Presented in partnership with the Salmagundi Club and for Village Preservation members at the $50 level and above.

Enjoy this special opportunity to go inside the beautiful Salmagundi Club and learn about the controversial history of altering and censoring well-known artworks.

Daniele da Volterra’s cover-up of the nudity in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment may be the most famous alteration of a work of art.  But through the centuries, paintings have been revised, repainted, cut up and cut down for reasons of religious sensitivity, prudery, and blatant commercialism.  This illustrated talk will explore some of the most outrageous examples of the extreme makeovers that have altered works of art, both well-known and obscure.

About the Speaker:

Robert B. Simon is an art historian and art dealer in New York, specializing in Renaissance and Baroque paintings. He received his doctorate from Columbia University and has published and lectured widely on both art-historical matters and on broader concerns relating to the authenticity, valuation, conservation, and commercial trade of works of art.  He is the co-author of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi & The Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts, recently published by Oxford University Press.

Accessibility Note: There are ten steps up to the front door.