UC>NRLF 
 
 $B 37fl 123 
 
 Flsmish An^fisrs 
 
 and their- ^Predecessors on the LoWE R Rhine 
 
 
 
 W. M. CONWAV 
 
*Ef.J[£lEV 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNlVE.iSITY O? 
 CALIFORNIA . 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BEQUEST OF 
 YNEZ GHIRARDELLI 
 
<^^ 
 
 /\ 
 
The Crucifixion. By Martin Schongauer. 
 
EARLY 
 FLEMISH ARTISTS 
 
 AND THEIR PREDECESSORS ON 
 
 THE Lower Rhine 
 
 )ISCARI>ED 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MARTIN CONWAY 
 
 Roscoe Professor of Art, University College, Liverpool 
 
 Author of 
 
 The Artistic Development of Reynolds and Gainsborough, 
 
 "Woodcutters of the Netherlands," etc. 
 
 With Twenty-nine Illustrations 
 
 LONDON 
 SEELEY & CO., 46, 47, & 48, ESSEX STREET, STRAND 
 
 1887 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
HLS^.c^-^^ 
 
 
 \ d. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART ... 56 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF 15TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART ... 89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE VAN EYCKS I25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND HUGO VAN DER GOES 160 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART ... 1 96 
 
 7C2 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HANS MEMLING 233 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING 269 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 TAPESTRIES 305 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Crucifixion. By Martin Schongauer Frontispiece 
 
 The Women at the Sepulchre ... ... ... 31 
 
 The Annunciation. Ascribed to Meister Wilhelm ... 35 
 
 The Madonna with the Bean-Flower. Ascribed to 
 
 Meister Wilhelm ... ... ... ... ... 38 
 
 The Virgin in a Garden ... ... ... ... 45 
 
 The Madonna. Ascribed to Meister Stephan ... 49 
 
 Maison des Bateliers at Ghent ... ... ... 59 
 
 St. Eligius. By Petrus Cristus ... ... ... 93 
 
 Fro.m the Altar of the Canon Van der Paelen. By 
 
 Jan van Eyck ... ... ... ... ... 99 
 
 The Altar-piece at Ghent. By Hubert and Jan van 
 
 Eyck ... ... ... ... ... to faceup. 136 
 
 St. Barbera. By Jan van Eyck ... ... ... 143 
 
 The Adoration of the Magi. By Roger van der Weyden 173 
 
 Christ taken down from the Cross. By Roger van 
 
 DER Weyden ... ... ... ... ... 179 
 
 The Nativity. By Hugo van der Goes ... ... 187 
 
 Altar-piece in Koln Cathedral. By Meister Stephan 
 
 to face p. 196 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The iVTarriage of the Virgin. By the Master of the 
 
 Lyversberg Passion ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 The Virgin before a Hedge of Roses. By Martin 
 
 schongauer ... ... ... ... ... 217 
 
 The Nativity. By Bartholomaus Zeitblom ... ... 223 
 
 Virgin and Child. From a Nurnberg Altar-piece ... 225 
 
 The Nativity. By Michael Wolgemut ... ... 227 
 
 St. Sebastian. By Hans Holbein the Elder ... ... 231 
 
 St. Ursula received by the Pope. By Hans Memling 245 
 
 Martin van Newenhoven. By Hans Memling ... 263 
 
 The Last Supper. By Dirck Bouts ... ... ... 277 
 
 The Entombment. By Dirck Bouts ... ... ... 281 
 
 From the "Hours" of the Due de Berri ... ... 288 
 
 April ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 293 
 
 The Madonna and Saints. By Gerard David " to face p. 296 
 
 The Virgin Enthroned ... ... ... ,, ,, 318 
 
EARLY FLEMISH ARTISTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 Considering the attention bestowed for centuries 
 upon the history, literature, and arts of Greece,- it is 
 not surprising that the study of Greek civih'zation as 
 a united whole should have advanced further than 
 that of the civilization of any other epoch. Greek 
 literature is of moderate length and wide compass. 
 Greek history is enshrined in it, and in the memorials 
 of Greek art, themselves relatively speaking few 
 in number. Thus the studies of these three main 
 factors of Greek civilization have naturally gone 
 forward hand in hand. So also has it been with the 
 investigations more recently set on foot to win back 
 some knowledge of the buried and forgotten civiliza- 
 tions of Assyria and Egypt. Historical students are 
 
2 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 forced by the dearth of other materials to consider 
 the memorials of ancient art with fullest attention. 
 It has however been different with the Middle Ages. 
 They lie too near us. Influences from them still 
 recognizably affect our lives. Our knowledge of the 
 general sequence of events in them, drawn from 
 contemporary records and chronicles, is tolerably 
 complete. Their most obvious importance to us lies 
 in the direct descent from them of our political 
 institutions. Thus the study of mediaeval history is 
 one-sided. Minute investigation has been lavished 
 upon certain aspects of the mediaeval past, whilst 
 other aspects, of equal importance, have received 
 slight attention. Of the rise, culmination, decline, 
 and after-effect of Greek or Roman civilization every 
 educated person has some sort of general idea ; but 
 relatively few comprehend, in their backward glance 
 over the history of Europe, any similar understanding 
 of the epochs of growth and decay through which 
 its various peoples have passed. In coming years 
 a change will take place in this matter. Already 
 the Dark Ages are being touched by the dawn of 
 a renewed existence. The day of their after-life is 
 at hand. 
 
 The people of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, in their scorn, gave the name of Dark to all 
 that period which intervened between the fall of the 
 Roman Empire and the beginning of the so-called 
 
THE RISE OF FAINTING IN THE NORTH. 3 
 
 Renascence, thereby declaring plainly enough that 
 
 that period was one from which they were wholly cut 
 
 off in sympathy and the general tone and aims of 
 
 life. It was in fact a world-epoch altogether different 
 
 from the one in which we live ; and a world-epoch is 
 
 not a mere scale of succeeding events, but a great 
 
 symphony of existence, played on the throbbing 
 
 lives of men. It has to be regarded as a whole, as 
 
 the working out of a noble theme, any one-sided 
 
 investigation of which will lead only to a one-sided 
 
 result. The politician may learn lessons from it for 
 
 the guidance of his policy ; the economist may use 
 
 it as a test for his theories ; the artist may draw 
 
 examples from it, and the man of letters may find 
 
 certain of its "written works suggestive to him ; but 
 
 one whose interest in the world is based upon the 
 
 full breadth of his manhood, must turn back and 
 
 view it as a whole from every side. Regarded thus 
 
 the Dark or Gothic period must in future times come 
 
 to rank among the greatest epochs. Do you ask for 
 
 heroisms, and will the age of St. Louis of France and 
 
 St. Francis of Assisi send you unsatisfied away } 
 
 Do you demand great thoughts, and shall you not 
 
 find them in a Bernard of Clairvaux or a Thomas 
 
 Aquinas .^ Must you have beauty of utterance, and 
 
 \v\\\ not the songs of a Walter von der Vogelweide 
 
 or the almost Homeric Chanson de Roland more 
 
 than satisfy your need? Is it splendour of art you 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE RISE OF PA FX TING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 require ? Enter beneath the sculptured portal of Our 
 Lady of Paris, and say, have any people (even the 
 Greeks themselves) attained higher rank in the 
 expression of noble thought through the language of 
 the chisel ? Has the brush of the painter been more 
 deftly wielded than by the tender hand of a Wilhelm 
 of Koln ? Have ever stones been more gloriously 
 builded together than by the thirteenth-century 
 architects of the He de France? Have walls ever 
 glowed with a finer iridescence of colour than the 
 Gothic painters shed over them in their joy? Have 
 richer hangings been woven, more tasteful costumes 
 been designed, more expressive ceremonials acted, 
 more beautiful domestic adornments made, in the 
 shape of furniture, jewellery, illuminated volumes, and 
 other articles of use, than by the men of the Gothic 
 age ? Where will you find a grander conception of 
 the governance of mankind than in the mediaeval 
 idea of a world-Emperor and a world-Bishop ? 
 Where will you find a nobler knitting together of 
 man and man than in the feudal system and the 
 guilds ? Where will you look for greater enterprises 
 than in the age of the Crusades, or more devoted self- 
 sacrifice than in the cells of many and many a scarce- 
 remembered monk ? Where, throughout all the ages 
 and races of humanity, will you discover a more 
 divine ideal of the invisible and eternal world than 
 that which in the Middle Ages was not alone the 
 
THE RISE OE PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 5 
 
 faith of the poet and the scholar, but the satisfaction 
 of the labourer and the craftsman too ? 
 
 One spirit animated the whole of this mediaeval 
 civilization, and expressed itself in various ways. 
 Political history does not reveal it except in part. It 
 is only by entering into the life of the folk, reading- 
 the books of their great men, looking at the works of 
 their artists, considering what it was towards which 
 they aimed, and what it was they most universally 
 admired, that the modern mind can be brought in 
 contact with the mediaeval spirit. It will not be 
 uninteresting, therefore, to consider briefly the 
 general tone and tendency of the paintings made 
 by northern artists during the Middle Ages, with 
 a view, if possible, to discover what manner of 
 thing the people of those days loved to imagine and 
 to see depicted for them — what, in fact, was their 
 ideal. 
 
 The materials for this consideration are tolerably 
 numerous, but, unfortunately, very inaccessible. Old 
 writers, old account-books and other archives, lead 
 us to the conclusion that in the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries the walls of every important building 
 were all glorious with fine colours within, and some- 
 times also without. It was customary not alone to 
 paint figures, or at any rate decorative patterns, upon 
 the surface of a wall or a roof, but also to colour 
 and gild the mouldings and the statuary with which 
 
6 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 portals and other parts of an edifice were usually 
 adorned. These mural decorations were painted in 
 distemper upon a fine coating of plaster, and of 
 course rapidly yielded to the action of the weather. 
 For this reason, if for no other, we should naturally 
 expect but few specimens of such work to remain. 
 Add the common habit in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries of whitewashing over any Gothic 
 painted works which had survived ; add the still 
 more pernicious restoration craze which destroyed 
 in cold blood a great part of the few remaining 
 fragments, and the rarity of mediaeval wall-paintings 
 in the north of Europe is sufficiently explained. 
 Though rare, however, they can be found, and enough 
 of them exist to enable the formation of a sound 
 estimate of the nature of our loss. In England there 
 are plenty, notwithstanding the enmity of an un- 
 generous Protestantism. In the Low Countries there 
 are not a few. Germany and France are som.ewhat 
 richer. Such paintings, however, must be sought out, 
 and the student will have to travel from city to city, 
 and from village to village, finding here the remains 
 of a figure, there the traces of a decorative pattern, 
 and only now and then any tolerably preserved 
 composition worthy the name of a picture. More- 
 over, such works do not appeal to any but a very 
 small section of the public, and so the photographer 
 remains ignorant of them, or passes them by with 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH 7 
 
 scorn as he sets up his camera before some newly- 
 erected statue of a worthy whose name will be 
 forgotten a century hence. For the purposes, there- 
 fore, of the ordinary student wall-paintings are re- 
 latively little important. Their place is excellently 
 supplied by stained glass windows, whereof a larger 
 quantity remain, and by illuminated manuscripts, 
 which may be seen and studied in all the principal 
 libraries of Europe. 
 
 A comparison of pictures upon walls and glass with 
 those in MSS. shows conclusively that the same 
 general style of work prevailed in all three, allowance 
 being made for the different treatments rendered 
 necessary by different conditions. Indeed for all 
 artists of any one time and period there must be one 
 ideal shared by them in common with the men for 
 whom they work. Now if the ideal of the Gothic 
 artists could be put into few words, we should not 
 have to pause long over this matter. But the state- 
 ment of that ideal employed the combined labours 
 of thousands of painters, sculptors, preachers, poets, 
 and philosophers, and a modern writer may well 
 pause before attempting to do alone in a chapter 
 what employed such a company for two centuries. 
 It is only by coming directly in contact with the 
 works of mediaeval art that one can be oneself 
 imbued with a knowledge of the mediaeval spirit. 
 A great Gothic building cannot be understood at a 
 
8 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 glance. The mass of it, the balance and building of 
 it, do indeed produce an immediate general effect 
 upon the spectator, but it is in the details of ornament 
 that the voice of the edifice is to be heard. Travellers 
 too often content themselves with a hasty passage up 
 the nave and down the aisles of some great cathedral ; 
 perhaps they glance at the treasury, and sometimes 
 they even walk once round the exterior. Then they 
 think they have seen all there is to see, and they move 
 on to look at something else. Upon the few who go 
 more intelligently to work, and for whom details are 
 things of a certain moment, the grotesque parts of 
 the sculptured ornament not uncommonly leave the 
 strongest impression. They think of these Gothic- 
 minded folk as a humorous set, and perhaps as men 
 of little reverence, the notion of illustrating one's 
 prayer-book with comic designs being rather out of 
 keeping with present ideas. The great mediaeval 
 cathedrals were prayer-books graven in stone. They 
 symbolized and expressed all that the mediaeval man 
 believed of the world that is, was, and is to come. In 
 that day of harmony between religion and daily life 
 there was no distinction of kind between week-day 
 and Sunday, or between the adornment of a house 
 and that of a church. Household implements were 
 embellished with carvings of sacred subjects as 
 naturally as the furniture of a cathedral ; and con- 
 versely it seemed just as natural to sculpture incidents 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 9 
 
 of every-day life in a church portal as images of the 
 most sacred personages of Bible history. The Reform- 
 ation was the great wedge which sundered religion 
 from daily life. Before it the two were merely different 
 aspects of the same thing. Now exactly the kind of 
 subjects that a mediaeval mason sculptured upon 
 churches, houses, municipal buildings, and everywhere 
 else where his assistance was called for, mediaeval 
 painters likewise painted and mediaeval miniaturists 
 illuminated. The ideal for all of them was the same, 
 and you can find that ideal informed just as well in 
 carved ivories, pieces of goldsmith's or ironsmith's 
 work, carved wooden implements, or woven stuffs, as in 
 sculptured portals or illuminated volumes. In attempt- 
 ing, therefore, to form some notion of the ideal of the 
 Gothic painter, we may draw illustrations indiscrimi- 
 nately from works of art of whatever kind. The same 
 set of subjects and the same kind of treatment (in so 
 far as the materials used permit of it) are everywhere 
 to be found, because the same ideal is everywhere 
 striving for expression. 
 
 Now, as has been said, it is the grotesque element 
 in mediaeval art which usually makes the strongest 
 impression upon the modern student, and we may 
 therefore consider that element first. In doing so, 
 however, we must at the outset guard ourselves from 
 the wholly false assumption that Gothic art was 
 mainly an art of humour. It is only because in that 
 
10 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 respect we are out of harmony with these old artists 
 that the grotesque element of their work strikes us so 
 powerfully. It is strange to us, and therefore we 
 notice it. We have our Punch in these days, but it 
 is a separate publication ; we do not mix it up with 
 sermons. Except in the services of the Salvation 
 Army, we are not accustomed to mingle together the 
 comic and the religious. But mediaeval art, being a 
 part of mediaeval religion, and that being a reflection 
 of every side of life, was ready to express in rapid 
 succession all the various moods and humours of men. 
 Just as the Church had its folk festivals and its solemn 
 religious ceremonies, following one on the heels of 
 another in the same building, and alike under saintly 
 and angelic patronage, art changed from grave to gay, 
 conscious that the eyes which regard mankind from 
 Eternity's stillness look with equal favour upon hours 
 of merriment and hours of worship, and find as great 
 satisfaction in the labour of a man's hands as in the 
 longings of his puzzled heart. The life of Christ, to 
 the Gothic mind, was a permeating influence in the 
 whole course of human life. The husbandman at his 
 plough and the churchman at his prayers were alike 
 fulfilling their heaven-appointed task, and were alike 
 performing a religious action. For this reason you 
 will find that the Gothic church bears always in 
 prominent position representations of the occupations 
 of the months of the year, these occupations being 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH ii 
 
 as much a part of the Christian religion as the events 
 of the hfe of Christ Himself. 
 
 In the cathedral of Chartres it is easiest to 
 catch some echo of the voice of a great mediaeval 
 church, of the things about which it spoke and the 
 manner of its speaking. That cathedral is remark- 
 able as possessing in tolerable condition three fine 
 sculptured porches by which entry is made from the 
 north, west, and south. It is impossible here to 
 enumerate all the subjects sculptured upon these 
 porches, but the North Porch may be taken as 
 typical of the rest. It speaks chiefly of the Virgin 
 and of her sweet influence, which, to the Gothic mind, 
 embraced all the thoughts and actions of men and 
 angels in the visible and invisible worlds. This porch 
 contains three doorways, each of which is filled above 
 and on either side with sculpture, and in front of all 
 three is a richly-wrought colonnade. In all there 
 are more than 700 carved figures, large and small, 
 many of the highest order of beauty. 
 
 The central figure is a colossal statue of St. Anne 
 holding the Virgin in her arms, and standing on a 
 bracket carved with the story of Joachim. Overhead 
 the chief subjects are the Death, Assumption, and 
 Coronation of the Virgin. Three incidents from the 
 birth and early days of the infant Jesus are carved 
 over the door on the left, their object being to tell 
 the great central fact of the Virgin's life, whilst in a 
 
12 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 corresponding position on the right are the Judgment 
 of Solomon and the Sufferings of Job — events typical 
 of Justice and patient Endurance, the leading virtues 
 of the Virgin herself. The setting for these jewels is 
 of an astonishing richness, every subject hereafter 
 mentioned being introduced into the position it holds 
 with intent to suggest side-lights of thought, each 
 being connected with its neighbours above and below 
 and contrasted with those that balance it in corre- 
 sponding positions. There are forty-two colossal 
 statues, twenty-six being of Saints and Prophets, two 
 representing the Annunciation, two the Visitation, two 
 the symbolical figures of the Synagogue and the. 
 Church, or the Old and New Dispensation, two the 
 symbolical figures of the Active and Contemplative 
 Life, and the remaining eight being intended for 
 portraits of the royal and noble personages by whose 
 munificence or under whose rule this great work of art 
 was made. These forty-two persons stand upon 
 brackets richly carved with subjects illustrative of 
 their lives. Around the arched-over part of each 
 door come rows of angels, some of them representing 
 the sun, moon, and stars ; then there are the physical 
 and spiritual ancestors of the Virgin, and a number 
 of representatives of the human race, engaged in 
 adoration of the Lady of Pity. To these succeed 
 series of carvings depicting the chief incidents in the 
 lives of Samson and Gideon, Esther and Judith, 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 13 
 
 Tobit, David and Samuel, — each of whom was re- 
 garded as a type of one side or other of the ideal 
 character. Further, we have the whole story of the 
 Creation, the Fall, and the condemnation of man 
 to a life of labour and sorrow. We are thus led 
 to consider the various occupations of the months, 
 accompanied by the signs of the zodiac and figures 
 emblematic of Summer and Winter. Next come the 
 arts and sc'ences ; then the various modes of life, 
 active and contemplative ; then, as warning and ex- 
 ample, the ten Virgins of the parable, the twelve Fruits 
 of the Holy Spirit, the fourteen Beatitudes of body 
 and soul, and tb,e seven Virtues conquering the seven 
 Vices. The whole is surmounted by a seated figure 
 of God Most High in the attitude of Benediction. 
 
 However strange and difficult to understand all 
 this sculpture may now be, it is clear at any rate that 
 it was the work of men not barren in ideas. The 
 Coronation of the Virgin is the central subject, and 
 about that the mediaeval mind grouped together into 
 a living unity its conceptions of the duties and joys 
 of life, its picture of the past and its hopes and fears 
 of the future. At no time in the world's history did 
 faith and life march together in such close com- 
 panionship. The whole of knowledge and all the 
 acts and events of hfe formed together part of one 
 system, and were animated by one faith and subor- 
 dinated to it. Religion directed and explained every- 
 
14 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH 
 
 thing to the perfect satisfaction of all men. Thus the 
 artist was gifted with a perfect language. He had 
 a symbol for every thought ; he could give visible 
 form to ideas which we can no longer express with- 
 out the aid of language hard to be understood. 
 
 But thus far we have noticed only the North Porch 
 of Chartres ; the same cathedral possesses two other 
 porches, one quite and the other almost as rich in 
 sculpture as this. Moreover, all these sculptures were 
 once painted and gilt, and the colours were treated 
 symbolically, and gave further expression to the 
 artist's thought. Then again these porches were but 
 the entrances ; the church within was more vocal 
 even than they. Its walls no doubt were covered 
 over with paintings, though none of them remain ; 
 its windows at any rate were filled with storied glass 
 fortunately in perfect preservation, and forming the 
 richest store-house of mediaeval fancy anywhere in 
 the world. Corresponding to the three porches are 
 three great rose windows, representing respectively 
 the Last Judgment, the Glory of Christ, and the Glory 
 of the Virgin. In addition to these there are one 
 hundred and twenty-fiv^e double-light windows, thirty- 
 five smaller rose windows, and twelve little roses, and 
 almost the whole of this gorgeous jewellery of pictured 
 thought dates from the thirteenth century. The win- 
 dows v/ere, for the most part, paid for and presented 
 to the church by the guilds of workmen of the town ; 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 15 
 
 many of them, therefore, contain panels representing 
 the occupations of the trades, subjects drawn with 
 perfect veracity and perfect art from the folk-life of 
 the day. Others were presented by royal and noble 
 personages, who, after the praiseworthy fashion of the 
 time, had their own portraits introduced into the 
 work ; in one case the donor and his wife are depicted 
 playing chess. The subjects of this multitude of trans- 
 lucent pictures are of the usual kind. The chief inci- 
 dents in the lives of Christ and the Virgin are to be 
 found, as well as those of the lives of some fifty saints. 
 The Apostles, the nine orders of angelic hierarchies, 
 the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, the 
 parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, 
 and the Ten Virgins, are all duly illustrated ; and 
 besides there are representations of certain less 
 common subjects, such as the Virgin holding in her 
 lap the seven Gifts of the Spirit. One window bears 
 a series of types and antitypes from the Old and New 
 Testament, another has once again the signs of the 
 zodiac and the occupations of the months, and a 
 certain number are occupied by very finely orna- 
 mented panels of decorative work in grisaille. 
 
 Such then was the range of subject at the disposal 
 of the Gothic artist. He had a long series of events 
 in the sacred history, an almost endless catalogue of 
 noble deeds, miracles, and heroic sufferings of saints, 
 and a large number of symbolic and emblematic 
 
1 6 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 figures representing the modes of life, the virtues, 
 vices, gifts of the Spirit, works of mercy, blessings of 
 the soul, and so forth, upon which to exercise his 
 fancy. The great difference between him and the 
 modern artist lay, however, not so much in the choice 
 of subject (for though subjects may be very different, 
 they can be treated in the same spirit), as in the 
 state of mind in which he attacked his work. The 
 modern artist feels that he has to paint a religious 
 picture if possible in a religious frame of mind, a 
 historical subject in an antiquarian frame of mind, a 
 humorous subject in a comic frame of mind, a tragic 
 subject in a tragic frame of mind. The mediaeval 
 artist felt no such thing. He went to work on all 
 subjects alike in the frame of mind most natural to 
 himself. He believed so implicitly in everything he 
 undertook, to represent, that he never thought he had 
 to make it look creditable. He cared only to make 
 it look pretty. He knew that people would recognize 
 at once the subject of his work, if they looked at it 
 in detail at all, because he was never called upon to 
 depict any except a well-known round of subjects. 
 Every one knew that a female figure holding a lamp 
 upside down was one of the Foolish Virgins, and every 
 one knew that a man with a gridiron was St. Laurence, 
 and they knew all about the Ten Virgins and all 
 about St. Laurence ; there was no call upon the artist 
 to do more than jog their memories. So he had 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 17 
 
 plenty of time for his own little whims and fancies. 
 If he felt merry he showed it in his work, even though 
 that were a picture of some martyrdom. Hence 
 arose the extraordinary and fascinating frequency of 
 grotesque in mediaeval times. It invaded the cere- 
 monies, as it did the art, of the Church, and is the 
 quality which most visibly hedges off the feelings 
 of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from our 
 perfect sympathy. 
 
 Of course a joke in stone is rather a laborious 
 affair ; the Gothic masons could not, therefore, be 
 often openly humorous. Now and again in some 
 little out-of-the-way corner, some spandril of a wall 
 arcading, some knob or corbel, they found a chance 
 to sculpture a grinning little fiend, or a monk-headed, 
 dog-bodied beast, clothed, likely enough, in pontifical 
 attire. But the chief quality of Gothic grotesque is 
 in its slyness. Its creations peep round the corner 
 at you and lurk in secret places, like a monk's joke 
 whispered in church. So if you turn up the under- 
 side of a carved seat (one of those known as misereres)^ 
 you will be more certain to find a specimen of this 
 old world humour there than if you walk straight 
 ahead, looking at the objects you cannot help seeing. 
 The Gothic sculptor used grotesque as a reward for 
 the patient observer ; moreover, he knew that his fun 
 would lose its flavour if it were continually before 
 the eye in prominent places. So he kept it in reserve, 
 
1 8 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 placed it so that it was only seen now and then, as 
 a relief to those finer and purer thoughts to which 
 the spectator was more prominently and continually 
 directed. It must be borne in mind that then people 
 spent much more of their time in churches than 
 any one, even the most devout, does now-a-days. 
 When a man only crosses the threshold of a church 
 one day in the week after getting himself up, mind 
 and body, for the occasion, he may find it easy to 
 be solemn, or even difficult to be anything else. But 
 the mediaeval church was quite a different kind of 
 place. It was the opera, and the concert-hall, and the 
 club, and the newspaper, and the place of worship all 
 joined into one. People went there often, and on 
 holidays stayed there for a longtime; and they did 
 so because they liked the place, and felt themselves 
 at home and unconstrained there. They were not 
 all the time compelled to draw a long face. Perhaps 
 they had their joke often enough. It is that kind 
 of spirit, therefore, that Gothic architectural ornament 
 expresses. 
 
 Thirteenth-century painting is merely a part of 
 architecture. All the arts in the thirteenth century 
 were but handmaids of architecture. They were 
 primarily devoted to the adornment of buildings, and 
 especially religious buildings. Sculpture arose as an 
 architectural embellishment, and could not help so 
 arising. Painting was chiefly employed as a com- 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 19 
 
 pletion for sculpture and as a mural decoration. 
 Other arts not so immediately useful to architecture 
 nevertheless fell under her sway. Carved ivories are 
 always at this time included within an architectural 
 design, embroideries are likewise designed as though 
 the figures on them were sculptured and set in stone 
 niches. If you take up the original binding of some 
 splendid Ihirteenth-century book, you will find that it 
 is embossed with figures which, reproduced on a 
 larger scale, would be noble works of sculpture. 
 Everywhere the power of the chisel reigned supreme. 
 Miniature painting did not escape the influence. 
 Most thirteenth and fourteenth century illuminated 
 manuscripts were intended for use in the services of 
 the Church. It was not till the fifteenth century that 
 sumptuously adorned chronicles and romances began 
 to be made for the amusement of the wealthy in their 
 hours of leisure. Fine thirteenth-century illuminated 
 MSS. were of two main kinds: either they were 
 Books of Hours, that is to say, the layman's Prayer- 
 Book for private devotions in his own chamber, or 
 else they were service-books to be used in church by 
 the clergy. They were in fact either furniture for 
 the church or for the private oratory. In either case 
 it was but natural that their decoration should be of 
 the same kind as that of all the other ornaments and 
 furniture of the church. A thirteenth-century illu- 
 minated service-book usually contains a number of 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 miniatures, of small dimensions, illustrative of the text, 
 and generally connected with borders or ornamental 
 flourishes, splendidly free in design, like the growth 
 of holly or hawthorn. These flourishes are likewise 
 attached to initial letters and present an endless 
 variety. There is never any repetition ; they dart 
 out in one direction or another with absolute crisp- 
 ness and grace, showing the exhaustlessness of the 
 miniaturist's fancy and the trained and governed 
 freedom of his hand. Almost always they are the 
 play-place of grotesques. It was said above that a 
 grotesque carved in stone was rather a laboured joke, 
 one at any rate that had to be set lurking in a secret 
 place. The grotesques in illuminated MSS. were 
 different in that respect. They were drawn on the 
 spur of the moment, and expressed the momentary 
 fancy of the craftsman. Hidden in the pages of a 
 book, they were sufficiently removed from the possi- 
 bility of wearying the eye by constant visibility. 
 There is thus a freshness and frolicsome humour 
 about these little things, never in the best period 
 descending into license, which makes them unique of 
 their kind, and endows them with a quite pre-eminent 
 and enduring value. 
 
 The ordinary miniatures are likewise of great 
 artistic merit. They usually represent events in the 
 sacred history. The manner of treatment is peculiar. 
 The background is almost always a beautiful diaper- 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH 21 
 
 work, against which the figures are reheved, Hke 
 painted sculptures before a painted wall. The 
 number of figures necessary to tell the tale is reduced 
 to the lowest possible limit ; they are grouped to- 
 gether with great simplicity, and usually in a severely 
 accurate balance. Each figure is as simple in posture 
 and clothed in as simple drapery as can be. There 
 is never an unnecessary line nor a needless fleck of 
 colour. Details are outlined with a fine pen, and 
 colours are laid on afterwards simple and pure. 
 Indeed, purity of line and colour is the leading 
 characteristic of this Gothic work. There is never 
 anything elaborate ; all is reserved and direct. 
 There is no seeking after display. The story is told 
 in its simplicity, and that is all. The figures, more- 
 over, are all of one type ; men and women possess 
 one invariable character — invariable except in cases 
 where brutality or vice has to be depicted, and then 
 the artists always fail. This uniform character is 
 the ideal of mediaeval legend, song, and tale. It 
 is the character of man and woman as the makers 
 of chivalry would have them be. Its leading quality 
 is purity of heart, absolute stainlessness of soul. 
 Faces are seldom, perhaps never, intellectual, neither 
 are they individual ; they possess none of the ele- 
 ments of portrait; they are repetitions, unfailingly 
 sweet, of one lovely, all-embracing ideal. It was 
 this ideal which gave birth to the devotion of monk 
 
22 THE RISE OF PAINTIXG IN THE NORTH. 
 
 and nun, and which sent men in thousands to the 
 Holy Land to fight the battles of an ideal Lord. It 
 was this ideal which raised the peoples of Europe 
 from the grovelling savagery of the time of the 
 Invasions, and taught them to be true and generous 
 and just. It was this which made possible what- 
 ever of manliness and righteous life has been nurtured 
 in us even to the present day ; an ideal which has 
 fastened itself as permanently in our thoughts, 
 let us hope, as in our language, and if it had left 
 behind it no greater monument than the name of 
 "gentleman," would in that alone have bequeathed 
 a richer heritage than many a conquering race in 
 all its works of pride. 
 
