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The Alba Madonna, a round canvas of Mary, infant Jesus and St. John, was painted by Raphael about 1510 at Rome, acquired almost immediately by one of the early Dukes of Alba. His Duchess gave it to her doctor in payment of a bill. The doctor was later tried and acquitted of poisoning the lady. Tsar Nicholas I bought it in 1836 for $50,000 for his collection at the Hermitage. Badly cracked in being transferred from wood to canvas, the picture is in none too good condition, has been elaborately repainted, but because of its price and because there are only ten genuine Raphaels in the U. S., it would probably always be the show piece of the Mellon museum.
The Cowper Madonna is another Raphael less well known than the Alba but considered by many a critic to be a superior work of art. Lord Duveen of Millbank bought it from Lady Desborough for $800,000 for Mr. Mellon.
Rembrandt's Self Portrait is one of that Dutchman's few works whose authenticity has never been questioned. In his varying fortunes he used to paint himself either when he was too poor to hire a model or when he wanted to display his sudden riches on canvas. Mr. Mellon's Rembrandt shows the artist when he was not rolling in wealth.
Titian's Toilet of Venus came from the Hermitage Museum, too, and cost Mr. Mellon $544,320. Painted about 1565, showing a half-nude, buxom Venetian blonde gazing into a mirror supported by cupids, it is supposed to be a portrait of Artist Titian's daughter Lavinia.
Holbein's Edward VI as a Child was painted by order of the little Prince's mother, Jane Seymour, in 1538 as a New Year's present for Henry VIII. Hanging in Windsor Castle for years, it is believed that either George I or George II took it to Hanover. There it passed to the Duke of Cumberland-Brunswick and eventually to Knoedler & Co. who sold it to Mr. Mellon.
Adoration of the Magi, No. 1 Botticelli in the U. S., was painted by the great Italian in Rome in 1481 while he was working on frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. This, too, turned up eventually in the Hermitage Museum, and it took $838,350 of Mellon money to get it out.
Perugino's Crucifixion with St. John, the Magdalen and St. Jerome, a magnificent triptych, hung peacefully over the altar of the Dominican Church in many-towered San Gimignano for 400 years, until Napoleon swept through Italy. Unlike most of Napoleon's booty, it was not deeded permanently to the Louvre, slipped through a number of private hands to land finally in Moscow. One of the greatest of the Hermitage treasures, it cost Mr. Mellon the least: $195,615.
The Marquisa de Pontejos, No.1 Goya in the U. S., is a portrait of a lady with a bouffant skirt, a single rose and a lively little pug dog. It was last seen publicly in Madrid in 1928 when Mr. Mellon lent it to the great Goya Centennial Exposition. Carman Messmore of the Knoedler Galleries calls it "probably the finest Goya in the world."
El Greco's St. Ildefonso, Writing was owned years ago, before modernist painters had made the great Spanish mystic their particular hero and driven his prices sky high, by Artists Jean François Millet and Edouard Dégas.
Van Eyck's Annunciation was completed about 1434. From a church in Dijon, to Paris, to Holland, to the Hermitage, the canvas finally landed in Mr. Mellon's collection for $503,010.