Popular Electricity and the World's Advance Volume 7 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER LXII. PALAZZI BARBERINI AND SCIARRA. The present representative of the Barberini family, one of the most ancient, proud, wealthy, and powerful of the Italian nobility, now lives in one half of the attic storey of his own palace. The other half is occupied by the Prince of Peace, and the principal floor is inhabited by Charles VII., the late King of Spain, and his old Queen. Poverty, which drove the Prince Barberini to his garrets, has compelled him to dispose of that celebrated Museum of ancient sculpture, vases, gems, cameos, intaglios, medals, andc., which was so long the wonder and admiration of Europe. Whither it is now dispersed, no one can say. The Barberini, now the Portland Vase,-f- is, we allknow, in the British Museum. The famous Sleeping Faun is cased up in wood, ready to be sent off to Munich, and only waits to cross the Rhsetian Alps, till the Egina Marbles, which the Prince of Bavaria has also purchased, are ready to bear it company. Both of whom are since dead. t It was found in what is called the sarcophagus of Alexander Severus, now in the Museum of the Capitol, and which was discovered in a tomb on the Via Latina, the modern road to Frescati. A noble ancient lion, in white marble, found in a tomb near Tivoli, adorns the staircase. I believe the sculptures, as well as the paintings of this palace, were divided with the Prince Sciarra, another branch of the family. Of the Barberini, half of the pictures, the finest have been sold, and those that remain are seen under all the disadvantages of bad lights, dirt, and utter neglect. But some among them triumph over every disadvantage. Nicolas Poussin's Death of Germanicus, is one of the finest of his learned and masterly compositions. Its colouring, never, perhaps, very good, has suffere...