 " Unto the pure all things are pure." Purity, if 
 it gains a footing in any heart, pervades every action 
 and leaves a trace in every footprint. It is not the 
 only or indeed an absolutely essential virtue ; many 
 of the great men, many of the great artists, of the 
 world have lacked it ; but whoever possesses it is 
 thereby endowed with an irresistible power and a 
 clearness and unfaltering certainty of insight never 
 better described than in the great Beatitude, " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
 Painters of the fifteenth and following centuries did 
 great things, and have left us great monuments of 
 far-extending power, but in one particular they 
 seldom equalled their Gothic predecessors. It was 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 23 
 
 only Fra Angelico and a few of his immediate com- 
 panions who were able to give form to ideal creations 
 in which it is hardly possible to discover a trace of 
 what we call sin. The Gothic painters seldom failed 
 in this. Their creations may be lacking in many 
 of those qualities of strength and intellect which 
 go to make a rounded human being, but they are 
 almost always of a spotless purity, fit to be dwellers 
 in that Divine presence which, to the mediaeval 
 mind, was the essential quality of the heavenly world 
 to come. 
 
 At no time, probably, in the world's history, if we 
 except the culminating period of Hellenic civilization, 
 has there reigned a more perfect harmony between 
 faith and the structure of men's lives than in the 
 thirteenth century. Holy Catholic Church and Holy 
 Roman Empire, in theory, at any rate, merely different 
 aspects of the same world-governance, were reflected 
 in the two sides of each individual's life. There was 
 no sunderance of Church and State, no opposition of 
 science and religion, no splitting into parts of a 
 man's life or his opinions. The body politic and the 
 body ecclesiastical were the same thing. Every act 
 of a man's everyday existence had both its spiritual 
 and its social aspect. The arts of the central Gothic 
 epoch give patent evidence of this harmony. They 
 culminated under the rule of architecture. Painting 
 was her obedient handmaid. The arts of the glazier, 
 
24 THE RISE OF PAINTING IiV THE NORTH. 
 
 the weaver, the sculptor were all alike dominated 
 by the art of the mason. Goldsmiths, wood-carvers, 
 workers in ivory, miniaturists, embroiderers, art- 
 workers of every kind took their forms from those 
 of the supreme art of the epoch, and combined to- 
 gether to express the same great ideal. 
 
 But in the fourteenth century this harmony no 
 longer existed. Feudalism was already doomed. 
 The monastic orders were already corrupt. The 
 folk had already begun to resent the pecuniary 
 exactions of a lazy ecclesiastical order. The balance 
 of classes was no longer perfect. Most ominous of 
 all, society was no longer united in the acceptance 
 of a single ideal, dimly or grossly perceived by the 
 masses, finely by the elect, but substantially the same 
 for all. If, in the light of historical experience, we 
 look back upon the thirteenth century, we can trace 
 the germs of discord to come ; for every Present 
 must contain a Future in its womb. But in the 
 fourteenth century divisions were latent no longer, 
 but patent to all. Society was openly divided into 
 the two great parties, noble alike — that which clung 
 to something fine in the past, and that which aimed 
 at something fine in the future ; Memory animating 
 the one, Hope the other. 
 
 When the Jewish philosophers introduced the 
 commentaries of Averroes and the Arabians to the 
 philosophers of Christendom, and thereby gave sub- 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH 25 
 
 Stance to the nascent opposition of Nominalist and 
 Realist, they sowed the seed which was in due time 
 to produce that convulsed offspring — the Reform- 
 ation. By the middle of the fourteenth century the 
 fruit was already formed, though still far from ripe. 
 The Averroi'sts of the thirteenth century, William of 
 St. Amour and the rest, were succeeded in the four- 
 teenth by Wicklif, in the fifteenth by Huss, and in the 
 sixteenth by Luther. The Reformation was growing 
 all those 250 years. In the thirteenth century 
 religious ideas and ecclesiastical forms of expression 
 were in harmony together. After the thirteenth 
 century forms tended towards rigidity and the 
 Church lost plasticity. It then became certain that 
 an opposition must sooner or later arise between the 
 literalists and the spiritualists — the party of strict 
 adherence to the letter of the Church's custom, and 
 the party desirous of enlarging the spirit of Christian 
 doctrine. 
 
 For the student of art the fourteenth-century 
 spiritualists, or " mystics," are a specially interesting 
 group of men. The Gothic art of a century earlier 
 had been the art of an entire civilization, similar in 
 that respect to the arts of ancient Egypt, Assyria, 
 and Greece. But in the fourteenth century another 
 state of things prevailed. Local schools began to 
 show sharp lines of division. Local ideals reigned. 
 The finest of such local schools was that which 
 
26 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 flourished in the Rhine valley under the influence 
 of the mystic preachers. 
 
 The fourteenth century was in many respects an 
 awful day in Central Europe. War continually 
 scorched the land ; famines followed one another ; 
 scarcely was one pestilence past before a worse came 
 in its wake ; and when the folk looked to those who 
 should have comforted them with noble hopes, they 
 found them unclean, idle, and mainly concerned with 
 their own temporal welfare. Under such circum- 
 stances a small band of men arose, animated with a 
 new and attractive ideal. They demanded not so 
 much splendour of religious ceremonies and frequent 
 observance of religious forms as an inward purifica- 
 tion of the heart. Such were Meister Eckhardt (a 
 "profound pantheistic thinker"), Tauler, Suso, and 
 their fellows. They did not sunder themselves from 
 the Church, — the possibility of so doing had not yet 
 occurred to them, — but they protested openly against 
 the evils in the Church, the lewdness and luxury of 
 the clergy, and the growing formalism of the folk. 
 They did not urge their followers to penance, they 
 did not preach good works. They encouraged an 
 enthusiastic yearning of the soul after God, after 
 things unseen and not rationally conceivable, but 
 comprehended by faith. Holiness was the aim of 
 their teaching, and it was to be attained by an entire 
 self-surrender of the soul. 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 27 
 
 " The mystic," says Mr. Beard,^ " is one who claims 
 to be able to see God and Divine things with the 
 inner vision of the soul — a direct apprehension, as 
 the bodily eye apprehends colour, as the bodily ear 
 apprehends sound. His method, as far as he has 
 one, is simply contemplation : he does not argue, or 
 generalize, or infer ; he reflects, broods, waits for light. 
 He prepares for Divine communion by a process of 
 self-purification : he detaches his spirit from earthly 
 cares and passions : he studies to be quiet that his 
 still soul may reflect the face of God. He usually 
 sits loose to active duty : for him the felt presence 
 of God dwarfs the world and makes it common : he 
 is so dazzled by the glory of the one great object 
 of contemplation, that he sees and cares for little 
 else. . . . The mystic is always more or less indistinct 
 in utterance : he sees, or thinks he sees, more than 
 he can tell : the realities which he contemplates are 
 too vast, too splendid, too many-sided to be confined 
 within limits of human words. . . . Give a mystic 
 the thought of God, and his mind wants and can 
 contain no more : from a soul so filled, all peculi- 
 arities of ecclesiastical time and place drop away as 
 useless shell or indifferent garment. This is the 
 reason why the works of great mystics have always 
 been the world's favourite books of devotion." 
 
 The mystics of the Rhine valley, " Brethren of 
 * Hibbert Lectures. 
 
28 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 the Free Spirit," " Friends of God," and other the like 
 more or less secret fellowships, produced an imposing 
 effect. Large congregations came together to their 
 preaching. Its results were shown, not in a great 
 organized movement, but in individual lives, in the 
 growth of independent thought. A movement like 
 that which piled on high the great Gothic cathedrals 
 was as much social and political as it was religious. 
 No such monumental result could arise from the 
 humbler labours of the mystics. Their teaching 
 tended in a different direction. Pomp of ceremonial, 
 and all of doctrine and circumstance that it involved, 
 was discordant with their feelings. Increased fervour 
 of private devotion, the ecstasy of the individual soul 
 in the privacy of a chamber, was their aim. Any 
 help towards this they fostered ; whatever had no 
 such tendency received no encouragement from them. 
 The city of Koln was the centre of life of the 
 mystic fellowship, especially during the last part of 
 the fourteenth and the first part of the fifteenth 
 centuries. Here then are some noteworthy dates. 
 Koln Cathedral was founded about the beginning of 
 the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and its 
 enormous choir was finished about the end of the 
 first quarter of the fourteenth century. Then the 
 building activity slackened. Years went by, and 
 little was added to the pile. The architectural spirit, 
 with all that it implied, ceased in the town about 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 29 
 
 the time of the consecration of the choir. Turn to 
 the last half of the fourteenth century, and what 
 do we see ? No longer a building activity, but an 
 activity in painting. Meister Wilhelm and his 
 fellows are hard at work filling all the Rhine-land 
 with their pictures. That is the measure of the great 
 social, religious, and intellectual change, one of the 
 features of which was the prevalence and power of 
 mysticism. 
 
 In the Gothic age, as Wolfram's Parcival tells us, 
 the two chief centres of Northern painting were 
 Maastricht and Koln. Out of the Gothic school, from 
 these two centres, as power passed away from archi- 
 tecture to painting, there developed northwards the 
 Flemish school of the fifteenth century, and south- 
 wards the important schools of the Rhine valley, and 
 later of Franconia and Swabia. Now if the school 
 of Maastricht had left any considerable quantity of 
 remains, it would not be necessary in this place to 
 discuss the fortunes of the school of Koln ; as it is, 
 however, we can do little more now-a-days than 
 reason from the one to the other. All the Gothic 
 schools, though presenting clearly-marked local dis- 
 tinctions, grew out of a single ideal. The more 
 northerly school was more individual, laid more stress 
 upon character and expression than her sister on 
 the Rhine, but in all main features the two were 
 much alike and followed similar lines of dev^elopment. 
 
30 THE /USE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 'Moreover, as we shall see, in the fourteenth century- 
 most of the artists of the Low Countries were Germans 
 from the Rhine valley, so that it is advisable to preface 
 a study of the fifteenth-century Flemish artists with 
 at any rate some short general sketch of the earlier 
 school of Koln. Indeed, if we could begin by form- 
 ing some idea of the art of the Rhenish district in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, our conceptions 
 of what is to follow would be all the clearer. But 
 to do so we should have to inspect a number of far- 
 scattered objects, accessible only with difficulty to 
 the patient traveller. The fine enamels for the pro- 
 duction of which Koln craftsmen were famous all the 
 world over would have to be examined ; the pages 
 of many illuminated MSS. would have to be turned 
 over, and the fading remnants of wall and roof paint- 
 ings, such as those which decorate the churches of 
 Schwarzrheindorf and Brauweiler,* would have to be 
 hunted out. These works would have to be com- 
 pared with the sculptured adornments of the Roman- 
 esque and Gothic buildings erected in the same 
 period ; and thus, eventually, sight and sense would 
 be gained of the simplicity of style, the majesty of 
 conception, and the confidence of faith with which 
 Gothic artists went about their work. As the first 
 years of the fourteenth century were approached, the 
 progress of a change would be observed. Choosing, 
 * Copies in the Koln Museum. 
 
for example, of the newer work, the painted decora- 
 tions of the now ruined church of Ramersdorf* in the 
 Siebengcbirge, a new tendency would be apparent.. 
 Graceful flow of line has become the painter's aim 
 
 <m(^M^¥^'^M 
 
 The Women at the Sepulchre. Wiesenkirche at Soest. 
 Tliirleentli century. 
 
 in place of the old simplicity. Moreover, the human 
 type changes. The figures become more slender than 
 
 * They date from the end of the thirteenth century. There 
 are copies of them in the Berlin Print Room. 
 
32 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 of old ; the shoulders are made narrow, and the 
 bodies receive a peculiar bend. More important than 
 all this, a new fervour enters into the devotional 
 figures. There is no longer the same lack of self- 
 consciousness in the presence of the Deity, no longer 
 that perfect confidence in the Church's compact 
 between man and God. The individual now feels 
 that religion is an individual affair, and not a mere 
 matter of social organization. The next example of 
 the artistic productions of the day with which it 
 would be well to come in immediate contact, are the 
 wall-paintings on the screen round the choir of Koln 
 Cathedral. These were executed about 1322, that 
 is to say, just at the time when the building activity 
 flagged and the painting activity gained strength in 
 the Rhenish city. Architecture is still supreme in 
 these pictures. Figures and incidents are represented 
 Ike coloured sculptures under sculptured canopies. 
 But the architecture is complex and pictorial in 
 quality, whilst the figures are less monumental, and 
 show more of the litheness and grace of life. There 
 are inscriptions below them, and amongst the letters 
 are little grotesque figures ; but there is a difference 
 between the new and the old in this matter also. 
 The grotesque of the central Gothic epoch has a 
 largeness of vitality, an all-round reflection of life, 
 necessarily including some coarse elements. The 
 new grotesque is less all-sided, but in its restricted 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 33 
 
 Sphere it is nevertheless perfect, very different from 
 the gross and degraded conceptions of some of the 
 fourteenth-century sculptors and miniaturists in Eng- 
 land, France, and elsewhere. This Koln grotesque 
 is full of play and grace, pure of heart and felicitous 
 in fancy — a short-lived flower of art, tender and coy 
 like some half-hidden violet of the dell. 
 
 Standing in the choir of Koln, the student should 
 then raise his eyes to the clustered shafts which 
 support its lofty vault. Backed against them and 
 standing on brackets are a set of large statues of 
 apostles, sculptured between 1349 and 1361. Having 
 watched painting in the act of liberating itself from 
 the control of sculpture, it would now be interesting 
 to observe how sculpture is beginning to fall under 
 the power of painting. Not only were these figures 
 entirely painted over, — that had been the custom all 
 through the Gothic age, — but they were elaborately 
 painted. Their garments were covered with patterns 
 of much complexity and rich colour. ]\Iore import- 
 ant than this, the figures themselves have not the 
 repose of their forefathers ; they are all bent this way 
 and that. The attempt has been made to give them 
 animation. Their drapery too is broken up into 
 larger and more complex folds. All these things 
 show the direction in which art was developing. 
 The great age of architecture was passing away — the 
 great age of painting was at hand. 
 
34 TIJE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 With the year 1350 we approach the period of 
 Meister Wilhelm and his followers. Meister Wilhelm, 
 we call him, on the authority of a sentence in the old 
 Limbiirg Chronicle, which mentions his name in 
 connection with the year 1380, saying that Wilhelm 
 lived about this time, who " painted a man as though 
 he were alive." This reference is remarkable. It is 
 the only record of the existence of the greatest artist 
 of a great school ; but it is a record. It is a sign that 
 artists were going to emerge from the anonymous 
 state and to appear and attain fame as individuals. 
 The art of previous centuries had been a socialistic 
 art, an art of guilds and associations of men. The 
 new art was to become an expression of individual 
 feeling and individual skill. The words of the 
 Limburg Chronicle, of course, set archaeologists to 
 work, hunting amongst the archives of Koln, and the 
 result of their search is to prove this much — that 
 a certain Wilhelm, born at Herle near Koln, a 
 painter, bought a house in Koln in 1357, that he 
 seems to have attained a prominent position among 
 the citizens, and that he died about 1378. This 
 Wilhelm of Herle was probably the same as Meister 
 Wilhelm. It is customary to assign to him the best 
 works of the Koln school, which, from internal 
 evidence, we judge to belong to the period of his 
 activity ; but it must be remembered that we have no 
 documentary or other proof that definitely connects 
 
DISCARDED 
 
 The Annunciation. ^/. Clara Altar. Ascribed to Meister 
 
 WiLHELM. 
 
 D 
 
his name with any known existing picture, except 
 perhaps a ruined wall-painting at Koln. 
 
 The most extensive of the works ascribed to 
 Wilhelm is an altar in one of the apse chapels of 
 Koln Cathedral. It is called the St. Clara altar, from 
 the church for which it was originally painted. This 
 is the earliest important painting upon panel which 
 has come down to us from the school, and it is 
 visibly the work of a master hand. It manifests the 
 simplicity in drawing and composition, the rhythmic 
 flow of line, the tenderness of expression, the feeling 
 for beauty of countenance, which are characteristic of 
 the school. The altar consists of several panels 
 bearing representations of incidents in the life of 
 Christ. Here and there a sweet playfulness of heart 
 finds early expression in them ; as, for instance, 
 where the Virgin holds the Child in motherly fashion 
 over His bath, whilst Joseph pours water gently over 
 His tender skin. The story of the life of the infant 
 Jesus is told throughout like some idyllic tale of 
 childhood in a poem. 
 
 Several more pictures in the Koln Museum link 
 themselves with the St. Clara altar ; not indeed as 
 the work of the same individual, but as the work of 
 the same school and period, expressing, therefore, the 
 same sweet and mystical ideal. On a higher level 
 than the rest stands the beautiful ' Madonna with the 
 Bean-flower,' perhaps the best of all the works of the 
 
38 
 
 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 Koln School, and certainly one of the sweetest old 
 pictures in the world. It is always ascribed to Meister 
 Wilhelm, and though this attribution is uncertain like 
 
 The Madonna with the Bean-flower. Ascribed to Meister 
 Wilhelm. 
 
 the rest, yet it is more convenient to adhere to it 
 than not to have any simple designation for the great 
 artist who painted it. It may be grouped with two 
 other pictures, probably the work of the same hand. 
 
and both representing St. Veronica with the sweat- 
 cloth bearing the impress of the face of Christ, the one 
 being at Munich, the other in the National Gallery. 
 A 'Madonna with a Bean-flower' amongst the pic- 
 tures at Niirnberg likewise belongs to this group. 
 
 The Koln Madonna may be aptly used to illustrate 
 the ideal of the mystics and the effect it produced 
 upon art. In thirteenth-century sculptures and paint- 
 ings we generally find that the figures of Virgin 
 and Child are treated with great dignity as becomes 
 Divine beings. Already, however, before that century 
 had worn to a close, sculptures were made, such as 
 the Vierge doree of Amiens, in which the human 
 element is a definite factor, and the mother's delight 
 in her babe finds clear expression. The Koln 
 painters, however, went further. A first glance at the 
 ' Madonna with the Bean-flower ' shows the wide 
 difference that separates it from the dignified Gothic 
 works. It is addressed not to the thronging masses 
 of the folk, but to the individual worshipper. The 
 spectator will enjoy it best alone. Its place is not 
 over the high altar of a church, but in some oratory 
 of private devotion. It is a thing to be seen often 
 and contemplated long. This Virgin is not an 
 exalted queen, but an amiable and tender friend, 
 who attracts love rather than homage, and will return 
 the protection of love rather than the protection of 
 power. Clearly into this presence the worshipper 
 
40 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 must bring utter purity of heart. Fervour of devo- 
 tion will naturally be called forth by such an ideal 
 as this — higher in some respects, more restricted in 
 others, than that of the central Gothic epoch. 
 
 The religion of the thirteenth century was one for 
 ■free use at every moment of every day. It mingled 
 in and tended to sanctify every act of life. Barter 
 and sale, manufacture and war, alike presented their 
 religious aspect at that noble time. But if thereby 
 the actions of life seemed to receive a Divine sanction, 
 the ideals of faith tended also at times to be draggled 
 in the mire. As soon, at any rate, as the enthusiasm 
 of the Gothic faith lost some of its vitality, this 
 dragging down of religion became evident to the 
 more spiritually-minded, and a reaction arose against 
 it which produced the driving forth of the mystery 
 plays into the market-places, and other similar 
 changes. The movement of the mystics was a part 
 of this reaction. In one sense they sundered religion 
 from out-of-doors life. They sundered it in fact 
 though not in intention. They laid stress upon a 
 change of heart rather than on religious acts. They 
 put the great emphasis not on the outward functions 
 of the Church, but on the inward emotions of the 
 heart. The acts of life were indeed to manifest the 
 changed heart, but the change took place in the heart 
 alone, and was wrought in silence and privacy. Thus 
 private contemplation and private devotion were 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 41 
 
 raised to the first place, whilst public worship sank 
 to a lower level. The necessary worldliness and 
 pomp of ceremonial of the older and larger symbolic 
 religion were naturally distasteful to these fore- 
 runners of the Reformation. Hence the peculiar 
 type of this mystical Madonna. She clearly could 
 not be the Madonna of a German market-place. 
 This ideal could not be dragged down into the 
 handlings of the shop. The man inspired by her 
 could scarcely rise to be a great manager or leader of 
 men. He might be a sweet poet, an enthusiastic 
 teacher, even a pensive student, but he could scarcely 
 be a man of action, or, if he were, his hours of action 
 and of worship would be sharply sundered in spirit. 
 
 It would be easy to add a catalogue of pictures 
 more or less similar to this one, but our object here 
 is merely to draw forth the ideal from its material 
 expression, and for that purpose one example is as 
 good as many. Moreover, a class of pictures peculiar 
 to the Koln school, called ' Paradise Pictures,' claims 
 its share of attention. In the dreams of the mystics 
 the gardens of paradise were the home of a saintly 
 company, amongst whom the Virgin dwelt as queen. 
 Dorothy and Cecilia, Catherine and Barbera, and 
 many another virgin saint, were thought of by these 
 gentle-hearted folk as the sweet handmaidens of the 
 Virgin, the fairest and the purest amongst the fair 
 and pure. Their home was no place of stately 
 
42 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 solemnity and rigid rule, but a bright and happy 
 garden, where, there being no impurity, there was 
 nothing but joy and brightness and peace in the 
 everlasting day. Flowers blossomed on every hand, 
 and they plucked them in basketsful for the beautiful 
 Infant of their love. They could sit down and talk 
 together in the bright meadows, and never a cloud 
 darkened the sky, never a cold wind blew, never a 
 scorching ray annoyed, but always gentle light and 
 murmuring breezes made fair sights and sounds 
 wherever they went. So in the Koln pictures of the 
 fourteenth century Mother and Child are always 
 happy together, and conscious of each other's joy. 
 The Babe in the ' Madonna with the Bean-flower ' 
 strokes the Virgin's face and looks up at her. The 
 Virgin is always filled with a peace that has known 
 no breaking ; and her maidens are like her. Their 
 hearts are perfect. The spirit of their home is the 
 spirit of their lives. Their actions are thus always 
 free and unconstrained, yet they are in perfect 
 harmony, each with the other, and all with the wishes 
 of their Queen. 
 
 There exist a considerable number of Paradise pic- 
 tures ; it will suffice then if a few are chosen as repre- 
 sentatives of the rest. A little winged picture at Berlin * 
 is perhaps the earliest which has come down to us. 
 It is very like the works ascribed to Meister Wilhelm, 
 * Phot. Berlin Photographic Co. 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 43 
 
 and certainly belongs to his school and period. Here 
 the Virgin and four female saints are seated upon a 
 flowery meadow, the naked Child upon the Mother's 
 lap playing with the flowers which Dorothy offers Him 
 out of her dainty flower-basket. Catherine holds out 
 a purse towards Him, as though she wanted a flower 
 put into it. Barbera and Margaret sit by contentedly 
 looking on. It is instructive to compare this picture 
 with one of the Gothic altars of a century before, speci- 
 mens* of which may be seen in the Koln Museum. 
 In the earlier work the dignity of the Gothic faith and 
 the consequent restraint of the architectural feeling 
 which it nurtured reign supreme. Each figure stands 
 under its own niche and holds its own emblem. The 
 emblems mark the individuals in place of a name, 
 and each individual represents some definite aspect of 
 the perfect life. How different is the Koln artist's 
 treatment of his theme ! Take, for instance, the 
 figure of Dorothy, and test it by her legend. f 
 
 Dorothy was a noble maiden of Cappadocia, fair 
 and pious. When condemned to death for her faith 
 she said, " Be it so ; the sooner shall I stand in the 
 presence of Him whom I most desire to behold, the 
 Son of God, Christ mine espoused ! His dwelling is 
 Paradise; by His side are joys eternal, and in His 
 
 * Phot. Crefeld (formerly Raps) of Koln. 
 t Compressed from Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary 
 Art. 
 
44 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 garden grow celestial fruits and roses that never fade." 
 On her way to martyrdom a youth, named Theophilus, 
 called to her mockingly, '* Ha ! fair maiden, goest 
 thou to join thy bridegroom ? Send me, I pray thee, 
 of the fruits and flowers of that same garden of which 
 thou hast spoken : I would fain taste of them ! " And 
 Dorothy, looking on him, inclined her head with a 
 gentle smile, and said, "Thy request, O Theophilus, is 
 granted." Whereat he laughed aloud. When she 
 came to the place of execution she knelt down and 
 prayed ; and suddenly appeared at her side a beau- 
 tiful boy, with hair bright as sunbeams. In his hand 
 he held a basket containing three apples and three 
 fresh-gathered and fragrant roses. She said to him, 
 " Carry these to Theophilus ; say that Dorothea hath 
 sent them, and that I go before him to the garden 
 whence they came, and await him there." And the 
 angel went to seek Theophilus, and found him still in 
 merry mood about Dorothy's promise. . And he set 
 before him the basket of celestial fruit and flowers, 
 saying, " Dorothea sends thee these," and so vanished. 
 And thereupon Theophilus was struck with wonder 
 and became converted, and presently sealed his faith 
 with his blood. 
 
 Gothic painters were satisfied when they had repre- 
 sented a fair maiden with a flower-basket in her hand 
 as symbol of the legend. But the artist of the mystic 
 school felt freer to treat things in the light of his 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 47 
 
 fancy. He took the old symbols and made playthings 
 of them. Dorothy, in the garden of Paradise, does 
 not merely hold her basket as a symbol ; it becomes 
 the toy of the celestial Babe. The old dignity is thus 
 indeed destroyed, but a new and charming freedom 
 takes its place. The new art is indeed smaller and 
 more individual. It docs not address a thronged city 
 of worshippers, symbolizing (where it cannot express) 
 the full- toned chord of their united worship in word 
 and work. It is an art intended for the chamber, an 
 art that becomes eloquent only to the prepared mind, 
 an art of the hour and place of private devotion, when 
 the devout soul has shut out the world and brought 
 itself face to face with its invisible ideal. It is, in fact, 
 the art of a religion of fancy rather than of a religion 
 fit for the use of common men in a world of work. 
 
 The feeling which the Berlin picture so plainly 
 shows could not fail to attain a more developed 
 expression. Frankfurt possesses a little panel which 
 gives evidence of this development. Instead of a 
 flowery meadow it shows a garden walled about, the 
 golden background being thus reduced to a small 
 area. There are fruit trees and beds of flowers in 
 the garden and a fountain of running water. Tame 
 birds perch upon walls and twigs in fearless happiness. 
 It is Dorothy's garden again, for Dorothy was an espe- 
 cial favourite with the mystic artists, — Dorothy and 
 Cecilia and Elizabeth of Hungary for difl"erent reasons. 
 
4S THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 The Virgin sits on a bank of flowers, reading with 
 devout deHght in some holy book. There is a table 
 by her side, with a napkin and fruit upon it. Her 
 little Boy sits before her on the grass playing on 
 Cicely's cithern. Dorothy gathers cherries from a 
 tree, and another saint drinks from the fountain. 
 Gabriel and two young knightly saints, George and 
 Maurice perhaps, are in one corner of the place, and 
 they have a monkey with them for their amusement, 
 after the fashion of young gentlemen ^of the day. 
 Everything is refined and courtly, for this is the 
 garden of the Court of Heaven, whither the Queen 
 goes forth after the banquet to divert herself with her 
 maids and pages of honour. 
 
 More famous than this picture is the Madonna in 
 Koln Museum ascribed to Meister Stephan ; but 
 there a new humanizing element is seen, working in 
 through the medium of Flemish influence. Another 
 no less beautiful Paradise picture is at Darmstadt 
 in the palace of Prince Karl. The perfect freedom 
 of the idyllic atmosphere did not last very long. 
 The figures gradually became more individual and 
 characteristic, at the same time drawing back into 
 something of the old reserve. Thus in a Madonna 
 at Berlin,* painted under the influence of Meister 
 Stephan, the relations between the different saints 
 are not so close and unrestrained as before. There 
 * Phot. Berlin Photographic Company. 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 49 
 
 is formality in the surroundings, and the figures lack 
 unity of occupation. Barbara alone has anything 
 
 The Madonna. Koln Muscinn. Ascribed to Meistek Stephan. 
 
 to do with the Virgin and Child, and her action 
 is confined to the formal offering of a pink, the 
 
50 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH 
 
 symbol of friendship. Into this picture a family of 
 donors is introduced — a beautiful series of portraits 
 — but they have the effect of removing the subject 
 from the land of poetry and dreams and bringing 
 it down to earth. The picture is very lovely both 
 in idea and execution ; it is better drawn than the 
 earlier works, though perhaps not so well coloured, 
 and it is painted on a larger scale ; but though 
 beautiful, and perhaps in its own way quite as 
 beautiful as the Paradise pictures, it enshrines a new 
 ideal, and proves that the power of mysticism was 
 fading out of art within fifty years of Wilhelm's 
 death. 
 
