Small Painting Research Articles

Memling’s Pagagnotti Virgin and Child : Italian Renaissance sculpture reimagined

Hans Memling's Pagagnotti Virgin, the central panel of a triptych painted in Bruges for a distinguished Florentine patron (fig. 1), belongs to a group of small devotional paintings by the artist which have long been acknowledged as the earliest Netherlandish paintings to employ the distinctly Italianate, all'antica motif of putti and garlands, widely associated with Renaissance sculpture. The other works in this group are the triptych of the Virgin and Child and an unknown donor in Vienna, the Resurrection triptych in the Louvre, and the Virgin and Child in Washington, all of which have been speculatively associated with Italian patronage, because of their use of the putto motif.1 In my view, on grounds of quality of execution and inventiveness of design, the Pagagnotti triptych is the prime version in this group. Now divided between the Uffizi and the National Gallery, London, it was painted for the Dominican Benedetto Pagagnotti, bishop of Vaison in Provence, who resided in Florence and was one of the most important churchmen in the city.2 It should probably be dated no later than 1480, since the detail of the mill from the background of its central panel, much cited by late fifteenth-century Florentine painters, first appears in an altarpiece by Filippino Lippi of 1482-83.3 Pagagnotti's desire to own a Netherlandish devotional image is explicable given the vogue for Netherlandish painting in Florence at the time, but Pagagnotti did not himself visit the Netherlands, and must have placed the commission through a middleman, perhaps his nephew Paolo Pagagnotti, who did visit Bruges.4It is likely that Memling introduced the putti and garlands as a gesture to his Italian patron, together with other details of apparently Italianate inspiration which have hitherto largely escaped notice: in the upper corners, the figures of Samson rending the jaws of the lion, and Cain slaying Abel, painted to resemble gilded sculptures, and the decorative detail of the arch itself. This article will consider the possible sources for these Italianate elements.Working in Bruges offered Memling ample contacts with the many Italians resident there, and with Italian visitors.5 These included some of his most important clients in the 1470s, such as the manager of the Medici bank, Tommaso Portinari, and the Venetian ambassador to the Burgundian court, Bernardo Bembo. Such individuals offered the potential for artistic exchange, whether through the commissioning of locally produced artworks such as tapestries, for which drawings were often sent from Italy, or as the owners of personal possessions brought from Italy, such as the sestertius of the Emperor Nero held by Bembo, a noted antiquarian, in his presumed portrait by Memling (Antwerp, Koniklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), an object that the artist studied closely.6 Confraternity membership provided another means of communication: Memling was a member of the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Snow, to which several members of Bruges' Italian community also belonged.7Contacts between Italy and the Low Countries extended well beyond the mercantile community to princes, nobles, diplomats, prelates and legists, whose travels to Italy must have generated a flow of artefacts from south to north, such as the gold chain presented to the distinguished Burgundian nobleman Philippe de Croy on his mission to Naples in 1472.8 There were also numerous Italians employed in various capacities at the Burgundian court during the reign of the Italophile duke, Charles the Bold (ruled 1467-77).9 These included the Neapolitan nobleman and ducal secretary Giovanni di Candida, who in the 1470s produced the first Renaissance portrait medals in the Netherlands.10 The Florentine goldsmith Niccolo di Forzore Spinelli, also known as Niccolo Fiorentino, was appointed in 1468 as maker of ducal seals.11 It is possible that both these artists brought with them drawings and other artworks from Italy.By 1498, when Gerard David cited them in The Justice of Cambyses (Bruges, Groeningemuseum), it was possible to see in Bruges versions of two antique gems from the Medici collection, the famous and much-reproduced 'Sigillo di Nerone' of Apollo, Olympos and Marsyas, and the so-called Ceres and Triptolemus. …

