Rare treasures of world art
Rare treasures of world art
Somewhere in Turkey today it may be in the fabulous "green mosque" of Bursa, former capital of the Ottoman Empire south of Istanbul, or in the Hittite ruins of Central Anatolia a three-man expedition is engaged in a treasure hunt which has already taken it 100,000 miles across four continents during the past three years. The three men are Peter Bellew, Unesco visual art expert, Anton Schutz, director of the New York Graphic Society, and Mario Dolfi, chief colour photographer of the Italian printing firm of Amilcare Pizzi. Their mission: to study and photograph little known or inaccessible national art treasures for Unesco's World Art Series albums.
Large numbers of extraordinary works of art have been reproduced in the past and made available in the form oí albums. Superb reproductions in colour of the greatest masterpieces continue to come off the presses of the world's best art publishers. Nevertheless there are obvious gaps. Unesco launched its World Art Series when it took stock of the fact that it is the better known and more accessible masterpieces which are most frequently reproduced by private publishers.
It is of course easier and less expensive to photograph works in the Louvre, the Prado or the Vatican than it is to scour the world in search of treasures buried in tombs, in caves or under desert sands. The technical and financial resources needed are usually beyond the reach of all but a few private publishers or else the volumes are priced so high that they are beyond the reach of the average buyer.
As an international organization, Unesco has been able to mobilize such resources with the aid of its member states. Every expedition is carefully planned with the collaboration of government officials and national authorities who join up with the Unesco three-man team in the field.
To collect their material, the Unesco team, though weighed down with some 300 pounds of equipment, have used rope ladders to reach caves dug into a cliff face, inched their way to the summit of a steep mountain rock in Ceylon, crawled into Egyptian tombs and driven a bullock team up the steep hills of old Serbia in Yugoslavia to photograph little known paintings in colour. Eight volumes have now been published.
They include the mural paintings discovered in the "Stave" churches of Norway, of which only 25 still exist; the irescoes found in the caves of Ajanta, India, painted by Buddhist monks centuries before the Christian era; the medioeval frescoes recently discovered under several layers of plaster in Yugoslav monasteries; paintings from Egyptian tombs and temples; and bark paintings by Australian aborigines.
This issue is devoted to the latest albums: Iran, Spain and Masaccio (the last of these is not part of the World Art Series). Forthcoming volumes will present the Icons of Russia. Japanese Buddhist art, early Buddhist wall paintings of Ceylon. The three-man Unesco expedition is now preparing to visit Mexico, Peru, Burma and Greece to collect material for other albums.