With regard to the collections to be provided for on the upper floors, it is here assumed, though of course without any express authority, that Ethnography and Oriental Antiquities would be removed from the Museum, and better accommodated elsewhere. The British and Mediæval Collections, however, are supposed to be retained; if they are removed, a modification of this plan must in consequence be made.
First Floor or New Buildings for Antiquities; its construction.
The apartments should all be about eighteen feet high, the windows of the same breadth as those below, but, except in the Terracotta Room, only about eight feet high, and as near the ceiling as possible. On the east side should be corresponding windows, so that each wall would be illuminated; for cross lights, though so injurious to sculptures, are generally desirable for galleries filled with wall-cases. All the windows should have ground glass, to prevent injury to the collections from the sun.
Vase Gallery.
1. Vase Gallery.—Two hundred and twenty-two feet long, the southern half twenty-six feet wide, and the northern twenty-eight feet. The wall-cases should be about eight feet high, like those in our First Vase Room; and the transverse projections, flanked by pilasters, would be only of the same height, so as not to shut out the view of the upper part of the gallery; having glass on each side, they would serve for vases with double paintings, such as we now exhibit only in dwarf central cases. The most important vases should stand isolated on tables, or pedestals, on each side the gangway; as in the present arrangement of the Temple Collection. |Its accommodation.| Although the superficial area of this gallery (five thousand nine hundred and ninety-two feet) is little more than a third greater than that occupied by vases in the present buildings (four thousand three hundred and twenty-one feet), the amount of accommodation it would afford is nearly double. For the present wall-cases, eight feet high, extend to one hundred and forty-six feet of linear measurement; those ten feet high will, when the collection is fully arranged, extend to eighty-four feet; the whole therefore may be reckoned as equivalent to two hundred and fifty-one feet of cases, eight feet high. The total extent, however, of such wall-cases in the proposed gallery is four hundred and fifty-five feet. The projections also, with the tables and pedestals, may safely be estimated as providing twice the accommodation for vases painted on both sides which is now furnished by the dwarf central cases, besides exhibiting them much more conveniently. It should be added that the vases would be better lighted than at present; whilst the length and comparative openness of the gallery would produce a more striking impression on the passing visitor.
Proposed Etruscan apartment.
The accommodation here provided being so ample, it might be desirable to appropriate one compartment of the gallery to an exclusively Etruscan Collection, comprising not merely the pottery of the Etruscans, properly so called, but that for which they were really more distinguished in ancient times, their bronze and other metal work.
Terracotta Room.
2. Terracotta Room.—Fifty-six feet by seventeen. As no windows could be made on the east side, there should be no cases on the west; but the western windows, which do not correspond with the others of this story, should extend from near the ceiling to four or five feet from the floor. A sloping case might then be placed in each window, for lamps and other small objects, requiring a strong light. Against the east wall should be cases for vases, and other large objects.
Gallery of Rotunda.