erstand; but he expressly disclaims pretensions to the nice
discernment and delicate sensibility of the connoisseur. He would never
have asked to be left alone with the Venus de Medicis as a modern
art-critic is related to have asked to be left alone with the Venus of
Rokeby. He would have been at a loss to understand the state of mind of
the eminent actor who thought the situation demanded that he should be
positively bereft of breath at first sight of the Apollo Belvedere, and
panting to regain it, convulsively clutched at the arm of his
companion, with difficulty articulating, "I breathe." Smollett refused
to be hypnotized by the famous Venus discovered at Hadrian's villa,
brought from Tivoli in 1680, and then in the height of its renown; the
form he admired, but condemned the face and the posture. Personally I
disagree with Smollett, though the balance of cultivated opinion has
since come round to his side. The guilt of Smollett lay in criticizing
what was above criticism, as the contents of the Tribuna were then held
to be. And in defence of this point of view it may at least be said
that the Uffizi was then, with the exception of the Vatican, the only
gallery of first-rate importance open to the travelling public on the
Grand Tour. Founded by Cosimo I, built originally by George Vasari, and
greatly enlarged by Francis I, who succeeded to the Grand Duchy in
1574, the gallery owed most perhaps to the Cardinal, afterwards
Ferdinand I, who constructed the Tribuna, and to Cardinal Leopold, an
omnivorous collector, who died in 1675. But all the Medici princes
added to the rarities in the various cabinets, drawing largely upon the
Villa Medici at Rome for this purpose, and the last of them, John
Gaston (1723-1737), was one of the most liberal as regards the freedom
of access which he allowed to his accumulated treasures. Among the
distinguished antiquaries who acted as curators and cicerones were
Sebastiano Bianchi, Antonio Cocchi, Raymond Cocchi, Joseph Bianchi, J.
B. Pelli, the Abbe Lanzi, and Zacchiroli. The last three all wrote
elaborate descriptions of the Gallery during the last decades of the
eighteenth century. There was unhappily an epidemic of dishonesty among
the custodians of gems at this period, and, like the notorious Raspe,
who fled from Cassel in 1775, and turned some of his old employers to
ridicule in his Baron Munchausen, Joseph Bianchi was convicted first of
robbing his cabinet and then attempting to se