EP 130: Improving Yourself vs. Impressing Others

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For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. You get free nights every night all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan, created for how Texans actually use energy, discover how much more you could save with free nights in cool summer, TXU Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information, rep #10004. All of us trans are in real danger, and whatever it is, it's closing in. It started with just a few lost hairs here and there, but now more and more of us are disappearing every day. But listen, we think we have a plan, a way to stop the shedding, panting abundant and strong. Go now. It's not too late. Pantene, abundant and strong. It's a three-step system that reduces hair loss by 85%. Only the strongest will survive the shedding. Nothing beats tradition, like weekly game nights at mom's house, and tostitos, crafted with masa made the traditional way, starting with whole corn kernels, with flavors worth gathering around, like a hint of lime and Mexican street corn, and no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives, that's the tostitos way. Bring tostitos to your next game night, and you'll be winning either way. Tostitos, tradition matters. Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello everyone, and welcome back to New Books in History, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Yana Byers, your host, and I am so pleased to be here today with the eminent historian Peter Burke, who is emeritus from Cambridge, but still working to talk about his new book, The Connoisseur, out this year, 2026, with reaction books. So what brought you to write this book? How does the history of connoisseurship relate to the history of knowledge? Now, this book is the result of a crossing of interests. So in 1990s, I began working on the history of knowledge, which was just beginning to define itself as a field set put from intellectual history. And I was particularly interested in the social history of knowledge, and wrote about that first generally. And then I wrote specific books about polymaths and wanting not to be stale, I thought, the best thing is turn a subject upside down. And so then I moved from people who were supposed to know everything through history of ignorance. So then where does one go from there? And I realized most of the time my social history of knowledge was a social history of academic knowledge, or I prefer to say, knowledge is in the plural. So I wanted in compensation to write about some form of practical knowledge. And when I was a schoolboy, I sketched, I painted, I visited art galleries. And without knowing it was cool, I played the attribution game of trying to guess when sufficiently far away not to read the label, whether this was money or whatever. And of course, I trusted the label as I've learned the course of writing this book, big a lot of questions. So I got to come to society and I'm very happy that I did because I had a wonderful time in the last two years during the research, talking to people and actually enjoy the business of writing as well. So that got me started. And how do we define connoisseurship? Yes. I could define connoisseurship in three words, which is the art of judging art. But it could be more specific, what does that involve? It certainly involves judgements of quality. But at least since the beginning of the 17th century, it's been customary to add to the sense of quality, the ability to attribute paintings or sketches to a particular artist. And also to discriminate between originals, copies and forgeries. Actually, this will not be my get back to that. There's no such thing as a forgery, only the presentation of a particular work intended to deceive. And that produces problems of knowing whether a copy was made by the artist or not. Or by somebody else to study or because they wanted it for their collection, or did they want to pretend that it was a real there and now that when it wasn't. So that's with definition, it's very traditional, but I was happy to work within those limits. Because this problem is because you have a pastiche, which is on the edge between a copy and a forgery. And the artists were extremely skilled at imitating the style of other artists, offered with no originality when they tried to be original. But under constant temptation, having so successfully painted something by somebody else, the room fell it till such. What separates it from other forms of appreciation? Well, it's just addition, and it includes art appreciation, but it also has these other components. If somebody never made an attribution, it will be very strange to call in the chromosome. However good they were talking about the quality of a particular Rembrandt or whatever. And then that goes with showing that your parent artist is not the real artist in the case of couples and forges. So these are different skills, but we do normally find them uniting the same person. And of course very often these are art historians, but it sustains complex relationship between art historians and chronicers. And get on very well, some of the same person. And others, I always make rudiments about one another. I've been colovsky didn't believe in connoisseurship. And when the Berenson in the rash moment said that panofsky was the hit throughout history, which is incredible, but so is how angry he was at the time. Let's begin by