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ART
GALLERIES
possess the most ample facilities for minute classification, small rooms or “ cabinets ” opening from each large room. Special rooms are also provided for drawings and watercolours, while special ranges of rooms are used by copyists and those responsible for the repair and preservation of the pictures. Though not so comprehensive as the great collections just described, the State galleries showing national schools state °f painting and little else are of striking galleries of interest. In England the National Gallery of national British Art (known as the Tate Gallery) contains schools. British pictures. The corresponding collection of modern French art is at Paris (Luxembourg Palace), Berlin, Rome, Dresden, Vienna, and Madrid having analogous galleries. The Victoria and Albert Museum has also numerous British pictures, especially in watercolour, and the National Portrait Gallery, founded in 1856, and since 1896 housed in its permanent home, is instructive in this connexion, though many of its pictures are the work of foreign artists. The national collections at Dublin and Edinburgh may be mentioned here, though most schools are represented. Brussels and Antwerp are remarkable for fine examples of Flemish art—Matsys, Memlinc, and Van Eyck of the primitive schools, Rubens and Van Dyck of the later period. The collections at Amsterdam (Ryks Museum) and the Hague (Mauritshuis) are a revelation to those who have only studied Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Van der Heist, and other Dutch portrait painters outside Holland; and in the former gallery especially, the pictures are arranged in a manner showing them to the best advantage. The Museo del Prado is even more noteworthy, for the fifty examples of Velasquez (outrivalling the Italian pictures, important as they are) make a visit to Madrid imperative to those who wish to realize the achievements of Spanish art. Christiania, Stockholm, and Copenhagen have large collections of Scandinavian art, and the cities of Budapest and Bale have galleries of some importance. In Italy the State maintains twelve collections, mainly devoted to pictorial art. Of these the best are situated at Bologna, Lucca, Parma, Venice, Modena, Turin, and Milan. In each case the local school of painting is fully represented. In Rome the Corsini and Borghese Galleries, the latter being the most catholic in the city, contain superb examples, some of them accepted masterpieces of Italian art; there are also good foreign pictures, but their number is limited. The Accademia at Florence should also be noted as the most important State gallery of early Italian art. The central Italian Renaissance can be more adequately studied here than in the Pitti. The “ Primavera ” of Botticelli, and the “ Last Judgment ” by Fra Angelico are perhaps the best known works. The large statue of David by Michael Angelo is also in this gallery, which, on the whole, is one of the most remarkable in Italy. Speaking broadly, these national galleries scattered throughout the country are not well arranged or classified; and though some are kept in fine old buildings, beautiful in themselves, the lighting is often indifferent, and it is with difficulty that the pictures can be seen. In nearly every case admission fees are charged every day, festivals and Sundays excepted; few pictures are bought, acquisitions being chiefly made by removing pictures from churches. Many towns own collections of well-merited repute. In Italy such galleries are common, and among them may n e Municipal °t d Siena, with Sodoma and his school; galleries Venice with Tintoretto (Doge’s Palace); Genoa, of special with the great palaces Balbi and Rosso ; Vicenza schools. (Montagna and school), Ferrara (Dosso and school), Bergamo and Milan (north Italian schools). Other civic collections of Italian art are maintained at Verona,
Pisa, Rome, Perugia, and Padua. In Holland, Haarlem, Leyden, Rotterdam, and the Hague have galleries supplemental to those of the State, and are remarkable in showing the brilliance of artists like Grebber, De Bray, and Ravesteyn, who are usually ignored. Birmingham and Manchester have good examples of modern British art. Moscow (Tretiakoff collection) has modern Russian pictures, and contemporary German and French work will be found in all the galleries of these two countries included in the municipal group. Collections of French work are found at Amiens, Rouen, Nancy, Tours, Lemans, and Angers, but large as these civic collections are, sometimes containing six and eight hundred canvases, few of their pictures are really good, many being the enormous patriotic canvases marked “ Don de I’Etat,” which do not confer distinction on the galleries. Cologne has the central collection of the early Rhenish school; Nuremberg is remarkable for early German work (Wohlgemut, Ac.). Stuttgart, Cassel (Dutch), and Hamburg (with a considerable number of British pictures) are also noteworthy, together with Brunswick, Hanover, Augsburg, Darmstadt, and Diisseldorf where German and Dutch art preponderate. Seville is famous for twenty-five examples of Murillo, and there are old Spanish paintings at Valencia, Cordova, and Cadiz. In Great Britain the best of the municipal galleries of general schools are at Liverpool (early Flemish and British), and at Glasgow (Scottish painters, Rembrandt, jiun]cjpai Van der Goes, and Venetian schools). In France galleries there are very large galleries at Tours, Mont- of general pellier, Lyons (Perugino, Rubens), Dijon, and schooIsGrenoble (Italian), Valenciennes' (Watteau and school), while Rennes, Lille, and Marseilles have first-rate collections. Nantes, Orleans, Besangon, Cherbourg, and Caen have also many paintings, French for the most part, but with occasional foreign pictures of real importance, presented by the State during the Napoleonic conquests, and not returned on the declaration of peace as were the works of art amassed in Paris. Some of the American collections, though still in their early stages of development, have very good pictures. At Boston (Museum of Fine Arts) all schools are represented, so too at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which is strong in Italian and Dutch works. Modern French and Flemish art is a feature of the Academy at Philadelphia, at the Lenox Library (New York), and at Chicago, where there are good examples of Millet, Constable, and Rembrandt. The Corcoran bequest at Washington is of indifferent worth. The best civic collection in Germany of this class is the Stadel Institute at Frankfort (Van Eyck, Christus, early Flemish and Italian). As the great bulk of religious painting was executed for church decoration, there are still numberless churches which may be considered picture galleries. Thus at Ant- Cburcbes werp Cathedral the Rubens paintings are remarkable ; at Ghent, Van Eyck ; at Bruges (hospital of St John), Memlinc ; at Pisa, the Campo Santo (early Tuscan schools) ; at Sant’ Apollinare, Ravenna, primitive Italo-Byzantine mosaics; at Siena, Pinturrichio. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely—in Italy alone there are 80,000 churches and chapels, in all of which pictorial art has been employed. In Italy, besides the church “ galleries ” still used for religious services, there are some which have been secularized and are now used as museums, e.y., Certosa at Pavia, and San Vitale at Ravenna (mosaics); at Florence, the Scalzo (Andrea del Sarto); San Marco (Fra Angelico) ; the Riccardi and Pazzi chapels (Gozzoli and Perugino); at Milan, in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, the “ Last Supper,” by Leonardo, and at Padua, the famous Arena chapel (Giotto). The Vatican galleries, though best known for their
