ITALIAN ART TREASURES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20951, 14 February 1930, Page 13

ITALIAN ART TREASURES.

LONDONERS* GREAT OPPORTUNITY. CROWDED GALLERIES. SUPERB WORKS OP MANY AGES.' (Fecit Oob Ows Goesespoitdent.) LONDON, January 7. Prom 9.30- a.m. until 7 p.m, an unbroken file of people is passing through the turnstile to see the Italian art treasures at Burlington House. The occasion is unique, and that ' unbroken file of sightseers will probably continue until the end of the Exhibition. Never in the past have so many famous and priceless.,.masterpieces - been brought together under one roof,* nor is it likely that such an opportunity for the enjoy-ment-as well as for the serious study of Italian Art will be offered again in this generation. One can only • surmise - the joy of, the student who. has made a study of the Italian masterpieces from the written page, and now has the advantage of seeing the works themselves, of making comparisons, and of examining those details about which so much has been written by experts. Somewhere a'long way behind the student’s appreciation comes that of the layman. Ppr the latter such an exhibition is entirely a new thing. He may be critical of small ■ things. ■He may- even be tempted to look for a presentable and human babe among- the scores and scores of pictures of the “Madonna and Child." Nevertheless, in the presence :of something which instinct tells him ' has more masterly qualities than defects he is silent. The works are sacrosanct, and this idea is borne out by the great silence that prevails in all the galleries of Burlington House, even though the rooms are so crowded that it is difficult to get even a peep at some of the more famous works. The Hanging Committee has, as far as possible, followed a-rough chronological order round the galleries, and illustrated by the choicest , examples, the whole sequence of evolution from the first attempts of such thirteenth century Viennese and Florentine masters as -Duccio and Cimabue tc infuse life into the hieratic images pf Bysantine art, - through the-epoch-making innovations, step by step, of Giotto, Masaccio, Piero dei Pranceschi, Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto, to the seventh century, the period of immense technical ability, unaccompanied either by: inventiveness-or. genuine inspiration, or intellectual curiosity. . THE PRIMITIVES. Room I. opens with the Trecentist pictures and some of the Quattrocentists. Here hang the Primitives, those first ten- , tative breakings away from the Byzantine tradition. Early Italian art.was, from the nature. of its origin, history, and environment, religious in' character, and tliis character persisted even to the end. Church and Biblical subjects. Madonnas and Saints are alone to be found in this first room. In Room II the mood changes. There is an exploring of a new world, experimenting .and inventing. The vision of the artists is directed not only to heaven but to earth. SUPREME MASTERPIECES. : The Royal Academy has atradition that Room 111 should be devoted to some supreme masterpieces. , Hence, we have in this gallery not only pictures of the fifteenth century, such as Botticelli’s “ Birth of Venus,” but of the sixteenth century, such as the “ Comaro Family,” by Titian. “The Birth of Venus,” best known perhaps to the layman, has pride of place at the cud of-the gallery. This picture is, with the same master’s “ Spring,’’ the purest embodiment of the pagan spirit of the early Renaissance. It illustrates the Homeric Hymn describing Venus, ou ber shell, being wafted to land by Zephyrus, and received by the Houri. All can admire -this beautiful work without having acquired any taste for old masters. 1 It might have been painted yesterday or at any time during the past few hundred years, so free is it from the fashions which!mark a. period. ‘ In this room many people are to be seen before Mantegna’s picture of “The Dead Christ.” On a mable slab lies the almost mide body of Christ, seen fiom the feet. His. head rests on apillow, and in the drooping hands can be seen the, marks of the nails. To the left stands the Virgin, her face distorted with grief. “The Transfiguration,” by Bellini, is another work which will attract a good deal of attention, not for its conventional design,- but for a cbnception that must have been unusual even when the artist produced it. Entering the Fourth Gallery we -fin'd works of the .fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the Farrarese. painters as the dominant note. Room V is devoted to fifteenth century work of the Venetian and North Italian schools, and Rooms VI and VH complete and carry on the tale of the ripe Renaissance, so various in its outlook, so decorative in its presentation, so pene-, Mating and human in its interpretation•' of men-and women. So on-until in the twelfth and thirteenth galleries we find the brilliant virtuosity of the eighteenth century, and .filially, in the fourteenth gallery, there are the works of the nine? teenth century, so remote from the primitives that called for attention in the first gallery. About "'SO per. cent, of the pictures (there are well over 1000. exhibits) have been lent from Italy itself, about 30 percent. have come from English collections, and the remainder are from other foreign countries, including America. A GLORIOUS MUSICAL ENTER- ‘ TAINMENT. To explain in detail -what the British public are flocking to see at Burlington House would require endless columns of print. _ One point made by a London i Cr A tIC « illuminating. it explains “ Without going into ah elaborate discussion of what is meant by ‘formal beauty’” he writes, “it can be said that the qualities in a work of visual art which persist in space—that is to sa L at a distance at which the subject 0 c hork becomes unrecognisable are tnc most likely to persist in time; and only necessary to stand'in the middle of any of the rooms at the Royal Academy to understand why Italian painting has remained our standard for of * an " lt f oU . t ,. taking in the subject of any of the pictures , a -person of ordinary sensibility would stil^carrv tw y rtn V - ISl !i al + i lmpreSsion COnl Parable to that received through the ear at a. concert of music; and, at a first visit the best way to regard the exhibition is’aSa glorious musical entertainment.”