Director Philip Adams of the Cincinnati Art Museum made a gleeful announcement last week. "For peanuts," he said, he had picked up in Florence, Italy a painting that turned out to be a genuine Botticelli. which he values at $80,000. The picture was a smaller (11½ in. by 8½ in.) version of Botticelli's great Judith, which hangs in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. Adams guessed his painting to be one of the master's preparatory studies of the subject. Cleaning at Cincinnati had corrected some "bungling repairs," made Judith's head look less prettified.
Italy, of course,...
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