Blue Boy, so the historian of Italian painting must come to America to study an always increasing number of its most indispensable documents. The late John G. Johnson, who was omnivorous, took the Italians in his stride, and left numerous examples of their work in the collection now owned by the city of Philadelphia. The late Isabella Bird Gardner made her Fenway Court, in Boston-also a public possession since her death-a kind of Renaissance shrine. No connoisseur of Botticelli, Crivelli, Giorgione, or Titian, to mention only a few of her masters, can neglect it. The Titian-Bellini Bacchanale is in the Widener collection, along with Raphael's Cowper Madonna and Mantegna's Judith. Mantegna again

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the beholder Ghirlandajo's adorable portrait of Giovanna Tournabuoni. Now it belongs to Mr. Morgan. Mr. Kahn owns one of the great portraits by Botticelli. There are Italian gems in the Goldman, Frick, and Mellon collections. tivity of the private collector is deliberately stressed for it is he, or she, quite as much as the public museum-if not more than that institution-who has brought the Italian inspiration into the air. What patience has been necessary to wait for the opportunity to do so! There was a period when the Renaissance masterpiece was the most infrequent kind of episode in the market. I can remember, as a commentator on the subject, how natural it was to consider the occasional

formed by Clarence H. Mackay. Doctor Wilhelm Valentiner has compiled this book, not only listing and describing the works of art at Roslyn but discussing them with scholarship and judgment and recording everything concerning them that research could discover. The reproductions are perfect photogravures and among the sculptures photographs have been taken from more than one point of view. The volume makes in the fullest sense a monument to a collection having distinctive character and importance. This collection is not extensive. It embraces only about sixteen paintings and but a slightly larger group of marbles, terra-cottas, and bronzes. But it is unique in its isolation of the Italian genius. Though other collections in America have specific gems equally resplendent, they are associated with others of different schools. This one is formed of Italian masterpieces and nothing else. The

armor is assembled. But in the big room of stone in which White recreated the background of the Renaissance, the Italian note is revived in its absolute integrity. Pictures and sculptures, with the huge carved mantelpiece, the coffered ceiling, and the furniture about, might have come, in themselves, and in the ensemble they make, from some Florentine palazzo of the fifteenth century.

There is a conspicuous reminder, encountered immediately on entering this room, of that change in conditions on which I have dwelt, the transition of precious things from Europe to America. I may venture to show how the instance met on the threshold has rounded out an experience of my own. It must be twenty-five years, if not more, since I was unforgettably entranced by a panel hanging at Chantilly, a panel delineating The Marriage of St. Francis to Poverty. The animated group in the foreground, the beautifully drawn mountains in the distance, the angelic figures floating above, made one of those tender, gracious designs that haunt the mind. I had had slight contact with Sassetta, the Sienese painter of the picture, and I did not know anything about the series to which it belonged. Then Berenson published, in 1909, the little book in which he ardently celebrated Sassetta as the artist "who has left us the most adequate rendering of the Franciscan soul that we possess in the entire range of painting," not even excepting Giotto, and I learned the whereabouts of the other parts of the polyptych to which the Chantilly panel belonged. Six panels of exactly the same dimensions were in the collection of M. Chalandon, in Paris. A seventh lodged in the château of the Count de Martel. The central Glory of St. Francis was-and still is in Mr. Berenson's hands at I Tatti, ultimately destined by him, I believe, to go to the Italian Government. His painting is unprocurable and so is that divine thing at Chantilly. But the seven Cha

landon-Martel panels hang in the Mackay collection, where I have continued the study of Sassetta begun in France so long ago. And I can imagine one foreign.critic after another seeking the same completion of an analysis begun abroad.

It is not the only instance at Harbor Hill. Pisanello, a Veronese contemporary of Sassetta's, a late fourteenth and early fifteenth century master, is known chiefly for his medals. A scant handful of his paintings is all that the mustered galleries of Europe have to show. In the Mackay collection hangs his portrait of a princess of the house of D'Este, a marvellous little profile, the face drawn with an Oriental fineness and precision, the head-dress and costume discreetly ornate, and the bejewelled color scheme a bold yet restrained harmony of pale ivory, blue, and gold. It is one of the rarest portraits of the Renaissance, very delicate,