I at first travelled slowly through the whole extent of
this long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length of the palace
on both sides of the court, and is full of sculpture and pictures. The
latter, being opposite to the light, are not seen to the best advantage;
but it is the most perfect collection, in a chronological series, that I
have seen, comprehending specimens of all the masters since painting
began to be an art. Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and
Fra Angelico, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred others, who have haunted
me in churches and galleries ever since I have been in Italy, and who
ought to interest me a great deal more than they do. Occasionally to-day
I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion in looking at an old
picture; as, for example, by a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ
hearing the cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or other, a sense
of his agony, and the fearful wrong that mankind did (and does) its
Redeemer, and the scorn of his enemies, and the sorrow of those who loved
him, came knocking at any heart and got entrance there.
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