Evening star., 1941-04-11
Showing Of Italian
Pictures Defended
Writer Suys Galleries
Of Other Lands Provide
American Precedent
To the Editor of The Star:

To the Editor of The Star:
Not surprising, but none the less un-
justified, is the criticism directed against
the new National Gallery because it
exhibits as many as 451 Italian paint
ings and as few as II American among
$50. To one who has studied the out
put of the past seven centuries, the
distribution seems inevitable, reasonably
fair and very significant. 1t is inevitable
in view of the fact that Italy was pro-
ducing two centuries before the New
World was known, five centuries before
the United States became a nation. The
most fertile field offers the most and the
best produce on the market; Italy was
that field. Our National Gallery Is not
alone in admitting this fact. For example,
the catalogue of the National Gallery Of
Spain, country with an artistic ira
dition as old as that of Italy, contains
the names of 100 italian painters and
only 80 Spanish. In the number of
paintings the Spanish school has an
advantage of 735 to 584 over the Italian
chiefly because the Prado is able to
include 86 works Of the prolific Goya,
II Of Velasquez, So of Ribera, who
worked only in Naples; Is of Ell Greco,
active in Spain though born in Crete
and trained in Italy. and more than a
score of paintings by Portuguese and
Italians naturalized in Spain.
In the National Gallery of Eng
land, whose artistic tradition is much
less venerable than that of Spain but
better nouriShed than ours, the repre-
Sentation is as follows: Italy, 235 paint
ers; the Low Countries, 174; France,
A; Germany, II; Spain, IA; Britain, SIS,
including three Americans "a colonial
and two expatriates) who are classified
as British. Among more than 1000
paintings, less than 200 are English,
even if the IA works of the three Ameri-
cans and six works of two Scots are
admitted as of the British school,
Furthermore, in the National Gallery
of England-a predominately Protestant
country-there are nearly 200 paintings
of the Virgin and Child; and religious
subjects outnumber portraits by approx
mately five to one, in spite of the fact
that portraiture is a field in which
Englishmen excel
I shall mention no more figures: but,
as to the National Gallery of France,
I quote two significant sentences from
the German, Karl Baedeker: Most visi-
tors to the Louvre will, of course, be
chiefly interested in the Italian painters
... OF all the great masters Titan is,
perhaps, the most brilliantly repre-
sented." What a tribute to the great
Venetian from the fatherland of Pous-
sin, Watteau, 1ngres, Delacroix, Daumier,
Manet! According to my recollection,
the National Gallery in Berlin honored
the Italian school with the best in
stallation. The most famous treasures
of Dresden and Vienna were produced
by Raphael. In the Low Countries and
in Leningrad, the fecundity of Rubens,
Van Dyck and Rembrandt tips the
balance in favor of their homelands:
but all these men were proud of their
debt to Titan.
None of these great national galleries
is national in the restricted sense of
the word. The connoisseurs who built
them have striven to be fair primarily
to standard of excellence. Civic mu-
seums are rightly entrusted with the
exploitation of local pride; restoration
projects and historical societies preserve
for our pleasure products of more anti
quarian interest than intrinsic merit;
our Museum of Modern Art keeps us
abreast of our contemporaries upon
whom future generations must yet pass
judgment. There are suitable places
where we may beam upon our Pelhams
and Smiberts and admire our Bentons
and Robinsons
1t is significant of the breadth of
vision of Mr.. Mellon, Mr.. KreSs, and the
other donors that they recognized that
paintings worthy of a place in the
National Gallery should be truly inter-
national. None of the great masters
was petty nationalist, none was a
suave propaganda. Raphael, Titan
and Paul Veronese belong so much to
all OF us that every nation translates
their names into its own idiom. If we
do not speak of Alexander Botticelli
and Andrew del Sarto, we decline to
do so by reason of respect for euphony.
Their race, not their nation-for they
knew no Italian state-generously lent
their genius to whomever could appre-
ciate it. So we remember the italian
painters: Simone Martini enriching
Avignon; Leonardo dying in a French
kings arms; Titan, incredibly old, de-
lighting the Spanish Hapsburgs; the
GentileSchi gratifying the tragic Charles
I in remote gray England and at the
same time touching off a vital spark
in Holland; Tiepolo lavishing his talents
upon Bavarian Wurzburg; finally, Bru-
midi and Costaggini still drawing upon
Italian wealth. then almost spent, that
we might have in our Capitol in Wash
ington, frescoes that no American could
accomplish. These are only few Of
the many artists who established Italian
prestige; there were sculptors and archi-
tects as well. As result, there has been
profitable exchange: Durer, the great
est of the Germans, and Honthorst, the
Dutchman, were alike debtors and credi-