talking about connoisseurship in the Renaissance. OK, so there's a sense in which series collecting began, will began again in the Renaissance, because there had been plenty of collecting in classical antiquity, as in the other courses of China in particular. And I'd start with the difference between a collector on the connoisseur, because one Chinese writer summed it up in an epigram, he said, most connoisseurs are collectors, but very few collectors are connoisseurs. Now in the Renaissance then you have this rise of an interest in the elite in Florence, Venice and elsewhere in collecting, but it's not in the first place collecting paintings. It's collecting relics of antiquity. Ancient Roman coins, inscriptions, classical statues, or bits of classical statues, sometimes believed to be rigged, but very often later connoisseurs have shown that these were late Roman copies of ancient Greek originals. But all this now made great excitement by well known figures in the Renaissance like Lorenzo de Medici and Isabella, just the Marcianess of Mantua, both of them were also interested in painting, but they were interested in this contemporary art, so they were patrons, They largely. patronised so that works could be exhibited in public which showed either their magnificence or their priority in the case of religious paintings. But an exception to the rule is Isabella because she also collected paintings of her own time to be just displayed in her study. I'm also getting very interesting about Isabella because most patrons about time, late 15th century and even much later collected paintings because they light landscape or they wanted their portrait, they painted or they light-skilled life. But Isabella wanted works by particular people so she was collecting nearly another or trying to get one and she went so far as writing to Gene Giovanni Bellini. I want one of your so much. It can be any subject to light which is remarkable coming from a lady who when negotiating with a lesser artist had given him not only the measurements the names of all the figures she wanted in the painting and with the little she added you were not to add anything of your own. I'm not talking to a creator artist like that. So it's definitely it starts in the Italian Renaissance and it spreads and at a certain point and there are only a few people that I couldn't think of in the early 16th century. There's a new interest in old art. So in the 16th century then the Flemish masters of the 15th are sufficiently distant but you find Italians wanting to buy roughly under Edmund and so on. It's about an important new stage and the collecting of old masters really takes off in the 17th century then the old masters are from the 15th and 16th. And then I thought I'd found the earliest use of the term old master in the infantry in French of the paintings that Rubens had collected. Ask him, met her, and versus met him over there. But my friend Feng and Paul Taylor don't trump this by telling me that the term is used in Karol von Mander in 1604. I didn't read carefully enough for two to be exact two long ago to realize that he would be worth looking for the first reference to this. And some of the most famous kinds of serves have been collectors. And which means amateurs. I mean it's only a few years since the death of Dengus Marg who had private means on a considerable scale. So his hobby was collecting works of art and he was then in that way became the renowned specialist on 17th century Italian art and which he was still buying at the age of 99 or so just a few years ago. Yeah, I mean people said his judgment wasn't so good in his last years as it could certainly mean when he was only 80 or 70. At UT MD Anderson Cancer Center our goal is to cure cancer. Not simply treat the symptoms. We go beyond standard diagnostics and conduct in-depth tests to ensure our patients receive an accurate diagnosis and the right treatment plan from the start. This deeper level of precision gives our patients the best hope to overcome cancer. At UT MD Anderson we know cancer inside and out. Squarespace because no matter what you're into a website makes it real. Use offer code difference for 50% off select plans terms and conditions apply. For the first time ever Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. You get free nights every night all year long plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer. TXU Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information rep #100004. The deadlines, the pressure, the tension. You may just brush it off as stress but is your hair. I got to tell you it's eating us alive. Weakening are very roots breaking us apart. In the more you stress the more we slip away. Now please take a deep breath. There's something you can do. Pantene abundant and strong systems strengthens your hair against stress. Reducing hair loss by 85%. Pantene abundant and strong. Nothing beats tradition like weekly game nights at mom's house. Antostitos crafted with masa made the traditional way starting with whole corn kernels with flavors worth gathering around like a hint of lime and Mexican street corn and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. That's the Tostitos way. Bring Tostitos to your next game night and you'll be winning either way. Tell me about the codification of connoisseurship. What are you using as your source here? Yeah, the codification is noticeable at the beginning of the 17th century. I wouldn't like to swear that that