Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/55

Rh places that it is necessary in each case to experiment with the amount of light required. (See Communications to the Trustees, No. 4, Boston Museum Publications.)

The difference between top-light and side-light will never mean anything to the museum director who has not at some time studied the same picture under varying conditions. The writer once had the opportunity of seeing Correggio's Leda in the little side-lighted, white-washed room with the grisaille decorations by Tiepolo in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, where the wonderful charm of the color and the warm and lively composition were a joy to the beholder. A few weeks later the same picture was hung in its usual place in the top-lighted gallery No. 45. The drop in tone and the flatness of the color were very marked and the picture has lost immeasurably by the change. [On this subject see report of the Commission to Experiment upon Lighting of Rembrandt's Night Watch. (The Hague, 1902.) Abridged translation in Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Communication to the Trustees, vol. II.]

But when all has been said on both sides, we come back to the one matter of real importance which is that whether top-light or side-light is adopted, a proper diffusion of the light in the room is the one great desideratum. In order to