Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/267

Rh order, and on one wall, so that the scheme may be followed, and none of the effect which that stately march is intended to give is lost. But in summer at least, the sunshine, or the reflection, on the glass, makes it difficult to observe them clearly or continuously. It is rarely, indeed, that the whole of any picture can be seen at one time. No arrangement of position that I can discover, or of the blinds that can be drawn down the great windows, makes much difference. We can only see them imperfectly and piecemeal. It is bad enough to see them; but worse remains behind. They have been patched, restored, repainted, treated with every indignity that can be imagined. "In the entire series there are perhaps not a dozen square inches in which Mantegna's hand is still visible," is the judgment of one of the latest and most competent critics. They are rather, says another, "a memory than a work still extant; the question not being which parts of the composition are due to the restorer, but which, if any, reveal to the careful observer any traces of Mantegna's own handling."

This is true enough, it must be admitted; and from the point of view of the connoisseur, who judges a picture according to the standard which his knowledge of its artist compels him to set up, it is fatal. But for the historian, and for the general observer, the "Triumph" retains an attraction which