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Rh meanwhile, that the old works possessed by the Academy include fine examples of Zurbaran, Murillo, Titian, and Rubens; while it should be added, in passing, that another important collection of old works, in Mexico city, is contained in the Museo Nacional de Arguéologia, Historia y Etnologia, which forms part of the Palacio Nacional, and faces the Calle de la Moneva. In this gallery, moreover, as also in the Palacio Municipal and the Biblioteca Nacional, visitors are afforded a good opportunity of appraising the modern Mexican school's prowess in portraiture; for there is domiciled, in each of the three said buildings, a large gathering of portraits of recent notables. Perhaps the Mexican portrait painter of to-day, who influences one most favourably, is Juan Tellas Toledo, a man who has won fame outside the border of his own country; while among his immediate predecessors, the best is probably Tiburcio Sanchez. It must be pointed out, however, that the Museo Nacional's two portraits of Maximilian, and one of the Empress Carlota, are not actually Mexican works; and the common inference that they belong to that category must be laid to the charge of numerous popular writers on Mexico, who, reproducing these paintings in books or magazines, have failed to state the artists' names.

Pottery is a branch of art for which the Mexicans have long shown a special aptitude—thus carrying on finely a grand Aztec tradition—and to this day, in a great many of their towns, there is made some given type of faïence, quite peculiar to the particular place where it is created. Zacatecas, for example, is renowned for its lustred ware; Guanajuato for dark green ware highly glazed, and rather similar to the latter are those emanating from Oaxaca; while, on the other hand, a light grey is the favourite colour with the potters at Zacepu, and those working at Cuanhitlan evince a fondness for black. Another important centre of the art is Aguascalientes, and a still more famous one is Patzucars, the potters