Briefs

Chinese calligrapher dies at 93

Chinese intellectuals and art connoisseurs are mourning the passing of master calligrapher Qi Gong (啟功) at the age of 93, state media reported last Friday. "His passing is a great loss to China, and to the world of traditional art and calligraphy," Wu Shuqing, a leading art critic, was quoted as saying by the China Daily. Qi, whose family was from the Manchu minority, died Thursday. He was revered for more than half a century as one of the foremost calligraphers in China.

Da Vinci work revealed with infrared

A previously unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered. The National Gallery in Britain owns it. Visitors will never be able to see it. The Guardian reported that the drawing of a kneeling woman, one arm folded, the other outflung, emerged when an infrared camera was trained on Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks, in the first scientific study of the 500-year-old painting. Visible beneath layers of paint, the sketch was probably intended as a Madonna gazing down on a sleeping infant, which was never drawn. Rachel Billinge, the researcher who led the National Gallery project, said the quality of the drawing was "beautiful -- it was all coming together to make a wonderful picture." Madonna of the Rocks was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in 1483 as an altarpiece for a chapel in Milan. Scholars believe that when Leonardo sought a bonus and was refused, he sold the painting to another client. (It is now at the Louvre.) The Confraternity continued to demand an altarpiece. Leonardo began a different painting, and scholars believe the Confraternity insisted on a Madonna of the Rocks, so in 1508 he delivered a second version, held today by the National Gallery.