ITALIAN COURT PAINTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 407, 16 July 1928, Page 14

ITALIAN COURT PAINTER

ON WAY TO SYDNEY HAS PORTRAITS OF POPE Court painter to the King of Italy, Count Arlando CasellaTamburini, who carries with him two portraits of Pope Pius XI. for the Eucharistic Congress at Sydney, is aboard the Aorangi with the Countess Dolya. Many of the most famous people in Italy and America have sat for the Count, who lives in Florence. One portrait of his Holiness shows him in Coronation robes giving the benediction in the Sistine Chapel and in the other he is presented in an attitude of prayer. No fewer than five times the Count has painted the portraits of the King of Italy, and the Queen and the Princess have both sat for him. Mussolini proved to be a very unsatisfactory sitter, because he would keep walking up and down in dynamic restlessness. The first sitting took three hours. “He is a man of the largest vision, of tremendous power and he has helped Italy greatly,” said the Count of II Duce. Queen Marie of Rumania sat for him aboard the Berengaria. The position of Court painter is almost hereditary in the Count’s family, his father having held that honour before him. The Countess comes from Virginia, U.S.A.