Jean-Pierre Isbouts | |
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Born | 1954 (age 69–70) [1] |
Occupation(s) | Professor, historian, author, screenwriter, director [1] |
Notable work | Charlton Heston's Hollywood Walt: The Man Behind the Myth National Geographic's The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas National Geographic's In the Footsteps of Jesus National Geographic's Who's Who in the Bible The Mona Lisa Myth The Story of Christianity: A Chronicle of Christian Civilization From Ancient Rome to Today |
Website | www |
Jean-Pierre Isbouts (born 1954) is a professor in the Social Sciences PhD program of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, [2] and an archaeologist, author, screenwriter, director, and producer of works addressing various historical periods, particularly the time period of Jesus and that of Renaissance and post-Renaissance art.
Born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Isbouts studied Attic Greek and Latin, archaeology, art history and musicology at Leiden University in 1980. He received his PhD from Columbia University in New York, writing his dissertation on the American Beaux-Arts architecture firm of Carrère and Hastings. In 1983, Isbouts wrote and directed one of the first documentary works specifically created for the LaserDisc format, and "the first successful commercial videodisc to index and show art works". [3] The piece, Van Gogh Revisited, was one side of Vincent Van Gogh: A Portrait in Two Parts, examining the life and works of Vincent van Gogh; the other side features a performance of the one-man-play by its author and co-director of the project, Leonard Nimoy. [3] [2]
Isbouts, as executive producer, expanded this into a Great Arts Series by 1991, with multiple installments allowing users to "explore art galleries and paintings while listening to music of the period", [4] including installments on The French Impressionists (1991), The Art of the Czars (1992), and Dutch Masters of the 17th Century (1993). In 1995, having formed the production company Pantheon in Santa Monica, California, Isbouts extended his interests to the historical backdrop of Jesus, directing a four-hour "multimedia presentation of New Testament stories from the birth of Jesus to his Crucifixion and Resurrection" narrated by Charlton Heston, the first production of the series, Charlton Heston's Voyage through the Bible. [5] [6] [7] In 1996, he produced Hamlet: The Game , a CD-ROM game of Shakespeare's Hamlet , combining material provided from the 1996 film adaptation by Kenneth Branagh with original footage, animation, and games and puzzles. [8]
Through his documentary work with Heston, in 1998 Isbouts came to coauthor Charlton Heston's Hollywood with the actor. [7] In 2000, Isbouts presented a three-part series examining ancient cultural and religious prophesies, [9] In 2001, Isbouts directed Walt: The Man Behind the Myth , a biographical documentary film about Walt Disney, narrated by Dick Van Dyke. [10] [11] [2] In 2008, Isbouts directed Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler , on Operation Valkyrie, [12] which was noted as showing "the advantages offered by a film treatment of a topic" as compared to accounts in print. [13]
In November 2012, Isbouts again returned to Biblical history, publishing In the Footsteps of Jesus with National Geographic . [14] [15] [2]
Isbouts paints a vivid portrait of the world as Jesus knew it, so scene-setting that Jesus doesn’t even appear as a topic until more than 100 pages into the 300-page book. Among other theories, Isbouts posits that Jesus was born near Nazareth, not Bethlehem; that he was a construction worker who toiled on new Roman cities rather than a carpenter; that he valued women as equal to men; and, perhaps most critically, that his ministry was as much about political and social activism as it was about religious belief. [14]
In 2016, Isbouts published two additional books, Archaeology of the Bible: The Greatest Discoveries From Genesis to the Roman Era, also with National Geographic ; and Ten Prayers that Changed the World. [16] [2] A 2020 Houston Chronicle article noted that "Isbouts has two main passions: the message of the historical Jesus and the artists who shared and represented those sentiments". [2] A musicologist, Isbouts also produced recordings for several of his films. [2]
In October 2013, Isbouts published another book examining a Renaissance art theme, The Mona Lisa Myth , [17] examining the history and events behind the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and the Isleworth Mona Lisa , endorsing the two-Mona Lisa theory and confirming the latter's attribution to Leonardo. [18] A companion film was released in March 2014, also directed by Isbouts, with narration by Morgan Freeman. [19] Describing his first examination of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, Isbouts related that he was "sceptical but intrigued", [20] stating, "I walked into the vault, it was very cold in there, and I spent about two hours with that painting. But after five minutes I recognised that this had to be a Leonardo". [20] He described being "absolutely floored" by the quality of the preservation and the "intense luminosity of the face". [21] [22]
Isbouts presented a theory that the Isleworth Mona Lisa is an earlier work by Leonardo, and is the original portrait of the Florentine subject, "while the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is an allegorical representation of the Madonna Annunziata". [23] He further noted that "24 of 27 recognised Leonardo scholars have agreed this is a Leonardo". [21]
In his 2017 book, Young Leonardo: The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist, 1472-1499, also coauthored with Brown, Isbouts presents a theory that Leonardo also painted two versions of The Last Supper , with the second being a replica of the first painted on canvas at the request of Louis XII of France. [24] In 2019, the pair published The da Vinci Legacy: How an Elusive 16th-Century Artist Became a Global Pop Icon. [25] That same year, Isbouts edited and wrote a section of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa: New Perspectives, further exploring the evidence of Leonardo having painted the Isleworth Mona Lisa. [20]
Year | Title | Functioned as | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | The Search for the Last Supper | Writer, director | TV movie documentary |
2014 | The Mona Lisa Myth | Writer, director | TV movie documentary |
2008 | Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler | Writer, director | Video documentary |
2007 | Beyond 'The Golden Compass': The Magic of Philip Pullman | Writer, director | Video documentary |
2005 | The Quest for Peace | Writer, director | TV movie |
2004 | Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator | Writer | Video documentary |
2001 | Walt: The Man Behind the Myth | Writer, director | Documentary series episode |
1999 | Inside the Cold War with Sir David Frost | Writer | TV movie documentary |
1997 | Terror on the Titanic | Director | Video documentary |
1992 | Dutch Masters of the 17th Century | Director | Video documentary |
1992 | The Art of the Czars | Director | Video documentary |
1991 | The French Impressionists | Director | Video documentary |
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, being two of the most famous artworks ever created, but also upon his diverse skills as a scientist and inventor. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.
