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“These days, photo-based painting is as common as rain and just as inevitable, as younger artists such as Nick Mauss, Lucy McKenzie, and Wilhelm Sasnal take up the practice and exploit it. Yet it often complicates the public’s understanding of art and can easily put painters who use photographic aids, including computers and projectors, on the defensive. The question is: why? Why should a painting based on a photograph be considered a less legitimate work of art than one painted from observation or one that is simply abstract?”

A researcher has reported that the secret to Mona Lisa’s smile is “millions of invisible dots.” The expert “reported that the technique is somewhat similar to pointillism used by the French Neo-Impressionists in the late 19th century. Examples of this micro-division of tones exist since the ancient Romans. Leonardo took an existing techniques, but used it to the extreme, like nobody else.”

Christie’s has removed five beams from sale from a Cordoba mosque. “The church argued that the beams should not be sold as they have strong grounds to assert that the church retains ownership of the beams,” it said, adding that the law firm had threatened an injunction against Christie’s to prevent the sale.”

“In a surprise search Wednesday, Greek authorities seized 17 unregistered artifacts and a Byzantine icon from the vacation house of Marion True, the former J. Paul Getty Museum antiquities curator on trial in Rome on charges she trafficked in looted art. Among the objects seized, only a Hellenistic marble torso is thought to be archeologically significant.”