It is not by mere activity that great things are done in art. In the
great gallery we now enter we see the deathless work of the men who
wrought in faith. This is the grandest room in Christendom. It is about
three hundred and fifty feet long and thirty-five broad and high. It is
beautifully lighted from above. Its great length is broken here and
there by vases and statues, so placed between doors as nowhere to
embarrass the view. The northern half of the gallery is Spanish, and the
southern half Italian. Halfway down, a door to the left opens into an
oval chamber, devoted to an eclectic set of masterpieces of every school
and age. The gallery ends in a circular room of French and German
pictures, on either side of which there are two great halls of Dutch and
Flemish. On the ground floor there are some hundreds more Flemish and a
hall of sculpture.
The first pictures you see to your left are by the early masters of
Spain,--Morales, called in Spain the Divine, whose works are now
extremely rare, the Museum possessing only three or four, long,
fleshless faces and stiff figures of Christs and Marys,--and Juan de
Juanes, the founder of the Valentian school, who brought back from Italy
the lessons of Raphael's studio, that firmness of design and brilliancy
of color, and whose genuine merit has survived all vicissitudes of
changing taste. He has here a superb Last Supper and a spirited series
of pictures illustrating the martyrdom of Stephen.
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