 Still the Koln painters retained for some decades 
 much of the sweetness which the Mystics' ideal had 
 taught them. They were the first, and for a long 
 time they were the only, school of artists, who, under 
 the name of incidents in the life of Christ, painted 
 those charming pictures of sweet family life which 
 still delight every spectator. About the year 1480 
 there was a painter working at or near Koln, who, 
 his own name having gone into forgetfulness, has 
 been cursed with the clumsy denomination, " Master 
 of the Lyversberg Passion," because he painted the 
 famous altar-piece once in the Lyversberg Collection 
 and now in the Museum at Koln. A little panel 
 by him at Niirnberg represents the Birth of the 
 Virgin in so sweet and tender a fashion that it can 
 
 "Ti x:^':^ c>. 
 
 Q.^ 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 51 
 
 hardly have ever been surpassed. The figures are 
 very human ; the costumes and surroundings are 
 those of the upper classes at the time ; but the 
 tenderness of sentiment — where the new-born babe 
 turns round to bless its mother — rises above the level 
 of every-day life into the region of poetic thought, 
 and this quality was an inheritance which the painter 
 received from those forerunners of his who yielded 
 themselves willingly to the influence of the " Brethren 
 of the Free Spirit" and the " Friends of God." 
 
 Mysticism maintained itself longer in the Low 
 Countries, the birth-place of its noblest product, 
 the Imitatio Christi ; but there, as we shall see, it 
 did not affect the development of art. That devel- 
 opment was directed by the stout merchants and 
 craftsmen of the most practical country in the 
 then world. Nevertheless, quite at the end of the 
 fifteenth century, the old Paradise picture reappeared 
 there once more, and had a short-lived currency. A 
 Madonna * by Gerard David, now at Munich, is the 
 best example of this singular revival. The landscape 
 all about it is modern, and the costumes are modern, 
 but the spirit of the thing is the spirit of Meister 
 Wilhelm and his gentle followers. 
 
 The Paradise pictures have taken us away from 
 the direct line of development, to which swift return 
 must now be made. Meister Wilhelm died, and 
 
 * Phot. Hanfstangl. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 anonymous painters arose in his place and carried 
 his art to further technical completeness. The finest 
 production of this second generation of artists is the 
 famous Madonna in the Archiepiscopal Museum at 
 Koln.* There the Virgin, larger than human, stands 
 upon flowery turf, with the diminutive Elizabeth of 
 Reichenstein, donoress of the picture, kneeling at 
 her feet. Angels look happily over and support 
 a curtain behind, while the Most High, the Dove, 
 and a group of singing angels appear in the blue 
 sky. The Virgin is sweet as she of the bean-flower, 
 but with a more human sweetness ; the Child is no 
 other than a human babe, dressed in a little em- 
 broidered garment such as mothers love. There is 
 a larger sweep in the drapery than of yore, and its 
 form is modern. Then again the sky is not gold, 
 but blue. The gold of the old backgrounds has 
 taken refuge in the pattern of the damask hanging. 
 The picture was painted about the year 1425 (to 
 judge by the donor's apparent age), some half-century, 
 that is to say, after Wilhelm's death. Changes had 
 been taking place in the ideal of the Koln artists, 
 though not very rapidly. The architectural element 
 is gone from the design, the symbolical element is 
 fast going. The donor of the picture is represented 
 by her own portrait, not by the figure of her patron 
 saint. On the other hand, most of the essential 
 * Well reproduced by the Arundel Society. 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 53 
 
 qualities of sweetness remain ; some are even in- 
 creased in force. The Child is the infant of the 
 Paradise pictures, more lovely here than ever ; the 
 angels are his frolicsome little playfellows — incar- 
 nations of brightness and grace. The painter of 
 the picture is by some considered to be Meister 
 Stephan, with whom we shall hereafter have to deal. 
 To me it seems the work of a mature artist of the 
 generation intervening between Meister Wilhelm 
 and him. 
 
 Few, if any, schools of art have produced, even at 
 their height of power, a series of works in none of 
 which is there a jarring touch. Usually, even in the 
 works of great artists, we find some detail somewhere 
 which is out of keeping with the rest. But even 
 the second-rate artists of the Koln school in the 
 fourteenth century are wholly true. They paint like 
 men whose minds dwell uninterruptedly in one 
 atmosphere of perfect repose. They know nothing 
 about competition, they are not anxious for personal 
 renown, they never sign their names or declare their 
 presence, they are not in a hurry, they have no 
 eagerness after originality, they are careless about 
 novelties, they ask for no earthly immortality, they 
 are content with their station in life and the world 
 in which they live, they are satisfied with the simple 
 food and clothing they receive, and as for fame they 
 look for a higher reward than that, when one day 
 
54 THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 
 
 they shall enter into the very land they loved to 
 picture, and the words of their greeting will be, " Well 
 done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the 
 joy of thy Lord." 
 
 To modern eyes there may be something bounded 
 and even mean in such work as this of the gentle 
 artists of Koln. In our day every one wants to be 
 rich, to possess as fine things, to dwell in as fine a 
 house, to live in as splendid a style, as his neighbour. 
 Hence results horrible misery of competition which 
 has invaded society in what are called civilized 
 countries, destroying all power of restful thought, 
 and rendering odious to many that ancient ideal of 
 a " peace that passeth understanding," which was 
 nothing more than a foresight of the perfection of 
 what already in their hearts men partially experienced. 
 We have already travelled a long distance since the 
 days of Meister Wilhelm. We have learnt many 
 things and made many inventions which would have 
 frightened his simple heart. But perhaps here and 
 there in the backwaters of life there may be found 
 even to-day one and another pure and peace-loving 
 soul, to whom it will seem not impossible that all the 
 science, the philosophy, the history, the inventions 
 and discoveries made from that day to this, a mere 
 drop as they are, not worth counting in the infinite 
 ocean of the unknown, have been hardly purchased 
 by the loss of that holy and restful ideal which 
 
THE RISE OF PAINTING IN THE NORTH. 55 
 
 enabled Meister Wilhelm, and doubtless many more 
 in his day, to live in unruffled peace of mind, satisfied 
 with this world, and joyous in anticipation of a better 
 which was certain to come. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 Long before the fifteenth century, the blossoming 
 period of Flemish art, the provinces of Flanders and 
 Brabant were famous for their wealth throughout all 
 Europe. Already in the thirteenth century a queen of 
 France could say with disgust that the wives of the 
 burghers of Ghent were as rich and as splendidly 
 bejewelled as herself. This wealth the people of 
 the Low Countries owed partly to the geographical 
 situation of their land, but chiefly to their own 
 national character. Part of their country was a re- 
 deemed swamp, which none but a hardy race could 
 have chosen for a home. The energy which enabled 
 them to beat back the ever-threatening sea was not 
 likely to be satisfied with that conquest alone. An 
 amphibious race, their ships soon found a way to 
 an ever-widening circle of distant ports. Commerce 
 came naturally to them, for their country was situated 
 at one end of the trans-European trade-route which 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 57 
 
 led from Bruges to Venice, and thus linked England 
 and the Baltic ports with the cities of the Levant and 
 the distant East. But the burghers of Flanders were 
 not only carriers, they were makers too. They were 
 the weavers of Europe. Their ships brought them 
 raw wool, shorn from the backs of the sheep of the 
 Surrey downs, and these fleeces they wove into gold. 
 The Woolsack, upon which the Lord Chancellor still 
 sits, was symbolic of the wealth of England ; the 
 Golden Fleece, which Duke Philip the Good chose 
 as emblem of the order of chivalry founded by him 
 at Bruges, was symbolic of the industry of the Low 
 Countries. The history of the period with which we 
 are concerned is really the history of the Woolsack 
 and its Golden Fleeces. 
 
 The Bruges of to-day presents few signs of its 
 ancient splendour. Its public buildings have been 
 either battered or entirely removed, and of the 
 palaces of its merchant princes, the finest examples 
 of domestic architecture out of Italy, all have disap- 
 peared except two. In the fifteenth century buyers 
 and sellers from every land resorted to Bruges for 
 their trade. The merchant of Venice and the Jew 
 of Lombard Street encountered one another on her 
 quays and in her exchanges. Sailors and traders" 
 from all parts of the world made her streets lively 
 with the varied colouring of their bright costumes. 
 They came and went, and each left something behind 
 
58 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 him. The wealth of England met the wealth of 
 the East in the market-halls of Bruges. The repre- 
 sentatives of twenty foreign princes dwelt within the 
 walls of this capital of the Dukes of Burgundy, at 
 the cross-roads of the highways of the earth. In 
 those days, says Mr. Weale, "the squares" of Bruges 
 ** were adorned with fountains ; its bridges with statues 
 in bronze ; the public buildings and many of the 
 private houses with statuary and carved work, the 
 beauty of which was heightened and brought out by 
 gilding and polychrome ; the windows were rich with 
 storied glass, and the walls of the interiors adorned 
 with paintings in distemper, or hung with gorgeous 
 tapestry. If but little of all this now remains, it 
 must be borne in mind that, during the past three 
 centuries, Bruges has seen its works of art exported 
 by Spaniards, destroyed (when not sold) by Calvinist 
 iconoclasts and French revolutionists, and carried off 
 by picture-dealers of all nations." 
 
 Ghent, Louvain, Mechlin, Ypres, and several other 
 neighbouring towns, were vast manufacturing centres. 
 Louvain could muster 150,000 men, amongst whom 
 no fewer than 4000 were master weavers employing 
 from thirty to forty hands. The suburbs of the town 
 were crowded. At Ghent the weavers' guild alone 
 numbered 40,000 members. The city could turn out 
 an equipment of 80,000 men. Day by day the great 
 bell summoned the workmen to their tasks, and the 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 6i 
 
 surging crowd that hurried forth rendered the streets 
 impassable. Life in such towns flowed in no gentle 
 current. It was impassioned. Civic feeling was in- 
 tense. The token of a town's freedom and individuality 
 was the belfry tower. Many of these towers remain, 
 looking down in their hoary age upon the withered 
 glory whose blossoming they beheld. Like some 
 human being in a second childhood, they prattle 
 aimlessly of the past, and at the old stated intervals 
 some of them still chime forth the notes which once 
 summoned the throng of thousands to their daily 
 toil, or dismissed them at evening to their rest. Now 
 no multitude listens to their call, but the hoarding of 
 the bill-poster echoes it back in irreverent scorn. 
 
 The close knitting together of religious, social, 
 and political life, which characterized the middle-ages 
 throughout Europe, is very plainly exemplified by 
 the organization of industry in the Flemish com- 
 mercial centres. Going back beyond the limit of 
 precise knowledge about social history, it is clear 
 that, in very early days, when industries began once 
 more to raise their heads after the anarchic period of 
 the barbarian invasions, the workers in some places 
 joined themselves together, by a loose kind of bond, 
 for religious and social purposes. In time all the 
 men engaged in a trade, or in two or three connected 
 trades, were thus linked together into confraternities, 
 the intention of which was often purely religious, the 
 
62 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 members being bound to be present at the funeral 
 of any one of them, to pray for his soul, to attend 
 certain anniversaries, and so forth. These religious 
 services were no doubt often followed by social 
 gatherings ; at any rate the bond once formed was 
 not slow to develop. It was the time when every one 
 had to struggle for his rights ; when citizens were 
 wresting charters of self-government from their feudal 
 lords, and when every industry had to resist pillage 
 from all quarters. In this lengthy struggle men 
 with common interests had to stand shoulder to 
 shoulder for their common weal. Thus all the 
 workers at one trade fought together to obtain 
 favourable conditions for their work ; and so, by 
 action, the society or guild, as it was called, became 
 strong. The guilds of a town presently included 
 most of the intelligent citizens. Community of 
 interest forced them to unite together against the 
 feudal lord. From this union of the guilds sprang 
 municipal government, the guild becoming the poli- 
 tical unit. Thus guilds represented the three sides 
 of mediaeval life, and were at once social, political, 
 and religious institutions. 
 
 For a self-governing municipality certain buildings 
 were necessary. A belfry was the first requirement, 
 and in early days its various storeys served for prison, 
 magisterial court, and record office. But as the 
 requirements of a growing town increased, a town- 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 63 
 
 hall had to be added to the tower. The oldest 
 existing belfry is that at Tournay, whilst the finest 
 is the famous tower of Ghent over which swings the 
 Golden Dragon famed in story. The first of the fine 
 town-halls was that at Bruges ; it served as model 
 for the still more elaborate edifice at Brussels, from 
 which again the town-halls at Louvain and Audenarde 
 were freely imitated. In addition to a belfry and a 
 town-hall for governmental purposes, and of churches 
 for religious purposes, two kinds of public buildings 
 were still required, — namely, market-halls for the sale 
 of various commodities, especially cloth, and guild- 
 halls for the several trade guilds. Of cloth-halls 
 the finest existing is the noble structure at Ypres, 
 which was erected in the best age of architecture, and 
 is one of the most splendid municipal buildings in 
 the world. It is no longer required for its ancient 
 purpose, and to-day serves as H6tel-de-ville. The 
 Market-hall connected with the belfry at Bruges is 
 likewise a famous building, striking now-a-days as a 
 monument of the city's former importance.* 
 
 The guild-halls unfortunately exist in very small 
 numbers now. Traces of some of them can be found 
 buried in the midst of modern plaster ; as, for 
 example, the Maison des Charpentiers at Antwerp. 
 In Ghent two very fine guild-halls are fortunately 
 
 * See articles on Belgian Civic Architecture in the Portfolio^ 
 Nov. and Dec. 1884. 
 
64 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 preserved, but even they are only battered specimens, 
 and presumably could not compare with the splendidly- 
 built and sumptuously-furnished houses which were the 
 pride of the more wealthy corporations. Amongst the 
 five hundred palaces of marble or hammered stone, 
 burnt at Antwerp in the days of the Spanish Fury, 
 many no doubt were guild-halls. But our interest now 
 is not so much with the buildings themselves as the 
 institutions they were raised to house. Guilds in the 
 fifteenth century, whatever their first origin may have 
 been, consisted of two classes, according as they were 
 chartered or unchartered. The unchartered guilds 
 were voluntary associations of men and women under 
 the patronage of some saint, usually for a religious 
 purpose. Such, for example, was the Confraternity 
 of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows founded at Bruges, 
 the members of which possessed a chapel in the 
 cathedral, paid a certain contribution in support of 
 religious services held within it, bound themselves 
 to fulfil stated religious duties, and participated in 
 the spiritual advantages which this piety merited. 
 Such confraternities were often formed for charitable 
 purposes, supporting perhaps a hospital, or relieving 
 the sick and the destitute. Sometimes they were of 
 the nature of benefit or burial societies. At all 
 events they were very numerous and multiform. 
 There were also shooting societies, or clubs of men- 
 at-arms, the members of which met together pretty 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 65 
 
 frequently, and indulged in sport and social inter- 
 course. The three great shooting- places at Antwerp 
 were important sights of the town, and when Diirer 
 was staying there he tells of his being taken to 
 see them. Equally numerous throughout the Low 
 Countries were the guilds of the Rhetoricians. They 
 were associations of artisans for purposes of amuse- 
 ment. The members composed lengthy poems which 
 they recited to their society, and every year meetings 
 were held in this or the other town to which dele- 
 gates were sent from all the country round. Dramatic 
 and musical exhibitions were also an important part 
 of their business. These guilds of Rhetoric in fact 
 performed many of the functions of the modern 
 periodical press, they attained considerable political 
 influence, and the Government, being unable to sup- 
 press them, did what it could to secure their help 
 by flattery. 
 
 The chartered guilds were, however, the most 
 influential. No man could work for pay in a town 
 unless he were a citizen free of the town. Moreover, 
 he was not allowed to exercise a trade unless he 
 belonged to the guild of that trade. It was only as a 
 member of a chartered guild that a workman occupied 
 a recognized and stable position. In the socialist- 
 ically-constructed middle-ages independent units 
 were regarded with little favour. Every man had to 
 join a recognized association before he could secure 
 
66 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 his rights, and every association not only conferred 
 rights but exacted the fulfilment of duties. The 
 guild entered into, and influenced, every relation of 
 the workman's life, and it is impossible to discuss 
 any subject connected with mediaeval industry without 
 considering the guilds. Painting, to the mediaeval 
 mind, was a craft like any other, and was therefore 
 organized in the usual way. A painter did not look 
 upon himself and was not regarded as a person 
 superior to ordinary discipline. It is only in times of 
 decay that artists give themselves airs, and require to 
 be considered in a Bohemian category of their own. 
 In the great ages of art painters lived like other 
 craftsmen, and were paid for the work they did 
 according to a fair scale of remuneration. They 
 lived simply, working unobtrusively and hard, and 
 their work was first of all good, and next beautiful. 
 That at any rate was the intention which the painters' 
 guilds had in view — to secure good and honest work 
 on the one hand, and to secure just and prompt 
 payment for it on the other. The guild, therefore, 
 first of all intervened in the education of the youthful 
 artist. The lad had to be bound apprentice for a 
 series of years to a recognized master of the craft, 
 who from that day forward stood to him very much 
 in the relation of parent to child. The master was 
 responsible for the apprentice's education, moral and 
 technical. The boy lived under his roof, served him 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 67 
 
 at table, and about the house, and had to fulfil his 
 bidding in all respects. The master, on the other 
 hand, was bound to give him instruction in all matters 
 connected with his craft. The methods of painting 
 in those days included a numerous series of processes. 
 The artist had to know how to prepare his panel, and 
 what should be the nature and quality of the wood. 
 Next, he had to be able to prepare and lay on the 
 coating of fine plaster or gesso which formed the 
 ground upon which the colours were laid. The 
 evenness of this coating and the firmness with which 
 it adhered to the wood, were important for the 
 durability of the picture. Further, he had to know 
 how to make every implem.ent and every colour he 
 wanted, for there were no artist's material shops in 
 those days. Neither the method of tempera, nor the 
 improved method of the Van Eycks, in which varnish 
 was used as a medium for laying on all the surface 
 colours, was a simple process. Moreover, the pre- 
 paration of oils and varnishes required no small 
 dexterity. Further, when engraving upon wood and 
 copper-plate was invented, artists were at first ex- 
 pected to be able to design for the wood-cutter, and 
 perhaps themselves on occasion to engrave a wood- 
 block, and this involved a further knowledge of tools 
 and processes, including some dexterity with the 
 printing press. Moreover, any artist might be called 
 
 upon to make a drawing, and that was in a day when 
 
 F 2 
 
68 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 cheap lead pencils did not exist. He might have 
 to work with the silver-point, and then his paper 
 required special preparation, which he had to give it 
 with his own hand ; or he might work in chalk or 
 charcoal, and the selection of materials had then to 
 be done by himself; there was no dealer to do it for 
 him, unless the guild stepped in, as we shall see it 
 sometimes did. The difference between ancient 
 and modern artists is thus very great. The modern 
 student has only to go to a shop, buy what his 
 master tells him, and then learn to use it. The 
 student in old days had to know how to make 
 whatever he required. Certain colours indeed, like 
 ultramarine which came from Venice and brick-red 
 made in Flanders, could be bought ; but artists had 
 to know exactly what they wanted, and to be able to 
 discriminate accurately for themselves between good 
 and bad materials. There was no go-between to 
 undertake the task of selection for them. 
 
 With so much to learn, a lad had a good five years' 
 work before him when he commenced his apprentice- 
 ship, though in some towns the period was only three 
 years ; it varied according to the locality. If the 
 master was an artist of real power, and the apprentice 
 a lad capable of reverence, it is hard to imagine any 
 arrangement better suited for enabling the one to 
 bring his influence more powerfully to bear upon the 
 other, and thus to secure greater permanence, and a 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 69 
 
 better chance of expression, even after his own death, 
 for the ideas that perhaps his technical skill had not 
 been sufficient to formulate in works of art ; and for 
 enabling the other to enrich his youthful and enthusi- 
 astic mind with seeds of thought and high ambitions 
 beyond the power of his years. To take one instance 
 out of many ; how much did Giotto owe to Cimabue 
 over and above the meagre technical methods he 
 learnt from him ? How many of the high ideals and 
 noble conceptions embodied in the pupil's work years 
 after the master's death, nevertheless owed their 
 origin to the large heart and penetrating intellect 
 of that master ? In the diaries and autobiographical 
 sketches which Diirer has left us, we gain clearer 
 glimpses than almost anywhere else into the inner 
 life of a northern artist. He does not say much 
 about his pupil days, except that his father delighted 
 in him because he was diligent in trying to learn, 
 and that in the workshop of his master Wolgemut, 
 he had much to suffer from his fellow-apprentices. 
 No doubt in those rough days a sensitive lad would 
 not find his 'prentice days very easy, especially if he 
 were one among several high-spirited boys. In that 
 fashion, however, he had to gather his learning to- 
 gether, and results prove it to have been no very 
 bad fashion either. 
 
 Apprenticeship ended, the youth emerged not yet 
 a full artist, but a journeyman. He could now work 
 
70 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 for pay under any master he chose, and in some 
 towns there were guilds of journeymen, though of 
 course such guilds were not among the chartered 
 bodies, and must not be confused with the regularly- 
 organized painters* guilds with which we are now 
 dealing. During his years of journeymanship the 
 young craftsman frequently, I believe generally, went 
 away from home and wandered to various towns, 
 working everywhere for hire, and at the same time 
 gathering experience of men and an enlarged know- 
 ledge of the various methods of his craft as practised 
 in different localities. For an artist these years of 
 wandering were of great value. He came in contact 
 with a wider range of subjects than his own town 
 could have supplied to him ; he saw the master-pieces 
 of many great painters ; his eye was cultivated, and 
 his hand, already disciplined to perfect obedience, was 
 able to give permanent form to whatever struck him 
 as worthy of note. Diirer probably went to Venice in 
 his years of wandering, and at all events he travelled 
 up the valley of the Rhine. This journey produced a 
 marked effect upon him. Everywhere he had nature 
 before him, and he studied her face with all the enthu- 
 siasm of youth in novel surroundings. He was away 
 from parents and home for four years, about the usual 
 duration of the period of journeymanship. At the 
 end of that time any youth of ordinary industry and 
 ability was in a position to take his stand as a com- 
 
GUILD SYSTEM A^fD ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 71 
 
 patent workman, fully prepared and educated in all 
 the foundation principle of his craft, and with eye 
 and hand practised to fulfil the bidding of the mind. 
 
 After giving proof of his abilities to the satisfaction 
 of the appointed officers of the guild, the workman 
 was now, upon payment of certain fixed fees, raised 
 to the status of a master of the craft. He had to 
 take solemn oaths of honesty, and to promise that 
 his work should be done as in the sight of God. 
 Henceforward he was a man ; his status was fixed. 
 He had a vote along with his fellows for the appoint- 
 ment of the officers of the guild, and he had his share 
 in the property of the guild. His duties and rights 
 were definite. At this time also it was customary 
 for him to take a wife. His years of roving were at 
 an end ; he was now to become a citizen and a house- 
 holder. But he was no more free as a master than 
 he had been before as apprentice or journeyman. 
 The guild, through its appointed officers, still con- 
 tinued to watch over his work. He was not allowed 
 to use any except recognized materials and tools. 
 If bad materials were found by the guild inspectors 
 in his possession, they were destroyed and he was 
 fined. He had to work according to the best known 
 methods, and any instances of scamping brought to 
 the knowledge of the authorities were rigorously 
 punished. The guild again stood between him and 
 his customers. Every contract he entered into had 
 
72 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 to be registered in the company's books. His 
 finished work had to be valued by the appointed 
 officers, and if the price had been settled in advance 
 they were called upon to state whether the work 
 came up to the standard contracted for. In case 
 of a dispute between the artist and his employer the 
 guild officers were called in to settle it, and to see 
 that an honest bargain was honestly fulfilled. When 
 an artist bought raw materials he had to bring them 
 to be approved ; when he bought tools he had to 
 bring them to be marked with the sign of the guild. 
 I remember a regulation of a certain guild of leather- 
 workers, which provided that if any member was 
 fortunate enough to acquire a lot of leather of more 
 than ordinary excellence, he was bound to hand over 
 half of it to the guild at the price he paid for it, so 
 that his fellows might share his good fortune. This 
 was a perfectly fair arrangement, because the moiety 
 of luck which a man lost on one occasion was returned 
 to him in fractions from the luck of his companions. 
 Very likely similar regulations were enforced by 
 painters' guilds. The guild, at all events in many 
 places, acted as wholesale buyer, and retailed to its 
 members at wholesale prices the materials they 
 required for their work. But guild members were 
 not restricted to purchasing from the guild alone. 
 It was only when a favourable chance of buying a 
 large quantity of materials occurred that the guild 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART 73 
 
 Stepped in, and the members could share in the good 
 fortune if they pleased. The various painters* guilds 
 of the Low Countries were federated together by a 
 loose sort of bond. At stated intervals delegates 
 from all the guilds in the country met in some town 
 or other, and spent a few days in social intercourse, 
 discussing matters of common interest, and no doubt 
 at such meetings new methods and improvements 
 discovered in one part of the country were made 
 known to the representatives of men working in other 
 districts. The remarkable uniformity in types and 
 processes used all over the Low Countries, which 
 would otherwise be difficult of explanation, was 
 doubtless due to this periodical meeting. 
 
 As the workman advanced in fame and in the 
 confidence of his companions he became liable to 
 election as an officer of the guild, and if elected 
 he was obliged to serve. His duty might then be 
 to collect the contributions of the members, not only 
 those levied by the guild for its own purposes, but 
 the taxes levied by the town and the State, for all of 
 which the guild was responsible. Or he might be 
 appointed to value work done, or to inspect the tools 
 and materials used by the members. Large sacrifices 
 of time might be required for these services, and the 
 only reward given for them was the dignity pertaining 
 to the position and the influence it carried with it, 
 A guild officer was a man of consideration in a town. 
 
74 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 The relations which the different guilds bore, one 
 to another, were defined by law. Certain superior 
 guilds interfered directly in the government of the 
 town, whilst others did not ; and this distinction gave 
 rise at one time to serious local disorders. Another 
 question not settled without much litigation related 
 to the crafts allowed to be exercised by the members 
 of a guild. It occasionally happened that two guilds 
 claimed the exclusive right of a certain kind of work. 
 As a rule, the work which belonged to the members of 
 one guild was forbidden to members of all the others. 
 For example, there were separate guilds at Bruges for 
 painters and illuminators. Painters were not allowed 
 to make miniatures, and miniaturists were forbidden 
 to paint pictures. The Guild of St. Luke included 
 painters, saddlers, glass-makers, and mirror-makers ; 
 that of St. John illuminators, calligraphers, binders, 
 and imagiers. This division seems unnatural, but if 
 we follow the history of the thing back to early times 
 it is readily explained. The illuminators' guild was 
 of much later date than that of the painters. Even 
 before the illuminators were enrolled into a guild at 
 Bruges, it was decided by a law-suit that illuminators 
 might only use water-colours, and that the making of 
 pictures in oil-colours, or with gold and silver, was 
 the exclusive right of members of the corporation of 
 painters. 
 
 The only exception to this rule was in the case 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 75 
 
 of an artist in the direct employ of the Sovereign. 
 He was allowed to do any work that might be 
 demanded of him without being called upon to make 
 himself a member of the corresponding guild ; for, 
 it must be borne in mind, a competent workman 
 could by payment become a member of any guild. 
 It was not necessary tliat he should have received 
 his education by serving apprenticeship to a master 
 of that particular guild. Once educated and capable 
 of proving himself a good workman, the payment of 
 an entrance fee made him free to work. 
 
 Such, then, was the nature of a guild in relation 
 to the organization of industry ; it was equally im- 
 portant as an institution for social intercourse. Very 
 few guild-houses remain in which the interior has 
 not been entirely changed ; but one at Llibeck con- 
 tains the large room on the ground-floor in its old 
 state. That room was the meeting-place of the 
 guild-members. It resembled a tavern-parlour, and 
 is divided into bays, each with a table and benches 
 in it, something like the room in the famous " Cock " 
 eating-house in Fleet Street. There at evenings the 
 members came together to drink and converse after 
 the labours of the day. Compare these conditions 
 with the barrenness of a modern working-man's life, 
 and it will be admitted that the mediaeval arrange- 
 ment was far superior. On great days more elaborate 
 gatherings took place. The members and their wives 
 
76 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 dined together, and sometimes entertained illustrious 
 guests. Read, for instance, Dlirer's account of the 
 entertainment given to him by the Painters' Guild 
 at Antwerp : — 
 
 "On Sunday, which was St. Oswald's Day (5th 
 August, 1520), the painters invited me to their guild- 
 hall with my wife and maid-servant. They had a 
 quantity of silver plate, and costly furniture, and most 
 expensive food. All their wives were with them, and 
 as I was led in to table, every one stood up in a row 
 on either side, as if they had been bringing in some 
 great lord. Amongst them were men of very high 
 standing, all of whom behaved with great respect and 
 kindness towards me, saying that in whatever they 
 could be serviceable to me they would do everything 
 for me that lay in their power. And while I sat 
 there in such honour, the syndic of the magistrates 
 of Antwerp came with two servants to me, and gave 
 me four cans of wine in their name, and said to me 
 that they wished thereby to do me honour, and 
 assure me of their good-will. For that I returned 
 them my humble thanks, and offered them my humble 
 services. Next came Master Peter, the town car- 
 penter, and gave me two cans of wine with the offer 
 of his services. When we had been long merry 
 together, up to a late hour of the night, they accom- 
 panied us home in honour with lanterns, and prayed 
 me to rely confidently on their good-will, and to 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART 77 
 
 remember that in whatever I wanted to do they 
 would all be helpful to me. So I thanked them and 
 lay down to sleep." 
 
 Such social gatherings, in which the newly- 
 instituted young master could meet men of high 
 position in the town on a footing of equality, were 
 of great value, bridging over, as they did, the gulfs 
 that tend to arise between different grades of society. 
 Notwithstanding the aristocratic organization of 
 mediaeval life, the strong line of division between rich 
 and poor did not then exist. That has been one 
 of the most conspicuous products of the insane cry 
 for "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" under the 
 echoes of which the revolutionists of Paris banished 
 the reality of all three from the soil of Europe. 
 
