The Guardian has a piece this week on the mysterious orb held by Christ in the Leonardo da Vinci painting currently on view at Christie’s. “Solid glass or crystal, whether shaped like an orb or a lens, produces magnified, inverted, and reversed images,” historian Walter Isaacson says of the image. “Instead, Leonardo painted the orb as if it were a hollow glass bubble that does not refract or distort the light passing through it.”
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In an extremely rare occurrence, two works by Florine Stettheimer have changed hands this year, with one going into the collection of the Whitney Museum, and one going onto the open market.  Stettheimer rarely sold or gave her works away, making one’s appearance, let alone two in the same year, a momentous event. 
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French-Algerian artist Kader Attia has been named  winner of the 2017 Joan Miró Prize.  “Attia’s passionate engagement with current affairs and with the shared fate of humanity [which] has close links to Joan Miró’s involvement in the critical episodes that marked his generation, while Attia’s unique take on complex, often traumatic, human relationships across cultures resonates with Miró’s universal aspirations,” the award’s jury said in a statement.
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