NEW RUBENS IN LOS ANGELES

Most of the nation's art treasures are still housed in collections east ot the Mississippi, but Western museums are gaining bit by bit. This week the Los Angeles County Museum announced an acquisition that any museum would be proud to own: Peter Paul Rubens' The HolyFamily with the Dove [opposite]. The painting is probably the first Holy Family Rubens ever attempted, and unlike many of his later works, which were painted partly by apprentices, it seems to be all from his own hand. Rubens made the picture in 1609, he was 32 and had just returned to Antwerp after a nine-year stay in Italy. The almost theatrical lighting recalls Caravaggio (one of Rubens' chief enthusiasms), and the whole canvas has a studied Italianate air. It cannot match the healthy, wealthy and wise painter's mature masterpieces, but the picture does demonstrate his growing genius. Beyond that, it glows with the animal drive and good spirits that were to make Rubens the most grandly physical of painters. No one ever depicted a jollier St. Joseph, a more cheerfully aggressive John the Baptist, or a bouncier Christ Child.

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