The Burlington Magazine, published in London, once bore a full title labeling it “for Connoisseurs.” It advertises itself as “the world’s leading monthly publication devoted to the fine and decorative arts.” In January 2005 it printed an article that, to put it as mildly as possible, was shocking in its moral opacity and obfuscation, by Professor Christopher Green of the Courtauld Institute of Art.

The subject was the British art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt (1907–1983), one of the infamous “Cambridge Five,” the quintet of intellectual traitors responsible for numerous crimes in the interest of Communism. The text was taken from the last in a program of five lectures held at the Courtauld in February 2004, under the rubric “Being Blunt: Exploring Anthony Blunt’s Legacy as a Scholar and Director of the Courtauld Institute.”

So far, bad enough: one may easily anticipate a fresh appearance in British academic life of the apologetics for the Stalinist intellectuals and their wickedness that have become dominant on American campuses over the last quarter century. But Professor Green’s commentary dealt with an especially provocative issue: “Blunt’s Picasso,” meaning the art historian’s Stalinist denunciation of a painter who himself became a prominent Communist, and even of Picasso’s monumental Guernica, considered by leftists today an unchallengeable exemplar of art in the service of politics.

The worst was apparently saved for last in the Courtauld series commemorating its former director. The first two events dealt with Blunt’s biography, and with