Desire and the Diagrammatic

In 1919, Marcel Duchamp gave Unhappy Readymade as a wedding present to his sister Suzanne and her husband Jean Crotti ( Fig. 1 ). Duchamp later described it as follows: It was a geometry book, which he had to hang by strings on the balcony of his apartment…; the wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages. Suzanne did a small painting of it . That’s all that’s left, since the wind tore it up. 1 In his discussion of Unhappy Readymade , David Joselit observes that the piece was unusual in that it was designed to perish in the wind and rain, leaving nothing behind but a painting, some photographs, plus textual, and artistic reverberations. The photos and painting show the early stages of the splayed book’s subjection to the weather, with pages puckering and furrowing. As Duchamp remarked, ‘the treatise seriously got the facts of life’. 2 In a photograph taken at the time, the text is not visible, but Duchamp later made a touched up version for his compendium of miniatures, The Box in a Valise .

Alain Huck. Drawing History.1

Active since the mid-eighties, Alain Huck is a Swiss artist born in 1957. After having explored various media in sculptures and small paintings, from 1993 to 2007, he kept a personal diary of 269 drawings entitled Vite soyons heureux il le faut je le veux (“Quick, let’s be happy, we must, I want it”: henceforth referred to as VSH), in which he found material for his latter works. Since 2006 he has been using charcoal for monumental works on paper which depict forests and – as studied in this ...

“Father and Mother”: Tantric Couples in the Collection of the Náprstek Museum and the History of the Collection Description

The first part of the study is devoted to the history of scholarly description of the Tibetan and Mongolian Collection in the Naprstek Museum, namely to the work of Lumir Jisl (1921-1969). The second part focuses on the iconography of Tantric couples on small votive Buddhist paintings from Mongolia.

상품화를 위한 마크 라이덴(Mark Ryden) 작품에서 나타나는 '언캐니(Uncanny)' 표현 연구*

Pop Surrealism infuses Pop Art with Surrealism. It started as an underground art movement and it was considered to be Lowbrow art in the very beginning. One of the leading Pop Surrealistic artists, Mark Ryden, made his living as a commercial artist from 1988 to 1998. It was the 'Side Show' exhibition that introduced his work to a full scale audience. Stake-shaped meat, a girl with large eyes, blood, a yak, a bunny, Abraham Lincoln, are his subject matters. Uncanny feelings born from the juxtaposition of awkward images he puts together create cruel and sinister fantasies. Uncanniness indicates a feeling of "scary", "loathing", "creepy", "horrifying", "fearful" etc. It's favored in art as an important subject matter for expressing a "scary unfamiliarity" or a "creepy beauty". This feeling of uncanniness was discussed by major psychologists like E. Jentsch and S. Freud. Particularly, Freud defined this uncanniness as a feeling of fear that evokes an extreme anxiety-a feeling that we have known for a long time so we are very familiar with them. Small size paintings in the 'Blood’ Series by Mark Ryden; with titles like Drips, Fountain, Rose, The Cloven Bunny, Lincoln's Head, Wound and Weeping; set a relationship between the girl and blood to express a physical wound and a feeling of sadness. "Scary unfamiliarity" from his bloody perspective is a prevailing feeling in this series of work. Blood repeatedly used in each work accelerates a creepy feeling with terror and cruelty particularly when the radiant innocence you get from the girl's large eyes is contrasted with the terror of blood. It prompts to manifest "scary unfamiliarity".

