Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/49

Rh The question of proportion is intimately connected with the question of light, which leads us to our next subject.

LIGHT Much the most important subject for consideration in the building of a museum is the relative advantage of top-light and side-light. Some twenty years ago no one would have considered for a moment the use of side-light in a museum. Now the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that there are some museum men who are unwilling to consider the use of top-light at all, except for modern painting. The usual reasoning is as follows. In the old days artists painted their pictures for rooms in palaces or churches or other places where side-light would be their portion. Now the artist must prepare for the fate which, if he is successful, awaits his pictures in the great exhibition halls all over the world. To put a modern picture, especially a large one, in an ordinary side-light, is to lose entirely the nuances desired by the artist. On the other hand, to put Italian primitives under a top-light is to lose much of their beauty. In this connection it is well to remember certain examples, as for instance Titian's Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, in the Academy in