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The Gallery of the Fine Arts was created in the long
gallery situated below the Raphael Loggias. Here 111 paintings of
the Italian school that had been deemed second-rate were displayed.
These "also-rans" included such objects of future admiration
as Titian's St Sebastian, Luca Giordano's Judgement of Paris
and Tiepolo's Cleopatra's Feast. Bookcases containing works
on art are placed along the windows of the gallery. For the most part
they are books from the collection of Marchese Bernardo Galiani, a
member of the Neapolitan Academy and well-known translator of the
treatise by the Roman architect Vitruvius (1st century B.C.) This
relatively small (some 1,000 volumes), but splendidly compiled library
on the fine arts was acquired by Empress Catherine II in 1776. |
