RISKS WITH ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 304, 24 December 1929, Page 6

RISKS WITH ART.

It is related that when, after the !iomnn capture of Corinth, the victorious general seat a shipload of works of art to Rome, he told the shipping contractor that if they were lost they must be replaced by objects of equal value. The Mummius type is eternal, but we find the other extreme of knowledge and care in thj precautions taken with the shipment of pictures and other objects of art from Italy to England. The ship that carried this largest and most valuable collection ever got together for exhibition abroad —it is valued at fourteen millions and it would probably fetch that sum if it were put up for auction before the millionaires of the world —was escorted to England, and it happened that she ran through one of the worst gales on record. Had anything serious happened to her at the height of the gale the escort could have done little. It is a curious coincidence that shortly after this shipment arrived safely in Londca, a ship carrying a collection of English pictures should have been totally lost on our own coast, and that the end of one of the artists concerned should have been hastened by the news. The wreck of the Manuka illustrates the risks involved in transportation of works of art, for which reason we are never likely to see the originals of the old masters.