Looking to the unquestionable originals in the collection, there are perhaps none of greater value than Jouvenet’s finished sketches for the dome of the Hotel des Invalides, at Paris.  They represent the twelve apostles, each with his symbol, and are extremely well composed, with a bold system of light and shadow.  The museum has five other pictures by the same master; in this number are his own portrait, a vigorous performance, as well in point of character as of color; and the Death of St. Francis, which has generally been considered one of his happiest works.  Both these were painted with his left hand.  The death of St. Francis is said to have been his first attempt at using the brush, after he was affected with paralysis, and to have been done by way of model for his scholar, Restout, whom he had desired to execute the same subject for him.  A Christ bearing his Cross, by Polemburg; is a little piece of high finish and considerable merit; an Ecce Homo, by Mignard, is excellent; and a St. Francis in Extasy, by Annibal Caracci, is a good illustration of the true character of the Bolognese school:  it is a fine and dignified picture, depending for its excellence upon a grand character of expression and drawing, and light and shade, and not at all on bright or varied coloring, to which it makes no pretension.

As local curiosities, the attention of the amateur should be devoted to the productions of the painters to whom Rouen has given birth, Restout, Lemonnier, Deshays, Leger, Houel, Letellier, and Sacquespee, artists, not of the first class, but of sufficient merit to do great credit to the exhibition of a provincial metropolis.

From these recent specimens, you would turn with the more pleasure to a picture by Van Eyck, the inventor, as it is generally supposed, of oil painting.  Let us respect these fathers of the art.  Let us pardon the stiffness of their composition, the formality of their figures, the inelegance of their draperies, the hardness of their outlines, and the want of chiaroscuro;—­for, in spite of all these failings, there is a truth to nature, and a richness of coloring, which always attract and win.  The picture in question is the Virgin Mother in her Domestic Retirement, surrounded by her family, a comely party of young females in splendid attire, some of them wearing the bridal crown.  It is altogether a curiosity, partaking, indeed, of the general bad taste of the times, but painted with great attention to nature in the minutiae, and resembling Lionardo da Vinci in many particulars, especially in the high finishing, the coloring of the carnations, and the grace, and beauty of some of the heads.  The draperies, too, are rich and brilliant.