The second _Sculpture Gallery_ was yet more elaborate in design and purpose. The work of art exhibited in this instance is placed within a back shop of the epoch, the front towards the streets being reserved for smaller and less important objects. A company of rich amateurs has evidently sauntered in to behold the latest acquisitions of the dealer. A colossal vase, poised upon a revolving pedestal, is especially claiming their attention. A slave slowly turns it round that they may view it in every light. We know him to be a slave by the crescent-shaped token he wears suspended from his neck. The effect of in-door and out-door illumination, and of reflected light from the shimmering surfaces of the objects in the shop is rendered with scientific accuracy and rare technical ability. Full of ingenious and most difficult light effects, too, is the _Picture Gallery_, in which we see a crowd of noble Roman dames and knights admiring the triptychs of the period wherewith the walls are hung and the easels loaded. This theme, with considerable variants, had been treated once before by Tadema. Indeed, he is fond of repeating his initial idea in different shape. This time the work is called _Antistius Labeon_. It represents an amateur Roman painter, a contemporary of Vespasian, showing off his latest productions to the friends who have dropped into his studio. It seems, so Tadema tells us, that the gentleman painter, who was a Roman pro-consul, was rather looked down upon by his contemporaries for his amateur tastes. It was thought gentlemanly in those days to admire art but not to practise it, an idea that even in early Victorian days we find not quite extinct. [Illustration: AT THE SHRINE OF VENUS.]