Paris as It Was and as It Is by Francis W. Blagdon
page 80 of 884 (09%)
page 80 of 884 (09%)
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before-mentioned. In other rooms, adjoining to the Great Gallery, are
exhibited, as formerly, that is during one month every year, the productions of living painters, sculptors, architects, and draughtsmen. These different exhibitions are placed under the superintendance of a board of management, or an administration, (as the French term it), composed of a number of antiquaries, artists, and men of science, inferior to none in Europe in skill, judgment, taste, or erudition. The whole of this grand establishment bears the general title of CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS. The treasures of painting and sculpture which the French nation have acquired by the success of their arms, or by express conditions in treaties of alliance or neutrality, are so immense as to enable them, not only to render this CENTRAL MUSEUM the grandest collection of master-pieces in the world, but also to establish fifteen departmental Museums in fifteen of the principal towns of France. This measure, evidently intended to favour the progress of the fine arts, will case Paris of a great number of the pictures, statues, &c. amassed here from different parts of France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Piedmont, Savoy, and the States of. Venice. If you cast your eye on the annexed _Plan of Paris_, and suppose yourself near the exterior south-west angle of the _Louvre_, or, as it is more emphatically styled, the NATIONAL PALACE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, you will be in the right-hand corner of the _Place du Vieux Louvre_, in which quarter is the present entrance to the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS. Here, after passing through a court, you enter a |
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