ART

Ireland’s National Gallery is not looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, even if a $75-million gift from South African mining millionaire Sir Alfred Beit does include four paintings stolen from Beit’s Irish home in 1986. The gallery plans to hang reproductions of the four, including a Goya and a Vermeer. Gallery director Homan Potterton told reporters Friday that the gift of 17 paintings--including a Murillo series, a Velasquez, Gainsborough’s “The Cottage Girl” and “The Lute Player” by Franz Hals--was “probably one of the most magnificent ever received by any museum anywhere.”