 Guilds further took an important part in all public 
 rejoicings and festivals. If a prince were to be 
 received in state, the guilds organized the reception, 
 each undertaking its part. On the great fete days, 
 the guilds marched in procession through the town, 
 many of them adorning their part of the show with 
 wagons bearing tableaux vivaiits, usually representing 
 either some event in sacred history or an assemblage 
 of emblematic figures. Of such processions the most 
 famous were the Omegang at Louvain, and that 
 which paraded through the streets of Antwerp on 
 Lady Day. Diirer has left a description of the latter, 
 telling how " the whole town was gathered together, 
 
78 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 craftsmen and others of every class, each dressed in 
 his best according to his position. Every rank and 
 guild had its sign by which it could be known. 
 Between the groups (forming the procession) great, 
 costly candles were borne, and old-fashioned long 
 French trumpets of silver. And between were also 
 many pipers and drummers such as they have in 
 Germany. The whole was carried on with much din 
 and blowing of trumpets. I saw pass through the 
 streets, in ranks widely separated one from another, 
 the Guilds of the Goldsmiths, the Painters, the 
 Masons, the Broderers, the Sculptors, the Joiners, the 
 Carpenters, the Seamen, the Fishermen, the Butchers, 
 the Leatherers, the Weavers, the Bakers, the Tailors, 
 the Cobblers, workmen of all kinds, and many crafts- 
 men and tradesmen who serve the needs of life. There 
 were Hkewise the merchants and traders, and all their 
 hands. Then came the clubs of men-at-arms with 
 guns, bows, and crossbows ; also the travellers and 
 pedlars. Then came the town watchmen, and then a 
 great company of very stately people, nobly and 
 costly habited. Before them, I forgot to say, went 
 all the religious orders, and some who had made 
 foundations, all in their various habits, very piously. 
 There was also in this procession a great body of 
 widows who support themselves with the work of 
 their hands, and observe a special rule. All of them 
 were clothed from head to foot in white linen made 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 79 
 
 specially for them, very pitiful to look upon. 
 Amongst them I saw persons of high estate. Last 
 of all came the Canons of Our Lady's Church, with 
 all the priests, scholars, and treasures. Twenty 
 persons bore the image of the Virgin Mary with the 
 Child Jesus, adorned in the most gorgeous fashion, 
 to the honour of the Lord God. In this procession 
 were brought along many heart-gladdening things 
 splendidly arranged. For there were many wagons 
 with plays upon ships and other stages, such as the 
 company and order of the Prophets ; and then, from 
 the New Testament, the Annunciation, the three 
 kings upon great camels and other strange beasts 
 most cleverly done ; also how Our Lady fled into 
 Egypt — most pious to behold, and many more things 
 which for shortness I omit to mention. Last of all 
 came a great dragon, whom St. Margaret with her 
 maidens led by a girdle ; she was specially pretty. 
 St. George came after her with his esquire — a fine 
 knight in armour. Also there rode in this company 
 youths and maidens beautifully and expensively 
 dressed according to the fashion of many countries, 
 representing various saints. From beginning to end 
 this procession took more than two hours to pass by 
 our house, and in it there were such a number of 
 things that I never could write them all in a whole 
 book, so I leave well alone." 
 
 Such being the chief industrial and social aspects 
 
So GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 of a medicEval guild, let us consider for a few moments 
 its religious functions. In the first place it must be 
 borne in mind how great importance the manner of 
 a man's death and burial and the prayers afterwards 
 offered up on his behalf had in the opinion of the 
 people of the fifteenth century. It was easy enough 
 for a rich man to make arrangements for the founda- 
 tion of memorial masses for the delivery of his soul 
 out of the pains of purgatory, but less well-to-do folk 
 had not the same facilities. Here, then, the guild 
 stepped in, and its work in this respect was by no 
 means the least important, in the opinion of the men 
 of those days. The guild first of all either owned a 
 chapel outright, or rented one from the authorities of 
 some church. This chapel they furnished with an 
 altar, an altar-piece, curtains for the same, chalice, 
 patena, and so forth, for the service of the altar, 
 vestments for an officiating priest, deacon, and sub- 
 deacon, and often a good many more things besides. 
 All these were the property of the guild, not of 
 the church ; and they are always mentioned in the 
 inventory of a guild's substance. In addition to this 
 chapel, the guild secured and paid for the services of 
 officiating clergy on certain occasions, the payments 
 being frequently made in accordance with a regularly 
 drawn up and signed agreement, which stated with 
 utmost minuteness what the services were to be, and 
 with what elaboration of music, candles, and the like 
 
GUILD SYSTEAf AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 8i 
 
 they were to be performed. On certain occasions 
 commemorative services were held for the souls of all 
 those members of the guild who had passed away. 
 If a member of a guild died in poor circumstances 
 he was duly buried with all Christian rites at the 
 expense of the Fraternity. Connected with these 
 directly religious acts the guild likewise exercised 
 charity in its corporate capacity. If the widow and 
 children of a member were left destitute, it was often 
 the custom to relieve them at the expense of the 
 whole body and to see to the education of the 
 children. 
 
 The existence of this religious side in a guild pro- 
 duced an unforeseen but important result. If a rich 
 man wished to found a memorial mass or other 
 service in perpetuity he often preferred to leave his 
 money in trust with some guild, which was bound to 
 see that his intentions were carried out, and to be 
 present in person at the said service. In return for 
 this they likewise received a certain sum by the same 
 agreement. A good deal of property came in this 
 way into the hands of the guilds, and thus the govern- 
 ing body grew in importance. The ordinary revenues 
 of the guild were derived from contributions levied 
 upon the members and fees paid at entrance. The 
 tendency of all such corporate bodies in those days 
 was to grow rich. Their wealth, however, though 
 partly spent in good cheer, was in the main devoted 
 
82 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 to the furtherance of the interest of their special craft. 
 The guilds of the City of London are almost the only 
 ones that survive to the present day, maimed in every 
 respect except their wealth and their feasts, but to 
 the historian picturesque institutions of great value. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be well to note briefly some 
 of the principal effects which the guild system pro- 
 duced upon the person of the artist, and thus upon 
 his art, for all art is but the product and reflection of 
 the conditions of the artist's mind, and the manner 
 of its working. And first of all, in contrast to the 
 present day, we may note the absence of tlie 
 effects of competition. Works of art produced for 
 exhibitions labour under the great disadvantage that 
 they must be made striking. Amongst the multitude 
 of their companions they must make their mark. 
 This accounts for much of the flaring colour, the 
 exaggerated drawing, the theatrical sentiment of 
 current art. The old art of the guilds was quiet 
 and reserved. The workman was taught to make his 
 work first of all things good. To produce what was 
 a piece of sound workmanship was of more import- 
 ance than to paint a striking picture. The pictures 
 required in those days were either altar-pieces or 
 portraits. Both had needs be durable. The altar- 
 piece was intended to last as long as the memorial 
 mass founded by the pious donor — one and the other 
 were to be permanent. Durer says with just pride of 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART 83 
 
 one of his pictures, that 300 years hence it would be 
 as fresh as the day he painted it; and so in truth it 
 would have been had not the flames devoured it. 
 More important still was the fact that the absence of 
 the stimulus of direct competition left the mind of 
 the artist freer. He had not to compete in expendi- 
 ture with his fellows, as almost everybody does in 
 the present day, either consciously or unconsciously. 
 The mere making and spending of a little more 
 money would in no wise have bettered his social 
 standing. His rising in the world was in the main 
 dependent on the opinion his fellow-artists had of 
 him, and that opinion depended upon the soundness 
 and workman-like quality of the thing he made. All 
 these conditions were favourable to the develop- 
 ment of a school of art whereof thoroughness was a 
 virtue. It was not merely the result of chance that 
 the brothers Van Eyck invented their peculiar method 
 of painting by which they were enabled to produce 
 pictures of almost unlimited durability and of unsur- 
 passable finish, provided sufficient care were bestowed 
 upon the work. The spirit of the day and the 
 method of the day were reflections one of another. 
 When men live in a scramble, they will paint in 
 haste and buy in haste. In old days they went 
 more leisurely to work. Take any picture of this old 
 Flemish school and regard it carefully, you will find 
 
 that only so do its beauties strike you at all. At the 
 
 G 2 
 
84 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 first glance you are liable to pass it by. When you 
 get to know it a little you find it impresses you more 
 strongly, till at last you cannot but pause long and 
 often before it in wonder and admiration at the 
 depth of the artist's thought, and the completeness with 
 which it is expressed. This completeness is due to 
 the essential character of the artist's environment ; 
 it will be found everywhere where similar conditions 
 obtained. Many of Jan van Eyck's pictures must 
 have taken him months to paint ; some of them not 
 less than years. Diircr, who came rather later than 
 the period now under consideration, but whose spirit 
 was singularly like that of the Flemish artists, spent 
 the greater part of seven years over six pictures. A 
 man was not continually wanting to go on to some- 
 thing fresh. Every work he planned he intended to 
 be monumental, and so he did his planning with care 
 as became a thing of dignity. The spirit in which 
 the work was done and the method of doing it 
 reacted one on another. It is related that once when 
 Jan van Eyck had half-finished a picture, and was 
 drying it in the sun, the heat cracked it in half. This 
 misfortune is said to have led him on to the invention 
 of his improved method of painting. Something of 
 the kind may well have been the case. Careful work 
 implied that the results obtained should be certain 
 and durable. A man would never be likely to hurry 
 over the preliminary stages of that which was going 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART 85 
 
 to be his chief business for months. The silver-point 
 drawings of the school which have come down to us, 
 most of them probably the work of pupils drawing 
 from finished pictures rather than, as gallery directors 
 would often have us believe, artists' original studies — 
 these very pupil drawings manifest the same careful 
 spirit, and show how from the very first it was instilled 
 into the youthful mind. 
 
 The other arts of the day give proof of the exist- 
 ence of a similar spirit in the workers devoted to 
 them. Little remains of the splendid old Flemish 
 jewellery, perhaps the finest goldsmith's work of which 
 we have any record ; but what there is shows an 
 elaboration and minuteness of finish that will be 
 sought for in vain elsewhere. Never do we find any 
 purely mechanical detail of ornament ; never, as in 
 the jewellery of to-day, any mathematical arrange- 
 ment of stones or ponderously brutal setting of 
 massive metal. The charm of all this ancient work 
 is in the living spirit that inspires it. The golden 
 wreath, never directly imitated from nature, shows 
 in its forms the same principle of growth that gives 
 grace to a tendril and beauty to a leaf. Stones are 
 set together not because they exactly balance one 
 another, but because their colours form a perfect 
 harmony. According to modern ideas the value of a 
 string of pearls is in direct proportion to the close- 
 ness of similarity between the beads. According to 
 
86 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART. 
 
 ancient notions dissimilarity of colour and form would 
 have been more admirable — not, however, dissimilarity 
 of a mere chance character, but such a dissimilarity 
 between adjacent members as gave to the whole 
 sequence a rhythmic flow. The charm of old 
 jewellery lay, however, not so much in the stones as 
 in the artistic work of the setting. The precious 
 metals were regarded as precious, not because of 
 their rarity, but for the beautiful plastic qualities 
 they possessed. Gold was treated as a fine clay 
 which could be coaxed into the daintiest forms. The 
 old goldsmiths were in fact sculptors working on 
 a small scale, but producing forms as lovely as any 
 that graced a mediaeval building. 
 
 Consider, then, the tapestry weavers. Flemish 
 tapestry is distinguished from all other kinds by 
 the fineness of its thread. It is free from the rough- 
 ness of texture usually so unpleasant in storied 
 hangings. The threads are all fine and the web 
 close. Such work, of course, took a great deal of 
 time, but then time is of secondary importance to 
 men for whom good work is the great consideration. 
 Old Flemish tapestries have of course faded to some 
 extent, but in other respects they retain their beauty 
 to the present day, and are unsurpassed. Without 
 directly resembling or imitating pictures, which no 
 good tapestry can do, they possess the pictorial 
 qualities possible to that kind of work, carried to 
 
GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART, 87 
 
 an extraordinary point of finish. This finish is 
 attained by the employment of a large number of 
 different shades of coloured threads, mixed together 
 with elaborate diligence, by workmen labouring in 
 a peaceful frame of mind. 
 
 The Flemish artisans of the fifteenth century lived 
 in outward turbulence and yet in inward peace. Hot 
 and headstrong in the assertion of their common 
 rights and freedoms, they were individually phleg- 
 matic. They wanted only to be let alone to do 
 their work to the best of their power. Their life 
 moved like a strong-flowing stream in majestic even- 
 ness along its appointed course. But if a barrier 
 was interposed against it, straightway there arose 
 a surging and a roaring and a great transformation. 
 The latent power burst forth with a fury terrible to 
 behold ; fair banks and smiling meadows were de- 
 vastated in sudden and unconquerable rage, until 
 the obstruction was swept away and the ancient 
 channel again restored Thus confidently in the 
 cities of Flanders the life of the folk went forward 
 towards its mysterious merging into the ocean of 
 eternity. Blindly, if you will, these men of iron plied 
 their daily tasks — blindly, and yet, so far as faith 
 is concerned, not so blindly as we. Nay ! had they 
 possessed no other faith than the confidence in 
 honesty, which held their horny hands in disciplined 
 restraint, they would yet be enviable amongst the 
 
88 GUILD SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECT UPON ART 
 
 sons of men. But they were also full of that ancient 
 virtue of reverence which we have been taught to 
 regard as "the chief joy and pride of life," yet 
 which so regarding we little practise. They did 
 always the thing that was within their powers, striv- 
 ing indeed by daily industry to increase the strength 
 of those powers, but never hoping either by luck 
 or momentary insanity to attain anything unattain- 
 able by patient thought and long-continued labour. 
 ''Patient continuance in well-doing" was the open 
 secret of their success, and the standing protest they 
 have left behind them against the faults and follies 
 of all "fickle and perverse generations." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF 15TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 Philosophers and Historians, for the last half- 
 century or so, have preached us a lengthy sermon 
 upon the one word — Progress. They have told us 
 that the History of Mankind is the history of an 
 evolution ; that whilst succeeding generations have 
 come and gone, the work of each has been the pro- 
 duction of an offspring finer than itself. They have 
 painted society as a great organism, increasing in 
 complexity with the tale of its years, increasing also 
 in knowledge and power. Whilst accepting the 
 general lines of this theory as a working hypothesis, 
 the historian of Art is mainly concerned to insist 
 upon certain visible facts, which his scientific colleague 
 is apt to overlook. The historian of Art has it con- 
 tinually forced upon him that, with the growth of 
 civilization, the artistic power of the human species 
 by no means continually increases. What was 
 possible to a less developed generation Is impossible 
 
90 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 to one more advanced ; and indeed it is hard to avoid 
 the conclusion that the artistic powers of the human 
 race, far from increasing in periods of general progress, 
 may often notably diminish. It would seem, then, 
 that certain forms of art-production, beautiful enough 
 in themselves to excite the wonder and reverence of 
 succeeding ages, are possible only to a semi-developed 
 race, and demand an order of intellect inferior to that 
 of the after-coming men, who yet must bow before 
 them in delighted awe. Art, in fact, gains very little 
 from the progress of science. The discoveries of the 
 last century have added nothing to her power, have 
 brought no new spheres within her domains. She 
 discourses not of science but faith, not of the thing 
 known but the thing hoped for, not of the world of 
 fact but the heaven of fancy. She looks upon the 
 earth and it blossoms into Paradise, upon the face of 
 man and it is as the face of an angel. Hence the art 
 of any generation depends not upon its knowledge, 
 but upon its Ideals of Faith and Hope ; and it would 
 seem that these ideals diminish in beauty as the 
 universe of the known increases in extent. No day, 
 therefore, can produce the Art of a preceding age, 
 because no day can feel the ideals of a day that is 
 dead. The hopes of a man change with every rising 
 sun ; the day that passes is taken out of the golden 
 age of hope and added to the less attractive kingdom 
 of knowledge, and often of disappointment. The 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 91 
 
 present delight may to-day be enshrined in picture or 
 poem, but not to-morrow, for then it has become a 
 memory, perhaps even a bitter one. And, as with 
 the individual so with the race, the ideal passes and 
 with it passes the art it called forth. Later ages may 
 look back with a memory for the one and a delight 
 for the other, but the thing that was then made can 
 be made no more : the art has passed away, and 
 another takes its place. 
 
 The history, therefore, which it is our business to 
 study, is a history of the succession of arts, or, if you 
 like, of the succession of Ideals. At one period 
 sculpture is the shrine of noblest thought, at another 
 painting, at another music, at another the drama or the 
 novel. This history of the succession of the arts 
 remains as yet not only unwritten but unsketched. 
 Each art has a period of rise whilst its predecessor 
 declines ; each has a period of culmination, when all 
 the minor arts of the day range themselves in subordi- 
 nation about it ; each has a period of decay, when its 
 strength is gradually transferred to the new art which 
 is to come. Thus about the beginning of the twelfth 
 century the art of Gothic architecture arose in Europe, 
 bearing sculpture and painting in her ministering train. 
 In the thirteenth century architecture culminated, 
 and produced such wonders of perfection as the cathe- 
 drals of Paris, Amiens, and Rheims, wherein the whole 
 edifice was voiceful with perfect harmony of sculptured 
 
92 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 tympanum, tinted wall, and stoned jewellery of glass. 
 In the fourteenth century the power of architecture 
 began to be taken from her. Painting ceased to be 
 her obedient handmaid, rebelled against the restraints 
 she imposed, and finally in the fifteenth century 
 became herself acknowledged mistress of all the living 
 arts. Slowly the artists' ideal changed. Slowly they 
 forsook the contemplation of eternal mysteries, and 
 opened their eyes to look upon the world of nature 
 and the visible mystery of man by which they were 
 continually surrounded. The painting of portraits 
 supplanted the painting of Madonnas, and then the 
 change from Henry the Eighth's Holbein to the 
 Elizabethan dramatists was one that might almost 
 have been foreseen. The introduction of music into 
 the play involved no wide step, and once introduced 
 its development was assured. Once more the servant 
 is seen supplanting the mistress ; the sceptre fell 
 from the hand of the drama and was taken up by 
 music. 
 
 At the present time, and probably for many years 
 to come, we shall do well to confine our attention to 
 the consideration of particular schools and epochs of 
 art, one by one ; but the student must continually 
 bear in mind that the knowledge thus acquired is 
 only so many links in a long and unbroken chain, 
 the whole of which we hope one day to disentangle, 
 and then by means of it one more anchor will be 
 
By Petrus Cristus. /Co/n. 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 95 
 
 cast forth into the invisible depths of the past, grant- 
 ing a firmer hold upon that infinite mystery over 
 which we float on the rising tide of time. 
 
 In this chapter, then, the Flemish art of the fifteenth 
 century shall be considered from the point of view of 
 the ideal which gave birth to it. The principal artists 
 of this school, whoso names are known to us, were 
 Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden, 
 Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, and Gerard David. 
 On a somewhat lower level come such men as Petrus 
 Cristus, Thierry Bouts, and perhaps Gerard van der 
 Meire. The principal works in England belonging 
 to this school are, — by Jan van Eyck, the portraits of 
 the Arnolfini, and two men's portraits in the National 
 Gallery, the Thomas a Becket at Chatsworth, the 
 Madonna at Ince Hall, another at Burleigh House, 
 and another belonging to Mr. Bercsford-Hope, also 
 Lord Heytesbury's St. Francis receiving the stigmata ; 
 of Petrus Cristus, there is a portrait belonging to 
 the Earl of Verulam, and a portrait of Marco Bar- 
 barigo in the National Gallery ; to Gerard van der 
 Meire, Crowe and Cavalcaselle ascribe with little 
 reason the Deposition of St. Hubert in the National 
 Gallery ; of Van der Weyden there is a triptych at 
 Liverpool, and another at Grosvenor House ; of 
 Memling, there is a Madonna at Chiswick, and two 
 more in the National Gallery, besides two portraits 
 belonging to Mr. Vernon Smith ; lastly, by Gerard 
 
96 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 David, is a panel with three Saints in the National 
 Gallery, and a triptych by his wife belongs to Mr. 
 Willett at Brighton. 
 
 From the Van Eycks to David, a period of about 
 a century, a great change is of course observ- 
 able, but one Ideal reigns throughout. The general 
 tendency of the change is the expression of the 
 gradual alteration (development if you like to call 
 it so) of the Ideal. This Ideal is, of course, most 
 clearly and nobly expressed in the master-works of 
 the school, and it will be well to glance at some of 
 them to discover it there. From the Van Eycks we 
 choose the upper part of the Ghent altar-piece as 
 probably the work of the elder brother, Hubert ; and 
 the Louvre picture of the ' Madonna with Chancellor 
 Rollin/ * certainly the work of Jan. From Roger van 
 der Weyden we take the Middelburg altar-piece at 
 Berlin. t From Hugo der van Goes the altar-piece in 
 the hospital of S. M. Nuova at Florence.^ From 
 Memling the diptych known as Martin Nieuwen- 
 hoven's at Bruges ;§ and from Gerard David the 
 beautiful panel in the National Gallery.|| Now, what- 
 ever the subject of these pictures, it will be found 
 that the parts which soonest attract and most forcibly 
 hold the spectator's attention are the faces, and 
 
 * Phot. Braun. t Phot. Berlin Phot. Co. 
 
 X Phot. Alinari, Florence. § Phot. Nohring. 
 U Phot. Braun and Berlin, Phot. Co. 
 
^ij 
 
 CHARACTER OF i^TII C. 
 
 especially the faces of the men. 
 
 passes on from the Madonna and Child 
 
 ing donor, or the adoring shepherds. It is al 
 
 to them, not on account of any fervent expression^ 
 
 devotion they betray, nor because of their physical 
 
 beauty. The attraction is the result of a wider and 
 
 deeper power, possessed to a remarkable degree by 
 
 all these artists — their power of insight into character. 
 
 The pictures they paint delight us in proportion to 
 
 the portrait-like nature of the figures they introduce. 
 
 The more they give way to their natural instinct, the 
 
 more play they allow to their inherited delight in 
 
 man and the face of man for its own sake, the more 
 
 general and strong is the admiration they receive. 
 
 Few Flemish paintings of the fifteenth century are 
 
 more popular than the ' Madonna with Chancellor 
 
 Rollin,' and yet the Virgin possesses no physical 
 
 attractions ; the Child is ugly, and the Chancellor 
 
 hideous. In Van der Weyden's ' Nativity,' beauty of 
 
 form is little more prominent, and the kneeling 
 
 Treasurer Bladelin certainly does not come of a 
 
 handsome stock. The 'Nativity,' by Hugo van der 
 
 Goes, contains many faults of composition and no 
 
 beautiful figures ; but the adoring shepherds, ugly in 
 
 feature and awkward in gesture as they are, attract 
 
 and delight the eyes of all. In Martin Nieuwen- 
 
 hoven's diptych, it is by no means the erect and 
 
 impenetrable Virgin that charms, but rather the 
 
 H 
 
98 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 figure of the praying youth. Finally, of the four 
 heads in Gerard David's panel, the most interesting 
 are the two which approach nearest to the reflection 
 of some living model. 
 
 We may go a step further, and say that amongst 
 portraits those of men are better than those of 
 women, and amongst the portraits of men the hand- 
 some are less excellent than the plain. None of the 
 artists, about whom we are speaking, cared to look 
 for well-forn^ed features or well-built figures. There 
 is no evidence that beauty of form was for them even 
 a subsidiary aim. The vigour of their minds was 
 engaged in grappling with a harder problem — the 
 comprehension of the character of man. Not so very 
 long ago, portrait painting was considered a second- 
 ary branch of the painter's art. What were called 
 historical subjects were alone thought to attain the 
 highest rank. The teaching of the last quarter of a 
 century has succeeded in reversing this narrow judg- 
 ment. It is now admitted that the highest subject 
 a painter can choose is the face of man. The manner 
 in which such work is to be undertaken has been 
 roughly blocked out by Carlyle in the following 
 granitic sentences : — " It is not the untrue imaginary 
 Picture of a man and his life that I want . . . but 
 the actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself, nay 
 truer, in a sense. Which the Artist, if there is one, 
 might help to give, and the Botcher never can ! Alas, 
 
Q C5 
 
 I? 
 
 > i^ 
 
 7. ^ 
 
 O ^ 
 
 z -^ 
 
 fa u 
 
 <= ?: 
 
 a: < 
 
 < > 
 
 II 2 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART loi 
 
 and the Artist does not even try it ; leaves it alto- 
 gether to the Botcher, being busy otherwise ! Men 
 surely will at length discover again, emerging from 
 these dismal bewilderments in which tiie modern 
 Ages reel and stagger this long while, that to them 
 also, as to the most ancient men, all Pictures that 
 cannot be credited are — Pictures of an idle nature ; 
 to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably, 
 were it never so forgotten, is the law! IMistakes 
 enough, lies enough, will insinuate thjmselves into 
 our most earnest portrayings of the True : but that 
 we should, deliberately and of forethought, rake 
 together what we know to be not true, and introduce 
 that in the hope of doing good with it ? I tell you, 
 such practice was unknown in the ancient earnest 
 times, and ought again to become unknown except 
 to the more foolish classes!" (Friedrich). Without 
 pausing to discuss the general tone of this passage, 
 it may be remarked in passing, that the Flemish 
 pictures of the Madonna and Saints were, to the men 
 of the fifteenth century, eminently ^'pictures that 
 could be credited." But let us consider for one 
 moment the remarkable phrase which states that the 
 Likeness should be " true as the face itself, nay truer 
 in a sense," for herein lies the difficulty of the portrait- 
 painter's task. It is matter of universal experience 
 that under the influence of strong emotion certain 
 qualities of a man's character stand plainly written 
 
I02 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 Upon his countenance. Other qualities require for 
 their clear outward manifestation a gentler provoca- 
 tion. Seldom indeed does the face of a man tell 
 his whole character at a glance even to the keenest 
 observer. It is for this reason that photography can 
 rarely succeed in producing a portrait, for any like- 
 ness worthy of the name must seize the face and 
 posture of the person portrayed at the moment when 
 the features are alive with thought and the limbs held 
 in tension by the mind. A portrait painter has to 
 watch his subject through many hours and under 
 varied circumstances ; he has to learn the orbit of 
 every gesture, and to treasure up in his memory even 
 the twinkle of an eye. He must carry on his 
 observations till the whole man in his entirety 
 becomes clear in his artist's eye, till he sees through 
 the veil of outward form into the inner sanctuary of 
 thought, till each gesture becomes an understood 
 portion of an articulate language, each passing ex- 
 pression of the countenance the shadow of a compre- 
 hended thought. He has only now to set down the 
 image which is clear in his own mind. He has to 
 depict his subject, not necessarily as he beheld him 
 at any moment, but as he might be at his best ; the 
 eye bright with the sympathy the artist has seen it 
 express ; the mouth trembling to utter a weighty 
 word ; head, hands, and limbs in those postures which 
 are natural to them when the man is at his best. 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 103 
 
 Truth must be the sole aim of the portrait-painter, 
 and yet truth of so high and magnanimous an order 
 that it rises far above the petty imitation of a wrinkle 
 or a scar, and pauses not until it surveys in wide- 
 reaching view the whole area of the character of the 
 man. The Ideal in portrait-painting, as in all other 
 art, is only the highest comprehension of the real 
 and true. Strive not to make a hero ; strive rather 
 to comprehend a man. Even that is a transcendent 
 task. Paint the orator in the full-tide of his elo- 
 quence ; paint the poet as " enveloped in mist and 
 with faltering voice" he goes his way, "rejoicing in 
 life" ; paint the merchant in the midst of honest busi- 
 ness ; the General in the hour of battle ; the peasant 
 in glorious command over his servant the soil. The 
 orator cannot stand still for you, or the spell is 
 broken ; the very ploughman becomes another being 
 when he ceases from his toil ; to the sympathetic 
 insight of a gifted seer is it alone possible to trace 
 for lasting instruction the shadowy lineaments of 
 passing thought. 
 
 When, therefore, we say that the painters of the 
 fifteenth century in Flanders excelled in their por- 
 traits, we give them the very highest praise, and 
 thereby declare them worthy to be ranked among 
 the great artists of the world. Portraits by masters 
 of this school possess the quality of instantaneousness. 
 They show their subjects caught in the middle of a 
 
I04 CHARACTER OF \^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 thought. They render, not only the dull scaffolding 
 of a countenance, but the fluttering drapery of ex- 
 pression it is wont at characteristic moments to put 
 on. Casting an eye over the pictures of this class 
 which have come down to us, we find that all the 
 faces portrayed possess many qualities in common. 
 They are all visibly men of one age and culture. 
 They are not fine of figure nor graccfijl of limb, but, 
 with hardly an exception, their faces tell us that they 
 are men of tried capacity and learnt experience. 
 Through the eyes of many of them glances a happy, 
 childlike soul enough, but the mind is almost in- 
 variably a slow-moving, solid power. They are men 
 of strength, capable of planning and carrying out 
 mercantile ventures, not unattended by risk, involv- 
 ing foresight, skilful handling, and honesty. Men 
 of the kind we can well conceive as having been fit to 
 lay the foundations of that commerce which we hold 
 in trust to-day. And such as they were the artists 
 Avho painted them ; they possessed the same industry, 
 they admired the same quahties. The virtue of 
 honest strength, which made the men of Flanders the 
 merchant princes of Europe, was the virtue whose 
 traces the artists of Flanders loved to observe, and 
 to set down with industrious veracity on their panels. 
 Their ideal is an ideal of strength. They love the 
 character whose essence is its force. They care little 
 for mystery, little for pity, little for enthusiasm, little 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 105 
 
 for any of the virtues which poets for the most part 
 love to sing and painters to portray. They love a 
 man whose visage tells of the strenp^th of his 
 character, who has weathered the buffetings of many 
 a storm, and bears on his visage the marks of the 
 struggle. They are true descendants of the worship- 
 pers of Woden and Thor — sons of the hammer rather 
 than the bower, children of the war-cry, not minstrels 
 of song. They love strength and eagerly seek for 
 it. The myrtle-groves and laurel shades of the 
 promised kingdoms of light they leave to the mystic 
 dreamers of Italy. If angels dance it is in a heaven 
 other than theirs ; the best they ever hope for is a 
 land of fertile meadows and well-built towns, where 
 only light clouds deck clear blue skies, and where 
 amongst the grass their own wild flowers flourish in 
 profusion, overshadowed perhaps here and there by 
 a tropical fruit-tree for novelty's sake. 
 