means that was when people first thought that way. What am I dealing with practices? It's a fair bet that practice any given practice antidates the first record of it in sometimes by quite a long time. But we can definitely say thanks to the evidence of treatises on the subject of connoisseurship. And I'm thinking of Philip Bubalvin who managed to cram and magisterial survey of the field into the relatively short lettermage was published after his death. After that, I thinking of origin, the field in France and England had to wait till the 18th century because none of the Richardson discusses all this. And they all have the threefold definition of connoisseurship in it, the different components. So that adds the codification and that's my evidence for it. But I do want to say, and of course this is obvious to the historian, that connoisseurship being a practice or more exactly a bundle of practices. If it lasts for 500 years, as it has done at the minimum in Europe, it's bound to have changed over time. And I'll get back to that later to answer another question, but I do want to insist early on that we're dealing with hard core of techniques to which traditions, refinements are made in the course of its development over those like 100 years. I'd like to spend a moment talking about collecting in my home, the Netherlands. Yes, he's a lot to say about the Netherlands. Since it's so well known that I don't need to talk about the REN research project. So it might come up again when we talk about crisis. But then they've been extremely distinguished connoisseurs in the Netherlands. One of the more recent ones, I don't know if he's still around, that is Franz Goupard. We met at the Getty Centre. It had some very interesting conversations. And he told me, I remember that his passion in life was taking paintings away from Vermeer and giving them to God Fabricius. But somebody else told me, it's a classic story about connoisseurs, that he found a Fabricius on the evidence of his eye alone. But then when he was taken out in the frame, it turned out Fabricius had signed it, but nobody had known since it went into the frame. And the same story about the Homefront Boulder discovering a guru which again was signed in some more place that nobody expected to find it. And of course, I put up a poll of four to eight. I suppose the best known forger in the history of the art must be hunt, hunt and make on, who had the skill to deceive even Abraham and Rhaedius who, ironically enough, had identified other forgerers in his past life as a commiserate, as well as discovering real fun as. It's an interesting story, which ends as you know, with what I think covers the myth of the and forger. But somebody who is so good that he's not relieved. So when my home facing a trial for prison decided to confess in jail that the painting he's all to going was not by from there at all. And then they said they wouldn't believe him and said, you have to paint whatever one to convince us. But of course, it's a story told by Rosari about Nicolangelo, who is cupping that he sold to Cardinal Riario as an antiquity. And then he said to the cardinal who'd really paid for it. No, it was actually by me. And Cardinal says, I don't believe you've got to make another one. And so Nicolangelo made a backpuss that persuaded him. And there were other cases. And so it's both the myth, and I think, is probably true in both cases. Something rather curious for historians to say. Of course, there's lots more to say about the Netherlands, including the southern Netherlands, as well, as the North. There's an early modernist, that's an uppermost idea. And then think of the restorer as forger. And think of music, yes, from the bacon, and the phlegmage primitium. So if nobody's now knowing where fun egg stops, and the restorer forger begins. Is this a professional role? It can be, but it need not be. And for a long time, it was the case that chromosomes were usually people with a different professional role. I mean, the first recorded act of connoisseurship of the time came across in late 15th century Italy. It's the patron Haras Montenegro to fresco a chapel. And then he wanders where the Montenegro had been using assistance. So he asks another artist. And the other artist said, I didn't see him paint anything, but I'm just looking at it, has to be Montenegro. And you know, we artists, we know we're very well acquainted with the style of our colleagues. And then the second group moved into this art dealers project. It has to be when people that solve works of art stop being general dealers who were selling rugs or whatever and specialize. And then it's worth their worthwhile to be invested in the training or self training to make themselves connoisseurs. And then still another profession. And in the 19th century, the rise of the professional curator, who of course was not just a keeper. And a director of an art gallery was expected to have an acquisitions policy, which we can't pursue that. Well, maybe they did get it and they paid the price by getting it by by all sorts of fakes. But European museums may have expected the director and to have a skill of connoisseurship as well as administration or all the other things you have to do if you're running a national gallery or something like that. And then of course, you can be an amateur like Dennis Martin. And I think there's a rise of these treatises in the 17th and still more in the 18th century. My right is things. Because the