BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I know nothing about art: But like Justice Stewart I know it when I see it. Buying on line? I don't know. Even when you buy from the biggest auction houses in the world errors in attribution are made.

Myfriend Muggsy Feldstein, the plumber, attributed one of his daughter's finger paintings to George Braque and I paid him half a month's salary for it thinking that I was stealing it from him. Muggsy had the lastlaugh.

Now in re the feminized painting of St Michael and the Dragon. that you are thinking of purchasing...I can tell you that that painting the hero of a painting as anadolescent, androgynous figure was very popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.

Recently I saw a slide of Andrea Del Verrocchio's David, the one in Florence that was restored a few years ago. Magnifico!

David appears hand on hip, Goliath's sword in his other. He wears a short skirt, and the detail of his musculature is very soft. His hair is curled and comes down to his neck. His face is feminine,one hip is thrust to the side.

If a woman were in this pose you wouldsay she was flirting. He has a bonnet on his head, flowered, definitely a woman's head covering.

The Medici's contracted for the statue and placed in in a privatewalled garden so that the hoi polloi (Joel and me -- not you Lew & Stella) would not be shocked by it.