 They love strength, but, be it observed, strength of 
 the mind, not of the body. They care little for a 
 graceful Hercules, and even St. George is no special 
 favourite with them. The man of their choice is 
 indeed always large in bone and firmly knit together, 
 certainly but not obtrusively strong. His chief 
 feature, however, is the setting of his face. He may 
 be stern and almost forbidding of aspect — they love 
 him none the less ; he is of the same brood as 
 themselves. He may be stout ; his wrinkles will 
 
io5 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 then become the more apparent. He may be grim 
 or good-humoured, sour or running over with laughter 
 — anything in short that is hearty and downright ; 
 but a mystic dreamer like Francis of Assisi, a wild 
 enthusiast like Spanish Dominic, — these and the like 
 of these are altogether beyond the horizon of their 
 conceptions. A ragged John the Baptist they can 
 understand well enough ; wandering about the wild 
 desert in his cloak of camel's-hair, half-starved, hollow 
 of cheek and lank of limb, his hair matted about his 
 head, his hands wrinkled, his eyes deep in their 
 sockets — him they are more or less in sympathy with ; 
 but the mild John the Evangelist is out of their 
 sphere. They have to paint him often, but they 
 never paint him well ; he is young and soft and 
 womanly, and they cannot treat him with success. 
 And so it is also with Christ the Man, the incarnation 
 of love, and pity, and enthusiasm of humanity. 
 Christ the Judge, Christ the King of Glory — Him 
 they can depict more grandly than ever it entered 
 into the heart of southern poet to sing, or artist to 
 frame. But Christ the tortured prisoner, the self- 
 sacrificing martyr, the tender shepherd of a wayward 
 flock — Him they successfully depict in no single 
 instance. 
 
 It is the strong and energetic character that they 
 love; and character grows in strength and definite- 
 ness with age, writing itself with daily increase of 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 107 
 
 visibility upon the face of a man as his years advance. 
 The oft-repeated emotion moulds its memorial in 
 plastic human clay. The brow held in constant 
 tension by a thoughtful mind at length fails even 
 in slumber to relax. Character writes itself by slow 
 degrees on the wrinkles of the hand, on the pose of 
 the members, nay, even on the creases of a shoe. 
 Thus, for the student of character, the old face is 
 more interesting than the open countenance of youth. 
 For if indeed this is as yet unscarred by traces of 
 failure and bitter disappointment, if it glows with 
 hope and is bright with the consciousness of a bound- 
 less vista of unborn possibility, the other yet shows 
 what has been done, however limited that may be. 
 Its language is certain. For better or worse it is fact 
 and experience that have written there their tale. 
 The Flemish painter, therefore, treats with keener 
 enjoyment and greater success the portraits of the 
 old than of the young. If, as often happens, he is 
 called to depict, on the wing of an altar-piece, the 
 father and all his boys, it is upon the old man's face 
 that all spectators will naturally be led to gaze. We 
 all know many instances of a countenance, plain 
 and unattractive in youth, but over which, in advanc- 
 ing years, a sweet indwelling character has spread 
 visible, unavoidable charm. The subtlety of a settled 
 expression, such as this, is far beyond the reach of 
 many an artist, who yet can hold attentive before his 
 
loS CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 pictures of girlish prettincss crowds of superficial 
 admirers. Indeed, the student of character does not 
 look to youth for the highest form of beauty, and 
 the severest trial of a painter of character is the test 
 of his treatment of middle age. An ordinary painter 
 frequently makes his subject look younger than he 
 is ; the character-painters of Flanders did exactly the 
 contrary, and so also did one of the greatest character- 
 painters of all, Albrecht Durer of Nurnberg. In 
 Dlirer's portrait of Oswoli Krel ^ (at Munich) the 
 face is so firmly held, in what must one day have 
 become an habitual frown, that at the first glance it 
 seems to be the face of a middle-aged man. A sorr.e- 
 what similar effect is produced in the finest of Roger 
 van der Weyden's portraits, that of the young Count 
 of Charolois, afterwards famous as Charles the Bold, 
 who is introduced, as one of the three Kings, into 
 the ' Adoration of the Magi,' now likewise at Munich. f 
 His figure is indeed that of a young man, but the 
 strong, almost fierce expression of the countenance 
 would rather befit the tragic field of Nancy than the 
 presence of the Infant Light of the World. :j: 
 
 The masculine Ideal of the Flemish painters was 
 thus one of strong character ; to what feminine Ideal, 
 then, did it correspond ? We have plenty of materials 
 for rendering an answer to this question, the ideal 
 
 * Phot. Hanfstaengl. t Phot. Hanfstaengl. 
 
 X Prince Carl at Darmstadt has a good old copy of this figure. 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART IC9 
 
 woman being in the majority of cases the main 
 apparent subject of a fifteenth century picture. Even 
 the most enthusiastic admirer of Flemish works will 
 scarcely bid us declare their Madonnas and saints to 
 be of a high order of feminine beauty. Their figures 
 are tall, slender, and erect ; their features are some- 
 times of faultless form, and yet they fail to charm us 
 after the manner of women. It may well be that 
 they seemed lovely enough to the people for whom 
 they were painted, so did the Madonnas of Italy to 
 the Italians ; but whereas these still delight us with 
 their everlasting beauty, those of the North, if they 
 affect us at all, do so by means of other qualities. 
 It must be borne in mind that the people of the 
 fifteenth century still lived in an age when the 
 language of symbols was rich and widely understood. 
 Every flower was an emblem, every colour had its 
 own special meaning, every accessory told a special 
 tale. The figures of the Virgin are likewise symbolic 
 in every part. Her high forehead and wide arching 
 brows tell of her intellectual power, her rich long hair 
 figures forth the fulness of her life, her slim figure 
 and tiny mouth symbolize her purity, her mild eyes 
 with their drooping eyelids discover .her devoutness, 
 her head, if bent, speaks of humility, if erect tells of 
 her sovereign estate. The supreme and evident virtue 
 which reigns in all these Madonnas is an absolute 
 purity of heart. And it is this virtue which, in the 
 
no CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART, 
 
 eyes of the fifteenth century Flemings, was supreme 
 over all other feminine qualities. Women might be 
 hard and stern, possessed of little charm of presence 
 or grace of deportment, so only they were spotlessly 
 pure. Painters of the period, almost without excep- 
 tion, seek to express the presence of this quality. 
 For its sake they smooth away many a wrinkle, and 
 likewise for it they suppress many a bright charm. 
 They often destroy the individuality of their subject, 
 but they never fail to present her as calm and pure. 
 Purity in women, indeed, is the natural correlative to 
 strength and character in man. The harder the 
 strife in which men have to engage, and the greater 
 the endurance and sternness demanded of them, so 
 much the more do they insist that the genius of their 
 home shall be unspotted by contact with whatever is 
 gross, worldly, and impure. If therefore it is found 
 that Flemish portraits of women are for the most 
 part of little attraction, the observer should bear in 
 mind the facts of the case, and, while censuring, if 
 he must, what is lacking, remember that the fault 
 in the picture arose from virtues in the society for 
 which it was painted. 
 
 There are a few excellent Flemish portraits of 
 middle-aged matrons, supreme amongst which is that 
 of the wife of Jan van Eyck.* She is represented at 
 
 * In the foreground on the left of the ' Seven Sacraments,' 
 at Antwerp, ascribed to Roger van der Weyden, there stands a 
 female figure borrowed from this portrait. 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART in 
 
 the age of thirty-three, but she has the aspect of a 
 woman of forty or more. She is not in any sense 
 beautiful, and never has been, but there is a quiet 
 look of competence, serenity, and homely virtue 
 about her, which well supplies the lack of more 
 striking attractions. The picture originally belonged 
 to the Painters' Guild of Bruges, and hung as pendant 
 to the portrait of her husband, which unfortunately 
 disappeared long ago. The two works together would 
 have been of high interest as portraying one of the 
 toughest and most characteristic of the men of the 
 great days of Flanders, and the woman whom he 
 chose for his life's companion, and who so nearly 
 approached his ideal of what a perfect woman should 
 be that when he painted the Madonna he took the 
 face of his wife for a model. 
 
 Second only to the excellence of the portraits in 
 the majority of Flemish pictures, is the charm of the 
 little landscape backgrounds. The fifteenth century 
 painters of Ita.y, with the exception always of the 
 Umbrians, cared relatively little about landscape. 
 Why men of such opposite character as the Flemish 
 and the Umbrians should have felt the charm of 
 natural scenery, apparently in a very similar manner, 
 would be an interesting subject of discussion. In 
 elaborate and loving treatment of landscape, however, 
 the Flemish painters distinctly led the way. The 
 veracity which held them so firmly to the stern 
 
112 CHARACTER OF isTH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 delineation of the thing which they saw in the human 
 face, taught them likewise to look with humility upon 
 the face of nature, and to be content to imitate her 
 in a spirit of like conscientiousness. The earliest 
 known picture of the van Eycks, the altar-piece of 
 the * Adoration of the Lamb,' is in this respect per- 
 haps as far advanced as anything afterwards produced. 
 Later painters learned to treat natural scenes more 
 broadly, and to imitate a wider scale of natural pheno- 
 mena, but nothing that they made is more perfect 
 of its kind than the gardens of Paradise in the picture 
 referred to. 
 
 An historical discussion of the landscape work of 
 this school will find place further on, but in the 
 present connection it cannot be out of place to dwell 
 briefly upon its leading virtue of veracity. Of course 
 veracity in landscape art may be of several kinds. 
 A painter may reproduce with perfect truth the 
 general effect produced upon him by a scene. A 
 precipice may be imposing in his eyes by reason of its 
 height, and may render, for the time, in his imagin- 
 ation, all surrounding objects mean in comparison. 
 If in his picture the precipice be more lofty than 
 trigonometrical measurements would allow, he never- 
 theless need lie under no accusation of unfaithful- 
 ness. He has actually reproduced an effect of truth. 
 Moreover, the complexity of nature being so infinite, 
 so utterly beyond the power of eye and mind to 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH* ART. 113 
 
 comprehend, and still more impossible for the hand 
 to reproduce in all its infinity of detail, an artist, 
 however conscientious, must omit much, nay must 
 omit far more than he introduces. It thus becomes 
 interesting to observe, in every case, what are the 
 objects chosen by a landscape painter out of the 
 infinity before him, and what are the objects refused. 
 Now in Flemish landscapes the chief features are 
 always much the same — clear blue skies lightly 
 flecked with clouds of tenderest white, undulating 
 hills, gently-flowing streams, country roads winding 
 amongst green trees, little hamlets or walled towns 
 or monastic buildings all breathing an air of quiet 
 and peace. In fact it is the domestic scenery of the 
 Maas valley that we behold, and we have every 
 reason to believe that the scenes represented are 
 actual views of localities known to the contemporary 
 spectator. In the treatment of buildings the artist 
 allows himself a certain amount of latitude, and 
 often alters the architectural details to accord with 
 his own taste. Now and again, in the abrupter hill 
 slopes, we notice the introduction of an emphasis 
 personal to the artist ; but such slight changes are 
 of trifling importance. In all else the most rigid 
 adherence to nature and fact is the inviolable rule 
 with these earnest men. And it is especially with 
 the small things of nature that this veracity becomes 
 most apparent. They cannot cover the whole of 
 
1 1 4 CHA RA C TER OF i^TH CENTUR V FLEMISH ART. 
 
 their foregrounds with a carpet of flowers, painted 
 in finished elaboration ; they were forced, therefore, 
 to sacrifice either the quantity or the finish of these 
 floral jewels. They did not hesitate a moment, but, 
 abandoning the method which would have dotted 
 the grass with spots of various tints, and so suggested 
 one side of the truth, they set themselves to repro- 
 duce with absolute accuracy a few representative 
 and symbolic flowers, and left them, as an arabesque 
 on a background of green, for a memorial of their 
 countless fellows, fair as they. In the rendering 
 of foliage a like diflficulty encountered them, and they 
 overcame it in a similar way. It was impossible to 
 outline and colour each individual leaf, even of those 
 that the eye could clearly distinguish. Here again, 
 then, they might mass the foliage together, and, 
 avoiding all detail, paint the masses truly as far as 
 truth was possible, or they might depict accurately 
 a few individual leaves, charging them, like the 
 flowers, with a representative function. Their love 
 of minute veracity made them choose, and for a long 
 time adhere to, the latter laborious alternative. 
 
 Veracity of this kind was of the essence of all the 
 work produced by the school under consideration ; it 
 was the natural quality of a set of men whose ideal 
 possessed the character above described. They could 
 not tolerate anything short of close approximation to 
 truth. They could not withhold their hand so long 
 
CHARACTER OF \^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 115 
 
 as aught of incompleteness or inexactitude remained 
 which it was in their power to remove. Thus in 
 portrait they carried the delineation of a face to a 
 point of a finish such as artists of no other school 
 (except Leonardo da Vinci) ever attained. They 
 were not to be satisfied with a picture which sug- 
 gested in general fashion the likeness of a man ; they 
 insisted upon working out to the uttermost every 
 little shade of expression. The dimpled foldings of 
 the lips were not enough for them ; they would 
 pursue the traces of a smile to the very extremities 
 of the visage. It was the same in their treatment 
 of every part. The smallest wrinkles of the hand 
 the least peculiarity in the form of a finger-nail or 
 an ear, did not escape their notice. They wrought 
 the garments with like painstaking. Textures and 
 patterns of richest or commonest substances were 
 reproduced with faithful veracity ; jewelled hems, 
 clasps, and trinkets, were designed with the full 
 knowledge of a goldsmith versed in his craft. The 
 very hairs of the head were almost painted one by 
 one. No artist in fact could have succeeded in that 
 day unless he were a man of wonderful diligence. 
 And this was but natural. The Flemish painter 
 worked for a race of men more industrious probably 
 than any others the world has seen. His employers 
 knew, each in his own sphere, what good workman- 
 ship was like, and they could not be satisfied with 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 art of a slovenly character. By a natural process 
 
 of evolution, therefore, the art-schools of mediaeval 
 
 Flanders produced a set of painters of persevering 
 
 tenacity such as have nowhere else appeared, except 
 
 perhaps in Venice and Franconia, under similar 
 
 conditions. 
 
 Owing to the nature of the climate these laborious 
 
 and painstaking artists were obliged to spend the 
 
 best part of their energies, not, as in Italy, in the 
 
 frescoing of walls, but in painting upon panels. The 
 
 method of painting employed in the fourteenth 
 
 century had been what is known as tempera. The 
 
 ground-work of the panel was prepared with a coating 
 
 of fine plaster, called gesso, and upon this the colours 
 
 were laid by help of a medium such as white of ^gg 
 
 or the juice of unripe figs. Oil was likewise used as 
 
 a medium even from very early days,^ but its use was 
 
 attended with great disadv^antages. It was difficult 
 
 to lay the colours finely with it, and then they took a 
 
 long time to dry. Hence oil was never used in the 
 
 finished parts of the work, but only for masses of 
 
 drapery and the Hke. As the demand for fine works 
 
 of art increased, and the skill of painters developed, 
 
 they longed, we cannot doubt, to discover some 
 
 method of painting by means of which they might 
 
 be enabled to produce more delicately finished and 
 
 * A Louvain painter of the fourteenth century was nicknamed 
 John Oilpot. 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 117 
 
 more enduring works. For another great objection 
 to the old tempora method, as far as northern 
 countries are concerned, was that they suffered rapid 
 deterioration from damp. In Westminster Abbey- 
 there is an old retable, painted in this manner. The 
 colours have flaked off it in large patches, and left 
 the panels bare over the greater part of the surface. 
 Such, no doubt, was the fate of most of the works 
 of fourteenth century painting in the Low Countries ; 
 and so we are scarcely possessed of any but the most 
 meagre materials for forming an estimate of it. Now, 
 artists of the kind that we know these Flemings to 
 have been, lavish of their labour and unfaltering in 
 their care, were just the men to whom this destruc- 
 tion of their labour would be intolerable. No one is 
 willinfr that a work which has drunk his life-blood 
 for months should quickly perish. For the full 
 development, therefore, of an art, such as the Low 
 Countries were capable of producing, a great improve- 
 ment in the method of painting was requisite, and 
 that improvement must be such as to make finer 
 work possible, and to give greater durability to its 
 completed results. 
 
 We may well assume, though materials are lacking 
 for support of the assumption, that artists set them- 
 selves with characteristic industry to find satisfaction 
 for the need they experienced. Of those who sought 
 and failed, however, we know nothing, but only of 
 
ii8 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 those who succeeded in the quest — the brothers Hubert 
 and Jan van Eyck. They are usually credited, since 
 the days of Vasari and Van Mander, with the dis- 
 covery of what we call oil-painting. But this is not true. 
 Oil, as we have seen, was used as a vehicle long 
 before their day. On the other hand, oil-painting of 
 the kind to which we are accustomed was not invented 
 by them, or indeed by any one, but arose out of a long 
 process of development, in which they did indeed 
 contribute an important step, but which had been 
 advancing before they were born, and continued to 
 advance after they had been long dead and buried. 
 
 The real point of the invention of the Van Eycks 
 seems to have been the discovery of a substance, 
 which, when mixed with boiled oil, caused it to dry 
 rapidly without the necessity of exposure to the sun. 
 This substance was probably resin. Hubert and 
 Jan were not men to rest content with any slight 
 advance, so for years they seem to have worked at 
 perfecting the new process, and eventually they became 
 complete masters of its utmost refinements. None 
 of their followers, for a century, surpassed them as 
 craftsmen, altogether apart from any question of the 
 artistic quality of their work. 
 
 So far as we can judge by examining pictures of 
 the school, the method of painting was somewhat as 
 follows. The panel was planed smooth, and then 
 covered, as for the old tempera process, with a coating 
 
CHARACTER OF isTH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 119 
 
 oi gesso. The design was next drawn with perfect 
 exactitude upon the white surface, and the broad 
 masses of colour were laid on. All the details of the 
 work, all the fine hghts and elaborate modelling, were 
 superimposed upon the ground tones by means of 
 colour mixed with a transparent varnish, and the whole 
 was wrought so finely together that at last the surface 
 became like enamel, and it is generally next to im- 
 possible to discover the traces of the brush. This 
 method, it will be observed, is different from that now 
 called oil-painting, in which the colours are laid on by 
 aid of a medium of an oily character, and when the 
 picture is finished, the whole surface is protected by 
 a final transparent coating of varnish. In Flemish 
 pictures the varnish was incorporated with the surface 
 colours, and cannot be removed without destroying 
 at the same time the very fabric of the work. For 
 this reason all attempts to, what is called, restore, or 
 clean pictures of the Flemish school, result only in 
 the destruction of the work, and by this means many 
 fine pictures have, for all practical purposes, perished. 
 A Madonna in the National Gallery, ascribed to Mem- 
 ling, is a lamentable example of this kind of ruin. 
 The method of the Van Eycks was a half-way stage 
 between those of the old tempera painters and of 
 modern artists. It still retained the gesso ground 
 and the panel, whilst it involved the use of varnishes. 
 A century later the change was carried to completion 
 
I20 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 in the studios of Venice under the hands of Titian and 
 his fellows. For their rapid style of work the Flemish 
 system was not suited. It was fitted alone for men 
 of the same stamp as its discoverers — men willing to 
 devote hours to the patient elaboration of a detail, 
 and who considered their lives well invested, if at the 
 end they left behind them a moderate number of 
 small but excellently finished jewels. 
 
 We may now proceed, in conclusion, to consider 
 how this method, of their devising, reacted upon the 
 painters of the Flemish school. It was of a kind 
 only applicable to work on a small scale ; it permitted 
 such work to be brought to an astonishing degree of 
 finish by expenditure of sufficient labour. There do 
 indeed exist a few large pictures of the school, not- 
 ably the Ghent altar-piece by the Van Eycks, the 'Last 
 Judgment,' at Beaune, by Roger van der Weyden, and 
 the ' Nativity,' at Florence, by Hugo van der Goes. 
 But of these the first two are only assemblages of 
 smaller panels framed together, their subjects being 
 related more or less closely one to another, whilst 
 Hugo's picture by no means gains in attractiveness 
 in proportion to its size, but would have looked more 
 beautiful had it been smaller and better finished 
 throughout, after the usual manner of the school. 
 
 An artist is of necessity led to expend upon 
 pictures which are small and laboriously wrought an 
 amount of care in the design, and especially in the 
 
CHARACTER OF 1^771 CENTURY FLEM7SH ART. 121 
 
 quality of the colours, by no means so imperative in 
 larger works. Such a painting as the 'Last Judg- 
 ment' by Tintoret in the Doge's Palace at Venice 
 produces some impression upon the most casual spec- 
 tator by means of its size alone. Details are not con- 
 sidered, and even the harmony of colour becomes 
 less imperative when the field of vision is unable to 
 contain the whole area of the canvas at once. But 
 the eye takes in at a glance the whole of one of these 
 tiny pictures of the Flemish school, and if the 
 colouring is poor in quality, or faulty in combination, 
 the defect is immediately apparent. Every charm 
 that can be bestowed upon so small a surface is 
 requisite to intensify its attractive power ; and hence 
 Flemish painters, aided by their new-found method, 
 developed a jewel-like quality of colouring which 
 remained peculiar to themselves. The especial love 
 of jewellery manifested at that time by the wealthy 
 of the Low Countries, and the consequent taste and 
 skill acquired by the goldsmiths of the day, may not 
 have been without influence in this respect. That 
 this love of jewels was shared by the painters is 
 sufficiently shown by the amount and beauty of the 
 jewelled ornaments introduced by them into their 
 pictures. Not only are brooches and clasps, sceptres 
 and crowns, studded with precious stones, but the 
 hems of garments are continually sewn with them, 
 whilst gloves and shoes of state are likewise so adorned. 
 
122 CHARACTER OF isTH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 It was further natural that when figures had to 
 be painted on so small a scale the artist should 
 prefer to clothe them in stuffs of great magnifi- 
 cence. And here again the fashion of the time 
 and the necessary tendency of its art were in accord. 
 No mediaeval or modern court, not even that of 
 Paris in the days of the Second Empire, can have 
 compared for magnificence of outward apparel with 
 the court of the Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth 
 century. Flanders was alike the centre of weaving 
 and of Oriental commerce. The silks of the East 
 were unloaded upon her quays, and sold in all the 
 markets of the land ; at the same time the looms 
 of Arras, Brussels, and Ghent vied with one another 
 in the richness and beauty of their productions. 
 Thus the painters of the Low Countries were made 
 constantly familiar with all manner of rich stufTs, 
 and they were eager to show in their works the 
 splendid results of their experience. Even in the 
 least excellent pictures by nameless pupils of the 
 school, the stuffs are usually well and richly painted, 
 and so are all those accessories of jewel and flower, 
 which admitted of being reproduced by any workman 
 well taught in the methods of his craft, and willing 
 to expend the requisite amount of pains. 
 
 In the Flemish style, as we have said, it was im- 
 possible to paint large or fast. An artist had to plan 
 his picture thoroughly beforehand, and to know 
 
CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 123 
 
 exactly what he was going to do. After the gesso 
 ground had been prepared, the picture drawn in, and 
 its undertones laid on, it was almost impossible to 
 alter anything except details, and it was hard to lay 
 aside what had already cost so much time. Painters 
 like Titian, whose pictures from beginning to end 
 seldom took him as many days as those of a Fleming 
 occupied months, might, with little sacrifice, abandon 
 any unpromising work and start afresh. They were 
 thus induced to make many new ventures, and to 
 design with originality. Northern artists experienced 
 no such encouragement; on the contrary, the tendency 
 with them was, of necessity, the other way. The 
 series of subjects, portraits apart, which they were 
 called upon to depict, were relatively few in number, 
 and showed little indication of increasing. For 
 each subject, typical methods of treatment became 
 habitual, and artists and patrons alike preferred to 
 adhere to them, with moderate constancy, rather than 
 to strive for an originality which might well be accom- 
 panied by a smaller measure of success. Memh'ng 
 almost always painted pictures of the enthroned 
 Virgin with Saints according to one design, particular 
 saints being introduced as the circumstances of the 
 case required, or if none were wanted, then angels 
 took their place. 
 
 Thus the chief qualities of the Flemish school may 
 be called Veracity of Imitation, Jewel-like richness of 
 
124 CHARACTER OF i^TH CENTURY FLEMISH ART. 
 
 Colour, perfection of Finish, emphasis of Character, 
 and Conservatism in design. These indeed are 
 virtues enough to make a school of art great in the 
 annals of time, even though they may never be able 
 to win for it the clatter of popular applause. The 
 paintings of Flanders were not, and were not intended 
 to be, popular. Flemish artists did not, like the 
 Italians, paint for the folk, but for the delight of a 
 small clique of cultured and solid individuals. They 
 painted as their employers worked, with energy, 
 honesty, and endurance ; they cared not for beauty 
 of the more palpable and less enduring kind, but 
 they cared infinitely for Truth ; for her they laboured 
 in humility, satisfied with the joy of their own 
 obedience, and then, when they slept and knew not 
 of it, she came and clothed the children of their 
 industry with her own unfading garments of lovehness 
 and life. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 St. Paul, in a moment of fine enthusiasm, declared 
 that the single virtue of charity is superior to all 
 others, so that without it they profit nothing. We, 
 looking back upon what generations have left behind 
 them of labour crystallized into form, and noting how 
 often men of splendid endowments but little tenacity 
 have passed away into forgetfulness, like a gay ripple 
 across a sun-lit sea, might be tempted to believe that 
 for the artist there is a different virtue absolutely 
 essential, and that that virtue is Industry. Now 
 and again, perhaps, some extraordinary genius has 
 arisen, to whom success seems to have come with- 
 out effort on his part ; but either the appearance is 
 illusory, or else the man was born in a happy hour 
 and reaped the reward, for which the soil was tilled 
 and the seed sown, by the faithful labours of his less 
 remembered forefathers. But the nobler measure of 
 praise belongs to one finely endowed by nature, who 
 
:26 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 patiently continues from day to day improving the 
 gifts and enlarging the powers which have been 
 rendered into his stewardship. And assuredly the 
 spirit of him who gazes will be more kindled and 
 exalted by watching the strong and steady winging 
 towards its aim of a keen-sighted and experienced 
 mind, than the sudden and impetuous rocket-flight 
 of a wild imagination, accompanied though it be by 
 never so many brilliant coruscations and startling 
 surprises. 
 
 Amongst artists few have been more gifted and 
 none more earnest than the two with whom the early 
 Flemish school culminated. It is not true that the 
 brothers Van Eyck were the founders of that school. 
 There were many and excellent painters in the Low 
 Countries before their day, as the few surviving works 
 and the ancient records testify. The Van Eycks 
 introduced great changes, and may be said to have 
 originated a new style, which became so popular that 
 pictures of the old school went out of fashion and 
 were replaced by others more in accordance with 
 the new taste ; but the brothers must nevertheless 
 be considered rather as the culminating than the 
 founding artists of the school. Fourteenth century 
 Flemish pictures are indeed rare ; but there remain 
 a few excellent wall-paintings, and meritorious panel- 
 pictures are likewise discoverable, as for instance at 
 Dijon. All this pre- Van Eyck Flemish work is of 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 127 
 
 the style of the Rhenish school, and closely resembles 
 the work of the Koln painters. Indeed, ancient 
 records seem to show that most of the artists who 
 worked in Flanders in the fourteenth century and 
 the early years of the fifteenth were Germans, follow- 
 ing the traditions of Meister Wilhelm and the mystic 
 school. The mild enthusiasm and purity of heart 
 which characterized the early mystics, degenerated 
 at the commencement of the fifteenth century into a 
 mawkish sentimentality. This kind of thing was not 
 likely long to suit the taste of the common-sense 
 burghers of phlegmatic Flanders, and, if art was ever 
 to be a living thing for them and not a mere toy, 
 a new spirit must be breathed into it, and they must 
 do that for themselves. The change which took 
 place under the Van Eycks and their followers was 
 thus in great part due to the new nationality of the 
 artists. It was the result of a transference of art 
 from German to Dutch and Flemish hands. Just 
 such a change took place also in commercial Venice. 
 The Venetians, busy with their trade, preferred for 
 a long time to buy, rather than to produce, the works 
 of art they required. The time, however, came when 
 their ideals and needs were different from those of 
 any other people, and the difference lay in a superior 
 robustness. Then they had to settle down and make 
 works of art for themselves, and in a few years they 
 produced a school as powerful as any in the world. 
 
128 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 Without breaking with the past the Flemish painters 
 of the fifteenth century introduced a new spirit into 
 the old work, and while they modified the ideal, they 
 modified also the technical method of working. 
 
 It is one of our greatest misfortunes, as students 
 of the history of art, that none of the early works 
 of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck exist 
 to our knowledge. Hubert was born at Maaseyck 
 (near Maastricht) about the year 1366, Jan was 
 born about 1380, and is traditionally asserted to have 
 been brought up by his elder brother. At some time 
 or another they removed to Ghent, where, in the year 
 142 1, they were admitted into the Painters' Guild. 
 Jan went off for a couple of years to the Hague, 
 whilst Hubert remained behind earning a high reput- 
 ation. About the year 1424 he received an order 
 for a great altar-piece, but in 1426, before he had 
 done much more than make a commencement upon 
 it, the swift hand of death bore him away, and the 
 work was left to Jan to be carried out. This 
 picture, the world-renowned * Adoration of the Lamb,' 
 at St. Bavon's Church in Ghent, is the only example 
 we possess of Hubert's handiwork, and the earliest 
 specimen of Jan's. It is painted in the improved 
 manner invented by one or the other of the brothers, 
 or by both conjointly. We have thus no indications 
 of what Hubert's early work was like, either as to 
 its ideal or its method. We are unable to trace the 
 
THE VAN- EYCKS. i29 
 
 growth of his mind or of the invention he made, and 
 we do not know to which of the two brothers the 
 greatest credit is due. Suddenly the old ideal and 
 the old methods seem to be supplanted by this im- 
 proved method and wholly changed ideal. In all 
 the history of art there exists no such other gap. 
 
