An art detective story

I was fascinated to read how, while cleaning a Dutch painting, an art student at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in England discovered that it had been altered in the past, obscuring its central feature – a stranded whale – without which the painting made very little sense.

Here’s a video report on how the discovery was made. I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

I suppose, after the passage of so much time, we’ll never learn for sure who covered up the whale, or why . . .

Peter