1.   A desk used by Columbus is also on display there, as well as other Columbus family artifacts and period paintings.

2.   Cinematographer Andrew Dunn captures images so lovely they seem to have been stolen from period paintings.

3.   Copious images of gorgeous period paintings, re-enactments and breathtaking vistas of the English countryside and castles offer an appropriate sense of scale to the epic history.

4.   My early work was narrative, so I looked hard at his blue and rose period paintings.

5.   The history lessons are illustrated with period paintings or engravings.

6.   They are abetted by period paintings and photographs drawn in part from the Smithsonian itself, by martial music and by smoky re-enactments that give the show mild movement.

7.   Shiny hunter-green walls and gilded molding offset period Russian paintings and antique samovars, making the old crowd feel right at home.