PRICELESS WORKS OF ART

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 300, 4 December 1929, Page 8

PRICELESS WORKS OF ART

COMING EXHIBITION IN LONDON ITALY’S GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION. (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, Dec. 2. Active preparations are being made for the shipment to*England of works of art of inestimable value which will be on view at the Italian art exhibition in Burlington House, London, which opens on January 1, Italy is making a superb and generous contribution to the exhibition and in a few days the steamer Leonardo da Vinci, escorted by warships, will leave Genoa for England packed with priceless pictures. Over 300 important paintings of the 700 which will be included in the exhibition are coming either from Italian galleries or Italian private owners. They have been collected from every corner of tho country and represent every period of Italian art from Ciinabue, “before whom there was no art,” to Segatin. Included among them are Raphael’s "Sacred and Profane Love,” Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” Tintoretto's “Adam and Eve,” and several by Giorgione. The immense value of these treasures can be gathered from the fact that one picture alone was insured for £500,000. The Academy Brera at Milan has been made the collection centre for the art works and also for the immense insurance operations which have been necessary. Apart from works sent from Italy and from England and other collections, pictures of unique importance will come from the Louvre, in Paris, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, in Berlin, the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam, and other famous Continental and Amriean collections.