensional surface? Cubism does leave many of Picasso’s portraits looking like he painted on a mirror, shattered it, and reassembled the fragments.

They say it takes about 22 muscles to smile and 37 muscles to frown. The human face has a myriad of expressions and viewpoints. Cubism, to Picasso, reduced the difficulty of depicting this complexity. Princess Margaret once commented that it was easier to feel his work and not have to put as much work into thinking about what every little symbol meant.

Cubism reigned from 1907 until around the end of World War I and began when Picasso was in Paris, working in partial inspiration from Cezanne’s flattened depiction of space. An early depiction, much closer to realism than later pieces in this movement, of Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907) is said to be the seminal Cubist creation. This piece is interesting because shapes and space aren’t just blocked out, characteristic of the Cubist movement, but the paint strokes are also prominently achieving the same effect, hardly seen in Picasso’s other works.

Notice the figures on the right. They appear very different from the other women, less like women in fact. The almost-masks are echoes from Picasso’s play with Primitivism and African sculptural influence.

When you look at those two women, elements of their faces seem to be rendered from various points of view. It can be disconcerting to the viewer. Picasso understood this in his use of color and often employed bright, primary color hues in his portraits.

Picasso used bright and dark hues to set a mood, usually dualistic, and in unusual ways to block space.

In Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932) Picasso shows us the view of the woman from the side and front, echoed in the positioning of the breasts. The figure’s left thigh is in a natural position to reflect either perspective.

It’s interesting to note that many of his similar rendered portraits, the object is usually a solitary figure and lover of Picasso.

Even though a viewer can easily understand this much, we still have to ask, “Why the weird faces Picasso?” If you want to show your child the meaning of, “Your face will freeze that way,” show him a Cubist portrait by Picasso; that might do the trick.

The body of Picasso’s works were stashed in a garage for forty years until a letter was written to Picasso’s son, asking about the worth of the collection. This letter was written last November by Picasso’s ex-electrician, Pierre Le Guennec, who claimed the collection had been gifted to him by Picasso and his second wife Jacqueline. It was only recently that Le Guennec was formally indicted with possession of stolen property. Le Guennec will appear before a judge later this month on charges.

According to Var Martin, the Le Guennecs were also gifted with 540,000 francs in 1983. The information was revealed by the Picasso Administration in a formal document. This gift occurs ten years after Le Guennec’s employment as an electrician (1970-1973) with the Picasso family. Inside the collection are never seen before drawings, Cubist works, and a rare painting from the Blue period.

However, Le Guennec is not the only one undergoing investigation. Picasso’s ex-driver, Maurice Bresnu, who himself possessed over a hundred of his employer’s works. Bresnu is Le Guennec’s cousin. Police did retain works from an auction of Bresnu’s own collection this June, but investigation has not lead to any evidence of connection between the cases, except for the obvious and unusual factor of familial relation and stolen goods.