through which certain towns in Italy and Spain have gained an
unenviable name.
Berlin and Vienna have collections of untold richness, and the
public are freely admitted. Berlin, besides its picture gallery
and architectural museum, has a collection of Christian
antiquities in the university. The old museum, a
royal foundation, is renowned for its classical sculpture
and a remarkable collection of medieval statuary, in
Germany
and Austria.
which Italian art is well represented. The new museum is
also noteworthy for Greek marbles, and contains bronzes and
engravings, together with one of the most typical collections of
Egyptian art. Schliemann’s discoveries are housed in the
Ethnographic Museum. The Museum of Art and Industry,
closely similar in object and arrangement to the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London, contains collections of the same
character—enamels, furniture, ceramics, &c. Vienna also has
one of these museums (Kunstgewerbe), in which the great value
of the examples is enhanced by their judicious arrangement.
The Historical Museum of this city is interesting, and the
Imperial Museum (of which the structure corresponds almost
exactly with a plan of an ideal museum designed by Sir William
Flower) is one of the most comprehensive extant, containing
armour of world-wide fame and the choicest specimens of industrial
art. Prague, Innsbruck and Budapest are respectively
the homes of the national museums of Bohemia, Tirol and
Hungary. The National Museum of Bavaria (Munich) has been
completed, and its exhibition rooms, 100 in number, show the
most recent methods of classification, Nuremberg, with upwards
of eighty rooms, being its only rival in southern Germany.
Mainz and Trier have Roman antiquities. Hamburg, Leipzig and
Breslau have good “Kunstgewerbe” collections. In Dresden
there are four great museums—the Johanneum, the Albertinum,
the Zwinger and the Grüne Gewölbe—in which opulent art can
best be appreciated; the porcelain of the Dresden galleries is
superb, and few branches of art are unrepresented. Gotha is
remarkable for its ceramics, Brunswick for enamels (in the
ducal cabinet). Museums of minor importance exist at Hanover,
Ulm, Würzburg, Danzig and Lübeck.
The central museum of France, the Louvre, was founded as a public institution during the Revolutionary period. It contains the collections of François I., Louis XIV., and the Napoleons. Many works of art have been added to it from royal palaces, and collections formed by distinguished connoisseurs (Campana, Sauvageot, La Caze) have France. been incorporated in it. The Greek sculpture, including the Venus of Melos and the Niké of Samothrace, is of pre-eminent fame. Other departments are well furnished, and from a technical point of view the manner in which the officials have overcome structural difficulties in adapting the palace to the needs of an art museum is most instructive. The Cluny Museum, bought by the city. in 1842, and subsequently transferred to the state, supplements the medieval collections of the Louvre, being a storehouse of select works of art. It suffers, however, from being overcrowded, while for purposes of study it is badly lighted. At the same time the Maison Cluny is a well-furnished house, decorated with admirable things, and as such has a special didactic value of its own, corresponding in this respect with Hertford House and the Poldi-Pezzoli Gallery at Milan—collections which are more than museums, since they show in the best manner the adaptation of artistic taste to domestic life. The French provincial museums are numerous and important. Twenty-two were established early in the 19th century, and received 1000 pictures as gifts from the state, numbers of which were not returned in 1815 to the countries whence they were taken. The best of these museums are at Lyons; at Dijon, where the tombs of Jean sans Peur and Philip the Bold are preserved; at Amiens, where the capital Musée de Picardie was built in 1850; at Marseilles and at Bayeux, where the “Tapestry” is well exhibited. The collections of Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Avignon are also important. The objects shown in these museums are chiefly local gleanings, consisting largely of church plate, furniture, together with sculpture, carved wood, and pottery, nearly everything being French in origin. In many towns Roman antiquities and early Christian relics are preserved. (e.g. Autun, Nîmes, Arles and Luxeuil). Other collections controlled by municipalities are kept at Rouen, Douai, Montpellier, Chartres (14th-century sculptures), Grenoble, Toulon, Ajaccio, Épinal (Carolingian objects), Besançon, Bourges, Le Mans (with the remarkable enamel of Geoffrey of Anjou), Nancy, Aix and in many other towns. As a rule, the public is admitted free of charge, special courtesy being shown to foreigners. In many cases the collections are ill cared for and uncatalogued, and little money is provided for acquisitions in the civic museums; indeed, in this respect the great national institutions contrast unfavourably with British establishments, to which purchase grants are regularly made.
The national, civic and papal museums of Italy are so numerous that a few only can be mentioned. The best arranged and best classified collection is the Museo Nazionale at Naples, containing many thousand examples of Roman art, chiefly obtained from the immediate neighbourhood. For historical importance it ranks as primus inter pares with the Italy. collections of Rome and the Vatican. It is, however, the only great Italian museum where scientific treatment is consistently adopted. Other museums of purely classical art are found at Syracuse, Cagliari and Palermo. Etruscan art is best displayed at Arezzo, Perugia (in the university), Cortona, Florence (Museo Archeologico), Volterra and the Vatican. The Florentine museums are of great importance, consisting of the archaeological museum of antique bronzes, Egyptian art, and a great number of tapestries. The Museo Nazionale, housed in the Bargello (A.D. 1260), is the central depository of Tuscan art. Numerous examples of Della Robbia ware have been gathered together, and are fixed to the walls in a manner and position which reduce their value to a minimum. The plastic arts of Tuscany are represented by Donatello, Verrocchio, Ghiberti, and Cellini, while the Carrand collection of ivories, pictures, and varied medieval specimens is of much interest. This museum, like so many others, is becoming seriously overcrowded, to the lasting detriment of churches, market-places, and streets, whence these works of art are being ruthlessly removed. The public is admitted free one day a week, and the receipts are devoted to art and antiquarian purposes (“tasse . . . destinate . . . alla conversazione dei monumenti, all’ ampliamento degli scavi, ed’ all’ incremento dei instituti . . . nella città.”—Law of 1875, §5). The museums of Rome are numerous, the Vatican alone containing at least six—Museo Clementine, of classical art, with the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, and other masterpieces; the Chiaramonti, also of classical sculpture; the Gallery of Inscriptions; the Egyptian, the Etruscan and the Christian museums. The last is an extensive collection corresponding with another papal museum in the Lateran Palace, also known as the Christian Museum (founded 1843), and remarkable for its sarcophagi and relics from the Catacombs. The Lateran has also a second museum known as the Museo Profano. Museums belonging to the state are equally remarkable. The Kircher Museum deals with prehistoric art, and contains the “Preneste Hoard.” The Museo Nazionale (by the Baths of Diocletian), the Museo Capitolino, and the Palazzo dei Conservatori contain innumerable specimens of the finest classical art, vases, bronzes, mosaics, and statuary, Greek as well as Roman. Among provincial museums there are few which do not possess at least one or two objects of signal merit. Thus Brescia, besides a medieval collection, has a famous bronze Victory. Pesaro, Urbino, and the Museo Correr at Venice have admirable examples of majolica; Milan, Pisa and Genoa have general archaeology combined with a good proportion of mediocrity. The civic museum of Bologna is comprehensive and well arranged, having Egyptian, classical, and Etruscan collections, besides many things dating from the “Bella Epoca” of Italian art. At Ravenna alone can the Byzantine art of Italy be properly understood, and it is most deplorable that the superb collections in its fine galleries should remain uncatalogued and neglected. Turin, Siena, Padua, and other towns have civic museums.