Albert L. Operti: chronicler of Arctic exploration

ABSTRACTThe great wave of immigrants to the United States during the late 1800s brought many talented individuals who enriched American culture and society. Notable among them stands the Italian-born artist, Albert L. Operti (1852–1927), a versatile painter, illustrator and sculptor. For much of his professional career, Operti served as a scenic artist for the Metropolitan Opera House and later as an exhibit artist for the American Museum of Natural History. However, he maintained an avid personal interest in polar explorers and the history of polar exploration, ultimately turning his artistic skills to the subject. Operti served as official artist for Robert E. Peary during his Arctic expeditions of 1896 and 1897, producing paintings, drawings and even plaster casts of the Inuit from the expedition. Over the course of his lifetime he painted a number of ‘great’ pictures depicting, in a factually accurate manner, important incidents in Arctic history along with numerous smaller paintings, sketches, illustrations and studies. The quality of his work never rivaled his more talented contemporaries in the field of ‘great’ paintings, such as the prominent artists William Bradford and Frederic Church. Nonetheless, Operti achieved some recognition in his time as a painter of historical Arctic scenes, but the full extent of his contributions are little known and have been largely unexamined. Unlike the explorers themselves whose legacy rests upon geographic or scientific accomplishments and written narratives, Operti's legacy stands upon the body of distinctive artwork that served to convey, in realistic and graphic terms, the hardships and accomplishments of those explorers. This article recounts the life of Operti and his role as an historian in disseminating knowledge of the polar regions and its explorers to the public.

Come piccoli quadri. Appunti su alcune fonti per la ricezione della miniatura tra XIV e XVI secolo

The paper investigates the fortune of the miniature on parchment through the evidence of Medieval and Renaissance Italian sources. The research points out the tendency of readers and public to look at decoration with particular interest for the illustrated pages observed as 'small paintings'. The evidence keys in this process, read in parallel with the history of conservation and collecting, are some texts written by the humanists Guarino Veronese, Gaspare Tribraco, Roberto Orsi in XVth century, and Marcantonio Michiel’ Notizia, drawn up between the third and fifth decade of the XVIth century.

Sleep education in Hong Kong

Sleep is one of the basic human needs with a vital role in normal development and growth. However, sleep loss is a prevalent problem among school children and adolescents, leading to multiple academic and health consequences. Children and adolescents in Hong Kong who are under greater academic pressure and stress are found to sleep lesser than their western counterparts. Several local studies consistently demonstrated that Hong Kong schoolers are sleep deprived during school days with extensive sleep compensation during weekends. To combat this prevalent situation, sleep education program aiming at promoting healthy sleep practices is needed. This paper will review the rationale, efficacy and experiences of our large-scale school-based sleep education program in Hong Kong. In summary, our group conducted a clustered randomized school-based educational program with multilevel and multimodal sleep education program including town hall seminar, small class teachings, slogan and painting competitions and development of a sleep education website. The findings of our study conducted in the secondary schools suggested that school-based sleep education program was effective in increasing sleep knowledge, improving behaviors and psychological health as well as healthy lifestyle practice in adolescents, but it did not improve the sleep-wake pattern of the adolescents.

Solid-state NMR for the study of Asger Jorn’s paintings

In this work, we explore the potential of a recent NMR technology, requiring one to two orders of magnitude less sample quantity than conventional solid-state NMR, for the study of oil paintings. The aim is the detection of changes on the molecular level that may be related to the degradation of the paint. Our sample is a small paint fragment that has flaked off the canvas of Asger Jorn’s work Maske from 1945, and an approximatively one-year-old zinc white reference sample. In addition to the expected signals stemming from products of the curing process, we observe chemical shifts corresponding to carboxylates indicating de-esterification and saponification. The advantage of using solid-state NMR is the possibility to study the entire sample rather than the small extractable mobile fraction. Fast spinning in conjunction with filtering techniques allows for the acquisition of 1H spectra of the mobile fraction in order to characterize it in its original environment. This could be all the more important as some hypotheses say that the loss of this mobile phase, acting as a plasticizer, is responsible for the degradation of the paint.

