"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire and to know what he ought to do"--St. Thomas Aquinas
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Autumn 2020 "The Sporting Life"
Christoff's Old Masters The Sporting Life Autumn 2020 (adobe.com) This issue is a beautiful investigation into the theme of the great outdoors in Old Masters and Classic-Modern painting. Perhaps as a respite to the culture of confinement we have been living through, this issue's essays, images, and erudition will transport one to the exciting world of "Man against Nature" as depicted in the most glorious paintings of the genre dating from the 15th through 20th centuries--and with a particular focus on Winslow Homer and the "struggle against the elements" in his art.. This issue also provides an overview of the record-breaking auction season that took place between July and October 2020, along with an analysis of present macroeconomic conditions "From the start, Cole’s style was marked by “dramatic forms and vigorous technique, reflecting the British aesthetic theory of the Sublime, or fearsome, in nature”. This application of “the Sublime” was virtually unprecedented, and moreover accorded with a growing appreciation of the wildness of native scenery that had not been seriously addressed by other landscape artists. However, the wilderness theme had earlier gained currency in American literature, especially in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, which were set in the upstate New York locales that became Cole’s earliest subjects, including several pictures illustrating scenes from the novels..."----From the Autumn 2020 issue, "The Hudson River School: Romancing the Stone"
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Summer 2020: "The Force of Destiny"
Christoff's Old Masters Summer 2020 (adobe.com)
This stunning issue centers on Spanish Renaissance and Baroque works, highlighted by the feature guest dealer Nicolas Cortes of Madrid. As the inaugural edition, its introduction emphasizes the significance of what I call "the value of Value" and why it is so important to keep this outlook in mind especially during times so wildly unstable as they currently are. This world devalues Value--with its paper money, its paper morals, paper principles and paper priorities. But then....there are Old Masters. It was a record year of sales in 2019 and January 2020--including works ranging from such blue-chip names as Rubens, Brueghel, de Ribera and Cimabue to the brilliantly sublime second tier led by the likes of Giovanni di Paolo, Sebastiano del Piombo and mysterious Bohemian “Masters”.
“The current phenomenon of viewing art as investment has took off in the US the 1960s, when, as dealer Robert Miller once observed, many large American corporations began hanging paintings and placing sculptures in lobbies and boardrooms. What accounts for the widely held perception of art as investment? Once upon a time it had to do with the growth in the size and scope of auction houses and the globalization of the art market; the growing audience for art, the desirability of art as a status symbol, the (relative) scarcity of top quality art, all of which fuels competition and rising prices. Art is also an excellent hedge against inflation as well as a currency hedge. As with every decade, troubles in the equity/stock market is always a factor; works of art are a safe repository. Other factors include real estate tax laws and the often precarious nature in the market that represents the classic storehouse-of-value, gold.” --From this issue: “Old Masters as the New Modern”
Christoff's Old Masters Summer 2020 (adobe.com)
This stunning issue centers on Spanish Renaissance and Baroque works, highlighted by the feature guest dealer Nicolas Cortes of Madrid. As the inaugural edition, its introduction emphasizes the significance of what I call "the value of Value" and why it is so important to keep this outlook in mind especially during times so wildly unstable as they currently are. This world devalues Value--with its paper money, its paper morals, paper principles and paper priorities. But then....there are Old Masters. It was a record year of sales in 2019 and January 2020--including works ranging from such blue-chip names as Rubens, Brueghel, de Ribera and Cimabue to the brilliantly sublime second tier led by the likes of Giovanni di Paolo, Sebastiano del Piombo and mysterious Bohemian “Masters”.
