The changes in the money value placed upon the same works in different epochs are also curious.  Indeed, a history of the caprices of art would be vastly entertaining.  In 1740, at the sale in Paris of M. Crozat’s collection, a drawing by Raphael brought only ten francs.  The same drawing, at the sale of the King of Holland’s gallery, in 1850, fetched fourteen thousand francs.  For the “Ezekiel,” Raphael, in 1510, had but eight scudi d’ oro, equivalent now to thirty dollars.  At present, it would bring a fabulous sum, if sold.  Within the memory of those now living, gold background pictures of the schools of Giotto and his successors, owing to the contempt the pseudo-classical French taste had excited for them, were brought out of suppressed churches and convents and publicly burned to obtain the trifling amount of gold which remained in the ashes.  Amateurs are now more inclined to pay their weight in gold for such as have escaped the ravages of time and Vandalism; and the same government that permitted this destruction in 1859 passed stringent decrees to prevent their leaving the country, sequestering all in public buildings as national property.

Without cautious study and much well-paid-for experience, the stranger has small chance of successfully coping with the artifices that beset his every step.  He must be well-grounded in the history of Italian painting, and possess a practical knowledge of the technical execution of its various masters.  Haste and ignorance, united to wealth and vanity, are a rich mine for the sensali. To such collectors America—­not to speak of Europe—­owes many of its galleries of great names, to the very natural astonishment and skepticism of the spectators and the defamation of great reputations.  Many of these purchases are the speculations of couriers, who, having artfully inoculated their employers with a taste for originals, take care to supply the demand, greatly to the benefit of their own pockets and the gratitude of those with whom they bring their masters into connection.  We have been called by a countryman to admire his gallery of Claudes, Poussins, Rembrandts, Murillos, and Titians, for which he had expended a princely sum, but which there was no difficulty in recognizing as the shop roba got up expressly to entrap the unwary.  One picture, worth, perhaps, for mere decoration, fifty dollars, had been secured as a great favor for twenty-two hundred dollars, the “last price” asked for it being three thousand.  Another, by a feeble artist of the Carlo Dolce school, had been converted, by a substitution of names and sundry touchings-up, into a brilliant Guercino, at the cost of nearly one thousand dollars, of which the owner got about one-third, the confederates pocketing the rest.

Some amateurs deceive themselves after a manner which acquits the dealer of any participation in their illusions.  A gentleman entered a well-known studio in Florence, not many years since, and inquired the price of a picture.