Scientific studies for the restoration of a wood painting of the Galleria Interdisciplinare Regionale della Sicilia—Palazzo Mirto di Palermo

The Ritratto muliebre, referring to Venus, is a panel painting, oil on wood, attributed to unknown artist and probably dated to the second half of 16th century, today conserved in the Galleria Interdisciplinare Regionale della Sicilia—Palazzo Mirto of Palermo.The aim of this research was to assess the techniques used to decorate the wooden painting and to verify the state of conservation of the artwork's materials but also to identify the previous treatments. This study was the essential condition to plane and perform the correct restoration.For this reason, an integrated analytical approach based on the use of non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques was used, with the aim to obtain a characterization of the wooden panel, to elucidate the painting technique, including the stratigraphic sequence of the pigments and the organic binders, the state of preservation, the possible decay processes, and the possible additions made during previous restorations.In addition to the imaging diagnostics techniques and the microchemical spot tests, micro-fragments of the painted material, original or not, were analyzed by several analytical techniques: optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDAX), FT-IR spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).The results of all analyses revealed that the portrait is a small panel painting made by an unknown painter in the second half of 16th century, with a traditional painting technique: a single wooden panel, two preparatory layers (“ammannitura”), a sort of priming (“imprimitura”), an underdrawing, a paint layer composed of oil as binding medium and pigments common in 16th century.

What We Get for Free: After Elizabeth Bishop

What We Get for Free:After Elizabeth Bishop Denis Donoghue (bio) My themes are: what do we get for free, and what do we have to pay for? I take Elizabeth Bishop as a special case, all the better for being special. I have found a title for this essay in a poem by Bishop called simply “Poem,” from her last book, Geography III. The poem begins, as many of her poems do, with an object in the world, something apart from herself that she is inclined to pay attention to, in this case a small painting done many years previously by her great-uncle, George Hutchinson. The painting, as she gradually recognizes, is of a village in Nova Scotia that she knew well—Great Village—and it prompts her to think of the life she and Hutchinson had in common, generations apart, the things they saw, the cows, the flowers, the fields; and then she thinks of the small work of art he made of it. Here’s the last section: I never knew him. We both knew this place,apparently, this literal small backwater,looked at it long enough to memorize it,our years apart. How strange. And it’s still loved,or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).Our visions coincided—“visions” istoo serious a word—our looks, two looks:art “copying from life” and life itself,life and the memory of it so compressedthey’ve turned into each other. Which is which?Life and the memory of it cramped,dim, on a piece of Bristol board,dim, but how live, how touching in detail—the little that we get for free,the little of our earthly trust. Not much.About the size of our abidance [End Page 316] along with theirs: the munching cows,the iris, crisp and shivering, the waterstill standing from spring freshets,the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. It is not immediately clear what those two “littles” are and whether or not they are the same. They seem to be adjectival to the “detail” in the previous line. “The little that we get for free” picks up on the earlier use of “free,” the painting is “useless and free,” because no one has made any demands on it. “Our earthly trust” is what we suppose we can be confident of, what we hold in trust for the future, and whatever is held in trust for us by the past. “Not much” rebukes the sentiment we may feel about our natural possessions. I wish Bishop had deleted “Not much” and let us make our own judgments. “About the size of our abidance / along with theirs,” the things referred to, the cows, the iris, the water, the elms, the geese: even as an approximation some of this is untrue. We live longer than the cows, the iris, the geese, probably not as long as the elms even though they are yet to be dismantled, and not as long as the water which will be renewed every spring. But “abidance” is not merely a chronological word, it means the life we are confident of while we have it, the transitory individual life and the seemingly permanent wholes or species. Inevitably, that confidence is darkened by a sense of limitation. In “Song for the Rainy Season” Bishop speaks of “our small shadowy life,” and David Kalstone, one of her most perceptive critics, writes of her sense of “with how much frailty we belong in the world.” But there is almost a stroke of gaiety in the way she saves “the geese” for the vigorous end. There is also an echo of “Abide With Me.” I’ve said that the poem begins, as many poems by Bishop do, with an object out there in the world. Bishop does it justice by describing it, with as much detail as she thinks it deserves. She evidently prefers description to narration. When the description is finished, or as nearly finished as she wishes it to be, she reaches a point where she moves [End Page 317] to another level, often a larger or more general consideration, as in this poem she touches issues...

