NEW YORK.-Masterpieces of Art: Five Centuries of Painting and Sculpture will feature works by some of Europe’s greatest artists and will be held at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, 22 East 71st Street, New York, in association with Whitfield Fine Art, London, from 17 October to 21 December 2007. This collaboration between two of the world’s most respected art dealers will provide a remarkable opportunity to see a selection of superb works on the market by artists whose reputations have stood the test of time and that would be prized by any major museum.

The exhibition will be presented in two parts. Firstly there will be an exceptionally strong selection of works from the Italian 15th, 16th and 17th centuries with paintings by Botticelli, Correggio, Parmigianino, Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, Titian, and also Orazio Gentileschi, Antiveduto Gramatica, Guercino, Giovanni Lanfranco and Guido Reni. In addition there will be important works by Dutch, Flemish, French and Spanish masters such as Matthias Stomer, Simon Vouet and Goya.

Recently Discovered Caravaggio on View in the USA for the first time - The second part will be a loan exhibition of works by the great Seicento master, Caravaggio. It will centre around a reconstruction of the private study of Cardinal del Monte - Caravaggio’s great patron. The highlight will be Caravaggio’s Apollo the Lute player which depicts the god and is one of the best known images in Western art from the celebrated second version in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. This first version, precisely described by Caravaggio’s early biographer Giovanni Baglione with details that do not appear in the Hermitage version, has languished unrecognised in an English country house for nearly 300 years and will be exhibited for the first time in the United States. Incredibly the show will also boast a number of important works by Caravaggio from private collections and the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome is lending the Shepherd Corydon which until the reappearance in the 1952 of the Capitoline version was admired as Caravaggio’s original.

This will be the first time Whitfield Fine Art has exhibited in New York. The exhibition will be accompanied by two lavish, scholarly and fully-illustrated catalogues, with contributions, among others, from Professor Mina Gregori and Dr Claudio Strinati, Soprintendente al Polo Museale Romano.