“The current phenomenon of viewing art as investment has took off in the US the 1960s, when, as dealer Robert Miller once observed, many large American corporations began hanging paintings and placing sculptures in lobbies and boardrooms. What accounts for the widely held perception of art as investment? Once upon a time it had to do with the growth in the size and scope of auction houses and the globalization of the art market; the growing audience for art, the desirability of art as a status symbol, the (relative) scarcity of top quality art, all of which fuels competition and rising prices. Art is also an excellent hedge against inflation as well as a currency hedge. As with every decade, troubles in the equity/stock market is always a factor; works of art are a safe repository. Other factors include real estate tax laws and the often precarious nature in the market that represents the classic storehouse-of-value, gold.” --From this issue: “Old Masters as the New Modern”
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HARD-ASSETS MATTER: LATEST MACROECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS
Updates on the ongoing destruction of free market capitalism, the rampaging U.S. national debt and the faux-money frenzy of the Federal Reserve. “We have gold because we cannot trust governments” ― Herbert Hoover Please Click Here 
El Greco, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz",1585, St.Igancio, Toledo
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LATEST ESSAYS
Your Money or Your Life: Warnings from the Federal Reserve Taki Magazine February 4 2021 "A Venetian law of 1403 on reserve requirements became the basis of U.S. banking law on deposits of public wealth in the late 1800s. The once mighty Bank of France was wisely admonished by its founder, Napoleon, never to allow France to be a debtor nation, only a creditor nation. The Bank of Russia once held the highest gold reserves in the world at the turn of the 20th century, and went through the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Russo-Japanese War with its finances intact and sound fiscal policy. Classic Switzerland, with “unlimited liability” private bankers (not “private banks”) and debt-ceiling ratios, had larger bank reserves than the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. The U.S. continued to keep the flag flying of this tradition in the form of the July 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, which was established upon worldwide trust in U.S. financial discipline. Then things changed..." [more] "Whatever Happened to the 'Man of the Right'" TAKI Magazine January 18, 2021 "The main failure of the rise of the conservative right in America has been its fear of producing its own brand of cultural elitist in the style and substance of the well-bred Reactionary. Its cultural contribution has produced no aesthetic vision, no artistic sophistication—only the cult of commentary, endless commentary...." On The Beautiful Violence of Old Masters Painting December 1, 2020 "To define art is to define life.” —William R. Bradshaw, 1890 Once upon a time, there was a rape that changed the course of world history. The event was immortalized in a stunning work of art, Tarquino e Lucretia, by the late Renaissance Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio, or more commonly “Titian” in the English-speaking world. The scene depicts the soldier Sextus Tarquinius, the son of a sixth century (BC) Roman king, dagger in hand, implacable anger, insatiable desire in his eyes, about to assault the “chaste and virtuous” Lucretia, wife of his cousin and kinsman Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. The intensity of the image captures the aggressor’s passion and his victim’s horror as his body lunges forward and she recoils in fear—a voluptuous figure of blonde waves and alabaster body engulfed by the lonely luxury of her dark bedroom. Tarquinius has come one evening to visit the home of Lucretia and her husband, Collantinus, and other visiting fellow soldiers. Aware of and aroused by the noblewoman’s famed dignity and reputation, Tarquinius stealthily enters her room that night and threatens to kill her if she does not consent to his advance, stating that he will defend the murder to her husband as an honor killing of an adulterous discovery between her and one of her slaves. Following the act, Tarquinius flees and Lucretia later tells the entire story of what took place before her husband and her brother. She then commits suicide before the two of them, declaring that in the choice between life and honor, death is the only way to preserve the latter. In the ensuing outrage, led by Collantinus and his friend Lucius Iunis Brutus, war is declared on the royal Tarquinius family and the Kingdom of Rome is destroyed. In its place, the ancient Republic of Rome is established, built on the martyrdom of Lucretia, who lives on in Western memory as one of the nine great heroines of antiquity. “Alas, Tarquino!,” the poet Ovid would write during the reign of Augustus nearly five centuries later. “How much that one night cost you your Kingdom!” The emotions captured in Titian’s rendering of that criminal scene on Lucretia’s wedding bed are as seductive as they are dreadful.....(please click here for the essay) On the Necessity of Elitism in the Fine Arts Marcia A. Christoff September/October 2020 * Near the end of life, a man or woman might ask themselves what destiny would have had in store for them if at some critical juncture in their maturity he or she had heeded the wisdom of a cautionary friend or a far-sighted foe. Today, what was once called ‘high art”, or the more safely neutral “fine art”, is confronted with the same question. It is on the defensive everywhere in the Western world. Although recent record sales at Old Masters auctions and a steady increase in attendance at the major museums prior to the coronavirus pandemic suggest an encouraging longing for the lofty, the position is deceptive. The institutional status of high art survives tenuously under a veneer of tradition; it is almost absent in education and broader media; its influence marginalized to that of a well-educated cult. The implied reason for this is that so-called elitist art has no place in an increasingly egalitarian society. If, however, the natural hierarchies of art that are to be enjoyed in any free society are eradicated, there will disappear with them one of the most powerful expressions of the principle of equality in that society: popular access to and education through aesthetic excellence. Such is the fate of the cultural life of this country if vigilance is not practiced by those who defend Western high art and resistance is not directed towards those whose long-term agenda is to discredit and even destroy it.... Please click here for more "The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do" --Galileo Galilei (d.1642) 
Juan Fernández el Labrador, "Four Bunches of Grapes"(1630-35);
Museo del Prado
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