Voices from the Crimson Clouds Library: Reading Liu Rushi's (1618–1664)Misty Willows by Moonlit Dike

Misty Willows by Moonlit Dike , painted in 1643 by the celebrated courtesan-turned-gentry-lady Liu Yin (1618–1664, better known as Liu Rushi), and documented by the literary talent Qian Qianyi (1582–1664), serves as the definitive statement on the romantic and artistic union of this eminent pair of cultural figures precisely a year before the fall of the Ming dynasty. It also reflects upon a complex gender dimension in the expression of reclusion entangled with the trauma of dynastic transition. This is revealed, in part, by two additions to the scroll: a small landscape painting of eight years later dedicated to Liu by her close female associate, Huang Jieling (ca. 1620-ca. 1669), and a long commemorative preface that Qian Qianyi wrote for Huang in 1651 reminiscing on bygone glory through the topos of their beloved Jianyun Library that tragically burnt down in 1650. Through a close reading of Liu’s and Huang’s paintings and Qian’s inscriptions on the scroll, this article aims to explore the macrocultural milieu of the time by examining, on the one hand, these two female paradigms of reclusion, and on the other the collective sentiment and memory of the catastrophe of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition as voiced through words and images in their paintings, calligraphy, and the iconography of the willow.

Risk factors associated with clinical dermatophilosis in smallholder sector cattle herds of Zimbabwe at the Amblyomma variegatum and Amblyomma hebraeum interface.

A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate factors for clinical dermatophilosis herd-level positivity in smallholder dip tanks from Gokwe (Chemawororo, Gwanyika), Kwekwe (Koronika) and Chegutu (Chivero), Zimbabwe, between September 2013 and April 2014. A total of 185 herds were clinically examined for disease and tick infestation. Data on herd and potential herd level risk factors were collected using a structured questionnaire. A herd was classified as clinically positive if an animal satisfied any of the following criteria: small lesions characterised by hairs clumping like a small paint brush, clear exudative circumscribed lesions with scabs of at least 1cm in diameter and confluent progressive exudative scab lesions affecting significant parts of the animal's body. Amblyomma variegatum and Amblyomma hebraeum ticks were identified in situ with further laboratory confirmation. The potential herd-level risk factors for clinical dermatophilosis were tested using multiple logistic regression with herd infection status (positive, negative) being the binomial outcome and risk factors being predictors. Of the herds examined, clinical bovine dermatophilosis was detected in 45% (84/185, 95% confidence interval (CI) 38.2, 52.6%) of the herds. The herd prevalence ranged from 6.9% (95% CI 0.00, 16.7) to 56.7% (95% CI 43.8, 69.6) with Chivero and Chemawororo dip tanks recording the lowest and highest prevalence, respectively. Herds infested with A. variegatum were associated with higher odds (OR = 6.8, 95% CI 1.71, 27.10) of clinical dermatophilosis while the association was not significant (p > 0.05) in A. hebraeum-infested herds. A history of having bought cattle (OR = 3.5, 95% CI 1.09, 11.12) compared to not buying was associated with increased herd clinical positivity status. It was concluded that management practices aimed at movement and tick control would help reduce the prevalence of clinical dermatophilosis in cattle herds.

Identification of lipid- and protein-based binders in paintings by direct on-plate wet chemistry and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry.

Direct on-target plate processing of small (ca. 100μg) fragments of paint samples for MALDI-MS identification of lipid- and protein-based binders is described. Fragments were fixed on a conventional stainless steel target plate by colloidal graphite followed by in situ fast tryptic digestion and matrix addition. The new protocol was first developed on paint replicas composed of chicken egg, collagen, and cow milk mixed with inorganic pigments and then successfully applied on historical paint samples taken from a fifteenth century Italian panel painting. The present work contributes a step forward in the simplification of binder identification in very small paint samples since no conventional solvent extraction is required, speeding up the whole sample preparation to 10min and reducing lipid/protein loss.