amateur collectors won't be skilled, either for its own sake, or to be accepted in the outworld and got to show a reasonable amount of knowledge. And because it's practical knowledge, they can't get it by just reading a book that they have to be trained in some way. So there's a sense in which Baron Summers was a professor in conversation. That is, and he made a living from it. A very good living from it. And since he refused to accept academic posts or posters curators, it meant he was his sole source of income. Today, the word connoisseurs has strangely become a dirty word. And but there are professional connoisseurs and some of them work, or are Christians or Suggles. Others set out business in their own. This is quite a recent trend. But when they do it, they like to call themselves art advisers or art consultants. They tell to something about the world we live in and the way in which the world art and the world of commerce intersect. So if I had to name and names of professional connoisseurs after barrens, it would be some of these people. And where does the professional art critic come in? Yes, of course. Art utilizes in the incense, and I, for quality, that's part of connoisseurship from the first. So I would start to link along to your question is I think the middle of the 18th century because the first professional art critic known to me is Denis Gishevaux because he made, of course he did so many other things. He was a great polymath, but he made a substantial income reviewing the salon for publication in a journal. And in the 19th century, which I think is the sort of golden age professional art critic. Yeah, they write from the beginning to the actual journal slide. They would do the amount in Paris, Westminster review in London, and so on. And after all, this is what Baskin made for a lot of his time besides writing his books. And he gives you power. You can launch previously on the artists as Baskin did for Turner. I didn't mention talent, but I think it's the very important part of being a connoisseur. There are the dealer, Connoisseurs, who have an extraordinary eye that one young man or woman in so much better than the other ones. And the dealer is going to give them one person exhibition and launch them. But in the sense, you can go back further and talk about talent spotting in the past. And I'm thinking, obviously, of Troche Berger, who was one of the people, not the only person, but the person who launched for mayor, who had not been taken very seriously relative to other Dutch artists until the middle of the 19th century. In Spain, there were people doing that for whole record. That raises a whole issue of whether people at a particular moment in time in the art world are prepared for the evaluation of a particular artist in the past, because of some affinity between that artist and something that's going on in the present. So it all glad we're being discovered because he's an early expressionist. And Patty was one of the first discoverers, Franz Mark, was a expressionist painting. Period of the Francesque is discovered in the age of Cezanne, because it's got that similar interest in geometrical shapes. Probably lots of cases I don't know about, but these things are really very interesting. That's more than enough on that topic. What's the cultural reaction to the connoisseur? It's now we get to the image of the connoisseur, which is very interesting. I think I'm not sure we linked again, but at least by the 19th century, connoisseurs have a public reputation as a kind of magician. After all, somebody walks up to a painting, looks at it for a minute, and says, "It's not a Leonardo." And as Berenson did in the house, our Lord Wings, who was so proud of his collection, and was so angry that he threw Berenson out of his house immediately. But there is this idea of magical power. And I think, for that reason, connoisseurs have often been, if not, the protagonist at novels, but they've made their appearance in the interesting range of novels, from the least, from Balsat to, and yes, Jim Tini and Lady, who is written about the art world in Weymus Aires and forgery and so on, and functions as an art critic on the side. And, of course, some of the pictures lives, it lend themselves to mythologisation. And my favourite remains, and Federico Zeri, who the eccentric who wrote a book about a talent eccentric, and he used to make telephone calls pretending to be a lady called Wanda. He's got a great sense of fun, and I may like to dramatise themselves, yet Giovanni Morelli was a playwright, he even wrote a play about artists and connoisseurs, and you can never quite tell whether Morelli means what he says, or whether he's saying particular things for effect. And, of course, that makes them figures who will appeal to the writers of biographies of novels and articles in newspapers and so on. Early on, there was no professional training for this position. How and when did that change? For a long time, there was no formal training, but there's a long history informal training. So, my young person wants to be a commiserate. Until 1900 or a little after, the obvious thing to do is to visit one of the stars of the activity, maybe whether it's the profession or not, and offer to be their assistant. And this way, it's a apprenticeship. They're looking at pictures every day together with the master, who, if he is in a good mood, will explain to you what he never explains in public, which is how he reached a particular position. Marensson was surrounded by right young man, mainly man, who went on lots of them to have distinguished careers of connoisseurs and curators themselves. He worked them hard. I don't think he paid them much, but they got this very good education. An alternative, I think, only turns up early in the 20th century. They're interested in training curators with the rise of public museums and galleries. There's a need for more and more curators. Somehow, I've got to know about them painting in this hands-on sort of way. And it wasn't a big enterprise. Sylvie Degang, who was a student in the 50s, said there were only four or five of them who were taking this course. Now it's much more. I think it's even people who don't want to be curators, but they do want to have had this kind of training. