that it has a
gallery of paintings. It formerly was used to exhibit paintings by the
old masters, but now nothing is allowed a place in the Luxembourg
gallery but pictures of living artists. As soon as the artist dies, his
pictures which hang in the Luxembourg, and which have been purchased by
the government, are at once removed to the Louvre, where only paintings
of men now dead are on exhibition.
The collection in the Luxembourg is in many respects a very fine one,
but it has the fault of all the modern French and continental
pictures--there is too much sensuality exhibited upon the canvas. The
school is too voluptuous--too licentious. I can put up with anything not
positively indecent for the sake of art, but I cannot put up with French
pictures. Their nakedness is too disgusting, for it is not relieved by
sentiment, unless of the basest kind. This remark of course does not
apply to all the pictures I saw. Some of them are very fine, especially
those of Delaroche and the war pictures of Horace Vernet. Near the
entrance there is a beautiful group by Delaistre, representing Cupid and
Psyche.
One of the pictures in this gallery haunts me still. It is an
illustration of one of Dante's immortal verses--his visit to the lake of
Brimstone. The poet with a wreath of laurel round his brow stands in the
center of a little boat, while his conductor in the stream propels the
craft with one oar over the boiling and surging sea of hell. His
countenance is filled with mingled astonishment and horror, yet he
preserves his wits and observes very critically all that is about him.
One poor wretch lifts his head from the liquid fire, and fastens his
jaws upon the rim of the boat in his terrible agony, while one of the
attendants of the boat with an oar endeavors to beat him back. On the
other side a ghostly wretch has fastened his long teeth into a
fellow-sufferer. The shades of light and darkness are so mingled that
the effect is very striking. It is the most horrible picture I ever
looked at, and I would much rather sleep in Madame Tassaud's chamber of
horrors, than look at it again. In the next apartment there is a picture
of Christ, which struck me as the best I ever looked at. The divine
sweetness of the human and the grandeur of the God were united with
wonderful skill. The face was half-sorrowful, as if the heart were
filled with thoughts of a sinful, suffering world, and still upon the
brow the very sunshine of heaven reste
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