Scripto | Transcribe Page

Log in to Scripto | Recent changes | View item | View file

Clipping, "Around the Galleries," New York Sun, 14 December 1907

https://transcribe.frick.org/files/Purchases/3107300004169_015_POST.jpg

« previous page | next page » |

You don't have permission to transcribe this page.

Current Page Transcription [history]

Telephone 4764 R Madison Sq. Intended for 49C "O wadsome power the giftie gi'e us To see oursel's as ithers see us" ARGUS PRESS CLIPPING BUREAU Established: Paris 1879 O. SPENGLER, M'gr. Cable Address: "ARGUSCLIP" NEW YORK 352 Third Avenue, New York. SCRAPBOOK MAKING A SPECIALTY for memorial or business purposes TERMS: $35 for 1,000 CLIPPINGS $11 for 250 CLIPPINGS $20 for 500 clippings $5 for 100 clippings Special rate, on yearly contract Clipping from New York Address of Patiet: Dec 14 1907

SATURDAY, DECEMBER AROUND THE GALLERIES. What the December bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of ARt truly calls an "important loan" is a picture owned by Mr. H. C. Frick which has been variously attributed; it is a Deposition, and Mr. Roger E. Fry believes it to be by Antonello d Messina. Yet it was shown at the Bruges exhibition of Flemish primitives in 1902, and in 1905, declared on the authority of Hulin to belong to the school of southern France, it was hung at the exhibition of the French primitives. After a close study Mr. Fry inclines to the Italian ascription. His reasons are cogent. He writes: "First, the mixture of Flemish and northern Italian influences. The type of the dead Christ and of the drapery is decidedly Flemish; the general conception of the painting, the harmony of the landscape with the tragic mood of the figures is Bellinesque and reminds one of such pictures as the 'Agony in the Garden' fo the National Gallery. *** Again, the technique is essentially that of Antonello, the subtle use of semi-opaque couches over brown underpainting. Finally the imaginative attitude, the high passion and strange poetical mood are akin to what we know of Antonello from certain works, such as the Antwerp 'Crucifixion' and the 'Correr Pieta.'"

Mr. Fry might have also adduced as evidence the "Dead Christ Supported by Angels" in the Vienna Gallery. Apart from the similarity of feeling—and what profound pathos it evokes!—there are other resemblances. There is no need of wonderment over the disputed attribution of Mr. Frick's picture. Flemish and Italian influences modulate in subtle succession over the canvas. The swinging little bodes of the wretched crucified thieves are of a different physical type from the lean Christ, while Joseph of Arimathea is not unlike Van Eyck. The Holy Mother betrays her agonized soul as she tenderly touches the shoulders of her dad and divine Son. The canvas breathes the spirit of faith in which it was conceived and executed; it also is painfully veracious in the presentation of lacerated bodies and souls. How versatile was this same Antonello from Messina (he flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century) one may see in his St. Jerome (National Gallery) with its serene symbolism of the student, and the saint sitting, profile meditative and severe, amid ideal surrounding for a philosopher. The two landscapes, gramed by the windows at the rear, are of miniature and tantalizing beauty.

You don't have permission to discuss this page.

Current Page Discussion [history]