Art: Momentous Diptych

Two little pieces of canvas slightly bigger than a man’s shirtfront last week raised the entire Metropolitan Museum of Art high in the list of the world’s repositories. Bursting with pride Director Herbert Eustis Winlock placed on exhibition the most important purchase the museum has ever made out of its own funds, two panels joined together by hinges, bought after four years of stealthy negotiation from the Soviet Government: “The Crucifixion” and the “Last Judgement,” generally attributed to Hubert van Eyck. Belittlers have insisted that the small panels (each 22¼ by 7¾ in.) do not belong together: they have hinted that no such person as Hubert van Eyck ever existed. Nobody has ever denied that the two panels have been among the greatest treasures of the Leningrad Hermitage Museum for more than 80 years, that with their gay Flemish color, their microscopic detail yet breadth of execution—photographs of the tiny panels make them look like murals—they are among the most important paintings in the world. The Brothers van Eyck (Hubert 1366-1426; John 1385-1441) used to be known as the inventors of oil painting. That they were not; oil as a binder for pigment instead of white of egg was used tentatively long before they were born. But they were major masters of the Flemish school, they popularized oil painting throughout the world and—what endears them most to dealers and collectors—they left precious few pictures behind them. Fewer than 20 genuine van Eycks are known to exist. Beside the Metropolitan’s diptych only two others are in the U. S.: “The Vision of St. Francis” in the John Graver Johnson Collection in Philadelphia; the “Annunciation,” purchased from the Soviet Government four years ago. The history of the Metropolitan’s diptych is well known. It was discovered in Spain by the Russian Ambassador Dmitri Pavlovitch Tatischev, was bequeathed by him to Tsar Nicholas I, who placed it in the Hermitage Museum in 1845. The same agent, President Charles R. Henschel of Knoedler & Co. who acquired the “Annunciation,” reputedly for Andrew Mellon, finally after years of secret conferences in London, Paris, Berlin closed the Metropolitan’s diptych deal. What he paid neither the Metropolitan, Knoedler & Co. nor the Soviet Government would say. Three hundred years ago the acquisition of such treasure would have been just cause for a three-day civic celebration. It did cause Manhattan art critics to launch columns of the most florid writing since the death of James Gibbons Huneker. Excerpts : Edward Alden Jewell (Times) : “Yet if the Crucifixion be esteemed a truly inspired example of the Flemish miniaturist’s artistry . . . full of a robust tenderness that climbs in the Christ to agonized sublimity . . . The Hell, monstrous on its minuscule scale, is terrific.” Henry McBride (Evening Sun): “This submission to change involves the non-preferment of one century to another, Mais que voulez-vous? Human nature is weak, and possibly a little weaker just now than it has been for some time, so practically everybody on peering through the lens at the van Eyck Crucifixion will be stabbed to the heart to see the cruelty of the well dresed mob. .