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In 1777, the British government had the opportunity to buy an art collection of worldwide stature, when the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole put his assortment up for sale. The MP John Wilkes argued for the federal government to buy this “invaluable treasure” and advised that or not it’s housed in “a noble gallery… to be constructed within the spacious garden of the British Museum”. Nothing came of Wilkes’s enchantment and 20 years later the collection was bought in its entirety by Catherine the Great; it’s now to be found within the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Unlike comparable…