Art
Great and Queer THE periodical exhibitions organized by the Burlington Fine Arts Club fulfil many functions. Sometimes they are precise in scope and aim at showing the achievement of a single artist, such for instance as Blake whose centenary was so celebrated in 1927. On other occasions the exhibitions are supplementary in purpose, as was that organized at the same time as the exhibition of British Art at Burlington. House, when many gaps at the latter were filled by exhibits at the former. But usually the exhibitions at the Fine Arts Club are comprehensive and miscellaneous in their selection and include not only paintings but furniture, china, and specimens of all those other arts which we condescend- ingly describe as minor. Exhibitions of this sort serve two main purposes : they introduce the public (or at any rate that section of the public which can achieve the admission " by introduction by a member only ") to many little known works of merit which have been either recently discovered or rarely shown, and secondly they collect together works which shall provoke speculation and discussion, which shall be in some way mysterious and shall put the connoisseurs on their mettle.
The present exhibition at the Club is of the miscellaneous kind and it fulfils its two functions with quite unusual success. Even the most insensitive could hardly walk round the room without noticing that there were some very remarkable works of art to be seen, and even the most incurious would be set thinking by some of the problems which these works present.
Taking the pictures in the order in which they are hung, we come at once upon perhaps the most fascinating problem of the whole exhibition, a canvas of a Moor playing a flute, intriguingly labelled " Velasquez and Reynolds." Fortu- nately in this case the solution of the problem is partly pro- vided ready-made, since Northeote in his life of Reynolds tells us that the latter repainted much of this canvas which was bought in the sale room as a much damaged Velasquez. We know also that this restoring of ruined old masters in a whole hearted manner was a favourite pastime with Reynolds who, having none of our perhaps exaggerated respect for the exact touch of any master, made no bones about the whole business and was indeed proud of what he achieved in this way. It is fairly clear which parts of the painting are by Reynolds, but there remains the question, who the author of the rest may be. Velasquez is impossible ; of Van Dyck and Jordaens, both suggested by the catalogue, the latter seems much the more probable.
Resisting the temptation to speculate about a much damaged and apparently fragmentary figure of the Virgin by Tintoretto and skipping some Italian and Northern primitives, we come to the first aesthetic peak of the exhibi- tion, the Madonna and Child by Bartolommeo Montagne, from the collection of Mr. Farrer, which makes one wonder why this artist is not as popular as Giovanni Bellini with those who like that peculiar fusion of the human and the divine typical of early Venetian religious painting. Leaping from peak to peak, we ecme to Mr. Stephen Courtauld's miraculously beautiful Mantegna of Christ descending into Limbo, in which this master's sculptural austerity is softened by an unusual sweetness of execution. Passing on, we abandon pure aesthetic admiration for speculation. Why, we wonder, is the painting over the fireplace described as The Massacre of the Innocents, with which subject it has no more than a double infanticide in common ? And what is the exact connexion between the National Gallery Geertgen and the Birth of Christ in the present exhibition mysteriously attributed to " Meister Michiel " ?
The later Italian pictures also set one wondering. The Old Lady Telling her Beads by Leandro Bassano shows in the background a picture of the birth of the Virgin. Is it what Leandro would make of a painting by Veronese if he had to fit it in with a scene of his own ? Next comes a real mystery piece, The Adoration of the Shepherds, discreetly 'described as " Venetian School, mid-sixteenth century." The mixture of motives from Bassano and Tintoretto (the shepherd on the left recalls the Fitzwilliam Adoration), a composition almost too audacious to belong to the sixteenth century, and the fact that the Virgin is wearing a purely mediaeval headdress, make a decisive attribution difficult. But after this the visitor may end on a note of certainty. Whoever it represents, the lovely Portrait of a Young Man must certainly be by Bronzino, and the Guardi of the Ducal Palace is unimpeachable both in quality and in pedigree.
ANTHONY 'BLUNT'.
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