The museum is open to the public on Sundays and Thursdays; but daily to students and strangers. It contains upwards of two hundred and thirty paintings. Of these, the great mass is undoubtedly by French artists, comparatively little known and of small merit, imitators of Poussin and Le Brun. Such paintings as bear the names of the old Italian masters, are in general copies; some of them, indeed, not bad imitations. Among them is one of the celebrated Raphael, commonly called the _Madonna di San Sisto_, a very beautiful copy, especially in the head of the virgin, and the female saint on her left hand. It is esteemed one of his finest pieces; but few of his pictures are less generally known: there is no engraving of it in Landon's eight volumes of his works.
Looking to the unquestionable originals in the collection, there are perhaps none of greater value than Jouvenet's finished sketches for the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides, at Paris. They represent the twelve apostles, each with his symbol, and are extremely well composed, with a bold system of light and shadow. The museum has five other pictures by the same master; in this number are his own portrait, a vigorous performance, as well in point of character as of color; and the _Death of St. Francis_, which has generally been considered one of his happiest works. Both these were painted with his left hand. The death of St. Francis is said to have been his first attempt at using the brush, after he was affected with paralysis, and to have been done by way of model for his scholar, Restout, whom he had desired to execute the same subject for him. A _Christ bearing his Cross_, by Polemburg; is a little piece of high finish and considerable merit; an _Ecce Homo_, by Mignard, is excellent; and a _St. Francis in Extasy_, by Annibal Caracci, is a good illustration of the true character of the Bolognese school: it is a fine and dignified picture, depending for its excellence upon a grand character of expression and drawing, and light and shade, and not at all on bright or varied coloring, to which it makes no pretension.
As local curiosities, the attention of the amateur should be devoted to the productions of the painters to whom Rouen has given birth, Restout, Lemonnier, Deshays, Leger, Houel, Letellier, and Sacquespée, artists, not of the first class, but of sufficient merit to do great credit to the exhibition of a provincial metropolis.