Mellon & Madonna

On Assumption Day last August important art news leaked from Moscow to Riga, from Riga to Paris, from Paris to the front pages of the U. S. Press. The news leak: Andrew William Mellon had bought Sanzio Raphael's Madonna of the House of Alba for $1,500,000 from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (TIME, Aug. 27).

Twenty-four hours later, the onetime Secretary of the Treasury broke off his grouse shooting at his lodge in Perthshire, Scotland long enough to deny the Moscow-Riga-Paris-U. S. news leak in the following words: "I have not bought the Alba Madonna or any other Soviet art. This story has cropped up recurrently for the past three years. Each time I have denied it."

In November another Mellon art story broke. The 79-year-old Pittsburgh multi-millionaire was supposed to be preparing to turn over all his pictures to a new public museum to be built either in Pittsburgh or Washington. Again Mr. Mellon came forth with a solemn, straight-faced denial:

"My collection of paintings eventually will be made available to the public. It is entirely unfounded that I have arranged to build an art gallery at Washington. I have engaged no architect, have caused no plans to be drawn and have made no commitments to build or endow a gallery at Washington, Pittsburgh or elsewhere."

Last week Mr. Mellon stood convicted in the public prints of some fancy fibbing about his art collection. He had bought the Alba Madonna from Soviet Russia, not for $1,500,000 as reported from Moscow but for $1,166,400, highest price ever paid for a single masterpiece. As long ago as 1931 he had started putting money into a trust fund to build a public art gallery in Washington. These facts were developed at a tax hearing in Pittsburgh last week (see p. 14). With the air of introducing a great patriot and generous patron, Frank J. Hogan, Mr. Mellon's astute Washington attorney, announced that his client had put $3,200,000 into his museum trust fund in 1931, that the Alba Madonna would go into that museum along with four other great canvases which Mr. Mellon bought from Moscow's Hermitage Museum for $3,247,695 and some 60 to 70 other masterpieces from his collection.

The Mellon collection has been assembled almost entirely through the New York house of Knoedler & Co. According to Lawyer Hogan, it is today valued at $19,000,000. Though generally assumed to be one of the finest private collections of old masters in the U. S., its complete make-up is still unknown to outsiders--largely because of Mr. Mellon's habit of issuing diplomatic denials every time the Press gets wind of a new acquisition. If and when the collection is publicly exhibited in a Mellon museum, students and critics will have a chance to view the following world-renowned treasures:

The Alba Madonna, a round canvas of Mary, infant Jesus and St. John, was painted by Raphael about 1510 at Rome, acquired almost immediately by one of the early Dukes of Alba. His Duchess gave it to her doctor in payment of a bill. The doctor was later tried and acquitted of poisoning the lady. Tsar Nicholas I bought it in 1836 for $50,000 for his collection at the Hermitage. Badly cracked in being transferred from wood to canvas, the picture is in none too good condition, has been elaborately repainted, but because of its price and because there are only ten genuine Raphaels in the U. S., it would probably always be the show piece of the Mellon museum.

The Cowper Madonna is another Raphael less well known than the Alba but considered by many a critic to be a superior work of art. Lord Duveen of Millbank bought it from Lady Desborough for $800,000 for Mr. Mellon.

Rembrandt's Self Portrait is one of that Dutchman's few works whose authenticity has never been questioned. In his varying fortunes he used to paint himself either when he was too poor to hire a model or when he wanted to display his sudden riches on canvas. Mr. Mellon's Rembrandt shows the artist when he was not rolling in wealth.

Titian's Toilet of Venus came from the Hermitage Museum, too, and cost Mr. Mellon $544,320. Painted about 1565, showing a half-nude, buxom Venetian blonde gazing into a mirror supported by cupids, it is supposed to be a portrait of Artist Titian's daughter Lavinia.

Holbein's Edward VI as a Child was painted by order of the little Prince's mother, Jane Seymour, in 1538 as a New Year's present for Henry VIII. Hanging in Windsor Castle for years, it is believed that either George I or George II took it to Hanover. There it passed to the Duke of Cumberland-Brunswick and eventually to Knoedler & Co. who sold it to Mr. Mellon.

Adoration of the Magi, No. 1 Botticelli in the U. S., was painted by the great Italian in Rome in 1481 while he was working on frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. This, too, turned up eventually in the Hermitage Museum, and it took $838,350 of Mellon money to get it out.

Perugino's Crucifixion with St. John, the Magdalen and St. Jerome, a magnificent triptych, hung peacefully over the altar of the Dominican Church in many-towered San Gimignano for 400 years, until Napoleon swept through Italy. Unlike most of Napoleon's booty, it was not deeded permanently to the Louvre, slipped through a number of private hands to land finally in Moscow. One of the greatest of the Hermitage treasures, it cost Mr. Mellon the least: $195,615.

The Marquisa de Pontejos, No.1 Goya in the U. S., is a portrait of a lady with a bouffant skirt, a single rose and a lively little pug dog. It was last seen publicly in Madrid in 1928 when Mr. Mellon lent it to the great Goya Centennial Exposition. Carman Messmore of the Knoedler Galleries calls it "probably the finest Goya in the world."

El Greco's St. Ildefonso, Writing was owned years ago, before modernist painters had made the great Spanish mystic their particular hero and driven his prices sky high, by Artists Jean Franc,ois Millet and Edouard Degas.

Van Eyck's Annunciation was completed about 1434. From a church in Dijon, to Paris, to Holland, to the Hermitage, the canvas finally landed in Mr. Mellon's collection for $503,010.

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