98 



MUSEUM. 



puished his house, to Rome. The villa of the Medici, 

 on Monte Pincio, became the place in which antique 

 works of arts, which had been hidden where destruc- 

 tion had not been able to reach them, were concen- 

 tred. The noble families of Rome, and, by degrees, 

 of all Italy, were inspired with a kindred zeal, and 

 so every where commenced excavations, in order to 

 find ornaments for their villas and palaces. Collec- 

 tions of coins were first made. The family of Este 

 made the first collection of gems. Afterwards came 

 collections of busts ; yet these, as well as statues, 

 were used in preference as ornaments in festival halls, 

 in gardens, and yards (cortili), instances of which are 

 the cortile in the Belvedere, and the villas in and near 

 Rome. The arrangement of the antiques in the nine 

 stanzas of the Villa Borghese was beautiful. This, 

 we regret to say, could not be re-established when 

 the other works of art returned to Italy, for these 

 antiques were bought by France, and not carried oft' 

 by force. Museums now became more and more 

 common, and works were crowded together without 

 taste and convenience. As the erudition of the Alex- 

 andrian scholiasts, though valuable, is not of equal 

 worth with the poetry of Homer, so museums, though 

 certainly noble establishments, and necessary to keep 

 alive a taste for the fine arts, are not to be compared 

 with the living activity of art ; and it is gratifying to 

 see that the effect of museums at present is to awaken 

 genius to original production, instead of making mere 

 copyists of ancient creations, as was once the case, 

 when modern art seemed to be rather a matter of 

 erudition than the offspring of native inspiration. 



The most famous museum in Italy is the museum 

 in the Vatican, which occupies almost all the rooms 

 of that immense palace, and includes pictures, statues, 

 relievi, books, and manuscripts. The stanze and 

 loggie contain the famous fresco pictures of Raphael. 

 In the cortile are the Apollo and Laocoon, with many 

 other of the noblest productions in which man ever 

 expressed his love for the beautiful. Raphael's 

 Transfiguration, his Madonna di Foligno, and most of 

 the celebrated pictures which had been carried to 

 Paris, were placed here after their return. See the 

 article Vatican; also the work entitled Museo Pio- 

 Clementino, and the continuation of it, // Museo 

 Chiaramonti, with illustrations by Visconti and Guat- 

 tani, edited by Ant. d'Este and Gaspare Capparone 

 (Rome, 1808, fol.) 



The museum at Florence (q. v.) is next in rank 

 after the Vatican. Its greatest ornaments are the 

 Medicean Venus and the Farnesian Hercules. The 

 museum in Paris, at the time when all the greatest 

 treasures of the arts of almost all ages and all coun- 

 tries were accumulated there, was the richest in the 

 world. It is even now exceedingly rich. The superb 

 Diana, the true sister of the divine Apollo Belvedere, 

 the majestic Pallas of Villetri, and the colossal tragic 

 muse, are its greatest ornaments. As in France gal- 

 leries of pictures also are understood by the name 

 musee, we must mention here the magnificent gallery 

 of the Louvre, the greatest treasures of which, at 

 present, are the pictures of Raphael and Leonardo, 

 purchased by Francis I., the works of Poussin, Le-- 

 brun, Lesueur, and the pictures of the former gallery 

 of Luxemburg, by Rubens. See count Clarac's 

 Musee de Sculpture antique et moderne (Paris, 1826, 

 with engravings.) 



Besides these, there is the musee des monuments 

 Francais, established by Lenoir, in 1796, with the 

 permission of the national convention. It was begun 

 in 1790, and opened to the public in 1791, at a time 

 when the fury of the people, excited by existing 

 abuses, attacked indiscriminately all monuments of 

 the previous order of things. It was composed of 

 seven great saloons, chronologically disposed, so that 



the works of each period stood by themselves. A 

 garden attached to the museum contained those monu- 

 ments which were too large for the rooms. In 1816, 

 this museum was broken up, and the monuments re- 

 stored to their former situations. M. Molard estab- 

 lished the conservatoire des arts et metiers, contain- 

 ing a very full collection of machines, &c. The Jardin 

 du Roi contains the musee d'hisloire naturelle, which 

 owes so much to Buftbn. 



