Mr.
Jarves's pictures afford the opportunity for an excellent beginning in
such an undertaking.
Mr. Jarves's object has been to form a gallery that should exhibit the
origin, progress, and culmination of Italian Art from the thirteenth
to the seventeenth century, in such chronological order as should show
the sequence and affiliation of the various schools and the various
motive and inspiration that were operative in them. To quote his own
language, Mr. Jarves began his undertaking with no "expectation of
acquiring masterpieces, or many, if any, of those specimens upon which
the reputation of the great masters is based. These are in the main
either fixtures in their native localities or permanently absorbed
into the great galleries of Europe; and America may scarcely hope ever
to possess such. He did propose, however, to get together a collection
which should _fairly_ represent the varied qualities of the masters
themselves, and the phases of inspiration, religious, aesthetic, or
naturalistic, by which they were actuated. And he claims now to have
succeeded in this to an extent which in the outset he did not dare to
hope, and to have secured for the collection the approving verdict of
European taste and connoisseurship in the recognition of it as a
_valuable historical gallery of original paintings of the epochs and
schools they claim to represent_.
"In putting forward this claim, he does it in full view of the
character of the criticism and doubts such an assumption naturally
begets.
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