Rio, and the
directors of the two great public galleries of Florence. After all,
however, this appears to us a matter of secondary consequence. If the
pictures are genuine productions of the periods they are intended to
illustrate, if they are good specimens of their several schools of
Art, the special names of the artists who may have painted them are a
matter of less concern. The money-value of the collection might be
lessened without affecting its worth in other more considerable
respects, as an illustration of the rise and progress of the most
important school of modern Art.
Every year it becomes more difficult to obtain pictures of the class
of which Mr. Jarves's collection is mainly composed. The directors of
European galleries have become alive to their value, and are sparing
no effort to fill the _lacuna_ left by the more strictly _virtuoso_
taste of a former generation. As far as the general public is
concerned, such pictures must, no doubt, create the taste by which
they will be appreciated. The style of the more archaic ones among
them may be easily ridiculed, and the cry of Pre-Raphaelitism may be
turned against them; but we should not forget that these earlier
efforts, however they might fail in grace of treatment and ease of
expression, are sincere and genuine products of their time, and very
different in spirit and character from the productions of the modern
school, which aims to reproduce a phase of Art when the thought and
faith that animated it are gone past recall.
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