Ferdinand, finding
he had done a clever thing unawares, began to put on airs and poser for
a patron of art. The gallery was still further immensely enriched on the
exclaustra-tion of the monasteries, by the hidden treasures of the
Escorial, and other spoils of mortmain. And now, as a collection of
masterpieces, it has no equal in the world.
A few figures will prove this. It contains more than two thousand
pictures already catalogued,--all of them worth a place on the walls.
Among these there are ten by Raphael, forty-three by Titian, thirty-four
by Tintoret, twenty-five by Paul Veronese. Rubens has the enormous
contingent of sixty-four. Of Teniers, whose works are sold for fabulous
sums for the square inch, this extraordinary museum possesses no less
than sixty finished pictures,--the Louvre considers itself rich with
fourteen. So much for a few of the foreigners. Among the Spaniards the
three greatest names could alone fill a gallery. There are sixty-five
Velazquez, forty-six Murillos, and fifty-eight Riberas. Compare these
figures with those of any other gallery in existence, and you will at
once recognize the hopeless superiority of this collection. It is not
only the greatest collection in the world, but the greatest that can
ever be made until this is broken up.
But with all this mass of wealth it is not a complete, nor, properly
speaking, a representative museum. You cannot trace upon its walls the
slow, groping progress of art towards perfection.
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