Passing through the Landing, at the head of the staircase (with interesting terra-cotta Etruscan sarcophagi) we arrive at the Great Gallery of =French paintings of the 17th century=. These may be examined somewhat in the mass, exhibiting, as they do, rather the courtly tendencies of the age of Louis XIV than any great individual artistic faculty. We must understand them in the spirit which built Versailles and conducted the wars on the north-eastern frontier. They are painted for the most part by the command of His Majesty. Only here and there does a faintly individual work, like _Le Sueur’s_ Christ and the Magdalen, and Bearing of the Cross, or _Lebrun’s_ Crucifixion, arrest for a moment one’s passing attention. The crudeness of the colour, and the insufficiency of the composition, will be the chief points, in a general survey, to strike the spectator. (On a screen in the centre, out of proper place among its contemporaries, hangs at present _Paul Delaroche’s_ famous Christian Martyr.) The student who has courage to attack this mass of uninteresting art in detail, should observe particularly the works of _N. Poussin_, as forming the point of departure for the School in general. His Bacchanal and other mythological works set the fashion of those dreary allegorical scenes which cover so many yards of ceilings in the Louvre. Observe the mixture of religious themes, like _Lebrun’s_ Martyrdom of Stephen, and _N. Poussin’s_ Holy Family, with classical pictures like the Rescue of Pyrrhus, and the Alexander and Porus, as well as the close similarity of treatment in both cases. Among the best of the lot are _Jouvenet’s_ Raising of Lazarus, and _Lesueur’s_ Paul Preaching at Ephesus (partly after Raphael). =*_Poussin’s_= “Et in Arcadia ego,” a rustic morality, is also famous, and is regarded as the greatest achievement of this artificial School. _Claude’s_ landscapes, often with a small inserted mythological story by another painter, deserve attention. (Note that landscape has hardly yet vindicated its claim to independent existence.) On the whole, it may be said that this room represents the two prevailing influences in French art of the purely monarchical period of Louis XIV,—either the pictures are quasi-royal and official, or else they are religious, for church or monastery. The mythological scenes, indeed, have often a royal reference—are supposed parallels of contemporary events; and even the religious scenes, wholly destitute of spiritual feeling, are painted in a courtly, grandiose manner. They are saints as conceived by flunkeys. Not till the Revolution swept away the royal patron did the French spirit truly realise itself. This room =reveals the Court=, not the nation.