Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/107

Rh grounds. One is a room hung with a cerise satin which has a blinding and dazzling effect upon the eyes of the visitor. No one who has seen it could ever forget it. To make the effect worse, the room is top-lighted so that the glare upon the lustrous surface of the satin adds to the brilliancy of the color and one finds that after looking at one or two of the really beautiful objects displayed in the room, one is seeing green spots and feeling so faint that one moves quickly away. Equally daring, but far more successful is the use of color in the second room where a soft violet about the color of little wood violets has been used as a background for some XVIII century Italian paintings, Canalettos, Guardis, etc. Never have pictures of this period appeared to such wonderful advantage. The soft pearly tints of the sky and water, which ordinarily look so gray, against this color become transparent, opalescent, vital, and the atmosphere of Venice lives again. Compare these with other Canalettos which have been placed on a dull, dust-colored background, where they seem to have lost all power of expression, and it is easy to judge of the influence that the background has on the picture. The Rubens room in the Louvre in Paris is by common consent one of the best examples of a room decorated for a special purpose.