\paperw19995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 Situated in a building with an imposing neoclassical faτade that overlooks Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery was created in 1838
. However, the collection had been in existence ever since a valuable group of works belonging to the financier John Julius Angerstein, including Sebastiano del PiomboÆs \i Raising of Lazarus\i0 , had been acquired by the State fourteen years earlier. In
1824, even though the building did not yet exist, a commission made up of artists and men of culture was set up to oversee the conservation and enlargement of the collection.\par
Lord Lock Eastlake, the director of the National Gallery from 1855 to 186
5, inaugurated a systematic policy of conservation and restoration, and added many works of art to the collection, respecting, at least at the beginning, AngersteinÆs interest in sixteenth-century Italian art. Thus paintings by Correggio, Paolo Uccello a
nd Piero della Francesca entered the museumÆs collection, along with TitianÆs \i Bacchus and Ariadne\i0 .\par
Later on, the museum began to take interest in the Northern European schools, adding works like van EyckÆs \i Arnolfini Marriage Piece\i0 and
HolbeinÆs Ambassadors to the gallery in the middle of the nineteenth century.\par
The countryÆs economic decline in the twentieth century has had repercussions on the museumÆs bequests as well, forcing it to look on helplessly as Britain gave masterpiec
