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 A visit to a Museum > The fine Renaissance spiral stair
The fine Renaissance spiral stair leads up to period rooms with pictures and furnishings of the 17C including French and Venetian schools and some French miniatures. The Holy Family, School of Raphael might be better labelled Infant School. See also the alcove room containing Goya's Self-Portrait, 1783, painted when he was 37, in the tradition of Velasquez. There is also a prototype black picture, full of floating cows and elephants, and his Mongolfier Balloon Flight, set against a Constable sky which may not be a genuine Goya. See too, the study for an equestrian portrait of Ferdinand VII. Other notable pictures include Tiepolo's Page Dying (not a moment too soon), the portrait of the child Louis Alexandre de Bourbon by François de Troy who died in 1730 and a scene-stealing Corot lake view.
The top floor includes a view of the Seine by Frank Bogges of Oldham, born 1855, and a Sisley. The Renaissance stair leads on up to a viewing platform providing a vista of the city. Easy tomiss is a small room on the upper floor containing a private bequest, Room 27. Here are a pair of pictures by Clouet of Charles IX and Elisabeth of Austria, tiny but finely detailed, and a self-portrait of Van Dyck. A portrait by Hans Meuelich, died 1573, could be a late Holbein. There is also a splendid Tang Dynasty figure of a man on horseback (7C), a bronze Buddha of similar age, and rare 15/16C Italian artist’s sketch books.
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