In the large courts electric lamps are now used with much success. It is wonderful to note the beauty of porcelain and all objects of delicate decoration under the new light; it brings out the minute traceries better than daylight.
Security from fire here has been made as nearly absolute as possible, and Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen believes it impossible by any device to fire the museum; yet the water arrangements and vigilance at South Kensington are as complete as if the building were built of the ordinary materials. As a matter of fact, the choice of materials was made after long and patient scientific experiments. The main material is the best gray stock brick, with ornamental work of certain blue, red, and cream-colored bricks peculiar to some English counties. Some iron it was, of course, necessary to use for joists and girders, but in every case this iron has been isolated by being surrounded with a thick fire-proof concrete. The floor is of Minton tiles imbedded in Roman cement. The double roof is Mansard, and covered with a French tile (tuile courtois), selected at the Paris Exhibition of 1855.
SIR PHILIP CUNLIFFE OWEN, DIRECTOR OF SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.
The picture-gallery described above, made to hold the Sheepshanks collection, has had additions made behind it, in accordance with the original plan, of three large rooms, which contain various collections of pictures, and near the back entrance to these is the gallery of Raphael’s cartoons. All this series of picture-galleries constitutes an upper floor of a wing to two vast double show-rooms. One of these is a large square apartment, in which large numbers of marble and other antique monuments are displayed. The other, connected with it, is architecturally divided by slender pillars—between which, as an avenue, are show-cases, above and below—into two noble rooms with splendid arched ceilings. The first-named of these rooms (that which is without division, and single-roofed) has not yet received its wall decorations, which are to be a distemper half-way up, and above, a frieze of frescoes large as Raphael’s cartoons. The other show-room—with the double-arched ceiling—furnishes, as may be imagined, fine opportunities for wall decoration, as also for the ornamentation of floor and ceilings. The decoration here has not been completed, but it has gone far enough for the scheme to be judged by its effect.
And it is just here that a careful criticism is necessary. While the purely architectural work merits all the praise that can be claimed for it, securing an admirable play of light, making each division add its light to the other, and reducing the space occupied by pillars and other accessories to a minimum, the decorations are but measurably successful. The faults are due, I think, to the intention that the ornaments themselves should present some of the features of a collection of styles. The result proves that it would be better if the varied styles were exhibited in a court set apart for the purpose. The floor, for example, is rich in its varieties of tiles, there being some five or six of different designs and shades. It is true that the great central floors are made of tiles of uniform design and color, and that these—a deep brick red, with small green spots at the corners of each tile—are grave and good; but all around, where we pass through arch or door, there is a deep fringe of brilliant tiles, which are reflected into the glass cases nearest them, to the injury of the objects shown; and in the series of “cloisters,” as the spaces beneath the picture-gallery may be called, there are further experiments in floor tiles which militate against the effect of the articles exhibited in them. The ceilings in these cloisters, or side spaces, have been covered with Oriental decorations by the late Owen Jones; they are Indian, Persian, moresque, and of the greatest beauty, each coffer in the ceiling and each archway presenting a new design, and yet all in harmony: these being too far above the show-cases to affect any objects in them, are rightly placed; but the floor, as the necessary background to many objects in the rooms—many of which depend on delicate shades of color for their effect—will eventually, I suspect, have to be reconstructed, and made entirely of the grave hue which has happily been already adopted for the greater part of it. Ascending a little above the floor, it must be said also that there is too much brilliancy about the lower arches and their spandrels—too much white and gold. It is not only that this does not give a sufficiently subdued background for the bright glass or chased metals in the upper parts of the cases (on the ground-floor), but they are by no means the best supports for the grand series of life-sized figures in mosaic, on deep gold surfaces, which make the magnificent frieze of the upper wall.
NORTH COURT, NORTH-WEST CORNER, SHOWING CASTS OF THE BIGA (OR TWO-HORSE CHARIOT), FROM THE ORIGINAL IN MARBLE AT THE VATICAN, AND OF THE PULPIT BY GIOVANI PISANO, FORMERLY IN THE CATHEDRAL AT PISA.