Gender and National Identity in David Allan's Small, Domestic and Conversation Paintings

Gender and National Identity in David Allan's Small, Domestic and Conversation Paintings

DuPont Settles Pricing Lawsuit

DuPont, the world’s largest maker of titanium dioxide, has agreed to pay $72 million to settle charges that it conspired to artificially increase prices of the white pigment. The class-action suit, filed in 2010 by a number of small paint companies that buy the pigment, alleges that DuPont coordinated price increases with other TiO2 makers between 2003 and 2013. The suit also targeted pigment makers Kronos and Cristal, which may yet have to go to trial on the matter, and Huntsman Corp., which settled for $6.5 million last month to avoid protracted litigation. LyondellBasell Industries and Tronox were named as conspirators but were not sued because they were in bankruptcy when the suit was filed. The TiO2 market is volatile, according to Michael D. Brown, president of consulting firm StrategyMark, who wouldn’t comment on the case itself. Prices for the global commodity tend to fluctuate depending on supply, demand, and ...

Examination of Car Paint Samples Using Visible Microspectrometry for Forensic Purposes

Visible (Vis) microspectrometry (MSP) allows objective measurement of color as opposed to the subjective results of visual color comparison. In this paper, the usefulness of this method for comparison of small car paint traces of the same color and the same or different chroma was studied for forensic purposes. Sixteen samples of solid and metallic bright and dark red paints taken from different cars were examined. Each sample was measured in the reflectance mode using a light beam falling perpendicular to the top surface of the sample and on a cross-section. In addition to the MSP measurements, the Raman spectra were produced in order to detect the pigment composition of the samples. On the basis of the obtained results it was stated that discrimination of car paints of the same color is conditioned not only by the kind, number, and amount of the pigments, but rather by the morphology of the paint layer, that is, by the size, shape, orientation, and distribution of the pigment grains in a paint resin. A criterion allowing two samples of the same chroma to be distinguished was established.

Broken Dreams of Motherhood: Frida’s Pictures of Pain

The ivory carving presented in last month’s issue reminded us both of Henry Ford Hospital, painted by Frida Kahlo in 1932. We hope that the connection between these pieces, created for such different reasons, will stimulate some reflection. Frida was born outside Mexico City in 1907. In a short life riddled with physical and emotional pain, she survived childhood polio and later, when she was a pre-medical student, a devastating tram car accident. (She said she had two major accidents in her life: the first was being hit by a tram and the second, marrying Diego Rivera.) This small painting (16” × 12”) reflects one facet of her struggles: a history of recurrent pregnancy loss. It was painted while her husband Diego Rivera was working on a series of murals for industrialist Edsel Ford in Detroit. The elements of the painting reflect her reality—the snail symbolizing the agonizing slowness of her struggle to bear children. Her fertility problems may have been secondary to both polycystic ovary syndrome and Asherman’s syndrome. She was slim but somewhat hirsute. Although it is a matter of conjecture, her uterus may have been damaged by both infection and direct trauma, following abortions and a penetrating abdominal injury at the time of the crash. Whatever the underlying pathologies of her life, Frida’s paintings stand out as representations of a woman’s struggle with chronic pain as well as infertility.

Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been portrayed as one of the cornerstones of modern IT Governance, with increasing numbers of organisations formally recognising an EA function and adopting EA frameworks such as TOGAF (http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/) (The Open Group Architectural Framework). Many claims have been made of the benefits of EA, yet little is known as to what organisations actually do or evidence of the benefits they accrue through EA. In this paper we report on the results of a small scale survey painting a snapshot of current EA practice in large UK organisations across the private and public sectors.

