624 The Pinacotheca of Munich. 



Andrea del Sarto, and the Monna Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci, are un- 

 questionably the chefs d'reuvre of this section of the Pinacotheca. In 

 the smaller apartments the visitor will find many other beautiful 

 works of the Italian masters, among which may be noticed more 

 particularly Raffaelle's Madonna playing with the Infant Saviour 

 (which was formerly in the Palazzo Tempi at Florence), and six 

 other works of the same artist, some sketches from Andrea del Sarto's 

 celebrated Fresco called the Madonna del Sacco, so much admired by 

 Michael Angelo and Titian, a Virgin and Christ by Fra Filippo, and 

 several compositions by Fiesole. We must not forget to mention 

 that one of the apartments branching out of the last saloon contains 

 some valuable specimens of the older schools of Florence and Sienna, 

 from which, if we were to select any as the chef d'oeuvre, it would 

 be Taddeo Bartoli's unfinished Assumption. 



Such, gentle reader, is a very brief sketch somewhat a la Mrs. 

 Slarke of the contents of the great Munich gallery. It would have 

 been very easy to extend this notice by assuming the higher ground 

 of professional criticism ; but we have refrained, because our object in 

 making the above remarks has not been to satisfy the idle curiosity of 

 stay-at-home readers, but rather to stimulate the desires of those more 

 active artists and connoisseurs with whom the certainty of the exist- 

 ence of such treasures is quite a sufficient inducement to send them 

 forth on a pilgrimage to the land of promise. The season for our con- 

 tinental migration has now arrived; and it is to be hoped, that, among 

 the thousands who leave our shores, many will be found who will 

 visit the Pinacotheca of Munich, a city which seems destined to be- 

 come the focus of art in Germany. The gallery and its adjoining 

 painting rooms are undoubtedly very potent instruments in accelerat- 

 ing the progress of the Fine Arts ; and we must never forget that 

 Munich can boast of a Cornelius, a Schnorr, and a Hess, men fully 

 competent to raise around them a body of artists that may one day 

 rival the English school, which now proudly claims for itself the most 

 exalted station in Europe. And here we cannot avoid expressing 

 some little surprise, that, among the many pictures of the English 

 school that are entitled to a continental fame, scarcely any should be 

 seen in the galleries of Germany. In the Munich gallery we do not 

 recollect to have seen one. That Reynolds, Gainsborough, Morland, 

 Fuseli, Lawrence, and Wilkie, have done very much to advance art 

 in modern times cannot be denied ; and it surely cannot be long, 

 ere their finest performances will find their way into the most select 

 depositories of classical art. At any rate, the English school has the 

 start in the race ; and it is to be hoped, that academic restrictions 

 will not shackle the exertions of our native artists in seeking what 

 should be the object of their ambition, not merely an English, but 

 an European reputation. 



