Buchanan, William: Memoirs of painting: with a chronological history of the importation of pictures by the great masters into England since the French Revolution (Band 2) (London: Ackermann, 1824)

116 MR. BUCHANAN’S IMPORTATIONS.—italy.
donna is giving suck to the child, which is rather
diminutive, and in swaddling clothes.”
It may here be remarked, that although the
transaction was thus broken off for the finest
pictures which belonged to the family of the
Sloanes, still the proposals made for them by Mr.
Irvine, and the various conversations which he
had on the subject of sending them to England,
induced that family to forward them to this
country, where they were attempted to be sold by
public sale. This not answering their expecta-
tion, they were all bought in, and some years
afterwards they passed into the hands of Mr.
Buchanan, who, in 1808, disposed of the celebrated
Claude from the Ghigi Palace, representing Alex-
ander in the Desert, and a picture by Paul Vero-
nese of Venus stealing Cupid’s bow, from the
Colonna Palace, to Walsh Porter, Esq. who at
that period had conceived the project of forming a
collection, which it was his intention of holding-
for his Royal Highness, the Prince, in the hope
that the same might at some future period be made
the foundation of a National Gallery. Mr. Porter
indeed did succeed in bringing together a collec-
tion of many capital works, but his bad state of
health and subsequent death prevented his inten-
tions from being realized.
It must, however, be here remarked, that no