Resumen de Early Italian paintings in Washington and Philadelphia
A comparison of the almost simultaneously published catalogs of early Italian paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With similar formats and, respectively, 156 and 94 entries, these catalogs include short biographies of the artists, notes on condition, the known provenances, and discussions of subject matter and attribution. One of the pleasures of reading both of them is to see their authors' difference in emphasis in discussing similar works by Fra Angelico, Masolino, Masaccio, and Pesellino. Their big difference is naturally in the quality of the paintings, for some of those in Philadelphia are mediocre at best, whereas the Washington ones rank with those of the great international museums.