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Harvard pioneers, as far as I know, the first course in connoisseurship, as part of a degree in art history, which would be the way that intending curators would choose a discipline to major in an American university. So the first teacher calls us. Interesting man, because he doubled as a banker, his family, where the B-sucks in New York, and has an art historian in connoisseur. And then he taught close looking, which is one of the key activities of a connoisseur. And I'm sure this is what people like. But Berenson said to be people around them, because Berenson was still beginning, and he could spend two hours in front of a painting just absorbing it. So there was this course and another lecturer on the course, Goldsmith. He told the students, "I love this phrase. Imagine that you're a fly. I take it to me. You've got to look closely at every tiny bit of the canvas. You have to, if like, touch it with your eyes all over before you stand back and make a decision about who it was, the pageant. But you have to have a fantastic visual memory to be a leading connoisseur. I'm sure it's not fully teachable, but however, of course, they did play something like Kim's game. So to make sure that the potential for visual memory of their students was fully rolled out. And of course, a new development. I think this is quite near. It's short courses for people that just want to enjoy painting more. And some in London, southern is one's son, but other places like Krutto and Berenson, that may last three days or a week. They charge quite a lot of money, and they get stars of the system to run and share a synchrist in England in commerce. So it's yet another form of training. At UTMD Anderson Cancer Center, our goal is to cure cancer, not simply treat the symptoms. At UTMD Anderson, we know cancer inside and out. Choose us first at MDanderson.org. A beautifully designed Squarespace website is the difference between thinking about photography school and selling your portraits online. A beautifully designed Squarespace website is the difference between having a movie reviewing hobby and a movie reviewing career. Squarespace, because no matter what you're into, a website makes it real. Use offer code Difference for 50% off select plans in terms of condition supply. It's a first of its kind plan, created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with free nights in cool summer. TXU Energy, energy for everything. You may just brush it off as stress, but is your hair? I gotta tell you, it's eating us alive. Weakening are very roots, breaking us apart. And the more you stress, the more we slip away. Now please, take a deep breath. Pantene abundant and strong systems strengthens your hair against stress, reducing hair loss by 85%. Nothing beats tradition, like weekly game nights at mom's house. Antostitos, crafted with masa made the traditional way, starting with whole corn kernels, with flavors worth gathering around, like a hint of lime and Mexican street corn, and no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. And how has technology changed the field? Yeah, and technology has gone a lot to change the field. I think from the later 19th century onwards. So the first, and I would sum this up, I did sum it up somewhere. By saying, the cool connoisseurship is named after connoisseurs, that is not mutual experience, as opposed to Savah, other kinds of knowledge, distinction. Alas, we don't have in English, but I know you have in Dutch, and they have in German as well as in French. So the history of connoisseurship is the history of how connoisseurs was joined by increasing doses of Savah. And beginning with chemistry, the chemistry of pigments, it was discovered that the professor of chemistry that was interested in art, and pointed out that a good way to recognize many four jurors is to know that certain the paints, especially a certain prussian bloom, were manufactured in just barely in the 19th century. If you analyze my new fragment of the 17th century painting and discover it was painted with that blue, you know you've got a fortress. So you can't prove that some things, but you can absolutely eliminate fortresses on that sort of ground. And then you'll have a very big change at the end of the 19th century, and the discovery of X-rays. And our world was very quick off the mark. Maybe not quite as quick as medicine, but very soon after they're using X-rays to go beneath the surface of paintings to discover pencumentine, and to discover whether it was another painting underneath, which means that the top ones are forging to notice all sorts of things that were in a raft and the