In Britain, the Oxford museum is the oldest. It 

 was founded in 1679, and owes a great part of its 

 treasures to Elias Ashmole, whose name it bears. 

 The British museum, in London, is continually in- 

 creasing by means of donations and purchases. Sir 

 Richard Cotton (q. v.) laid the foundation of it by 

 his valuable collection of manuscripts. Since that 

 time, the government has frequently made additions 

 to it by purchase. See British Museum. 



No country has more museums than Germany. In 

 Dresden are the collection of antiques, called the^/- 

 gusteum, the greatest ornaments of which are the three 

 female figures of Herculaneum, the gallery of pictures, 

 with Raphael's great master-piece, the Madonna di 

 Sisto, and Correggio's Night, and the museum of 

 casts in gypsum, collected by Mengs. (See Dresden). 

 Munich has the Glyptotheca (q. v.); and a similar 

 building has lately been erected for the reception of 

 pictures, the collection of which is considerable. 

 Guide's Ascension of the Virgin iythe most distin- 

 guished of them, and the Dusseldorf collection, and 

 that of the brothers Boisseree, have greatly enhanced 

 their value. Still larger and finer is the new museum 

 at Berlin, lately finished, and containing works of 

 sculpture, coins, gems, Egyptian monuments, &c. 

 The building itself, with its fresco paintings, is a 

 splendid work of art. In the other cities of Prussia, 

 museums are likewise erecting. Darmstadt, Gotlia, 

 Cassel, Brunswick, Dessau, Vienna, &c., contain 

 museums more or less distinguished. Llorente has 

 communicated some information on the collections in 

 Spain. That country has been too much agitated, of 

 late, to bestow much attention on the fine arts, or 

 collections of works of art. In Turin, an Egyptian 

 museum, opened in 1824, contains Egyptian antiqui- 

 ties, obtained by Drovetti. Amad. Peyrou published 

 the Papyri Graeci Musei Taurinensis. Milan has 

 been growing richer every day in coins. In Brescia, 

 a museum of antiquities was established in 1827, 

 shortly after a temple, with many statues, had been 

 excavated. The museo JBorbonico, at Naples, is 

 increased by the treasures found in the subterranean 

 cities. The most important treasures of this museum 

 are made known to the public at large by Niccolini's 

 Real Museo Borbonico, published since 1824, in 

 numbers. It will form sixteen volumes, and a cata- 

 logue of two volumes will contain the less impor- 

 tant works. Niccolini gives, at the same time, 

 information respecting the history of the excavations 

 in Pompeii. Respecting St Petersburg, see Hand's 

 Description (Weimar, 1827, 1 vol.), and Miliotti, on 

 the gems of that capital, Vienna, 1807). Several 

 private collections at Petersburg, and in other places 

 of the Russian empire, are not important. Copen- 

 hagen has valuable collections, affording interesting 

 illustrations of northern antiquities. (See Copen- 

 hagen.") The Greek government, some time since, 

 issued a decree, commanding all antiquities found in 

 the interior to be brought to the national museum, in 

 order to preserve them from future destruction, and 

 also to prevent their exportation.* 



* It already consists of 1090 painted vases (of various forms 

 and descriptions), 108 lamps, and 24 smaller statues of terra- 

 cotta, 16 small earthen vessels, 19 g\nss vases, 34 alabaster 

 vases, 137 copper utensils (comprising patera, and other sacri- 

 ficial vessels), Tl stone tablets (with inscriptions), U4 statues, I* 

 bass-reliefa, 53 fragments of sculpture, and y39 coins and medals. 



