ART CHRONICLE
THE VENETIAN LINE
The paintings from the Vienna collections now on view at the
Metropolitan in New York do not form so large or interesting an
exhibition as those from Berlin that we saw last year in Washington.
The Austrian museum authorities did not want to expose their wood–
panels to the hazards of travel, thus confined their shipment of pictures
to canvases, with the exception of a few copper-panels and some paintings
on paper. However, the selection, owing no doubt to the Hapsburgs'
marked taste for Venetian painting and its legatees in Spain and
Flanders, makes up in sumptuousness and physical scale for a relative
lack of variety. Added to this are the less spectacular virtues of some
thirty Renaissance bronzes. Even when we include the tapestries,
ornamental objects, and other items, the exhibition as a whole still
creates that rich and suave effect that belongs so particularly to
Venetian art. Golden or silvery volumes glow from out of umbered
depths. Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez, and Rembrandt sustain this
general impression in their several ways; Caravaggio (even though
with a bad, mechanically painted picture) and Hals conform to it.
Surprisingly, even the wonderful Vermeer canvas, "The Artist in his
Studio," with its very un-Italian luminosity, seems to fall well into the
embrace of the Venetian tone; as does also a mellow Ruysdaellandscape.
But this paradox may be largely an illusion of the decor.
Velasquez makes the best showing of all; I suspect that his later
style would always make the best showing, no matter in what company.
I have never seen a better piece of painting than his "Infanta Margareta
Teresa in Pink," or for that matter, his "Infanta Maria Teresa,"
which was done at about the same time and in some particulars even
surpasses the other work. His small head of Philip IV, executed with
a rich, melting touch, is also superlative. His other three portraits fall
short of the quality of these by only a shade.
In
his best period Velasquez
had such a consistent command of his art that the merit of individual
pictures would seem to vary only according to the extent to which the
nature of their subjects gave him opportunity for the display of his
