Gift, Sales

Some patrons of art are merely lavish. Others are both lavish and acute. The latter not only endow museums, but also assist living, impoverished artists. George Blumenthal, famed Manhattan banker, and his wife continually do both these things. Last week it was a museum's turn to benefit. To Manhattan's Metropolitan the Blumenthals gave a million dollars, which, however, must be set to accumulating interest until they die.

In the early 14th century Duccio saw and disliked stiff, awkward Byzantine mosaic figures in northern Italy. He imagined more supple figures. For 16 cents a day he painted them on the altarpiece of Siena Cathedral. His work spurred the Italian Renaissance in painting. In the 20th century John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Clarence H. Mackay saw and liked Duccio's humanized Biblical groups, legends of simple faith in simple perspectives. They bought three of them from Sir Joseph Duveen, famed London collector. The price was estimated at more than a million dollars.

Col. Michael Friedsam, Manhattan department store tycoon, paid between $200,000 and $300,000 for Dutchman Vermeer's Allegory of the New Testament. With lucid precision the long dead Dutchman had depicted the crucifixion, a serpent crushed beneath a stone, the Eden apple, a woman with one foot on a globe. It was the Dutchman's biggest picture--3 ft. x 3 ft.