THE NATIONAL GALLERY : ITALIAN MASTERS

THE National Gallery was founded in 1824, its origin being the purchase of thirty-eight pictures from the collection of the late John Julius Angerstein, of Lloyd's, for 57,000 by Lord Liverpool's Government. They would now be worth many times that SUM.

The numbers on the frames should always be noted because they indicate at what period the pictures were acquired, and this helps to reveal the extraordinary growth of the Gallery in the last few years. One of the latest numbers that I find at the time of this revision is No. 3714 on the little Fabritius in Room XII. That was hung in 1923, ninety-nine years after the Gallery was begun; which suggests that the rate of addition to its treasures has been about thirty-eight pictures a year. But a neighbouring picture that happens to have its date of acquisition as well as number, Velazquez' portrait of Admiral Pulido Pareja, in Room XVII, shows us that there has been no such steady increase. That picture was acquired in 1890 and is numbered 1315. As the Gallery began in 1824, it means that whereas fifty-six years were spent in amassing the first thirteen hundred Pictures, the following thirty-three years have seen the addition of two thousand six hundred more. Another date in the same room helps again. Velazquez' " Venus and Cupid " was acquired in 1906 and is No. 2057; so that in the seventeen years since then over sixteen hundred pictures have been added. This is a great achievement.

Not all of the pictures are, however, here ; for the Tate Gallery, a branch of the National Gallery, shares the numbering and hangs as many, if not more, pictures on its walls, as we shall see when the times comes to visit Milbank.

It would be difficult to give our National Gallery too much praise. Its present post-war arrangement seems to me almost beyond criticism. Every time I look in and I am there certainly once a week I am more and more impressed by the excellence of the collection, in gross and in detail.

The numbering of the rooms is rather capricious, but I think it better, for the most part, to follow it here.

At the head of the entrance stairs we find the earliest painting of all portraits from Egyptian mummy cases. Here also is one of Cimabue's big black-mantled Madonnas that were carried in procession through the streets. The blue robe came later. This painting is one of the earliest of modern times. Cimabue is assumed to have been born in 1240 and to have died in 1301.

Room I now lodges the Italian primitives, and beginning at the right wall and walking round you can follow the evolution of painting from the purely ecclesiastical symbols of the fourteenth century chiefly of the Sienese school to Uccello's great battle piece, painted some time in or after 1432. Everyone in this room was feeling his way, among the chief and most influential of these pioneers being Masaccio (1401-1428), and Andrea del Castagno (1410 ?-1457) whose " Crucifixion," No. 1138, has a strange mastery for so early a day. But for these two painters Italian art might have developed very differently. In this room also you will find the sweet and gentle fancies of Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico, who painted saints as though they were saints themselves. The last picture of all, the Bernardino Fungai, No. 1331, is an adorable work.

In Room II we find far more accomplishment. Much had yet to be done in compassing light and shade, but drawing is now established. This room is chiefly Botticelli's and his associates and followers. To the lay mind there is little enough to choose between Botticelli and the School of Botticelli : both produced works of exquisite beauty. Here also you will find Lippo Lippi, Botticelli's master and the hero of Browning's monologue ; Lorenzo di Credi, who, though not of the same rank, made very pleasing things ; and two pictures which the authorities give to the school of that fine artist and influence, Andrea Verrocchio (Andrew of the True Eye) in whose studio Leonardo da Vinci learned his craft. Both are very beautiful. Note in No. 781, " The Angel Raphael and Tobias," with what triumphant airy lightness the angel is moving ; in the other, No. 296, "Madonna and Child with Angels" fore-shadowings of the Leonardo type of girl's face are visible.

We must cross the big room No. I again to reach Room III, where Piero della Francesca rules. A very gentle sway is his. One of my favourite pictures has always been his " Nativity," No. 908. Time has been not too kind to the painter's colours, but in another way it has befriended him, both in this work and in the " Baptism of Christ," near it, for the faint tones that age has brought about are very soothing and unlike anything else in the gallery. These two pictures are getting on for five hundred years old. Note the drawing of the man divesting himself, in No. 665. Piero's pupil, Luca Signorelli, who, in his turn, influenced Michelangelo, is also in Room III. Note in No. 1133, "The Nativity," the careful painting of the wild flowers. Piero's wild flowers and birds you will have noticed too. That very engaging Painter, Pintoricchio, whose Piccolomini frescoes lure so many people to Siena, displays great versatility in this room for he has an exquisite little "Madonna and Child," 703, and the curious and very interesting fresco (transferred to canvas), representing the return of Ulysses No. 911. Finally there is the serene and mellow triptych by Perugino, No. 288, famous for the figures of the angels Raphael and Michael.

