> On Sep 18, 2011, at 1:50 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>> On 9/18/2011 11:35 AM, Charles Turner wrote:
>>> On Sep 18, 2011, at 11:54 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>>
>>>> And what does one do with a "Value Judgment" anyhow? Wear it like a bumper sticker?
>>>
>>> Well, as I said, they make Rembrandt a household name, and Ferdinand Bol (to whom former "Rembrandts" are now attributed) pretty obscure.
>>
>> What is the evidence that it "they" (formal value judgments) were what did the trick. I suspect it was just that one painter evoked continuing conversation while the other painter did not.
>
> Which, along with other criteria, are probably what constitute what we have come to call a “value judgement”, no?
I was going to let this comment of Carroll's pass, but what I meant by "to whom former "Rembrandts" are now attributed" is that in this century (or last), paintings formerly thought to have been painted by Rembrandt are now attributed to Bol, who had been a pupil of Rembrandt.
The process of re-attribution isn't a very forensic one: there's no paint chip, no artistic DNA that can be compared, to solve the authorship question. While the type of tack used to stretch a canvas might be a hard clue to authorship, mostly, the process relies on an examination and assessment of "artistic values."
So "formal value judgements" didn't "do the trick," and as these painting had been thought for so long to have been by Rembrandt, the idea of their "evoking continuing conversation" is pretty moot. Also, their re-attribution has done nothing to lower our estimation of Rembrandt's greatness as an artist, nor raise our opinion of Bol, although the monetary value of certain collections fluctuated.
C.