The Isleworth Mona Lisa is an early 16th-century oil on canvas painting depicting the same subject as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, though with the subject depicted as being a younger age. The painting is thought to have been brought from Italy to England in the 1780s, and came into public view in 1913 when the English connoisseur Hugh Blaker acquired it from a manor house in Somerset, where it was thought to have been hanging for over a century. The painting would eventually adopt its unofficial name of Isleworth Mona Lisa from Blaker's studio being in Isleworth, West London. Since the 1910s, experts in various fields, as well as the collectors who have acquired ownership of the painting, have asserted that the major elements of the painting are the work of Leonardo himself, as an earlier version of the Mona Lisa.
Marco d'Oggiono was an Italian Renaissance painter and a chief pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, many of whose works he copied.
David Feldman MA. BBS, RDP(I).FRPSL is a professional philatelist, auctioneer, art specialist and author. He held his first stamp auction in 1967. Feldman is Honorary Chairman of David Feldman SA, a Geneva-based auction company, through which he attained record prices for some of the world's most famous postage stamps. In 1993, Feldman auctioned the "Bordeaux Cover", which comprised the 1847 1d Orange-red and the 2d Deep Blue Mauritius "Post Office" stamps, which brought 6,175,000 Swiss francs including all commissions, at that time the highest price ever paid for any philatelic item. He also sold the unique 1855 Sweden Treskilling Yellow stamp at auction in 1996, which at the time was the highest price ever paid for a single stamp, for which he was pictured in the Guinness Book of Records. That record was eclipsed in 2014 by the sale of the British Guiana 1c magenta.
The 16th-century portrait Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci, has been the subject of a considerable deal of speculation.
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable and famous works of art in the world, and also one of the most replicated and reinterpreted. Mona Lisa replicas were already being painted during Leonardo's lifetime by his own students and contemporaries. Some are claimed to be the work of Leonardo himself, and remain disputed by scholars. Prominent 20th-century artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí have also produced derivative works, manipulating Mona Lisa's image to suit their own aesthetic. Replicating Renaissance masterpieces continues to be a way for aspiring artists to perfect their painting techniques and prove their skills.
John Fredrich Asmus is a research physicist who has focused his work on the use of scientific techniques in art conservation. As of 2020, he taught at the Institute for Pure and Applied Physical Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he began working in 1974.
The Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci is located in Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci's birthplace, in the province of Florence, Italy. It is part of the Museo leonardiano di Vinci.
Adolfo Venturi was an Italian art historian. His son, Lionello Venturi, was also an art historian.
Paul George Konody was a Hungarian-born, London-based art critic and historian, who wrote for several London newspapers, as well as writing numerous books and articles on noted artists and collections, with a focus on the Renaissance. A recognized expert on the art of the Renaissance, he was lauded for his evaluation of claims of authenticity for works from that period, correctly debunking Wilhelm von Bode's assertion that a bust of Flora was sculpted by Leonardo da Vinci. During World War I, Konody became interested in the representation of war in the arts, and directed an effort to commemorate Canadian participation in that war.
Vertumnus and Pomona is a painting by Francesco Melzi dated to c. 1518–1522. It depicts the Roman god of the seasons Vertumnus in the guise of an old woman attempting to woo the lady Pomona. It is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie of the Berlin State Museums.
The two–Mona Lisa theory is a longstanding theory proposed by various historians, art experts, and others that Leonardo da Vinci painted two versions of the Mona Lisa. Several of these experts have further concluded that examination of historical documents indicates that one version was painted several years before the second.
Dr. Henry Franz Pulitzer (1899–1979) was an Austrian-born gallery owner and "avid art collector", and connoisseur, described by one source as a "media mogul". He was the owner of the Pulitzer galleries in London and Bern, Switzerland, and of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, a painting famous for the claim passed down from its previous owners that there was evidence that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Pulitzer himself took up the cause of proving the claimed provenance of the painting, including writing a book in support of it, but his efforts did not lead to acceptance of the claim during his lifetime.
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