Vermeer, Beauvais, Peale

Francis Kleinberger, of the Kleinberger Galleries (Manhattan), gave tongue loudly when he purchased Jan Vermeer of Delft's New Testament, considered one of the finest of the 38 assured works of this rediscovered master. The painting was found 30 years ago in a Berlin junk shop, and loaned to the Royal Museum at The Hague, where it was exhibited until six months ago. Dealer Kleinberger paid a price variously estimated from $100,000 to $500,000; Dr. Abraham Bredius, who discovered it, had paid $100 for it.

P. W. French & Co., a U. S. firm, paid $78,800 for an 18th century royal Beauvais tapestry, in a sale held at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris. The catalog description : "Against a background of a sunlit Italian landscape are at the left the ruins of a colonnade, arch of triumph, and a temple built in the Ionic order. Between the shafts of the columns a mountebank dressed as a Turk has placed his wares under a red drapery, offering the various ointments, elixirs, etc., to the villagers who have gathered about at the call of the trumpet. Near by a maiden plays with a monkey which is being teased by the young gamins. At their side a man has installed a magic lantern apparatus, through the peephole of which gazes a young mother holding her son. . . . Near the player of the trumpet are several lads surrounding a lady selling sweets."

Prints as well as paintings occupied the fancies of collectors. Sir James Caird, who received his baronetcy in the New Year's honors, bought for $540,000 the famed McPherson collection of naval prints, maps and pictures, for the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich, England.

In Amsterdam was sold last week Leda and the Swan, which might have been the mysterious original, painted about 1514 by Leonardo da Vinci, and stolen from Fontainebleau sometime during the 18th century.

Agents of John Davison Rockefeller Jr., who have been nosing around Virginia since the announcement of his gigantic gifts for the restoration of the village of Williamsburg (TIME, June 25), came upon a portrait of George Washington, by Charles Wilson Peale, which was hanging in the home of Mrs. Marion Carter Oliver Jr. This they bought for an unspecified sum.