Stolen Guercino and newspaper sloppiness

That Guercino ’s Madonna with St. John the Evangelist and St. Gregory the Wonderworker was stolen, everyone knows by now: after all, art history is wont to make headlines in the mainstream media either when there is a million-euro sale at some auction, or when improbable “masterpieces” are "discovered," or, as in this case, when a work of art of some significance is stolen, especially if in a daring manner as happened in Modena.

Guercino, Madonna with Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Gregory the Wonderworker.

There is, however, news in the news, namely the news that newspapers confirm their sloppiness when talking about art history. Using the correct terms? Go figure. Inform themselves accurately before writing such things? Please. Use sources other than Wikipedia? No way. Having someone on the editorial staff who has a modicum of familiarity with a subject not as easy as art history? Too much work and probably too expensive. And the result is that articles with glaring errors are produced.

The first: the date of the work. Almost all newspapers and all websites, and when we say all we mean precisely the totality of those who reported the news, attributed, to the painting by Giovan Francesco Barbieri known as Guercino, the date 1639. Now no one expects journalists to go and retrieve Guercino’s Account Book to discover that on June 25, 1630, Paolo Antonio Barbieri, brother of the artist, noted “Del Ser.no Sig.r Duca di Modena, si è ricevuto p. il Quadro d’Altare ne’ Padri Teatini, con la Madona, San Giovani, San Gregorio Taumaturgo che sono in tutto figure n: 3. dacordo in ducati 300 - e questo residovo, e Schudi 250.” No one expects the average journalist of the local gazette or generalist newspaper to go and read the studies of Denis Mahon or other experts in the field. But it would have sufficed if journalists had taken the trouble to consult any book on the artist where the date 1629-1630 is correctly given. For example, the booklet on Guercino in the Dossier d’Art series written by Luigi Ficacci would have sufficed: cost of the operation, not even 5 euros. For the thrifty, even zero euros: time to find the nearest bookstore, take a peek at Ficacci’s booklet, jot down the right date, and deliver a corrected article to the editors. But it costs too much effort: then indeed a look at Wikipedia, which gives the date 1639 and is apparently the preferred source for almost all Italian newspapers (or at least for the first one that broke the news, and was then taken up by all the others). For the sake of the record, theonly newspaper to report the correct date was the Gazzetta di Modena, which, however, corrected the story from an article that came out the previous day: one can see that someone pointed it out to them.

Then what about the light use of precise and specific terms? For example: Il Fatto Quotidiano writes that “The Madonna with Saints John the Evangelist and Gregory the Wonderworker, an oil on canvas measuring 293x184.5 centimeters and dated 1639, has disappeared from the church of San Vincenzo in Corso Canalgrande.” Dated in art history has a very specific meaning: it means that a certain date is exactly stated in the painting. These are not boring scholarly niceties: it is the basic level of accuracy in art history.

There is, finally, the always obnoxious tendency to consider the economic value of the work as one of its basic parameters. Were it for the mainstream media, the works’ apparatuses could be rewritten like this: "Guercino, Madonna with Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Wonderworker; 5-6 million euros; oil on canvas, 293 x 184.5 cm; 1629-1630; Modena, San Vincenzo." It is not clear why the reader of the local gazette, as well as of the nationally circulated daily newspaper, should be interested in the economic value of a work, all the more so in a case like this, with a painting that is patently unsaleable: this is because it is one of Guercino’s best-known and most studied works, and therefore no collector, even the most unscrupulous one, would take the very large risk of buying it. Since it is therefore an unsaleable work, it does not even make sense to shoot figures. When will we understand that the value of a work lies in its history, its significance, its importance in an artist’s journey, its importance to the local community, the values it conveys, and not in what it might be worth? The feeling one gets from reading the news in the newspapers is one of disarming sadness.

If newspapers have lost thousands of readers in recent years, it is not just because news can be found on the Web for free. So, dear journalists of traditional generalist newspapers, when you are trying to understand why your readership is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively what it used to be, read this post and ask yourself some questions.

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