§58. PLACE FOR PICTURES. 271 



The best place for paintings on canvas, or on panel, is a 

 picture gallery. There is, however, no objection to their 

 being put up in an ordinary room, provided, as I have just 

 observed, it contains nothing which can interfere with their 

 effect ; but pictures are out of place in the Christian church, 

 as they were in the Pagan temple. The Greeks, like our- 

 selves, had their picture galleries. Besides numerous other 

 public places, used as Pinacothecce, or picture galleries, 

 Athens had in the Acropolis its Stoa, called from its pictures 

 the Poecile, like that at Sparta ; and Delphi, and other places, 

 had their Lesche, for the same purpose. Every town had some 

 kind of picture gallery ; and when paintings were put up in 

 a Greek temple, it was for security, and because beautiful 

 works were honoured by a place in that sacred edifice. This 

 was quite consistent with, and will explain, the fact of their 

 not being mere dedications ; and their subjects were seldom 

 connected with religion, or the Deity of the place. They 

 were not intended as part of the ornamentation of the temple; 

 and, unless the walls were of some uniform hue adapted to 

 their effect, they must have ill accorded with its coloured 

 interior. The protection afforded them by the temple was 

 the excuse for their being there ; the place was not chosen 

 as one suited to works of art; and if some were dedications, 

 they proved the piety, rather than the taste, of the donors. 

 So again, though the finest pictures may have been painted for 

 churches, they are not suited to them on any plea. We do 

 not go to church to look at pictures ; and churches seldom 

 have either a good light, or any other recommendation pos- 

 sessed by picture galleries; to which, moreover, the best 

 paintings have, in process of time, been transferred. And 

 this has been very fortunate for them, and for the public. 



To paint historical or sacred subjects in temples, on the 

 walls themselves, was not according to the custom of the 

 Greeks; and the paintings of first-rate masters, as Pliny 

 shows (xxxv. 10), were mostly confined to wooden panels, 



