Through an Italian looking glass

IT is natural, I suppose, to experience a little twinge of sadness on learning that the heirs to a restituted work of art have immediately put it on the market; natural, but unfair. One can know nothing of the family’s present circumstances, still less of motives or individual tastes. Indeed, they may have no personal relationship, as it were, with the object, having been separated from it two or more generations ago.

Harry Fuld (1872–1932) was perhaps lucky to die when he did, on a business trip to Switzerland. Descended from antique dealers, he had made his own