 The * Adoration of the Lamb'"^ is thus a monu- 
 mental work of unique importance. It is unfortunate 
 tliat, owing to the greed or indifference of some 
 churchmen, its wings have been dismembered from 
 the centre-piece and distributed in part to Brussels 
 and in part to Berlin, their place at Ghent being 
 taken by feeble copies. 
 
 On the outsides of the wings there is an Annunci- 
 ation in the upper four panels, the scene being laid 
 in the painter's own studio, with a view out of the 
 windows looking over the town of Ghent. In the 
 four panels below are Jodocus Vijts and his wife, 
 who paid for the picture, and by their sides two 
 images of their patron saints. 
 
 It is, however, to the interior when the wings are 
 opened that attention will be chiefly directed. The 
 picture is an illustration of the following passages 
 from St. John's Apocalypse : " I looked, and, lo, a 
 Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him an 
 hundred and forty and four thousand, having His 
 
 * The Arundel Society has published a reproduction of it 
 with an imitation of the original frame. 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 Father's name written in their foreheads. And I 
 heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many- 
 waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I 
 heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps : 
 and they sung as it were a new song before the 
 throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders : 
 and no man could learn that song but the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed 
 from the earth .... These are they which follow 
 the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were re- 
 deemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto 
 God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was 
 found no guile : for they are without fault before the 
 throne of God." And again, " I beheld, and, lo, a 
 great multitude, which no man could number, clothed 
 with white robes, and palms in their hands .... 
 These are they which came out of great tribulation, 
 and have washed their robes, and made them white 
 in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before 
 the throne of God ; and He shall feed them, and shall 
 lead them to living fountains of waters, and shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes." 
 
 Upon the principal panel in the centre below is the 
 Adoration of the Lamb ; on the lower panels of the 
 wings on either side of it are the Just Judges and 
 the Knights, the Saints and the Hermits advancing 
 to adore. The noble figure of Christ, King of 
 Heaven, seated between the Virgin and John Baptist 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 131 
 
 (as he is usually represented in pictures of the Last 
 Judgment), occupies the upper central portion, whilst 
 in the corresponding parts of the wings on either side 
 are choirs of playing and singing angels, and Adam 
 and Eve representing, the fallen, as the Virgin and 
 John the redeemed, human race. 
 
 Tradition asserts with probable correctness that 
 two of the Just Judges are portraits of Hubert and 
 Jan van Eyck. Hubert is the man in front on the 
 white horse; Jan with the mild face and lurking 
 smile is somewhat behind, dressed in black. The 
 same two persons appear in another picture ascribed 
 to Van Eyck, the ' Fountain of Life ' at Madrid, to 
 which reference will presently be made. Amongst 
 the Knights are St. Michael and St. George, St. 
 Maurice and Kaiser Karl. Knights and Judges to- 
 gether represent the two sides of the active life. The 
 hermits and pilgrims, devoted to a life of con- 
 templation, are opposed to them on the other wing. 
 All four parties move along tortuous ways through 
 a beautiful country towards the mystic altar of the 
 Lamb. The nearer they approach, the more richly 
 is the country wooded, and the clearer and purer is 
 the over-arching sky. About the altar itself on every 
 side flowers burst into joyful bloom — violets and 
 pansies, cowslips, daisies, and lilies of the valley 
 all in their fairest colours. Behind are purple 
 
 flags, lilies, roses, and vines in fullest strength of life 
 
 K 2 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 and glow of blossom ; no stricken bud, no blighted 
 leaf, no withered flower amongst them all, for they 
 grow in the soil of Paradise, where there is no decay. 
 Even the stones in the brook are jewels, and the 
 water of life washes them. 
 
 Those who have already arrived are grouped in 
 adoration on either side of the altar. Ranged in 
 front are the apostles, fourteen in number, including 
 Paul and Mathias ; behind are Popes, Bishops, and 
 a body of the faithful. Over against them are the 
 ancient prophets, those of the Jews in front, those of 
 the Gentiles (including Homer, Plato, and Aristotle) 
 ranked behind, all alike inspired by the rays of 
 spiritual illumination which fall from the hovering 
 Dove. 
 
 The fountain of life is placed in front, and the water 
 of it flows through the ages along its jewelled bed. 
 
 Behind, amongst the rose bushes, are the holy 
 martyrs with palm branches in their hands ; amongst 
 the lilies opposite to them are the martyred virgins 
 led by Barbera, Agnes, Catherine, and Dorothy. 
 
 Angels with gorgeous rainbow-coloured wings kneel 
 round about the altar, some in contemplation holding 
 the instruments of the Passion, some in adoration 
 gazing on the emblem of Divinfe love, some swinging 
 their censers, the symbols of prayer, till they touch 
 the words embroidered in letters of gold, "Jesus the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life." As the key-note to 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 133 
 
 the whole composition the painter has written, along 
 the front of the altar, this text from his Latin Testa- 
 ment : " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away 
 the sins of the world." 
 
 Finer even than this is the upper portion of the 
 middle picture, generally admitted to be the work 
 of Hubert, as the Adoration panel is certainly the 
 work of Jan. The figure of Christ, the King of"^ 
 heaven, is one of the grandest creations of all art, 
 and can be paralleled only by the head of Christ in 
 Diirer's picture of the ' Adoration of all Saints,' now 
 at Vienna. " Here eyes do regard you from Eternity's 
 stillness" says Goethe. Majestic calm is the leading 
 quality in this face. In the forehead is intellectual 
 power ; the eyes are mild yet deep as the ocean, the 
 hand is full of strength, the pose of the figure is 
 greatly dignified. The word Sabaoth is embroidered 
 on the hem of His robe, the diadem of glory and the 
 triple crown of heavenly law are upon His head ; in 
 His hand is the sceptre of irrefrangible command, at 
 His feet lies the crown of earthly rule. " Heaven is 
 His throne, earth is His footstool." As contrast and 
 commentary there is embroidered again and again, 
 on the curtain behind, the symbol of charity and self- 
 sacrifice, the Pelican nourishing her young with flesh 
 plucked from her own breast, and beneath it the 
 name " Ihesus Christus." Along the front of the 
 dais, whereon His feet are placed, are these words 
 
134 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 written : " In His head life without death, on His 
 forehead youth without age, joy without sorrow on 
 His right hand, security without fear on His left." 
 
 Scarcely less beautiful is the figure of the Virgin, 
 the representative of all glorified women, as John 
 Baptist of all glorified men. Specially interesting is 
 the symbolism of her crown. The hair represents 
 always the strength of life, and the crown the obedi- 
 ence to Divine law that governs and restrains it. 
 The Nazarite, who devoted himself to the Lord, let 
 his hair grow in token that his life was no longer his 
 own, to order it according to his pleasure. The 
 Pagan cast a lock of his hair into the sacred river of 
 his land, or burnt it to his god in the sacrificial fire, as 
 a sign of his self-dedication. The fillet, therefore, that 
 binds the hair symbolizes the obedience to eternal 
 law which binds the life ; and so the crown primarily 
 symbolizes obedience, and only secondarily command, 
 because he alone is fit to order others who himself 
 has learnt to obey. " He that ruleth over men must 
 be just, ruling in the fear of God ; and he shall be 
 as the light of morning when the sun ariseth, even 
 a morning without cloud ; as the tender grass spring- 
 ing out of the earth by clear shining after rain." The 
 crown of thorns is the parent of all others, and they, 
 like it, alone become glorious by obedient wearing, 
 even as the rod of martyrdom is changed into the 
 martyr's palm. 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 The most beautiful virtue of the Virgin, to the 
 mediaeval mind, was her humility, and the symbol 
 of that was the lily of the valley. " The Lord hath 
 regarded the lowhness of His handmaiden." Her 
 crown is a crown of lowliness, a ring of wild and 
 humble flowers — the lily of the valley, the wild rose, 
 and the rod lily. But she wore it in patient and 
 meek obedience, and so she could thereafter sing, 
 ** He that is mighty hath magnified me, and Holy is 
 His name; behold, from henceforth all generations 
 shall call me Blessed." And so in sign of her great 
 reward the binding fillet of lowly obedience glitters 
 with rubies and topaz and pearls ; the humble flowers 
 toss themselves up in their joy, and are strong with 
 unfading vigour ; the lilies and the hare-bells hold up 
 their heads in the fulness of a larger life ; the petals 
 of the wild roses glow with richer tones. And above 
 
 the blossoms glitter their brothers of the night, a 
 sevenfold coronal of stars. The crown of humility 
 has become a crown of glory too. 
 
 The work of painting this picture occupied eight 
 years, for it was ordered in 1424, and not completed 
 till May 1432. The inscription placed upon it states 
 that " Hubert van Eyck, than whom none greater has 
 appeared, began the work, which Jan his brother, 
 in art the second, brought to completion." How 
 much of the whole design was prepared by Hubert, 
 and how much of the actual painting was done by 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 his hand, we cannot for certain say. After Hubert's 
 death Jan did not at once set to work on it, for he 
 was resident then at Lille, in the service of Philip 
 the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and was by him several 
 times sent on mysterious missions, probably to paint 
 the portraits of ladies, the Duke being at that time 
 on the look-out for a wife. In the winter of 1428-29 
 he was sent on such a mission to Portugal, to make 
 the portrait of Princess Isabella. On his return he 
 settled down permanently at Bruges, and there no 
 doubt in the years 1429 to 1432 the great Ghent 
 altar-piece was finished. 
 
 The only other existing picture of the school at all 
 like the * Adoration of the Lamb ' is the ' Fountain of 
 Living Water' at Madrid. Some critics have ascribed 
 it to Hubert, others consider it to be a sixteenth- 
 century copy of a lost work by Hubert or John. 
 Whether original or copy, it at all events preserves 
 for us a composition of great importance. The 
 scene upon which the figures are ranged is divided 
 into three stages. On the upper stage Christ is 
 seated in majesty upon a throne under a great 
 canopy, with the Virgin and John the Evangelist by 
 His side. Upon the middle stage are playing and 
 singing angels, whilst upon the lower is the fountain 
 of living water, by which the Pope, the Emperor, 
 and other representatives of the organized body of 
 Christendom are reverently kneeling on the one side, 
 
To face p. 136. 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 137 
 
 whilst representatives of the old Jewish religion are 
 grouped on the other side in consternation and 
 despair. The throne of Christ is adorned with sculp- 
 tured figures of prophets and of the beasts symbolic 
 of the four evangelists. At His feet lies the Lamb 
 of God, and just below it the pure river of water of 
 life, clear as crystal, proceeds out of the throne of 
 God and of the Lamb, and bears along holy wafers 
 of spiritual food, through the fountain, which is the 
 Catholic Church, to the hungry and thirsty world. 
 
 The symbolism of the picture is sufficiently plain, 
 but it is graceless and forced. The same to a less 
 degree is the case in the 'Adoration of the Lamb.' 
 Symbolism is a language capable of expressing many 
 things which speech cannot well convey. By a 
 symbol a man's thoughts may be directed towards 
 things out of any artist's power to represent oV poet's 
 to describe. Such a symbol was the Lamb of God. 
 Mediaeval sculptors and painters never represented 
 the lamb as a mere animal. They always made it 
 carry a banner, emblematic of the resurrection ; they 
 treated it, moreover, in a decorative fashion — carved 
 it alone as a boss or on a key-stone, not as the centre- 
 piece of a group of human figures. Thus, if you 
 understand what the Lamb meant to the mediaeval 
 mind, your thoughts when you see it are directed 
 along a certain channel. If you do not understand 
 anything about its meaning, it is still an object 
 
138 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 decoratively treated. In the Ghent altar-piece, on 
 the contrary, the symbolic creature is painted with 
 perfect realistic veracity. It does not look like a 
 symbol, it looks like a sheep ; and instead of at once 
 suggesting a mystic thought, it shocks the eye by its 
 sturdy realism, and that all the more strongly because 
 it is not even an adjunct (as in the 'Fountain of 
 Life '), but the central object of the whole picture. 
 
 Veracity, we have seen, was the key-note of Flemish 
 art, and that particular virtue is more clearly mani- 
 fested in the work of Jan van Eyck than in that of 
 any of his followers. Of all Flemish painters he was 
 the most emphatically national, and independent of 
 external influences. The national character attained 
 its highest development and its noblest expression 
 in and through him. Now this very virtue of perfect 
 veracity is inconsistent with the use of symbolic 
 methods in art. Ideal characters, ideal conceptions, 
 do not belong to a painter like Jan van Eyck. His 
 peculiar power lay in keen penetration into actual 
 fact. Thus in the Madrid picture he has to show 
 that Christians are invigorated and comforted by the 
 life of Christ, and that Jews are disturbed and con- 
 founded at it. He therefore represents a company 
 of Christian dignitaries kneeling on the one hand in 
 reverent satisfaction ; whilst on the other hand, for 
 no apparent cause, the Jews tear their garments, 
 and the high priest, representing the synagogue, his 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 139 
 
 eyes blinded with a handkerchief, falls backwards as 
 stricken by a blow, the pole of the standard in his 
 hand being at the same moment shattered in pieces. 
 All this is done without the visible interference of any 
 agency, no encouraging angel on the one side, or 
 indignant angel on the other. It is not as though 
 the Pope and high priest had been mere emblematic 
 figures, such as we find sculptured on the outside of 
 many a Gothic cathedral, or painted by Jan van 
 Eyck himself among the sculptured ornaments of the 
 Madonna's canopy in the beautiful little picture * 
 belonging to Mr. Beresford Hope. Here they are 
 actual human beings, portraits executed with marvel- 
 lous fidelity and insight into individual character. It 
 is just that fidelity and insight which destroyed the 
 old thirteenth and fourteenth century art of fantasy 
 and faith, and produced the fifteenth-century school 
 of actual fact. A further proof of Jan's lack of 
 understanding of the old ideals may be drawn from 
 a consideration of the individual figures in the Madrid 
 picture. The Christ is no longer the dignified and 
 majestic King which Hubert made Him, but a person 
 of insignificant and almost anxious mien. The Virgin 
 is a sweet woman, the angels chubby and smiling 
 children. But, beyond question, the finest part of 
 the whole is the group of leaders of Christendom, in 
 which every face is a portrait full of power and vigour, 
 * Phot. South Kensington Museum. 
 
I40 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 and executed with a masculine veracity. Specially 
 fine is the profile of the Emperor, whilst the portraits 
 of Hubert kneeling conspicuously in the foreground, 
 and of Jan standing up behind, are of great value 
 for comparison with those on the wing of the Ghent 
 altar-piece. 
 
 The individual character of a great artist and the 
 general tendency of his day are always in perfect 
 harmony, because the thing which makes an artist 
 great is the clearness and precision with which he 
 gives form to the ideals of his contemporaries. 
 Activity and enterprise were the leading qualities of 
 the Flemish in Jan van Eyck's day. Industry was 
 full of vigour, men were growing rich, and at the 
 same time increasing in their knowledge of the actual 
 world wherein they lived. A new continent was 
 shortly to be discovered, trade routes were being 
 changed. In every direction the world of nature 
 tended to win for itself much of the attention which 
 previous generations had devoted to the world of 
 spirit. When, therefore, we turn away from Jan van 
 Eyck's ideal pictures to those in which the portrait 
 element had freer play, we are leaving a group of 
 subjects of yearly decreasing interest to the men of 
 Flanders, and we are approaching a field of art in 
 which they found continually greater delight. 
 
 Comparing Jan's Madonnas with those of his 
 predecessors and contemporaries a little way up the 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 141 
 
 valley of the Rhine, we find a notable difference. 
 Excepting only the Virgin of the Annunciation now 
 in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, they are always 
 self-possessed and in a very composed frame of mind. 
 They give no evidence of spiritual exaltation, and 
 the same may be said of Jan's saints. Even St. 
 Francis receiving in an ecstacy the sacred wounds of 
 Christ upon his own body, a picture recently dis- 
 covered on the walls of the Turin Gallery,* — even St. 
 Francis, whose legend was well known to every 
 Christian in Europe in Van Eyck's day, and who 
 was the very incarnation of extravagant mysticism, 
 when Jan depicts him at the culminating moment of 
 a life of visions and dreams, appears as a stout and 
 well-conditioned Fleming, reverent and thoughtful 
 indeed, but thoroughly composed of mind. More- 
 over, neither the Virgin nor any of the saints 
 possess the dignity of bearing suited to the Queen 
 and aristocracy of heaven. They are indeed dressed 
 in the rich costumes fashionable anion c: the great 
 people at the Court of the Dukes of Burgundy, the 
 most sumptuous Court in Europe at that time, but 
 their faces are plain, and their expressions often 
 familiar. Take for example the Madonna with St. 
 George and St. Donatian now in the Academy at 
 Bruges. St. George is in the act of introducing his 
 
 * Phot. Brogi of Florence. Lord Heytesbury's picture is a 
 smaller replica of this. Some think it a copy. 
 
142 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 ponderous protege, Canon George de Pala, to the 
 enthroned Virgin and Child. As he does so he 
 makes a bow and takes off his hat, smiling — we might 
 almost say grinning — at the seemingly frightened 
 Child. (See wood cut, p. 99.) 
 
 For this want of sublimity in Jan's art there is 
 ample compejisation in the new qualities with which 
 his fearless veracity so richly endowed it. He has, 
 for instance, to paint a portrait of St. Barbcra, as in 
 the unfinished panel in the Museum at Antwerp. He 
 takes her legend literally, and depicts it according 
 to the circumstances of his own day with simple 
 truth. 
 
 The legend runs that Barbera's father shut her up 
 in a tower, fearful lest her marvellous beauty should 
 attract suitors to her, and that so he should lose his 
 only child. In her tower she, being a lady of great 
 intellect, gave herself up to meditation and study, 
 and came to the conclusion that the God who made 
 the stars of heaven could be none of those whom 
 her father worshipped. The rest of the tale is im- 
 material to us now ; suffice it to say that she became 
 a Christian, and suffered martyrdom. Jan van Eyck 
 represents her as a fair young Flemish maiden 
 (holding for form's sake a martyr's palm) seated out 
 of doors upon the ground reading in a book. In the 
 background a multitude of workmen are building 
 such a tower as Jan thought would be suitable for 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 143 
 
 SO fine a princess. It is the best thing in the way of 
 a decorated Gothic tower he could devise. He drew 
 it with literal accuracy — the crane on the top hoisting 
 
 ^rH^-^^^^'r. 
 
 St. Barbera. By Jan van Eyck. Antwerp Museum. 
 
 up the stones, the workmen labouring at their various 
 tasks, some wheeling up the rough blocks upon 
 barrows, some cutting and squaring them under a 
 mason's shed, some fitting them into their places. 
 
144 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 It is the truest representation of the actual way 
 building operations were carried on in the fifteenth 
 and preceding centuries. No doubt if you take what 
 St. Barbera was to the mystic mediaeval mind, 
 namely, the saintly representative of the contempla- 
 tive life, you do not find her depicted by Jan van 
 Eyck ; but if you regard the name of the picture as 
 nothing more than a name, you will find that the 
 work itself contains qualities of the highest artistic 
 merit, besides being a historic record of lasting 
 human interest. 
 
 In Mr. Beresford Hope's Madonna standing under 
 a canopy, symbolic of the gate of heaven, though the 
 symbolism is more finely carried out than in any 
 other of Van Eyck's pictures, the chief interest lies 
 neither in it nor yet in the divinity of the persons 
 represented, but rather in their complete humanity. 
 Apart from the mere aesthetic pleasure which the eye 
 derives from the harmony of colours, the play of light, 
 and the rich combination of textures, a pleasure 
 which all the master's works afford without exception, 
 the picture depends solely upon the human relation 
 between the Mother and Child for its charm. That 
 she is the Blessed Virgin Mary and that He is the 
 holy Child Jesus in no way adds to or detracts from 
 the idea of the picture. The essential fact which it 
 bears on the face of it, and beyond which the painter 
 does not attempt to penetrate, is that she is a loving 
 
The van eycks. 145 
 
 mother and He a frolicsome babe.^ The human 
 interest is supreme, and it raises the art to a level 
 from which it addresses not merely a set of people 
 of a certain religion, but all men and women of every 
 epoch. So long as mothers and babies exist this 
 picture will speak to them in a manner which cannot 
 be misunderstood. 
 
 Thus Jan van Eyck, in losing touch of the religious 
 idea, in no way lowered his art, but on the contrary 
 raised it. Reverence, the grand fundamental spirit of 
 all true religions, was as strong, nay stronger, in him 
 than in his mystic predecessors ; only his reverence 
 was for incarnate spirits visibly around him, and for 
 the material earth and heavens that shut him in from 
 the infinities on every side. The supreme virtue in his 
 pictures is, therefore, the expression of reverent study 
 of the two great things perennially interesting — Man 
 and Nature. Religious systems of thought, systems 
 
 * The Berlin Gallery possesses, amongst other genuine works 
 by Jan van Eyck, a little picture of the Virgin standing, in the 
 nave of the church of the Abbey of the Dunes (525 C). There 
 is a copy of this at Antwerp forming part of a diptych dated 1499, 
 and painted by some follower of Memling. The other half of 
 the diptych bears a portrait of the donor, John le Clerc, Abbot 
 of the Dunes. In the library of the University of Cambridge is 
 a MS. written for this same Abbot, and likewise adorned with 
 his monogram, coat-of-arms, and portrait. The Virgin in the 
 Berhn picture is represented as of colossal size, and gorgeously 
 clothed and crowned, but in all other respects she is just a 
 Flemish woman of the middle-class, looking strangely unsuited 
 to such attire. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 of society, come and go, but the human interest 
 abides, and the image of a once actually living 
 man is of everlasting value. For this reason the 
 highest kind of portraiture is the highest kind of 
 art. Photography can render the features of a man, 
 but it can seldom, if ever, produce a portrait of 
 him. For a true portrait is the image of a man think- 
 ing. The flesh is but the expression of the mind. 
 Like the mind, it is partly moulded by heredity, but 
 far more by actions done and thoughts felt. A smile 
 that recurs often leaves at length permanent traces, a 
 frequent frown bends the brows even in slumber. 
 Yet no expression returns again exactly the same, 
 and no face is any less variable than the sky of 
 heaven, which the moving sun and the changing 
 clouds every moment alter with infinite variety. Like 
 the landscape painter, the painter of portraits has to 
 choose his moment and to catch his subject at its 
 best. He has by long observation to see and fix in 
 his memory those almost imperceptible tremblings 
 of the eye and twitchings of the lips wherein the char- 
 acter of the subject manifests itself. Thus the great 
 virtues of a painter of portraits are swiftness to 
 observe, tenacity to remember, and veracity to depict, 
 and all these virtues Jan van Eyck possessed to a 
 remarkable degree. Different men make different 
 uses of the same qualities, according to their other 
 characteristics, and according to the standard of the 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 147 
 
 day in which they Hve. Reynolds dashed off a 
 thousand or more portraits in the course of half a 
 century, and every one of them catches with greater 
 or less insight and veracity the character of the person 
 depicted. But as a rule Reynolds does not plunge 
 deep into the character ; he gives you the general 
 outlines of it as he does of the face. The people of 
 his day wanted to be painted fast. Van Eyck, on 
 the contrary, painted very few pictures, but those he 
 finished with an industry almost unique. Nature 
 will beat any artist in finish. Magnify one of her 
 details a thousand diameters, and draw all you can 
 see, you will be no nearer completeness, for it might 
 be magnified a thousand times more and the details 
 would not only be magnified but multiplied a thou- 
 sandfold. Moreover, an artist, even the most patient, 
 has neither the time nor the skill to set down all he 
 can see. He has to omit the greater part. Diirer 
 says that if he were to finish one of the small heads, in 
 a picture upon which he was at work, up to the point 
 to which he could carry it, that alone would take him 
 six months. Jan van Eyck never left a thing less 
 complete than his powers availed to make it. The 
 motto that he chose proves this : " As I can, not as I 
 wish." His pictures show that every touch was a 
 work of love. He worked on and on at the surface 
 glazings till every sign of roughness disappeared. 
 
 The very elaborateness of the technique hides the 
 
 I. 2 
 
148 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 individual traces of the brush. The surface is like 
 enamel, and even a magnifying glass will seldom 
 reveal an imperfection. To us it seems a high price 
 for a man to pay for his fame ; but mark the result. 
 Jan van Eyck's pictures have lasted without sensible 
 deterioration, even when they have been but poorly 
 cared for. They have always been prized and must 
 always be worthy of prizing ; the works of other less 
 industrious men have fallen to pieces or greatly de- 
 teriorated, and most of them have passed through long 
 epochs of neglect. The honest hard work of John 
 van Eyck has made his pictures perennially delightful. 
 The National Gallery is fortunate in possessing 
 three of the finest specimens of Jan's portraiture.* 
 One is the picture of John Arnolfini and his wife 
 standing in their bedroom ; another is the charming 
 " Leal Souvenir " of a man who doubtless was the 
 painter's friend ; the third, and in some respects the 
 best, is the portrait of an unknown person, wearing 
 a red turban. There is a peculiar simplicity in Jan 
 van Eyck's character ; everything that he does 
 exactly fits in with our first idea of him. He is not 
 like so many who do contradictory things which are 
 not easy to reconcile. He is always direct, always 
 the same ; every insight he gives us into himself 
 shows the same simplicity and serenity of heart. 
 The very inscriptions he puts on his pictures are 
 * Photo. Braun and Berlin Phot. Company. 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 149 
 
 thus characteristic. The portrait of the Arnolfini 
 is signed, "Jan van Eyck was here." He only pro- 
 fessed to come, look, and record what he saw. No 
 photograph or reproduction of any kind can convey 
 the least idea of the veracity manifested in every 
 detail of the Arnolfini picture. The original must 
 be inspected with a magnifying-glass from point to 
 point. It is only the likeness of a well-to-do 
 merchant and his wife, standing in their own bed- 
 chamber holding hands. The painter makes no 
 attempt to flatter either them or their room. He 
 might no doubt have found more traces of beauty 
 in their faces had he cared to look for it ; but he 
 did not care, he looked for character, for the visible 
 expression of the manner of folk they were — the 
 husband quiet, dry, business-like, slow of speech and 
 motion ; the wife simple, and rather childish in her 
 simplicity, but dressed with matronly dignity ; both 
 of them orthodox, plain-dealing folk. Their room 
 is like them. It is furnished with strong and taste- 
 fully-made things — a fine bronze chandelier overhead, 
 a handsome bedstead with an upright carved chair 
 by the side, and a carved bench along the wall. 
 Right opposite the spectator is a convex mirror 
 set in a frame adorned with little medallion paintings 
 of the Passion of Christ, as material for the lady's 
 meditation whilst doing her hair. Her rosary hangs 
 on a nail close by. The whole room is reflected 
 
I50 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 in miniature in the mirror, with the doorway at 
 which the spectator is supposed to be entering, and 
 a window in the passage without. On the floor are 
 the clogs of John Arnolfini, neatly cut out of plain 
 wood, and behind are the more dapper foot-gear of 
 his wife. There are many other little objects about, 
 such as an orange on the window-sill, placed there 
 to catch the light. Through the window you can 
 see a cherry-tree, with sunshine on the ripe fruit. 
 In the treatment of these and similar details, Jan 
 van Eyck shows a liking for dots and spots of light. 
 He finds himself obliged to use a great deal of 
 shadow, but it is light that he loves and darkness 
 that he hates. But light implies darkness, and can- 
 not exist without it. Nevertheless Jan does with as 
 little darkness as possible, and whenever he comes 
 across a space of general shadow he almost always 
 contrives to find there some fortunately-placed bright 
 object or another whioh reflects at all events a ray 
 of light. Herein he shows himself akin to all the 
 later painters of the Dutch school, and indeed, almost 
 without exception, to the painters of all the northern 
 schools that came after him. The Gothic painters 
 cared little for light and shade. They put on their 
 colours in almost flat spaces, taking delight in the 
 graceful outlines of those spaces, but caring little about 
 the lights upon them or the shadows around them. 
 The beings they loved to depict lived in a land where 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 151' 
 
 there was no night, and no burning heat, but where 
 the Sun of Righteousness illuminated everything 
 with his mild enveloping rays. The painters of the 
 fifteenth century descended to earth and represented 
 what they saw there as truthfully as they could, 
 and so it came to pass that to depict the solid form 
 of things was one of their first requirements, and 
 to do that they must regard the lights and shades 
 by which solid form is made manifest to the 
 eye. 
 
 The excellence of the Arnolfini picture lies in the 
 veracity with v/hich the husband and wife are repre- 
 sented in pose, costume, and surroundings, and not 
 merely in the truth of the portraiture of the faces. 
 The character of the pair is manifested by their 
 surroundings, and the spectator looks at these fully 
 as much as, if not more than, he does at the faces. 
 
