On Assumption Day last August important art news leaked from Moscow to Riga, from Riga to Paris, from Paris to the front pages of the U. S. Press. The news leak: Andrew William Mellon had bought Sanzio Raphael's Madonna of the House of Alba for $1,500,000 from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (TIME, Aug. 27).
Twenty-four hours later, the onetime Secretary of the Treasury broke off his grouse shooting at his lodge in Perthshire, Scotland long enough to deny the Moscow-Riga-Paris-U. S. news leak in the following words: "I have not bought the Alba Madonna or any other Soviet art....
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