The art of portraiture revived under the creative genius of Giotto and Orcagna, and of the great men of the _Renaissance_--Domenico Ghirlandaio and Giovanni Bellini--until it reached the highest dignity and beauty in the superb works of the mightiest of the mighty Italians--Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Titian. The most remarkable portraits of this period are paintings, and are therefore not to be found in large numbers in the Crystal Palace. In the beautiful gallery, however, of copies from the old masters, will be found several fine examples. In the Renaissance and Mediæval Courts, will be seen some of the statues from the tombs of Maximilian and Albert of Saxony--the finest portrait-statues of their kind. In the Italian Court, too, there are the immortal monumental statues of the Medici, and a superb bust of Cosmo de’ Medici by the inimitable Cellini. The antique statues and busts described in the following pages are from THE VATICAN, AT ROME, THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, THE NAPLES MUSEUM, THE FLORENCE GALLERY, THE LOUVRE, THE BERLIN MUSEUM, THE BRITISH MUSEUM. [Illustration: ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΣ.] THE PORTRAIT GALLERY. ANTIQUE PORTRAITS. GREEK COURT.--SOUTH SIDE-COURT. POETS AND DRAMATISTS. [28]1. HOMER. _Great Epic Poet of Greece._ [Born, probably B.C. 850. Place of birth unknown.] A majestic antique Bust. The kingly and venerated Patriarch of all Poets, for the western civilization--or, the sound of a Name! The two wonderful poems which bear down this name--whatever signifying--through the lapse and revolutions of time, preserve, as it were, the image of an extinct world: although of a world, perhaps less than half real, and more than half ideal:--for the manners _were_: the persons and events may, or may not have been: and the gods and goddesses of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” were, we know, only a believed-in, waking dream. But, by the potency of the song, the picture lives! The war, imaginary or no, raging between the Hellespont and the foot of Mount Ida, remains, to the educated memory of the nations, like the beginning--if not of the world’s, yet of its western half’s--history. And those heroes and heroines, with their high actions and their deep passions--the unrolling, embroidered web of their fortunes and fates:--the king of men, Agamemnon,--the swift-footed son of the sea-goddess, Achilles,---the sage, long-lived Nestor,--the shrewd, enduring Ulysses,--Ajax, a tower in the fight,--Diomed, favoured of Minerva present beside him in the storm of spears;--and that grey-headed, imperial sire of Troy, with all his falling sons, Priam,--the gallant and good Hector,--the loving and faithful Andromache,--the aged, too fruitful mother, Hecuba;--even the fatal and criminal, but divinely beautiful Helen--Is it not a strange magic that dwells in the creative thought of the poet, and in his modulated words, and that thus, in a language, and with manners, a faith, an age--all so long since dead and