Museum of art São Paulo. Great museums of the world

172 magnificent new color
photographs, the paintings and
sculptures of the são paulo
museum superbly reproduced
in full color.
The são paulo museum achieved instant in-
ternational recognition in 1953 when it sent 100 masterpieces of old and modern art on a tour of major european museums. The fledgling museum was then less than ten years old, but the quality of its holdings astonished the art world, and the museum is recognized today as the largest and most important museum of western art in latin america.
This meteoric rise has been largely due to one man. He is Assis Chateaubriand, the dynamic brazilian entrepreneur of press, tele vision and aviation, who conceived the idea of the museum and employed all of the resources of his personal enterprises for the cultural development of his country.
Many of the Museum’s most important acquisitions were made in europe during the late 1940s and ’50s when art of every description was available due to the dislocations of the war. With strong financial backing, the Museum’s brilliant director, Pietro Maria Bardi, purchased practically on sight works which have turned out to be of major importance.
Raphael’s Resurrection of Christ had been attributed to a minor Umbrian painter until the master’s own studies for it were found. The superb Bellini came from a collector in Ohio; a first rate Titian portrait, from an old new york collection; and the authorship of Velazquez was rediscovered from under the varnishes of Count Duke of Olivares, bought from an english collection.