La grotte ornée paléolithique d’Etxeberri (Camou-Cihige, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) : datation du contexte archéologique de la « Salle des peintures »

The cave of Etxeberriko Karbia, in the “ Massif des Arbailles” (Western Pyrenees), has been the subject of spelunking expeditions since the early 20th century. However, during a visit in May 1950, P. Boucher, with G. Laplace, discovered a small painting of a red horse as they were on their way out of the cave before crossing through a crawlway. The following year, Laplace decided to study the art in this cave and, in 1952, he published the results along with the cave of Sasiziloaga (Laplace, 1952a and b). The general shape of the cave of Etxeberri is a 200 m long north-south gallery, with a difficult passage. It begins with a large chamber scattered with huge blocks from the partially collapsed vault. Accessing the decorated areas is particularly challenging because of the narrowness of the gallery and the presence of three underground lakes. The first chamber with parietal art is of modest size with extensive figures on both walls. Next, down a ten-metre vertical passage, is the end of the cave system with four decorated areas (la salle du gouffre, l’étroiture, la fissure, la corniche), and a 20-metre deep chasm. Laplace reports a total of 38 figures for the entire cavity, including a complex type of sign described as “ pectiforme”, ten horses, two bison, two ibex and a few dots and indeterminate lines. A later publication by P. Paillet (Paillet, 1989), based on existing literature, reports poor conservation of the paintings, with some vandalism. Indeed, several years of uncontrolled cave visits have caused the disappearance and/ or irreversible deterioration of a significant portion of the representations. The resuming of research in the cave of Etxeberri by a team under D. Garate Maidagan (2007-2010) was accompanied by the study of the other decorated caves in the “ Massif des Arbailles” : Sasiziloaga and Sinhikole. The recent investigations, which have discovered new paintings and engravings in all three cavities, can now offer an updated interpretation of the graphical representations and their context. Indeed, in 2008, during the study of the parietal art in the cave of Etxeberri, we found archaeological material (ochre and flint) on the ground beneath the decorated walls of the “ Salle des Peintures”. After authorization by the Aquitaine Service Régional de l’Archéologie, we performed a test excavation in 2010 to extract these remains and unearth others. Radiocarbon dates (by Beta Analytic Laboratory) were obtained from two fragments of burnt bones and a Littorina obtusata shell. The fragments of burnt bones yield two statistically different dates : 13370 ± 60 BP (equivalent to 16040-15690 cal BP) and 13770 ± 60 BP (equivalent to 16550-16240 cal BP). These dates are perfectly consistent with the known limits for the Middle Magdalenian. They therefore fit well with the “ Old Style IV” proposed by A. Leroi-Gourhan in 1971 based on stylistic comparisons (Leroi-Gourhan, 1971). The date of the first bone is slightly more recent which may indicate two painting stages within the Middle Magdalenian period. However, several arguments suggest a unique visit (stylistic coherence between decorated sectors, depth and danger of the cavity, etc.). However, the dating of the shell is even older and would correspond to the Lower Magdalenian (16570 ± 60 BP equivalent to 19470-19190 cal BP). This date should be interpreted cautiously, as it is generally accepted that a date obtained on a marine shell is 400 to 500 years older than one with a terrestrial origin. We cannot, however, totally exclude the idea of a quick visit before the Middle Magdalenian, unrelated to artistic events, as this could confirm another lithic artifact found in the “ Salle du Gouffre” in 2009. To conclude, these dates offer the possibility of chronologically situating the human artistic activity during the Middle Magdalenian in the chamber called “ Salle des Peintures” and, by extension, the other decorated chambers away from the cave entrance. In recent years, direct AMS-14C dating of paintings and archaeological contexts in decorated caves has become more common and can now contribute to a discussion about the place of Etxeberri in the art of the Magdalenian period in the Franco-Cantabrian region (including the sites of Bédeilhac, Niaux, Marsoulas, Le Portel, Trois-Frères, Oxocelhaya and Covaciella, Tito Bustillo, Altamira, La Garma, Santimaniñe, etc.). Thus, formal and stylistic parallels, supported by the new dates, can link Etxeberri with other relatively contemporary decorated caves in this geographical area.