DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22424#0015
THE
TREASURES OF ART IN GREAT BRITAIN.
LETTER I.
ADDITIONS TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
British Museum — Antiquities — Objects of art belonging to the Middle Ages
— Additions to the collection of miniatures — Byzantine — Bedford Missal
— Henry VI.'s Ps; Iter — Divina Commedia — Drawings of the Italian,
Early Netherlandish, Early German, and later Netherlandish schools —
Engravings : Italian, Early German — Block-books.
Since the publication of my work ' The Treasures of Art in Great
Britain,' the arrangement of the sculpture in the British Museum
has been greatly improved. The Egyptian and Assyrian monu-
ments have, in the first place, been disposed in that chronological
succession which alone best unites the highest instruction with the
greatest enjoyment. With the Assyrian monuments are also seen
other antiquities of the same nation and of the same period—the
ivory reliefs and the bronze vessels being deposited in glass cases
along the centre of the same gallery. The arrangement of the
Greek and Roman marbles, though the space did not permit of so
strictly chronological an order as with the foregoing, is also much
more satisfactory. The chief alteration consists in the fact that the
sculptures from the pediments of the Parthenon have been removed
from the hall containing the reliefs from the Parthenon, into a
neighbouring room, which, though smaller, is also lighted from
above. Besides this, room has thus been gained so to place the
sculptures from the two pediments—here seen opposite each other
—as to leave about the same spaces as the missing portions would
have occupied; by which means the relation between what has
been preserved and what has perished is shown, as well as the
original extent of the pediments. At the same time the reliefs
in the great hall have perhaps benefited more than any other
objects by this change. Now for the first time are they seen so
VOL. IV. B
TREASURES OF ART IN GREAT BRITAIN.
LETTER I.
ADDITIONS TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
British Museum — Antiquities — Objects of art belonging to the Middle Ages
— Additions to the collection of miniatures — Byzantine — Bedford Missal
— Henry VI.'s Ps; Iter — Divina Commedia — Drawings of the Italian,
Early Netherlandish, Early German, and later Netherlandish schools —
Engravings : Italian, Early German — Block-books.
Since the publication of my work ' The Treasures of Art in Great
Britain,' the arrangement of the sculpture in the British Museum
has been greatly improved. The Egyptian and Assyrian monu-
ments have, in the first place, been disposed in that chronological
succession which alone best unites the highest instruction with the
greatest enjoyment. With the Assyrian monuments are also seen
other antiquities of the same nation and of the same period—the
ivory reliefs and the bronze vessels being deposited in glass cases
along the centre of the same gallery. The arrangement of the
Greek and Roman marbles, though the space did not permit of so
strictly chronological an order as with the foregoing, is also much
more satisfactory. The chief alteration consists in the fact that the
sculptures from the pediments of the Parthenon have been removed
from the hall containing the reliefs from the Parthenon, into a
neighbouring room, which, though smaller, is also lighted from
above. Besides this, room has thus been gained so to place the
sculptures from the two pediments—here seen opposite each other
—as to leave about the same spaces as the missing portions would
have occupied; by which means the relation between what has
been preserved and what has perished is shown, as well as the
original extent of the pediments. At the same time the reliefs
in the great hall have perhaps benefited more than any other
objects by this change. Now for the first time are they seen so
VOL. IV. B