RENAISSANCE BRONZES: KRESS COLLECTION

IN the dark days after the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune of 1871, French Banker Gustave Dreyfus, 35, sought out Paris Art Critic Charles Timbal. Taking shrewd advantage of the general despair, Dreyfus coolly offered to buy the collection of Italian Renaissance art works that Timbal had spent 19 years assembling. Timbal sold, thus making Dreyfus overnight the possessor of a small private museum of Renaissance sculpture and painting.

Dreyfus quickly developed a connoisseur's eye for the small bronzes, rarely over gin. high, that Renaissance noblemen once placed in their studies as familiar religious objects or models of classic statuary. To these Dreyfus added a collection of the medals that wealthy Italians had struck off for special occasions, and of the small, exquisitely molded bas-relief plaquettes often worn as neck pendants. In pursuit of perfection until his death in 1914, Dreyfus sometimes owned as many as five or six versions of the same medal in succession, settling only for the most flawless. The result of this mania was the collection of 1,306 bronzes (see opposite), that were newly installed this week in Washington's National Gallery as part of the gallery's 15th anniversary celebration.

Today the bronzes are part of the fabulous collection left the gallery by one of its top benefactors, five-and-dime Millionaire Samuel H. Kress. He got them, along with many of his finest paintings and sculptures, from Joseph Duveen (later Lord Duveen of Millbank), Lucullan art dealer extraordinary to such U.S. millionaire clients as John D. Rockefeller Jr., Andrew Mellon, John Pierpont Morgan Jr., Henry Clay Frick. Duveen staggered the art world in Depression 1930 by buying up the whole Dreyfus collection for $5,000,000. Then, believing it sound business to upstage his millionaire clients, :he pounced on the Dreyfus bronzes, had them expertly catalogued in three massive volumes. As Duveen had anticipated, the impressive volumes sold Kress. The price he paid has never been disclosed. But art experts today consider the collection's 460 superb reliefs and 708 medals unrivaled anywhere in the world.

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