This prelate, possessed of a large fortune and wielding
a powerful influence, showed from his very youth a great love of art; he
had also the best opportunity of satisfying it and a luck in collecting
which verged upon the miraculous. In later years he found his greatest
pleasure in the task of placing this collection in worthy surroundings,
in this wise rivaling those Roman families who had at an earlier period
been cognizant of the value of such treasures. It was, in fact, his
chief pleasure to overload the assigned spaces, in accordance with the
manner of the ancients. Building crowded upon building, hall upon hall,
corridor upon corridor; fountains and obelisks, caryatides and
bas-reliefs, statues and vases were lacking neither in court-yard nor in
garden, while the greater or smaller rooms, galleries and cabinets
contained the choicest art specimens of all times.

We observed in passing that the ancients had in a similar manner filled
their palaces and gardens. The Romans so overloaded their capital that
it seems impossible that everything recorded could have found place
there. The Via Sacra, the Forum, the Palatine were so overloaded with
buildings and monuments that the imagination can hardly conceive of a
crowd of people finding room in any of them. Fortunately the actual
results of excavated cities come to our assistance, and we can see with
our own eyes how narrow, how small, how, so to speak, like architectural
models rather than real buildings these structures are. This remark is
true even of the Villa of Hadrian, in the construction of which there
were space and wealth enough for something extensive.

In such an overloaded condition was the villa of his lord and friend
when Winckelmann departed this scene of his highest and most gratifying
education. So also it remained after the death of the cardinal, to the
joy and wonder of the world, until in the course of all-changing,
all-dispersing time, it was robbed of its entire adornment. The statues
were removed from their niches and pedestals, the bas-reliefs were torn
from the walls, and the whole enormous collection was packed for
transportation. Through an extraordinary change of affairs these
treasures were conducted only as far as the Tiber. In a short time they
were returned to the possessor, and the greatest part of them, except a
few jewels, still remain in the old location. Winckelmann might have
witnessed the first sad fate of this Elysium of art and