PRICELESS PICTURES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 837, 4 December 1929, Page 9

PRICELESS PICTURES

WARSHIPS WILL ESCORT ITALIAN STEAMER GREAT SHOW IN LONDON British Official Wireless Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY, Monday. 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 at Burlington House, London. The exhibition will open on January 1. Italy is making a superb and generous contribution to the exhibition, and in a few days’ time the steamer Leonardo da Vinci, escorted by warships, will leave Genoa for England packed with priceless pictures. Over 300 important paintings of the TOO which will be included in the exhibition, are coming either from Italian galleries or from Italian private owners. They have been collected from every corner of the country and represent every period of Italian art, from Cimabue, “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 Giorgiones. 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 a collection centre for the works of art and also for the immense insurance operations which have been necessary. Apart from the works sent from Italy and England and other collections, pictures of unique importance will come from Louvre in Paris, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, and from other famous Continental and American collections.