Clothes & the Man

The great Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn might be considered excessively vain, for he painted 62 pictures of his own face.* Emanuele, Count Castelbarco Albani, Italian painter whose first one-man show in the U. S. opened last week in Manhattan's Marie Sterner Galleries, might be considered inordinately modest, for the only self-portrait in Count Castelbarco's exhibit portrays no part of the Count's body.

Those who saw the portrait, however, could tell that its subject was a titled man-of-the-world, a sportsman, a connoisseur of literature, art and tobacco. A dinner jacket suit, from which the painter has removed himself, sits upright in a chair beside a small round table, on which there are a signet ring, a pipe and a leather-bound book. Behind the chair, where the room's blue-green walls meet, stand three polo mallets; near them hangs the painting of an Italianate nude.

Holder of a 745-year-old title, Count Castelbarco had long been an art collector and ban vivant when he decided, seven years ago, to take up painting seriously. To Manhattan he brought, besides the self-portrait, some clear, flowing Italian landscapes, some easy, informal portraits. He brought as well his wife, the Countess Wally, daughter of Arturo Toscanini, famed conductor, whose hobby is painting. Herself unmusical, Countess Castelbarco likes to wear shoes modeled on those of the Medicis, made of cork, with five-inch heels, three-inch soles.

*Reason, Rembrandt had no money to throw away on models.

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