 The same is to a less degree the case with one of 
 the gems of the Louvre Collection — Chancellor Rollin 
 kneeling before the Madonna in a chamber over- 
 looking the town of Maastricht. The Chancellor is 
 to some extent known to us in history. He was a 
 man of sumptuous life, who either out of generosity 
 or pride founded monasteries, and was otherwise 
 liberal to the Church. He seems to have been a 
 learned man, and his great virtue was that he was 
 "perfect in justice." In the Louvre picture, not- 
 withstanding the splendour of ^colouring of the whole, 
 
152 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 notwithstanding the amount and gorgeousness of the 
 jewelled ornaments on and about the Virgin, notwith- 
 standing the loveliness of the garden, seen through 
 the window, and the perfection of the landscape with 
 its town and its river winding away to the far-off 
 range of snow mountains — it is not these things that 
 the eye chiefly regards. The face of the Chancellor, 
 hideous though it be, possesses a fascination, by 
 reason of its strong and vivid presentment of character, 
 which puts all else into the shade, and renders the 
 very Virgin and Child mere accessories in the 
 presence of the man who worships them. Jan has 
 taken the Chancellor at his ugliest, for he has painted 
 him with his brows knit into a frown and his lips 
 pressed together. He has reached that period of 
 life when the face loses all natural beauty and 
 depends for charm upon expression. If Rollin's 
 character was not pleasant, it was certainly strong. 
 He may well have been just, he may likewise have 
 been cruel. He looks like a man who regarded the 
 world with hostile severity. He has passed through 
 anxious times and emerged sour from the trial. His 
 expression, therefore, adds little that is attractive to 
 his features. Nevertheless, the downright veracity 
 of the painter's work, the clear insight and un- 
 trembling directness, which he shows, are worth a 
 hundred graceful saints and fluttering angels, the 
 incarnation of transient ideals, not human verities. 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 153 
 
 The altar-piece of the Madonna with Canon George 
 de Pala, now in the Academy at Bruges, presents, in 
 the portrait of the donor, the same fearless neglect 
 of all the artifices by which painters so often try 
 to flatter their subjects. The stout, somewhat asth- 
 matic old gentleman, grasping his prayer-book as 
 though for dear life, and kneeling with ponderous 
 emphasis at the foot of the Virgin's throne, is a piece 
 of pictured humanity that cannot be surpassed. 
 His heavy pudding-like character stares you in the 
 face, and you know the manner of man he is as soon 
 as your eye falls upon him. The artist might have 
 disguised all this, but Jan van Eyck would disguise 
 nothing. To tell the truth was his business, and he 
 told it without fear or favour. If he had been in- 
 clined to flatter anybody, it would surely have been 
 his wife in the picture he painted of her for present- 
 ation to the Painters' Guild of Bruges. He has, how- 
 ever, done nothing of the sort ; he has had her 
 dress in her best, with a fine fresh headdress such as 
 Arnolfini's wife wears, and he has set her down so, 
 the woman he knew, and whom we also may know. 
 The likeness is perfect. She is a bright, intelligent 
 housewife, with a clear, steady eye, and a firm mouth. 
 She has the look of a capable person. Her appear- 
 ance is older than her years, for the inscription on 
 the frame of the picture states that she was thirty- 
 three at the time. 
 
154 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 It must not, however, be imagined that Jan van 
 Eyck is a mere reahst in the ordinary sense. A 
 reahst is a man who looks at his subject, and sets 
 down the superficial appearance of the thing, not 
 selecting from what is visible with a definite purpose, 
 but usually taking what is easy or effective, and 
 leaving out what is difificult. Jan van Eyck selected 
 with a definite purpose, namely, the expression of 
 character. He took the man who was before him, 
 and in painting his likeness he made every stroke 
 tell something about the man's character. Thus his 
 portraits are in the highest sense ideal ; they are the 
 visible expression of thought, not the reflections of 
 sight. 
 
 The industry and veracity which were the secrets of 
 his charm were likewise the secrets of his influence. 
 They were to some extent communicable virtues. 
 Thus the Van Eycks became the founders of a 
 school in the widest sense. They did not merely 
 influence their immediate pupils, but they influenced 
 every artist who came in contact with their works. 
 The Koln school became transformed after Jan van 
 Eyck's day. Thenceforward, instead of Flanders 
 being dependent upon the initiative of Koln in 
 art, things were exactly reversed. The earnestness 
 which produced such rich results in Jan was, at that 
 time, a national characteristic ; the artists of the day 
 all possessed it more or less. Jan's work, therefore, 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 155 
 
 quickly produced an effect. His initiative was 
 swiftly responded to. 
 
 In the leading towns of Flanders and Brabant 
 local schools arose, and the new technical method 
 was employed, and the same ideals were adopted in 
 all of them. Industrious, earnest work such as this, 
 naturally led men along divergent ways, and local 
 schools introduced modifications of one kind and 
 another into the Van Eyck ideal ; but all these 
 modifications were so slight, that until late years it 
 was the custom in picture galleries to attribute any 
 Flemish work to Van Eyck. A little careful study 
 has enabled us to rectify such blunders, and to isolate 
 from a multitude of school pictures, often of great 
 beauty, the few real jewels which were the work of 
 the leading men. The fact, however, that super- 
 ficial students were able to mistake the works of so 
 many different artists for that of the founder of the 
 school, proves the strength of his influence over his 
 contemporaries and followers. 
 
 The mystic school of Koln came to the end of 
 its resources in two or three generations. The 
 veracious school of Van Eyck lasted, we might 
 almost say, for two centuries and a half. The seven- 
 teenth century painters of the Dutch and Flemish 
 schools were the direct outcome of Van Eyck's 
 initiative. Many of them contrived to employ his 
 technique with little modification. Moreover, they 
 
156 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 looked at things much ia the fashion he had taught 
 them to look. It was their delight in the expression 
 of character that sent them to the peasantry for their 
 subjects, rather than to the high-born and the luxuri- 
 ous. It was their hatred of shams and their delight 
 in reality that made them prefer incidents in the life 
 of the fo'k to religious and other ideal subjects. 
 The initial direction that Jan van Eyck gave did 
 not require to be modified in any respect. The lines 
 he laid down were those ultimately followed ; devi- 
 ations from them never led to a successful result in 
 the Low Countries. The mystic religious element 
 entered more strongly, as we shall see, into the work 
 of Roger van der Weyden and Hans Memling, than 
 into th:it of Jan van Eyck ; but so far from ennobling 
 their work, it prevented them from reaching the 
 altitude attained by their guide. 
 
 The only probably immediate pupil of Jan van 
 Eyck, whose works are known to survive, is Petrus 
 Cristus, or Christophorus. Two of his pictures are 
 preserved at Berlin, and the contrast between them 
 is of interest as confirming what has been said of 
 the master. The one is a pair of wings (signed and 
 dated 1452) from an altar-piece formerly at Burgos 
 in Spain. These contain representations of the 
 Annunciation, the Nativity, the Last Judgment, and 
 Hell. The first three are painted in a dull, per- 
 functory style. There is no trace in them of any 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 157 
 
 delight of the artist in his work ; their design is 
 traditional ; no artistic conception lies behind them. 
 The landscape below the Last Judgment, showing a 
 wide bay with surf breaking on the shore, stands on 
 a different footing; yet even there the artist does 
 but carry out the teaching he had received, without 
 improving upon it. It is only in the Hell that he 
 sets to work with vigorous hand and creative mind. 
 There, in the horrible gaping mouths, the rush of 
 fiery wind, the grim little fiends amongst the flames 
 inventing cunning tortures for the damned, and Death 
 spreading wide his wings of night over all, the painter 
 finds free play for such fancy as is in him, and fore- 
 tells the coming of Jerome Bosch. The other picture 
 (No. 532) is a small half-length portrait of an English 
 lady of the Talbot family. Here the artist has reality 
 before him, and he paints with all his heart. He 
 rounds the face with soft grey shadows all his own. 
 He makes indeed an error in the drawing of one 
 of the eyes, but none the less his picture presents 
 us with the reflection of a living person, whom we 
 can thus behold and know at the distance of four 
 centuries. His best picture is perhaps the ' Saint 
 Eligius' in the Oppenheim Collection at Koln. Were 
 it not for the halo one would certainly have taken this 
 for the earliest of that series of pictures of money- 
 changers which Quentin Massys and his fellows 
 painted with so much enjoyment. Saint or not, 
 
158 THE VAN EYCKS. 
 
 however, it is all one to Petrus Cristus, so he have 
 an actual Fleming before him who can be repre- 
 sented in a room at Bruges busied with the ordinary- 
 affairs of life. The very Annunciation, for Van Eyck, 
 took place in No. 26, Koey Straat, Ghent. 
 
 It is only passionately enthusiastic faith that can 
 enshrine itself nobly in work of religious art, and 
 passionate enthusiasm of faith was a thing impossible 
 to the Flemish mind in the fifteenth century. Re- 
 ligion became artificial in those days, and produced 
 many an unhealthy growth. Compared with the 
 work of Gothic artists the religious art of the Flemish 
 schools has slight fascination. The whole tone and 
 tendency of the day was opposed to soaring flights 
 of faith. Men were striving to penetrate facts, not 
 to invent fancies. They were being brought by the 
 irresistible force of events into contact with reality. 
 They were finding out that the most mysterious 
 of supernatural things are not the dreams of vision- 
 aries, but the actual men and women of the every- 
 day world. There was no diminution of reverence 
 implied in this. Reverence was being brought to 
 bear upon objects that for centuries had been held 
 in unjust scorn. The area of science and religion 
 were alike being enlarged. Contact with the actual 
 was producing not the annihilation but the elevation 
 of the ideal. The tendency of art to turn away 
 from visionary subjects and to busy itself about this 
 
THE VAN EYCKS. 159 
 
 wondrous world came not a day too soon. The 
 neglect with which the men of the thirteenth century- 
 treated themselves and their contemporaries had its 
 noble side, but it deprived posterity of the power 
 of being as strongly influenced and taught by them 
 as it otherwise might have been. Artists work for 
 the delight and instruction of posterity as well as 
 of the people of their own day. The broader the 
 base upon which art stands, the wider the range of 
 purely human sympathies it enlists upon its side, the 
 more powerful can it become, not only at a particular 
 day, but as long as man remains the creature that 
 he is. Buddhist art and Gothic art are admirable to 
 those who force a way into the charmed area of the 
 past. Greek art at its highest, Flemish portraiture, 
 Elizabethan drama, are arts which address themselves 
 to man as man, and cannot be forced by changing 
 civilizations to lose their charm as long as the great 
 feelings which all ages of men have felt alike retain 
 their hold upon the human heart. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND HUGO VAN DER 
 GOES. 
 
 The generation of artists which succeeded the 
 Van Eycks included several men of eminence. 
 Owing, however, to the fact that they rarely signed 
 their names to their pictures, and owing to the 
 neglect with which the works of fifteenth-century art 
 were treated by the men of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, many once famous painters have 
 passed into total oblivion. No doubt some of their 
 pictures still exist, but in many instances we know 
 only the name and fame of a painter, but none of 
 his works, whilst on the other hand we possess 
 hundreds of pictures, but cannot say who they were 
 by. The careful investigations of modern students 
 in the history of art, and especially the patient 
 labours of Mr. James Weale and M. Pinchart among 
 the archives of Bruges and Brussels, have won back 
 from oblivion the memory of certain well-nigh for- 
 
ROGER VAN DER WE Y DEN. i6i 
 
 gotten artists. Such was Roger van der Weyden. 
 The vague traditions connected with his name had 
 made it doubtful whether he was one man or four ! 
 He was believed to be a pupil of Jan van Eyck's, 
 and pictures of the most diverse kinds of workman- 
 ship were indiscriminately attributed to him. It is 
 the fashion with certain superficial amateurs of art to 
 pour scorn upon the kind of study of ancient pictures 
 and records by which this state of ignorance has been 
 removed. Until ignorance on such fundamental 
 points as the authorship of a picture is replaced by 
 knowledge, the lover of art for its own sake has no 
 firm ground to go upon. He cannot begin to tell us 
 what he sees in the work of an individual until the 
 list of that individual's pictures is purged of all 
 productions falsely attributed to him. 
 
 Roger van der Weyden is the central figure 
 amongst the fifteenth-century artists of the Low 
 Countries. Jan van Eyck was both a greater man 
 and a greater artist than Roger, but Roger was the 
 greater master. The leading painters of the second 
 half of the century were either directly or indirectly 
 pupils of his. He was the agent who took the new 
 principles of Jan van Eyck and gave them currency, 
 not in the Netherlands alone, but throughout Germany 
 and even Italy. The fame of Jan van Eyck spread 
 abroad over Europe, and attracted to the Nether- 
 lands many young artists during the period of their 
 
 M 
 
l62 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 journeymanship, but then Jan (ob. 1440) was already- 
 dead, and so they naturally fell under the influence of 
 his successor. The school of Koln in the days of the 
 anonymous artist known to us as the " Master of the 
 Lyversberg Passion " was nothing but an offshoot of 
 Roger's school. Further up the Rhine at Colmar, 
 Martin Schongauer, himself possibly an immediate 
 pupil of Roger's, was influencing the whole course of 
 German art. Even Wolgemut at NUrnberg, who was 
 destined to become the master of Albrecht Diirer, 
 did not escape the influence of the town-painter of 
 Brussels. 
 
 It is as master rather than as artist that Roger's 
 personality interests us. His pictures indeed are 
 often of considerable beauty, but they by no means 
 possess the artistic merit or the powerful individuality 
 which belongs to the works of his great predecessor. 
 Jan van Eyck's paintings are perennially delightful 
 altogether apart from their historical position ; 
 Roger's only yield their full value to a student who 
 has acquired some knowledge of the effect which 
 they produced upon the development of art. Van 
 Eyck was great as a discoverer, Roger as an ex- 
 ponent. Van Eyck laid a broad and massive found- 
 ation, Roger carried out his predecessor's plans and 
 devised the scaffolding by means of which the edifice 
 was set up. 
 
 In order that Van Eyck's art should produce a 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 163 
 
 wide and general effect, a broadening of its ideal was 
 to some extent necessary. Van Eyck's work is 
 individual to the highest degree. It is the expression 
 of a powerful personality, and cannot be confused 
 with the product of any other mind whatever. Van 
 Eyck forsook once and for ever the ancient religious 
 ideal. In this he was acting in accordance with the 
 tendency of his day, but he went ahead of the point 
 to which that tendency had carried the ordinary level 
 of his contemporaries. Roger van der Weyden, in 
 the first place, reintroduced the religious element into 
 Flemish art. He combined the old religious feeling 
 with the new naturalism. He thus made it possible to 
 enlist among his followers artists of various districts in 
 which the old ideal retained hold of people's minds. 
 
 Roger was a native of the town of Tournai, where 
 he was brought up and received his artistic education. 
 He was already twenty-six years of age when he 
 devoted himself to painting, and became the ap- 
 prentice of Robert Campin. Unfortunately we know 
 nothing about Robert Campin and the Tournai 
 school of art in his days. Tournai is famous for its 
 cathedral, the finest specimen of architecture on 
 Flemish soil. It is stated to be a building which 
 combines the elements of German, Romanesque, 
 and French Gothic architecture. The painters of 
 Tournai may be supposed to have come under a 
 
 similar combination of influences. In all probability 
 
 M 2 
 
l64 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 the traditions of the old Koln school were stronger 
 in them than in men working in the more advanced 
 mercantile cities, whilst the Gothic-religious in- 
 fluence of France must have tended to keep alive 
 in them the language of symbolism.* 
 
 The picture of the 'Seven Sacraments' in the 
 Gallery at Antwerp is the best example we can 
 produce of pure Tournai art. It is ascribed to Roger 
 van der Weyden himself, though many critics fail to 
 find the traces of his handiwork in it, and some 
 would have us believe that it is by Robert Campin. 
 At all events it is Tournai work, and was painted 
 
 * The three fine altar-pieces by Roger van der Weyden in 
 the Berlin Museum show in a very plain and interesting fashion 
 the decadence of the Gothic architectural spirit, which was 
 going rapidly forward in his days, and the growth of the Renas- 
 cence painting spirit in its place. The earliest of the three is 
 certainly the John Baptist altar (534 B), of which the Stadel 
 Institute possesses a small copy. Here the three groups are 
 surmounted by pointed stone-coloured arches, the fabric of 
 arch and sculptures being the same colour. The spandrils are 
 panelled. A trus architectural feeling appears in the work. 
 In the Miraflores Altar of the Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin 
 (543 a), whilst the same general arrangement is adhered to, 
 the arches are round and their heads are partly filled with 
 lace-like tracery which could only have been carved in wood 
 and has no structural function. The fabric and mouldings of 
 the arches are painted brown, and only the sculptured groups 
 and canopies are left their original stone-colour, so that they 
 look as though glued on to the wall, and not carved out of it. 
 In the Middelburg altar-piece (535) Roger takes a further step 
 towards the Renascence, and omits all architectural accessories 
 and canopies whatsoever. 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 165 
 
 between the years 1437 and 1460 for Jean Chevrot, 
 bishop of that diocese. 
 
 It represents the interior of a church, obviously 
 copied from some then existing building, not as 
 yet identified. The nave of the church is depicted 
 in the central panel, whilst the aisles with their side 
 chapels are upon the wings. The foreground, in the 
 midst of the nave, is occupied by a representation of 
 the scene at Calvary, with the dead body of Christ 
 upon the cross, the Virgin fainting in the arms of St. 
 John and the three Maries weeping around. This is 
 the historical event symbolized and commemorated by 
 the various sacraments which derived their power from 
 it. Thus immediately behind is a priest celebrat- 
 ing mass at the altar, and in the act of elevating the 
 host. On the left side are the sacraments of Baptism, 
 Confirmation, and Confession ; on the right those of 
 Ordination, Marriage, and Extreme Unction. An 
 angel holding a scroll hovers over each group en- 
 gaged in the celebration of a sacrament. These angels 
 are all of different colours, and their colours are 
 symbolical. Thus the angel of baptism is white, the 
 angel of marriage blue, the angel of ordination 
 purple. Roger, as could be readily shown at some 
 length, was fond of using colours in this symbolical 
 fashion. Take for example his beautiful altar-piece, 
 called of Miraflores,* now in the Berlin Museum. It 
 * Phot. Berlin Phot. Co. 
 
1 66 ROGER VAN DER WE YD EN AND 
 
 represents three incidents in the Hfe of the Virgin — 
 first her gladness over the new-born babe, secondly 
 her sorrow at the foot of the cross, and thirdly her 
 renewed and ever-enduring joy at the Resurrection. 
 In the first instance she is depicted as humble and 
 pure, so her robe is of white delicately tinted with 
 violet, and round the hem of it the embroidered 
 words, "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, 
 for He hath regarded the lowliness of His hand- 
 maiden." In the second case she is shown in the 
 flood-tide of grief, and her robe is therefore blood- 
 red. Finally, in her renewed joy and completed 
 knowledge, she wears the blue of heaven, where all 
 is known and all is peace. Or again, likewise at 
 Berlin, is another very similar altar-piece,* repre- 
 senting three incidents in the life of John Baptist. 
 The central panel depicts the baptism of Christ. An 
 angel is waiting on the bank with the robe that the 
 newly baptized is thenceforward to wear. Its colour 
 is purple, the colour of the angel of ordination — 
 symbolic of passionate enthusiasm of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Roger's art then is essentially symbolic. An 
 emphatic instance of this is an altar-piece now at 
 Madridf which there seems reason to believe was the 
 one painted by Roger for the Abbot of St. Aubert of 
 Cambrai. In this picture he evidently had in mind 
 the painting of the ' Seven Sacraments ' already referred 
 * Phot. Berlin Phot. Co. f Phot. Braun. 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 167 
 
 to. The central panel likewise presents a view into 
 the interior of a church, whilst in the foreground there 
 is again a Crucifixion. Painted and sculptured 
 incidents from the Passion are introduced into the 
 voussures of the archway admitting to the church. 
 The pilasters on either hand likewise bear painted 
 and sculptured groups illustrative of the remaining 
 six sacraments. On the right wing Adam and Eve 
 are driven out of the wooden gates of paradise 
 because of their sin, which is seen acted in the back- 
 ground. In the voussures and the spandrils are the 
 days of Creation. The left wing, on the contrary, 
 shows the Last Judgment, with the seven works of 
 mercy in the voussures and the spandrils. The 
 picture as a whole thus symbolized to the people of 
 Roger's day the Fall, the means of salvation, and the 
 final result upon those who accept or refuse those 
 means. The little groups of figures are a painted 
 commentary on the main subjects. The whole has 
 to be inspected closely, by a man in full religious 
 sympathy with the artist, before the lesson it conveys 
 can be learnt. The picture does not address itself to 
 the world upon the simple ground of a common human- 
 ity, as Jan van Eyck's pictures did, but it addresses 
 itself to people of a certain religion, .To appreciate 
 it you must give up all your own ideas, and you must 
 accept the painter's ideas. You must put yourself in 
 his place, and look at his work from his own point 
 
i68 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 of view, then you will find that it is excellent of its 
 kind. This very quality which makes Roger's work 
 less popular now than Jan van Eyck's made it more 
 popular in Roger's day. Everybody was then a 
 Christian of the old-fashioned Catholic type. Every- 
 body understood and could appreciate work like this. 
 The painter addressed the people of his day in the 
 religious language of the day. Art being chiefly 
 enlisted in the service of the Church, religious painting 
 of this type produced a much more widespread effect, 
 than the higher and more original work of a man who 
 spoke to men merely as men, and that some century 
 and a half before Shakespeare. 
 
 The two Berlin altar-pieces already referred to 
 present the same characteristics as this altar of 
 Cambrai. Each of the three main incidents is included 
 under an archway embellished with sculptures which 
 form a commentary upon it. Take for example the 
 picture of Christ appearing to the Virgin after His 
 resurrection. The Resurrection itself is seen occurring 
 in the background just at the time when the three 
 Maries are sorrowfully wending their way to the 
 tomb, bearing their burden of ointments, and whilst 
 the black clouds that have darkened the heavens are 
 rolling away into the distance and melting into the 
 blue of memory. The flowers are glad on every hand 
 and the tender grass springs up in the bright morning 
 sunshine. These are the preliminary incidents which 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 169 
 
 serve to remind the spectator of the events which led 
 up to the main event forming the subject of the panel. 
 Overhead the sculptured groups tell the after-story 
 of the Virgin's life — how the three Maries came and 
 talked with her of the glad event, how she beheld her 
 glorified Son ascend to heaven, how the Spirit came 
 down upon her in Pentecostal fire, how an angel 
 brought a palm-branch to her and foretold her passing 
 away, how in the midst of the apostles she died and 
 was carried up to heaven in glory and crowned by 
 the Most High. Nor is this all ; the sculptured 
 capitals of the pillars bear images of Old Testament 
 events — amongst them Samson carrying away the 
 gates of Gaza, an accepted type of the Resurrection of 
 Christ. 
 
 There is in the Picture Gallery at Munich an 
 * Annunciation ' ^ which, by the introduction of such 
 a sculptured commentary, betrays the influence of 
 Roger. The apparition of the angel suggests to the 
 painter the idea of miraculous apparitions in general, 
 and sets him thinking on the subject. In order that 
 he may transfer that train of thought to the spectator, 
 he paints two sculptured medallions upon the wall 
 of the room. One represents the. apparition of the 
 serpent to Eve, the other the apparition of the angel 
 of God to Gideon ; the evil angel foreshadowing 
 defeat, the good angel victory. 
 
 * Phot. Hanfstaengl. 
 
I70 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 We have thus far treated of the individual char- 
 acteristics of Roger's as opposed to Van Eyck's art ; 
 of his reh'gious and mystical tendencies as opposed 
 to the whole-hearted naturalism of his great contem- 
 porary. But Roger could not escape the influence 
 of Jan van Eyck, however much he might cling to 
 his own ideals. It will be remembered that Van 
 Eyck painted an altar-piece for Chancellor Rollin 
 with a view of the city of Maastricht in the back- 
 ground. Roger was employed by the same munifi- 
 cent patron of the arts to paint a great altar-piece for 
 the hospital at Beaune. He may thus have seen 
 and been struck by the masterpiece of Van Eyck. 
 At all events he, or some closely-allied follower of 
 his, introduced an imitation of this landscape back- 
 ground into a picture of St. Luke drawing a portrait 
 of the Virgin, which is now at Munich.* The picture 
 was undoubtedly painted as altar-piece for a chapel 
 of a painters' guild ; unfortunately, however, its history 
 is not known. A comparison between these two 
 landscapes in Van Eyck's and Roger's pictures shows 
 what a great gulf lay between the two men in their 
 love of Nature. Van Eyck's landscape is finished 
 with marvellous accuracy, and manifests the artist's 
 delight in every tiniest touch. Roger's, on the con- 
 trary, is perfunctorily treated, and resembles rather 
 the work of an artist under the influence of Koln, 
 * Phot. Hanfstaengl. 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 171 
 
 where the painters preferred gold backgrounds to 
 distant natural features. 
 
 But the effect of Van Eyck upon Roger is visible 
 in more than the mere imitation of occasional details. 
 Not only did the method of painting invented by 
 the Van Eycks become the common medium of 
 artists throughout the Low Countries, but the spirit 
 of Jan's work infused itself into the art of the whole 
 school, even though it did not obliterate the old 
 religious tendencies all at once. Jan garnered in 
 the first crop of the new ideas which grew up in scat- 
 tered quantities among his contemporaries. Those 
 ideas spread ever wider, and struck their roots more 
 deeply in the folk, till in the following century they 
 flourished everywhere. Thus, Roger could not be un- 
 influenced by them, and through the agency of Van 
 Eyck they infused themselves into his art. 
 
 The masterpiece of Roger van der Weyden con- 
 tains in about equal measure the old religious ideal 
 and the new naturalism. This picture is the altar- 
 piece now at Berlin, painted for the church of 
 Middelburg,* at the command of the landlord of the 
 town, Bladelin, the treasurer of the Order of the 
 Golden Fleece. Bladelin, by the tenacity and up- 
 rightness of his character, raised himself from a 
 common burgher of the small town of Furnes to 
 be one of the leading men at the Court of the 
 * Phot. Berlin Phot. Company. 
 
ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN. 
 
 sumptuous Dukes of Burgundy. He was a Fleming 
 of the best type — a man of strong personality and 
 great fixity of purpose. For him, then, Roger painted 
 a picture, the subject being the first appearance of 
 Christ upon earth. The idea is embodied in three 
 simultaneously-occurring incidents. In the centre 
 is the new-born Babe adored by its parents, by 
 angels, and by Bladelin, an angel at the same time 
 announcing its birth to shepherds watching their 
 flocks on the distant hill. Upon the right wing the 
 Three Kings (representing the Gentiles of the East) 
 behold the wonderful star in heaven with the child 
 in the midst of it, whilst upon the left wing the 
 Emperor Augustus (representing the Gentiles of the 
 West) sees the apparition of the Virgin and Child 
 in the heavens by the direction of the Tiburtine 
 Sibyl. Between this picture and Roger's earlier 
 works there are great and important differences. In 
 the first place there is no commentary here of 
 subsidiary incidents; the three incidents depicted 
 are all simultaneous, they are painted upon three 
 separate panels, and framed together as illustrative 
 of one idea, just as a modern painter might arrange 
 them. Secondly, the figures are of a portrait-like 
 character, if we except those of the Virgin and 
 angels. The Virgin still recalls the mystic Koln 
 type, though here it is more humanized than of old. 
 The slender hands and figure still symbolize ascetic 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 175 
 
 purity, the brow tells of intellect passing the ordinary 
 gifts of men, the face of affection, the hair of fulness 
 of youthful life ; but in spite of all this the Virgin's 
 appearance is more that of an ordinary woman than 
 she ever possesses in a Koln picture of pre-Van 
 Eyck days. Humanity reigns supreme in all the 
 other figures. Bladelin is a splendid and veracious 
 portrait. The man stands visibly before us. So 
 again it is with the Emperor Augustus, who is really 
 Philip the Good. He lives ; he is a real man. 
 Roger had just returned from a prolonged visit to 
 Italy when he painted this picture ; perhaps while 
 there he had seen a portrait of Dante. At all events 
 one of the Emperor's courtiers bears some resem- 
 blance to the great Florentine. Between Jan van 
 Eyck's portraits and Roger's there is, however, a 
 whole world of difference. In Van Eyck's Madonna 
 with Chancellor Rollin, the Chancellor kneels phleg- 
 matically and undisturbed in the heavenly presence. 
 He might equally well be in his ofifice. His face 
 is devoid of emotion, though it is full of character. 
 Roger, on the contrary, expresses character by means 
 of the emotion that a person betrays. The three 
 Magi do not pretend to adore ; their faces are full 
 of enthusiastic wonder. A still more striking example 
 may be drawn from the ' Adoration of the Magi ' at 
 Munich,"^ a picture originally painted for the Church 
 * Phot. Hanfstaengl. 
 
176 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 of St. Columba at Koln. The foremost of the three 
 Kings is Duke PhiUp the Good, the youngest of 
 them is his son Charles the Bold. The character 
 of Charles stands out plainly and unmistakably in 
 history. Bold he was even to rashness, alternately 
 generous and cruel, a man of hot passions, uncertain 
 in council, but vigorous to temerity in action. Just 
 such a man stands before us in the Munich picture, 
 but his character is expressed not in the settled 
 aspect of his face, as John would have made it, but 
 in the momentary glance of the eyes, puckering of 
 the brows, and pose of the figure. The stretched 
 uprightness of the form, the fierce holding of the 
 head, the thunderous aspect of the features, all work 
 together to convey to the spectator a notion of a 
 character altogether in keeping with that of the 
 Charles of History. 
 
 Thus Roger van der Wcyden influenced his con- 
 temporaries and followers both as a portrait painter 
 and as a religious artist. He took the art of strong 
 character which Van Eyck originated and softened it, 
 infusing into it something of the religious tenderness 
 and mystery, and at the same time teaching his 
 fellow-artists to look at men not alone for the sake 
 of their monumental aspects, but with delight in the 
 momentary play of gesture and expression for which 
 the phlegmatic Jan had cared little. 
 