artist and went in another direction afterwards. And that's followed by infrared and ultraviolet light, which brings out other features that are one out of my wouldn't notice. And I suppose one should talk about the improvements in microscopes and the ones that the stories use now being incredibly more effective than the old magnifying glass, which used to be the badge of the commissar, trawling around the painting, holding a little hand-like microscope to focus on the brushwork of the corner of the painting. But finally, this is of course so new that it's risky to have any verdict. There has been the use of artificial intelligence in the attribution of authorship. As far as I know, the first attempts to do this were not very convincing. And it seemed that maybe the programme for the machine had not been written very well, and it made attributions that the art world doesn't accept. But remembering the history of language translation by a machine, and when it first came on the market, I looked at it, and it was so many mistakes it was just funny. It was totally untrustworthy. But within 20 years, it's really useful. I mean, if I give a lecture in any language except my own, the rough draft of the translation is done that way. But it has to be corrected by hand and eye. They always make mistakes. They may not have been programmed with the appropriate specialist knowledge of, say, the world of corner cells. Or they don't seem to have a sense of humour. They're literally minded, and they don't know what to do with irony. But probably, well, that will be ironed outing out. So, my guess is that in the next 20 years, in which we've been in the next 10 years, this is the message of the history of AI, it will become much more reliable. And that will have a big impact on the art world, since you have chronicises, making a living by giving these advice either to buyers or sellers. And it can't really be replaced. And in any case, and this is maybe not a practical detail, but an interesting one. What does it mean if the machine says these bus strokes follow the pattern of paintings by Rubens? Where did the pattern come from? The pattern came from the judgments by the eye of hundreds of years of corner cells. So, there's a sense in which AI is simply doing fast, something that lots of individuals have labored for countless hours to establish the corpus. And then the machine will just say, "Yeah, the pattern that is where you established this particular way of principle." So, I don't know whether this is all for the matter of the words. And may not be around to see its consequences anyway. When I'm thinking of a commissary, I'm thinking of someone adept at discerning a forger. Yes, and then they're right, but they're not completely right. That is one of the big tasks of commissaries is to identify forgeries. But if the public think that's what commissorship is all about, it's neglected several key components. But, of course, this is what strikes the public imagination and novels and films when they're not about, if they're about art, art theft or about art forgeries. In the third place, romanticized lives of a few people like Vincent Fengar. But forgeries and accounts for an awful lot of public interest, it might even get some people to acquire a taste for genuine vengeance and those. So most of the people we've been talking about so far are men. When and how did women begin to join this story? I can be quite sure that in the 17th century there was some. But, once again, this is the history of practices and wouldn't necessarily be recorded if some women were good commissaries earlier. After all, think of willing artists who were trained because their brother or their father, some close relative, was a leading artist with a big workshop. So in the way that artists were the first promises before the dealers and all the others, I would hate to assert that Mr. Tintoretto, who painted in her father's studio, lacked those skills. But, if we want safe ground in the 17th century, especially in France, and there are more of them in the 18th century, still more in the 19th century and it's more, there are less obstacles to women publishing books in their own name and a fight on art criticism, art history, and show commissar ship. And then by the beginning of the 20th century, there are some fight remarkable female commissaries who were well-known. And that brings one to the interesting group of peers of conjugal commissaries. Of course, Robinson and Mary being among these examples. But, before that, as such as East Lake, the Director of the National Gallery, relying a lot on the eye of his wife Elizabeth, who were made a reputation in that field before they got married. Or chose one of my favourites with minor English commissaries, physics-pouncy, who specialised on memoriseurs drawings. And to married a mural French lady, they did a lot of viewing together and they made certain key judgments together as Philip was the first to admit. There are others in Germany and elsewhere. And so, and today, definitely in certain subfields, let's take contemporary art in Latin America. And if I had to name any commissaries at all, I think the first three names would come across, would be a Brazilian of Venezuela and Mexico. So the situation is changing quite fast. At last. And this book ends with a series of crises. Is conwassership in crisis? I have to say, I do believe in this crisis of connoisseurship. It's very dramatic language. And Master Ed, I don't