I would gladly say more of the author of these frescoes (there is not a little to be said), but I must now hasten to answer the question that may be asked: But what if the inscription is ancient? Even then Mr. Wertheimer’s picture does not cease to be Andrea Solario. The inscription may in fact never have been intended for a signature, but for a label. Soon after it was painted this picture may have fallen into the hands of a person who, like so many of us to-day when addressing a letter, confused the Christian name of the painter with one resembling it, and, wishing to make sure that he did not forget it altogether, had it inscribed according to his inaccurate recollection upon the panel, with the addition of the fact that the picture was painted in Venice—for that is all that the word Venetus need mean here. Or if it does mean more, this more would tend to establish the value of connoisseurship. It was on internal evidence alone that I came to the conclusion, published in my ‘Lorenzo Lotto’ some nine years ago, that Solario must have made a long enough sojourn at Venice to have become deeply imbued with the ideas of Alvise Vivarini: and now Mr. Wertheimer’s picture, if the inscription be ancient, would confirm this hypothesis to the extent of proving that Solario remained long enough in Venice to be considered a Venetian, just as Lotto, for instance, owing to a residence of two or three years at Treviso, was called a Trevisan.
BERNHARD BERENSON.
Walker & Cockerell Ph. Sc.
Lady Betty Hamilton
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the collection of the Earl of Normanton.
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LARGER IMAGE
PICTURES IN THE COLLECTION OF SIR HUBERT PARRY, AT HIGHNAM COURT, NEAR GLOUCESTER
❧ WRITTEN BY ROGER FRY ❧