Pictures for the Nation The National Gallery has been gloriously
enriched this week by the purchase of two famous pictures. Titian's picture of the Cornaro family at worship in the open air, with its rich colouring, was one of Vandyck's possessions, was bought from his executors by the tenth Earl of Northumberland, and has hung at Alnwick for the last century. Of real beauty too, but also of intense national interest, is the diptych which has been in the possession of the Pembroke family for many generations. The painter is unknown, but his work includes a fine contemporary portrait of Richard II., which proves that before the end of the fourteenth century, fifty years before the frescoes were painted in Eton Chapel, and before the days of the Van Eycks, someone in England had reached as high a standard of art as was conceived anywhere on the Continent. To- wards the purchase of these treasures Mr. Samuel Courtauld has made a noble contribution of £40,000, and others have made munificent gifts. Of our own money the Treasury diverted for our good 100,000 guineas. * * *
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