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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Another argument in favour of the resemblance of a church and a gallery is the fact that a gallery is quite a recent invention. Over a long time in the past an average viewer could see the works of art merely in freely accessible churches because other precious masterpieces were in the possession of the ruling class. The notion of an art gallery or museum was unknown; it is at most two centuries since the art owners have made their collections available to the public. Hence, the churches, as now galleries, served for contact with art.