15 FEBRUARY 1930, Page 32

Visitors to the marvellous Italian Exhibition at Burlington House would

be well advised to read, in the Burlington Magazine' for February, the valuable articles by Sir Charles Holmes and Mr. Roger Fry. The late Director of the National Gallery institutes a comparison between that collection and the loan exhibition, and Mr. Fry discusses some of the lesser known and earlier pictures. In the same issue Mr. Egerton Beck has a lucid article on " Copyright in Artistic Works," which has a very serious concern for publishers as well as artists and owners of works of art. The law is complex and virtually unworkable, except that no painting or photograph made before July, 1912, is protected if the author died before July, 1905. " As things are," says Mr. Beck, " the owner of a collection of modern works of art cannot legally distribute an illustrated catalogue of them to his friends without the permission of the makers of these works," and the makers in turn are dependent on the owner.