Art

Our Italy

By SIMON HODGSON

IT has taken probably the most magnificent exhibition to be

seen in London since the war to get Burlington House redecor- ated. Not piecemeal either, by

God, but a clean sweep through every room, so that one now almost regrets the passing of that time-stained sacking. The compensation, of course, is that one can now see the pictures which hang there, and this is an exhibition that is un- likely to be equalled for generations. The chron- ology is that of the entry of Italian works into English collections, and thrown in are works by Reynolds and others who returned from Italy having learnt certain Italian lessons. For the scholar whose field lies where tastes and ideas meet, and are exchanged. the changing interest§ of our collectors would deserve a monograph. Above all it is the continuity which is both moving and fascinating, for, leaving aside Mr. Merton's ill- drawn, clumsily pretty and enormous Guardis, which were collected by chance if not in a fit of absence of mind (1 suppose they must be Guardis, it said so in the papers), there are seventeenth- century paintings which Mr. Mahon has collected and which, with others, he has now arranged in two galleries here. These are masterful and monu- mental, often dramatic works, executed with Olympian assurance. Or one may turn to the Quattrocento works collected by Sir Thomas Merton—they are astonishing these Mertons, I think another one of them even paints.

But the variable shifts of taste must be left on one side when, as here, one is so often confronted with the absolutes of quality. Let us start with the drawings, which Mr. Popham has arranged in the collections of which they once formed a part, those of Lord Arundel, of Lely, of Richardson, of a

Consul Smith, of Lawrence. Parmigianino, (1 Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Michelangelo, Raphael; Piazzetta, Ricci; an astonishing Cot,

reggio. These are names which have for us a talismanic quality Once, and for others, the property of the saints. Even Salvator Rosa, even Guido Reni, lived that we might live; and they made the world in our image; and if we have often P1

failed them in love and dignity they will never In finally reject us or we them. These artists made Ip

Europe, and what Europe made in a mere 3.000 years was their idea of man; a creature whose occasional abilities in kindness, communication

and private courage produce those gaps 10 violence that we call civilisation; gaps which allow us our finest activities, those of artistic production, and, through these, our small portion of hope.

It is the constant level of excellence which three oil centuries of collectors looked for which is so

surprising and so exciting. You may see here a

Botticelli, which now belongs to Sir Thomas rl Merton, that has never been exhibited before. or Count Seilern's Daddi Triptych, or the Ashmolea0

woi Orcagna, or the extraordinary emotional range of the Fitzwilliam Venezianos, or the Royal Leonardos and Giorgiones, all of which came to this country any time from the sixteenth century

onwards. The last comparable exhibition of 11111 Italian painting was held in 1930; though still exti wailing in drawers at that time I have seen the 1L1n1

catalogue, which shows that masterpieces from Italian sources provided a never-to-be-repeated

collection. The charm of the present vast assemblY toI:

of pictures is of a somewhat chauvinistic nature: How clever of Lord Oxford to own his Matteo

Giovanni, how wonderful our Bellinis are (the Burrell collection Virgin and Child especially), how spectacular is the Bronzino portrait of a boy belonging to Lady Mersea. But if 1930 had works Which are now too valuable to be moved again from Italy, the quality of nearly all the pictures here is incredibly high, the drawings and the Venetian pictures (and Bronzino's ravishing Italian child) providing the greatest excitements perhaps, the Guercinos showing the most recent development in taste at its most honourable, and the del Sarto of a young man being, dare I say it, one of the very few disappointments.

This is our Italy. This is the country of the mind, under whose sun we soak up warmth and splendour, to be distilled at home later, in a gentler light and with less urgency, into our own unemphatic and more cautious creations.