mean by crisis, a big disaster. I want to define it, because historians use the word 'prices' all the time, that they debase the currency. So I want to revive a precise use of the term, as a short period of turbulence followed by a change in structure. Now, in that sense, we certainly are in the crisis. Not only of connoisseurship and art history, not a lot of itself. I thought connoisseurship was established and developed at a time when you said art. You meant, especially painting in sculpture. But now, if you say art, you might be referring to digital art, then the art performance art might be referring to installations which are designed by somebody like an architect, but still built by a team of other people. How can you assess? It's the old criteria become irrelevant. The new criteria haven't been invented yet. And either one says it's impossible. So we go on doing connoisseurship, but only of conventional traditional forms of art. All somebody comes up with his totally new form, I've no idea of whether that's possible. And in any case, there is a possibility of emerging from the crisis and there are some good people around now who respect each other whether there's a crisis or not, we still have the eye, they're still doing their job and expecting, I don't know if I'm hoping that some of them will review my book. Yeah, in the end, can we trust these people? Are they people of great distinction, or do they just talk of a game? And that of course is the million dollar question and I can answer in three words, yes or no. It's the start with the negative change side, already in the 18th century, this problem was being discussed. And the case against connoisseurship, in one trench critic said, connoisseurship is a practice in unreliability, it is second only to managing, to getting two stabs in one legitimacy. So people like Richardson point out, first of all, connoisseurs change their mind. But if they, one time they say it's inventive, another time they say it isn't, how can we trust them? Secondly, the stars of connoisseurship contradict upon another, often violently, as in the famous case in the United States, in the 1920s, about two paintings, a portrait of a lady, both which are being described to their other, that it would be extremely unlikely that they would both be originals. So some leading connoisseurs testify that one of it, one of those is the right one, but there is an equal number of connoisseurs saying the other one, and the judge got so irritated, and probably he was a foolish guy in any way, he directed the jury, not to take any notice of the so-called experts and make up their minds on other criteria. So that's quite a powerful case against, including the way in which leading connoisseurs have been tricked by forges, radius is unlucky to be the most notorious of some poor, but plenty of people in the top class have at least one failed identification of a four-jury somewhere behind in their career. But then, to end with a look on the good side, there are these people who do have a remarkable eye, and they do these demonstrations, looking at the painting for only a minute and delivering the verdict. Of course, it doesn't mean that it's intuition in the sense of something in your genes. And I think connoisseurs would like to think they had connoisseurs in their genes. But a much more plausible account is to say that, as in many other practical knowledgees, connoisseurs should depend on lots of experience and very good memory, visual memory in the case of connoisseurs. So what happens is a situation comes up, and to show it's not just high status connoisseurs. This happens in firefighting. The Haydewa firefighting team is in the burning building, and it has a sense. This scene is going to collapse in a few seconds, he gets the team out. Afterwards, the journalist say, "How did you know?" He said, "I don't know how I know, but I put I absolutely knew." But so it's unconscious comparison of a given experience with all the past experiences that are buried in one's memory. Well, explain. So, how is the close looking at each individual painting? You do an every day for 20, 30 years, and then you have the chance to come out with it. Sometimes, not even in your own special field, there he was a specialist in 15, 16th century Italian painting. And I advise the Gertie, and used to fly to Los Angeles for meetings of the committee. And one day they meet him and they're full of themselves, and they say, "You just have to see the sculpture we just bought." And our cake re-cruise. And so, there he looks at hitfully, prescribed 60 seconds, and just says, "Hope you haven't paid for it yet." Which they had, 10 million dollars. And now it's the consensus of the ancient art specialists that there he was right. And they get to him even half admitted it, because he haven't seen the label myself, but they say it was strange to say, "Iver, this is an archaic Greek statue. Or it is in 19th century 40." They asked him, "How he did it?" He said, "This is the fingernails." I mean, a classic piece of moralism, which also gave the journalist a sound bite. Quite a character. I'm so sorry, I never mentioned it. Thank you so much for talking to me today. It has been an absolute pleasure. Well, it was lovely to meet you, and I thought he's exceptionally thoughtful questions. And really sent me off. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, New Books Network dot com. 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