Page 26 - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione - Visions and Ecstasy

negotiations with her attorneys ensued until a deal was struck at $12,000,000,or thereabouts,I no longer remember
precisely, and the contract was prepared. A pre-condition had been to clean the painting which would make a
subsequent resale to a museum more complex.With the deal seemingly in the bag at the very last instant, as I was
later informed by a friend at the BJP Foundation, Basia’s former art advisor turned up and apparently in a fit of
jealousy,since he was not‘included’in the transaction,proclaimed that he knew another version in Italy which could
be bought (through him) at a fraction of the price.Indeed,there was another‘version’which had once been published
by Pallucchini, but it was a copy.The contract had been sealed and the courier was due to pick it up that day. It never
arrived in London and the deal collapsed. In 1996 we sold the painting toThe National Gallery ofArt,Washington.

lll

B arbara Johnson sadly passed away on April the first 2013 after fighting a long illness. I have been honoured
to regard her as a friend and, in recent years, to visit her in Monaco and latterly in her unique house inAssisi
where she often cooked a delicious lunch for me.We would sit there under the thousand year old olive trees she
had had transported from Andalusia and watch the birds drink from the puddles of water that collected among
their gnarled roots. Many are aware that Basia was often capricious or even described as 'a very difficult woman'
but I was fortunate in having a relationship that transcended any such difficulty. During her later life Basia worked
tirelessly for charitable purposes, perhaps the best known being her extensive financial support for Solidarity
and attempt to rescue the Gdansk Shipyard. Less universally known was her support through her Foundation,
established in 1974, for autistic children, a cause she took very personally founding The Institute for Child
Development in Gdansk which is a centre of excellence for the treatment of autism.This institute cooperates
withThe Princeton Child Development Institute in the United States, a world leader in the field. Basia also had
a passion for music and, of course, Chopin first and foremost, supporting the English Chopin Society, so that it
was natural that we should listen to the Études together played by Krystian Zimerman. In addition she has
supported both Polish students, enabling them to continue their studies in the United States, as well as Polish
victims of martial law and also homes for single mothers and selected health facilities. Basia endowed her
Foundation with a collection of Polish art and works of art. I am pleased to acknowledge here the debt that my
gallery owes to Barbara Johnson's dedication down the years to collecting prime examples of Renaissance and
Baroque European Art. I had hoped the collection would grow eventually to be gifted to an Institution.Alas, its
high water mark was the Warsaw exhibition 'Opus Sacrum' in 1990. Our joint enthusiasm resulted in a great
collection, now sadly dispersed, and a lot of fun and excitement. Basia had a passion for all things related to St
Francis, hence her desire to live in Assisi, and it is therefore fitting that this catalogue, whose subject matter is St

26