MASTER PAINTINGS FROM THE HERMITAGE AND THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM, LENINGRAD

New York: M. Knoedler, 1975. Illustrated Coated Boards. Near Fine/Near Fine Plastic Protector. 11 1/4 x 9 1/4. This handsome book records the 1975-6 exhibition of works from two Leningrad museums, which had its debut in Washington (Betty Ford was honorary patron), and which subsequently travelled to New York (where it was displayed at the publisher's galleryr), Detroit, Los Angeles, and Houston. Although as much a political event as an artistic one there are masterpieces in the collection: Cranach's Madonna of the Apple Tree; Caravaggio's Lute Player; Velasquez' The Repast; Rembrandt's Saskia as Flora; and Matisse's Still Life with "The Dance." Also shown were works, drawn from the Mikhailovsky Palace, of classical Russian painters, chronologically from Levitsky to Bakst, Particular virtues of this publication are the illustrations (by Aurora Editions, Leningrad), and introductions by Piotrovsky (of the Hermitage) and Pushkarev (of the State Russian Museum). 132 pages, with [Foreword] by Brezhnev, Acknowledgments, two Introductions, numerous color illustrations, and Index of Artists; illustrated endpapers. Plastic protector and boards are clean and sound; embossment of prior owner on second title page; text is clean and strong. Laid in is a pamphlet from the LACM, and an erratum sheet.