GERMAN PICTURE GALLERIES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the Spring you published an article of mine .dealing with the reorganisation.of the National Gallery. I compared it favourably with the continental galleries which I had seen, but added : "I have not visited the German Galleries, but I am told that they alone rival ours in wise and systematic care." I have since filled this serious gap in my education, and I was delighted to find that I had not been -misinformed. I still feel that our gallery has both the highest general standard and the most logical arrangement and organisation throughout, but so admirably are the German pictures cared for that one feels the comparison to be ungracious. How pitiful the welter of the Louvre is beside these intelligent selections and hanging.
I was particularly impressed by the placing of the Sistine Madonna at Dresden. 'It is given a room to itself, where we may sit in silence on comfortable couches and worship Raphael's masterpiece, that no amount of cheap reproduction can hurt. The glorious Giorgione in the same gallery is hung in a room which I believe to be without parallel in Europe for harmony and proportion of arrangement. Again the room at Munich in which the Raphael Holy Family, Perugino's exquisite Madonna and Botticelli's Entombment are hung gives one an impression of sustained beauty, which is masterly with such a number of pictures and such a standard set.
My only regret was the difficulty of obtaining reproductions. In all Berlin I could not get a photograph of any sort of Michael Angelo's St. John the Baptist, but this I believe to be the result of temporary difficulties.—I am, Sir, &e.,
ANTHONY BERTRAM.
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