In the next room, IV, we find Perugino again, in the large pale fresco No. 1441, " The Adoration of the Shepherds," painted for the church of Fontignano in 1522 and removed from there in 1843. It belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum, but has been lent to the National Gallery for a long while and is better here. Other pictures to note here are the Matteo di Giovanni " Assumption of the Virgin," No. 1155, a most satisfactory altar piece for a church frequented by simple souls ; and another of the many representations of the mystical marriage of S. Catherine and the Infant Christ, by Lorenzo da San Severino II. The child slips what is very like a real ring, so thick is the applique gold, on the third finger of the saint's right hand ; but she was not, of course, then a saint. The artist has made her more comely than she was and altogether it is a very pretty fancy. The curious, and in part reassembled, Pesellino hanging close by, "The Trinity," with two angels brought from different sources, and a panel lent by the King, to assist in the completion, is an example of patient and pious research.

Although the numbering of the rooms is not consecutive I think it would be well, at this point, before going to Room V to enter the Dome and visit the three other rooms that radiate from it, for all have a similar character, being given up to large church pieces, nor are they strictly chronological.

MOUSEHOLD HEATH,

AFTER THE PICTURE BY OLD CRONE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

The earliest works are those of Orcagna in Room VIII, at the end of which is the famous Raphael known as "The Ansidei Madonna," painted in 1505-6 for a church in Perugia. Raphael is here at his most grave and mellow. On the left wall we find Orcagna, who lived as long ago as the first half of the fourteenth century and was not only painter but goldsmith, sculptor, architect and worker in mosaic as all students of Florence know. On the opposite wall are the altar pieces of that very interesting and amusing, if not great, painter, Carlo Crivelli of the Venetian School, who in addition to his skill as a draughtsman and his ingenuity in welding real stones and lumps of gold into his paint, had very pretty thoughts and fancies and the admirable habit of signing his works in full. To the conjecturing expert this may be deplorable, but to the simple-minded it is a virtue. Crivelli was fond of giving his celestials very human accessories such as fruit and flowers and creatures of earth and air. In No. 724 there is, for example, a swallow; in No. 668 there are ducks. Look at the predella of No. 724, in which poor S. Sebastian is being pierced by arrows at the closest range. You will find S. George and the Dragon here too.

In the Dome we come, on the right, to a rich and glowing altar piece by Francia, ; then, past the next entrance, to a very interesting Luca Signorelli, with an attractive town on the water's edge in the distance ; then to a Perugino so bland as to be insipid ; and then a sweet assemblage of benign personages by Cima. The room opposite No. IV is No. XI, where that great master of portraits, Moretto of Brescia, whom we shall find in the large Venetian room, may be seen as an ecclesiastical painter. The two angels that guard the door are very charming. Here also are altar pieces by other Italian painters of great distinction and power, but not quite of the highest rank, such as Foppa and Garofalo and Parmigiano, while Paul Veronese, who refused to be humble or even to sanction humble things, has a vast canvas representing the "Adoration of the Kings" in a stable of palatial dimensions.

The fourth room leading from the Dome is XVI, where you will find the very antithesis of Veronese's splendours in No. 1849 by "Pacchiarotto who worked in distemper " : a "Nativity" in as modest a shed as could be depicted. Here also is the great Botticini "Assumption," where the Virgin rises from a tomb now filled with lilies in a meadow not very far from Florence, whose dome and spires are seen in the distance. On either side kneel the donors : Signor Palmieri and his wife. In the heavens is the celestial host. Two pretty altar pieces by Bertucci, No. 282, and Girolamo, No. 748, should be looked for : each has little musicians making melody. And I like the rich colours of the Ortolano, No. 669.