Art
Italian Art in Paris NATIONALIST jealousy is perhaps the first feeling to be aroused by the exhibition of Italian Art at the Petit Palais in Paris. Is this a better or a worse exhibition than our 1930 display at Burlington House ? And, however regretfully, the visitor is in the end forced to admit that in many respects Paris has defeated London. He can, however, console himself With the thought that the organizers of the Petit Palais exhibition had certain advantages over their English col- leagues. They have not hesitated to Make their selection more complete by simply moving a great many pictures. from their home half a mile away in the Louvre, and they have per- haps not been over-Meticulous in examining the condition of the pictures which they borrowed to see whether the 'sudden translation to another climate would not damage them.
But however great these advantages may be, it must still be admitted that it is possible to get a more complete idea of Italian painting at the Petit Palais than it was at Burlington House. The difference between the two exhibi- tions is instructive and throws light on the difference between the tastes of England and Fraree at the present time. Bur- lington House began in effect at Duecio and Giotto. . The Pptit Valais contains a series of important Tuscan paintings of the 13th century, including Coppo di Marcovaldo's Crucifix from Pistoia, one of the great religious paintings of all times. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Paris and London come out very nearly equal, though London has a slight ad- vantage in the scientific painters of the Quattrocento, par- ticularly Antonio Pollaiuolo and Signorelli.. For the high Renaissance also there is little to choose, but with the later sixteenth century • an important difference appears. The organizers of the London exhibition seem to Itai.,6 thought that painting in Central Italy stopped with Raphael and Michelangelo, with the exception of a few portrait painters. Paris has, on the other hand, done the Mannerists proud. London had no paintings by Baroccio, Beccafumi or Rosso' and only portraits by' Pontormo. Faris has borrowed big compositions by all these painters, including Rosso's Deposi- tion from Volterra and Pontormo's version of the same subject from S. Felicita in Florence, two landmarks in the develop- ment . of Mannerism. Baroque painting is perhaps slightly. better .represented in the Petit Palais than at Burlington House, and the group of sculpture is considerably larger.
It is only to be expected that Mannerism should be more sympathetically studied in France than in England, for, as I have had occasion to point out before, French painting has itself been .going through a period of Mannerism during the last thirty years, whereas English painting--at any rate till within the last five years—has kept along the lines of Post- impiessionist .clikasicism. But it is also natural that the French should be interested in the pre-Giottesqucs. It was striking to see at the Petit Palais the 'similarity between the Mannerists and the painters of the Dugento in their approach to certain problems,. particularly colour. After two centdries when colour had been used for naturalistic purposes, to construct forms, to create space, to render nature, suddenly ' thete appears Pontortno's Deposition, in which colour is used for its' direct appeal to the sub-conscious, in fa* tones of initaire; light bine; bright reds and oranges, with just the Same method and often the same 'colours as in the case of those other't,Yreat religious painters; of the early.' period: The' painters of the Dugento and of Mannerism double their scam for naturalistic form 'With one for naturalistic colours. They also share both with seine modern painters, and' was interested rather than surPrised to find. that Picasso in his most recent painting is using jusethe same .blues, mauves and oranges in just the smile Spirit as his great non-naturalistie predecessors.
It seemed to me therefore that they only state a half truth who maintain that El Greed introdnced the modern conception of colour into Western painting and that he derived it from his BYzantine training. He was only the laSt and greatest of that line. Of Mannerists who had revived the Byzantine conception of colour not through direct inheritance from the Byzantine tradition but because of SirnilaritY of purpose mid conditions. The rediscovery was originally made before lie was born by the religious painters of Florence about 1520, particularly by
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