 As has been said, Roger's art, by reason of the 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 177 
 
 number of streams of style and tradition it united 
 in itself, was suited to pipduce a wide-spread effect. 
 South of the Alps his I«tdfe4"^**p sought after and 
 his fame was known, all ovei^Cl^pnJtthi^ influence 
 was paramount, whilst in the 
 artist was his imitator if not directly his 
 perfectly natural result followed. Roger's pictul 
 became types. In whatever fashion he represented a 
 subject other artists followed him. His pictures were 
 copied with more or less fidelity by numerous ad- 
 mirers, in a day when plagiarism in art was considered 
 an honest thing. Patrons would contract with a 
 painter for a picture to be like such and such a 
 work by a well-known artist. The most famous of the 
 types to which Roger gave currency was his design for 
 the Descent from the Cross. He repeated the subject 
 himself more than once, and his followers multiplied 
 his picture a hundredfold. It is not impossible that 
 the beautiful little triptych in the gallery of the Royal 
 Institution at Liverpool* may represent the first 
 stage of the idea in the painter's mind. The picture 
 itself may not be by Roger, but our knowledge of the 
 details of his life is so small, and our acquaintance 
 with the growth of his style and his early methods of 
 work is so vague, that we cannot pronounce definitely 
 about a good many works which strongly suggest his 
 
 * See photograph in W. M. Conway — Gallery of Art of the 
 Royal Institution, Liverpool. 
 
 N 
 
178 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN. 
 
 authorship. This is one of such, and belongs to a 
 group of pictures all painted in the same style, in 
 Roger's studio and under his eye, and very likely 
 by his hand. The figures in the Liverpool triptych 
 correspond in sentiment and character with those in 
 the great altar-piece, painted by the master in the 
 period of his fully-developed powers, and now hang- 
 ing in the gallery at Madrid.* They are not indi- 
 vidually so graceful nor individually so expressive ; 
 but they give evidence of the artist's struggle to 
 express more than he yet had power to do. The 
 wings of the Liverpool picture bear pictures of the 
 two thieves on their crosses. At Frankfort is a panel 
 painted with a life-size replica of the thief who 
 appears on the right wing. The bottom of the panel 
 has been sawn off, and so only the heads of Longinus 
 and the Centurion appear on it. This panel points 
 to the existence of two wings like the Liverpool wings, 
 only larger. These two wings may have belonged 
 to the Madrid picture, the wings of which are gone. 
 If so, Roger, when he painted the Madrid picture, had 
 this earlier work in his mind ; he modified and greatly 
 improved the composition of the central panel ; but 
 he kept the old designs of the wings in the main 
 unaltered, and gave them to a good pupil to carry 
 cut. It is at all events certain that the wings of the 
 final picture did contain thieves of this type, for we 
 * Phot. Braun and Laurent. 
 
N 2 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. iSi 
 
 fortunately possess an engraving-,"^ done by an early 
 Flemish master, and rudely copied from Roger's great 
 picture (or from a copy of it), and in this engraving 
 the two thieves appear, copied in reverse as they 
 naturally would be. There exist many more copies, 
 and perhaps one replica by the master himself. The 
 type soon became recognized, and for more than 
 half a century artists seldom diverged far from it in 
 painting this subject. The existence of the engraving 
 just referred to, has led to a suggestion that possibly 
 Roger engraved it himself. As an art for the pro- 
 duction of prints for sale, engraving upon a copper- 
 plate arose during his life-time, and it was first chiefly 
 practised in the district of the Lower Rhine. It is 
 prima facie probable that the earliest engravers were 
 gold-smiths. It is likewise probable that the art was 
 known and practised in the studio of Roger. The 
 earliest engravers were imbued with Roger's principles 
 of design, and the first great engraver, the so-called 
 * Master E. S.,' was powerfully influenced by our 
 master. In the year 1449 Roger went to Italy, and 
 it has been suggested that he made Italian artists 
 acquainted with the new method. 
 
 Unfortunately we know little about the details 
 of Roger's life. The main incident in it was his 
 appointment to be town-painter of Brussels, in which 
 
 * The only known impression is at Hamburg; M. Hymans 
 published it. 
 
iS2 ROGER VAN DER IVEYDEN AND 
 
 cit\- he dwelt during the active years of" his life, and 
 there he died and was buried in 1464. 
 
 Even more tantaHzing is another great artist who, 
 already probably a man of middle age, became a 
 master-painter in the Ghent Guild about the time of 
 Roger's death. During his Netherlands journey 
 DUrer was taken into St. Jacob's church at Bruges, 
 and shown "the precious pictures by Roger and 
 Hugo." " They were both great masters," he says. 
 About a certain portion of Hugo's life we are toler- 
 ably well informed. He lived for a decade or so 
 in Ghent, with his hands full of work. His chief 
 employment seems to have been the painting in lime- 
 colours of great linen sheets to take the place of 
 tapestry. Records and accounts remain to tell us 
 how, oil certain festive occasions, the walls of houses 
 were hung with the workmanship of Hugo. He 
 painted quickly and upon a large scale in this manner, 
 and his storied sheets became popular. In Bruges 
 and Ghent many churches and houses owed their 
 mural hangings to the deft brush of Master Hugo. 
 Of all this, however, not one atom remains. But 
 Hugo was no stranger to oil-painting. The picture 
 Diirer saw and praised was doubtless such, and at 
 any rate Van Mander, the historian of Flemish art, 
 knew several of Hugo's pictures and valued them 
 highly. All these however, if they anywhere exist, have 
 gone into forgetfulness, with one single exception — 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 183 
 
 the altar-piece in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova 
 
 in Florence. Towards the end of his life he seems to 
 
 have suffered from religious melancholy, and so he 
 
 retreated to the Augustinian Convent of Roodendale. 
 
 A fellow-monk has left us an account of the painter 
 
 which is of such interest that no apology is required 
 
 for introducing it here. He says : " I was a novice 
 
 when Van der Goes entered the convent. He was so 
 
 famous as a painter that men said his like was not to 
 
 be found this side the Alps. In his worldly days 
 
 he did not belong to the upper classes ; nevertheless, 
 
 after his reception into the Convent, and during his 
 
 novitiate, the Prior permitted him many relaxations 
 
 more suggestive of worldly pleasure than of penance 
 
 and humiliation, and thus awakened jealousy in 
 
 many of our brothers. Frequently noble lords, and 
 
 amongst others the Archduke Maximilian, came to 
 
 visit him and admire his pictures. At their request 
 
 he received permission to remain and dine with them 
 
 in the guest-chamber. He was often cast down by 
 
 attacks of melancholy, especially when he thought of 
 
 the number of works which he still had to finish ; his 
 
 love of wine, however, was his greatest enemy, and for 
 
 that at the strangers' table there was no restraint. 
 
 In the fifth or sixth year after he had taken the 
 
 habit, he undertook a journey to Koln with his 
 
 brother Nicolas and others. On his return journey 
 
 he had such an attack of melancholy that he would 
 
i84 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 have laid violent hands on himself had he not been 
 forcibly restrained by his friends. They brought 
 him under restraint to Brussels, and so back to the 
 Convent. The Prior was called in, and he sought by 
 the sounds of music to lessen Hugo's passion. For 
 a long time all was useless ; he suffered under the 
 dread that he was a son of damnation. At length 
 his condition improved. Thenceforward of his own 
 will he gave up the habit of visiting the guest- 
 chamber and took his meals with the lay-brothers." 
 In the year 1482 he died. 
 
 Our only certain relic of this remarkable man's 
 work is the picture at Florence, above referred to. It 
 was painted at the order of Tommaso Portinari, the 
 agent at Bruges for the banking-house of the Medici 
 at Florence. Of all foreigners resident in Bruges this 
 Tommaso was the most splendid and influential. 
 He was man of affairs and political ambassador as 
 much as merchant. Though so far away from his 
 Florentine home he was not forgetful of her, and 
 amongst other acts of munificence the donation of 
 a great altar-piece to the Hospital of Santa Maria 
 Nuova was by no means the most generous. This 
 was the picture which Hugo painted. 
 
 Of all fifteenth-century Flemish works remaining 
 to us this picture is the largest. Hugo was so much 
 accustomed to painting on a large scale, that the 
 little gems his contemporaries loved to work at pro- 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 1S5 
 
 bably possessed small fascination for him. The 
 monk s account suggests him to us as a man of energy 
 and dash, suffering often from nervous reactions, but 
 when at work loving to work with vigour. Perhaps 
 the largeness of his treatment was more acceptable to 
 the fresco-loving Italians than the fine finish of other 
 northern artists. The Florentine picture at all events 
 affords a strong contrast when compared with other 
 contemporary works. Northern painters, when they 
 had a large picture to make, usually broke it up into 
 numerous small panels containing each a separate 
 subject, treated as a separate picture. Hugo, when 
 large work was ordered of him, rejoiced to be able to 
 handle it upon a large scale. He painted the figures 
 the size of life, and introduced relatively few of them. 
 He made no attempt to pack the area at his disposal; 
 on the contrary, his composition errs by being some- 
 what too loose and open. 
 
 The central panel of the altar-piece represents the 
 Nativity. The Virgin kneels before the new-born 
 babe ; Joseph, having kicked off his sandals, adores 
 from a remoter point ; angels with splendidly-coloured 
 wings and robes, kneel around or hover in the air, 
 some arising like gathering birds, not without a 
 certain grostequesness of effect. From ore side the 
 shepherds with their crooks are just arriving to 
 behold the new-come wonder. The left wing of the 
 picture is occupied by the kneeling donor, Portii^ari, 
 
ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN. 
 
 with his two boys, St. Anthony and St. Thomas, 
 standing behind. His wife and daughters, with their 
 patron saints, Magdalen and Margaret, occupy the 
 other wing. A glance is enough to show that Hugo 
 was not much influenced by Roger van der Weyden. 
 The lesser angels in the air somewhat recall his 
 creations, but in the rest of the picture there is little 
 to remind us of him. Hugo clearly was more directly 
 the offspring of Jan van Eyck, and this will become 
 evident as we proceed. In character he was not by 
 nature religious or mystical. He loved good cheer ; 
 \\z was of a passionate disposition. One story pre- 
 served about him relates how he fell violently in love, 
 and painted a picture of himself and his lady, under 
 the guise of David and Abigail — of course, however, 
 the picture is lost. He took to a religious life through 
 fear of hell, a common form of mania ; but he was in 
 no sense a man of reh'gious tendency. On the con- 
 trary, even Jan van Eyck was not so great a naturalist 
 as he. Every one of the faces in Hugo's picture is 
 a portrait, and a portrait of extraordinary power. 
 Portinari appears as a man of dignified bearing ; his 
 boys behind him, though for a moment quelled into 
 quietness, are boys every inch of them, full of the 
 potentiality of mischief and fun. Equally good and 
 characteristic are the lady and her little girl, whilst of 
 the female Saints behind, St. Mary Magdalen is the 
 finest full-length figure of a woman ever produced in 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 189 
 
 Flanders in those days. Her thoughtful and char- 
 acteristic face, her dignified pose, and her splendid 
 garments, are all interesting to a reflective spectator. 
 Nevertheless, it is evident that the painter's interest 
 was greater in other parts of the picture. It is the 
 heads of the rough old men and peasants that he 
 painted with the greatest delight. The picture of 
 Portinari shows that he could depict a perfect gentle- 
 man when he pleased, but when he had to draw the 
 figure of a male saint, instead of taking his model 
 from among the high-born and refined (as the Italians 
 always did), he went to peasants for inspiration. It 
 is clear that he himself was a man of the folk. Art 
 in his days was beginning to draw its life from a 
 wider area, and to address a wider public than before. 
 The spread of the rapidly-developing method of 
 wood-carving was bringing artists and the folk to- 
 gether, and artists were receiving new strength from 
 the contact. This picture of Master Hugo's would 
 be of untold value for one thing alone, even if it 
 possessed no other virtues : it is the first picture 
 that really makes us acquainted with the mediaeval 
 peasantry. Nothing is more obvious than that the 
 three shepherds are drawn from life. They are no 
 ideal shepherds; their horny hands, rough features, 
 and gaping mouths, are proofs of a perfect veracity. 
 The next artist whose mind was in sympathy with 
 the peasant class was Durer, and a comparison 
 
190 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 between these shepherds and the country-folk, en- 
 graved by him is rich in suggestiveness. Most of 
 the writers of that period either scorn the labouring 
 agricultural folk as people without soul, or wholly 
 omit to mention them. Not many years later the 
 miserable course of events was about to give rise to 
 the Peasants' War with all its train of horrors. Then 
 the folk were abused by high and low, reviled, hated, 
 trodden down, and cursed, From the accounts 
 preserved to us from those days of rage we derive 
 most of our misinformation about the country-folk 
 of mediaeval times. Diirer's prints and Hugo's 
 picture tell a wholly different and an obviously more 
 truthful tale. The three men in this Nativity, or at 
 all events two of them, are not creations issuing from 
 the moral consciousness of any one. They are re- 
 flections of actual persons. Their bent figures tell of 
 their labouring battle with the earth. Their hardened 
 faces have been beaten into that rugged form by 
 nights of exposure, frost, and storm. Whilst the 
 world was going along in its noisy fashion with wars 
 and revolutions, setting up of kings, poHtical intrigues, 
 and tremblings of hope and fear in the hearts of 
 conspicuous but now for the most part forgotten men, 
 peasants such as these were the real heat that kept 
 the whole surface bubbling on the go. But for their 
 careless and continuous labour, kings and feudal 
 systems would have faded in a few days. Yet they 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 191 
 
 are as unrecorded and unobserved (except for some 
 tyrannous statute of labourers or another) as if the 
 fine gentry, the monks and the merchants, had really 
 been the life at the heart of the whole body politic. 
 Among the multitude of Golden-Fleeced Heroes, 
 Hanseatic merchants, Lords, Counts, Dukes, and 
 Popes, whose likenesses we possess, whose sayings 
 we can know if we care to hunt them up, whose 
 manner of living is recorded in minute detail, these 
 three old shepherds are the only representatives of 
 the far larger and more important body of silent 
 sufferers and silent workers who kept the world 
 a-going. And mark what manner of men they are ! 
 Not soulless ruffians by any means, not cattle nor 
 anywhere on the level of cattle, but strongly intelligent 
 creatures, capable of wide-mouthed wonder, of reverent 
 delight — human to the uttermost, warm of heart and 
 keen of eye, though coarse in manner and slow of 
 utterance. 
 
 In such veracity and strength of handling Hugo 
 shows himself a true follower of Van Eyck. He 
 surpasses him in the expression of reverence, and he 
 nearly equals him in the expression of character, 
 though he falls far behind him in the artistic quality 
 of his work. Every picture of Jan's has an aspect of 
 inevitableness. It seems as though everything must 
 have been just so. There is nothing to alter, nothing 
 to improve. The harmony of colouring, the balance 
 
192 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 of masses, the arrangement of accessories, is always 
 as good as can be ; and Jan's handling of the brush 
 as a vehicle for laying on paint has never been sur- 
 passed. Hugo was less richly endowed with these 
 artistic qualities. In Van Eyck they were partly the 
 gift of nature, but more the reward of patience. 
 Hugo was not a patient man. He was of a hot and 
 hurried disposition. Thus his work is less well 
 planned than his predecessor's. The grouping of 
 his figures is faulty ; they are patched together 
 rather than grouped. The accessories all about are 
 often in the way. The design of such a picture as 
 this Nativity required more consideration than it 
 received. A figure wanted taking out here, another 
 introducing there. The whole thing is to pieces, and 
 the eye fails to receive much pleasure from it as a 
 whole. 
 
 One more point must be noticed before we close 
 this altar-piece — it is the treatment of light. We 
 have already noticed Jan van Eyck's love of bright- 
 ness ; here the feeling is more strongly manifested 
 still. It is usually said that in this picture the light 
 proceeds from the Child ; it does not, however, do 
 anything of the sort, as a glance at the shadow cast 
 by the Virgin's figure conclusively shows. The light 
 falls from above upon the Child, in a mysterious 
 manner, and then is reflected upwards from the floor. 
 Thus the whole picture is solidified by reflected 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 
 
 lights in a bold and original way. The reflections 
 upon the two angels, close above in the air, are 
 particularly carefully done, and no other picture of 
 this date, except a little panel in the Belvedere at 
 Vienna, shows anything of the kind. As compared 
 with Jan van Eyck's treatment, the shadows are darker 
 here. Hugo, to give emphasis to his light, increases 
 the surrounding darkness. In fact he takes another 
 step along the road that was to lead to Rembrandt. 
 The germ of that lurid gloom, which the fiery Dutch- 
 man was one day to light up with his mysterious 
 cunning, lies before us here. The same spirit belongs 
 to both artists. Some painters rejoice in colour ; 
 they are usually happy men, full of gaiety and 
 simpleness of heart. Others look first for light, if 
 it be but a far-off glimmer, to pierce the gloom that 
 shrouds them in. They are for ever praying the 
 prayer of Ajax ; they are men upon whom the stress 
 of things lies heavy. They wait for light, but behold 
 obscurity ; for brightness, but they walk in darkness. 
 The art of all such men is an intellectual art. They 
 paint to satisfy the thoughts rather than to delight 
 the eye. This is no empirical generalization, it is a 
 demonstrable truth. Take the great chiaroscurits of 
 bygone schools — Rembrandt, Tintoret, Lionardo da 
 Vinci, Jan van E}xk, Turner, — every one of them is a 
 man of deep thought, on the whole, sad. Take the 
 colourists in their turn — Bellini, Cima, Giorgione, 
 
J94 ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN AND 
 
 Titian, Holbein, Reynolds ; as far as we know, or 
 can infer anything about them, they were without ex- 
 ception joyous. Follow out the comparison amongst 
 the poets, and you will find the same result ; those 
 who are always telling of the colours of things are 
 happy ; those who speak of the light upon things 
 are thoughtful, and usually terribly in earnest. 
 When 
 
 " The white lime glimmered, and the trees 
 
 Lay'd their dark arms about the field ; 
 
 A hunger seized my heart," 
 
 says Tennyson. Hungry of heart, likewise, was 
 Hugo, if his picture tells the truth, and what else 
 can it tell ? Such also the brief story of his life as 
 we know it reveals him. The light of history touches 
 him but slightly, though with brightness where it 
 does touch him, leaving a vacant midnight all around. 
 Nevertheless, the few lineaments thus brought into 
 prominence are enough to reveal an artist nature of 
 peculiar interest — a man of power, originality, and 
 restless heart, alternately carried to the heights, and 
 plunged into the depths. Fond of his fellow-men and 
 joyous with them, lightly undertaking a load of work 
 in a sanguine hour, then miserable when the weight 
 of it rests upon him and the enthusiasm has faded 
 for awhile away. A man of strong though perhaps 
 hardly lasting, affections, a man of clear observation, 
 of considerable insight into character, of wide sym- 
 
HUGO VAN DER GOES. 195 
 
 pathy for the outcast and the poor. Finally, a man 
 of truth, veracious in the utterance of his handicraft, 
 and earnest, like her of Cumae, that his last words 
 be true. Of all the treasures of which we have been 
 robbed by Time and the rage of men one against 
 another, assuredly the memorials of so rich a mind 
 are not amongst the least precious. 
 
 O 2 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 The law of attraction holds good in the artistic as 
 in the material world. No school of art can attain 
 strength without influencing neighbouring schools. 
 Such influence is sometimes a power for good. The 
 school of Siena was strengthened by contact with the 
 genius of Giotto, and the school of Florence was refined 
 by contact with the works of Simone Martini. As 
 often as not, however, such influence produces evil 
 effects. When the artists of the Low Countries formed 
 the habit of studying in Italy, the level of their work 
 was depressed, and the same result followed in Koln 
 when the works of Flemish painters began to be 
 imitated there. 
 
 The school of Koln, as has been sufficiently stated, 
 took form under the moulding force of a restricted 
 but refined ideal. It was not the ideal of a great 
 civilization, but of a relatively small clique of men. 
 It would not, therefore, spread far or last long without 
 
St. Gereon and the Theban Legion. 
 
 To face p. 196. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 197 
 
 losing its Strength and purity. Thus, early in the 
 fifteenth century, it began to wear out. It had by 
 that time attained sufficient expression, and the buyers 
 of pictures became tired of it. Just then Art was 
 advancing with rapid strides in Flanders under the 
 leadership of the Van Eycks. Koln stood in close 
 relation with the Low Countries, and no conspicuous 
 movement could stir them without being felt in the 
 Rhenish City. Koln artists did not attempt to stem 
 the tide ; headed by Meister Stephan, they drifted 
 willingly with it. 
 
 We know little about this Meister Stephan, and his 
 very name has only been preserved to us by an entry 
 in Diirer's diary of his Netherlands journey. Archives 
 prove that Stephan Lochner bought a house in Koln 
 in 1442, and that he died in 145 1. His great work, 
 painted at sometime during the second quarter of the 
 fifteenth century, was the altar-piece for the Chapel of 
 the town-hall, now the most valuable painting in Koln 
 Cathedral.* It is to be considered as the typical 
 example of the second period of the Koln school. 
 Compared with earlier large altars, it presents this 
 difference, that, instead of representing a multitude of 
 incidents on different panels, it represents one incident 
 on all three. The Virgin, friendly yet majestic, sits in 
 the midst with the child on her lap. The Three Kings, 
 
 * This and all the principal pictures at Koln are photographed 
 by Crefeld, formerly Raps, of Koln. 
 
198 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 patrons of Koln, kneel around, and their followers 
 stand behind them. On the wings are the faithful 
 companies of Koln's martyrs — Ursula and her maidens, 
 Gereon and his fellows of the Theban Legion. The 
 ground is carpeted with fairest flowers, increasing in 
 number and richness as they approach the Virgin's 
 feet. The background is of diapered gold, with the star 
 of Bethlehem upon it, shining forth from a company 
 of little cherubs, who hover in glad reverence around. 
 A florid arcading, as of carved wood, runs all across 
 the top of the panels, reminiscent of the time when 
 painted figures formed cheap substitutes for statues 
 in Gothic niches. 
 
 The modernising element is supreme throughout the 
 whole picture. The Virgin and Saints are clothed, 
 not in the ideal drapery of an imagined Paradise, but 
 in the costly costumes of a fifteenth-century court. 
 The knightly saints wear the armour of the day, part 
 plate, part chain. All the faces, except perhaps those 
 of the Virgin and St. Ursula, are portrait-like and 
 animated. In these respects, as well as in the type of 
 the female faces, Flemish influence is clearly visible. 
 The strong and masterful art of the practical Flemings 
 is bending the pliant product of Koln. 
 
 There is little or no decay visible in Meister 
 Stephan's pictures, but they contain those foreign 
 principles from which decay was to arise. There is 
 more freedom of pose and more naturalism. The 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 201 
 
 figures are not the mere expression of mild and 
 tender characters. They are individuals with the 
 weaknesses as well as the virtues of humanity. The 
 old beauty of outline is now sacrificed to truth of form 
 in limb and drapery. Characters and expressions are 
 more manifold. More figures are introduced, and they 
 are united together without relation to any sculptur- 
 esque unity in the grouping, and without thought as 
 to the elegance of outline of the whole when projected 
 against a gold background. Their grouping is governed 
 by pictorial and sentimental necessity alone. Most of 
 these changes were not in themselves harmful ; but an 
 art of this new character was not suited to express 
 the old Koln ideal of an idyllic world, and artists 
 trained by that ideal would not adopt with a whole 
 heart the new ideal of an all-round humanity 
 which their practically-minded contemporaries had 
 developed in the Low Countries. 
 
 But Koln art did not suddenly go out. It had 
 many decades of activity still before it, during which 
 work worthy of praise was produced by more than one 
 now anonymous artist. There was, for instance, the 
 ' Master of the Heisterbach altar,' a picture whose 
 various panels are now at Koln, Munich, and Schleis- 
 sheim. He was a follower of Stephan's, who also 
 harked back to Meister Wilhelm, and learnt anew 
 from his work something of the old grace of manner 
 and mildness of expression. Perhaps it was he who 
 
202 THE IXFLUEyCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 painted a large picture of St. Ursula bhelteriug her 
 maidens under her cloak, which we may see in the 
 Koln ]\Iuseum (No. 124). a painting not without 
 elements of grandeur as well as grace. 
 
 Then there is a many-panelled altar, once in the 
 Lorenz Church at Koln, and now scattered in the 
 Museums of Koln, Frankfort, and Munich. Its 
 central panel (at Koln) bears a famous representation 
 of the Last Judgment. Here all the weird fancies 
 of the Teutonic heart find utterance as clearly as 
 they did in Petrus Cristus' picture already described. 
 There is a realism in the expression of faces and 
 figures amongst the damned almost passing to the 
 verge of caricature. 
 
 The most charming of the Koln painters of the 
 last half of the fifteenth century was the ' Master of 
 the Lyversberg Passion.' He was not, however, 
 uniformly sweet as his predecessors had been ; it 
 was only in subjects of family life, such as the * Birth 
 of the Virgin,' to which reference was made above, " 
 that he preserved the distinctive qualities of the 
 mystic school. Turn from that to the series of 
 Passion-pictures from which the artist takes his 
 name, and a wholly different personality seems to 
 speak from the panels. The Passion, as conceived 
 by this painter, was a scene for the display of 
 brutality, rather than the exhibition of heroism. The 
 enduring Christ is not the subject of the pictures. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 203 
 
 but the torturing villains that surround him. The 
 figure of Christ does not dominate the rest ; the vile 
 element seems always victorious. Such interest as 
 the pictures possess lies in the delineation of ruined 
 characters. The faces of the Jews are terrible for 
 plain expression of vileness. Christ is a mere weary 
 creature, enduring because He must, and not even 
 conscious of a high ideal. The only touch of sweet- 
 ness is the tender, though rather unreal, sorrow of 
 the Maries. Moreover, after pondering over this 
 picture well, it becomes apparent that the vileness 
 and coarseness in them are not those of a wild, un- 
 developed art, but of an art corrupted and decay- 
 ing. The singleness of aim is gone from the school. 
 Artists have learnt to admire something foreign to 
 the ideal by which they had been formed ; they mis- 
 took brutality for strength ; they tried to combine the 
 new ideal with their old traditions. As a body they 
 failed, and their failure is instructive. 
 
 We need not further follow the fortunes of the 
 school of Koln. Such masters as those named after 
 the St. Thomas' altar, or the picture of the ' Death 
 of the Virgin,' are little interesting for their own sake. 
 They have to be considered in connection with the 
 growth of the later German schools, but they may 
 be omitted in the present connection. The chief 
 personal influence experienced by the Masters of 
 the Lyversberg Passion and the St. Thomas' altar 
 
204 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 was that of Roger van der Weyden, or perhaps even 
 of his pupil, Dierick Bouts of Louvain. Roger van 
 der Weyden's influence was one which it was almost 
 impossible for any artist of the last half of the 
 fifteenth century to escape. His power was felt from 
 Ferrara to Burgos, and from Portugal to Paris. The 
 reasons for this permeation of it must be sought in 
 its nature and the conditions of the time. 
 
 Roger, as has been shown, borrowed Jan van 
 Eyck's technical methods, but mingled in with Jan's 
 ideal of broad humanity some of the old religious 
 qualities. Roger's art is thus not so universal for all 
 time as Jan's, for whilst Jan's was founded on the 
 broad basis of humanity, Roger's ideal depended 
 upon the taste and creed of a day. But for this very 
 reason Roger's art was better suited to spread. The 
 Church was still, directly or indirectly, the chief 
 patron of art. Her ideals still ostensibly reigned 
 supreme. An art which was to cover Europe must 
 at any rate have a religious appearance, Jan's style 
 was too original, too personal to the man himself, to 
 go very far without some intermediary to popularize 
 it. Jan's name was the great attraction which 
 brought students to the Low Countries ; but, arrived 
 there, it was in Roger's school that they worked, and 
 it was Roger's impress that they took away with them. 
 
 Streams of style, like all other civilizing influences, 
 follow the course of trade. Consider for a moment 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 205 
 
 the growth of the printer's craft, and this fact 
 becomes at once apparent. The chief internal trade- 
 routes of Europe were the water-ways. Towns within 
 one river-system were likely to be more closely 
 united than towns on different river-systems. If 
 now we divide central Europe into its river-basons, 
 we shall find that each river-bason in the main has 
 its school of printing. There is a family likeness 
 between the works of Rhine printers, and a different 
 family likeness between the works of printers in the 
 Maas valley. This is one of the keen generalizations 
 which the wide and minute learning of the greatest 
 of bibliographers, the late Henry Bradshaw, availed 
 to demonstrate. In like manner it was because the 
 artists of Flanders worked in the market-place of the 
 world's commerce that they were enabled to carry 
 their influence so far. Flanders was at one end of 
 the chief trans-European trade-route. Flemish ships 
 sailed to all European ports. Whatever therefore the 
 Low Country artists accomplished that was worthy of 
 imitation soon found imitators in many lands. 
 
 Brussels was the head-quarters of Roger's activity. 
 The most active part of his career was from about 
 145 1, when he returned from Italy, till his death 
 in 1464. During those years he brought Flemish 
 influence to bear upon most of the art-schools of 
 Europe. At home the painters dominated all other 
 artists. The weavers of tapestry, the sculptors in 
 
2o6 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 wood and stone, the glass-painters, the metal-founders, 
 the engravers of monumental brasses — all followed 
 the fashions set by the painters. These different 
 groups of craftsmen were then at the head of their 
 several crafts in all Europe. Diirer relates how his 
 father, the goldsmith, spent " a long time with the 
 great artists in the Netherlands" before he settled 
 in Niirnberg. As with the goldsmiths so was it also 
 with most of the artistic crafts of Europe. Young 
 workmen flocked from all parts in their years of 
 journey manship to learn style from the greatest 
 living masters in the Low Countries. Roger's influ- 
 ence upon the craftsmen of his own country thus 
 received wide extension. In a brief sketch it is 
 impossible to do more than trace some of its bolder 
 effects, and in order to accomplish this with the less 
 uncertainty, it will be well to select a few particular 
 examples, leaving them to fulfil a representative func- 
 tion. Four artists then shall be considered in turn : 
 the engraver called the ' Master E. S. of 1466,' the 
 engraver and painter Martin Schongauer of Colmar, 
 the engraver and painter Michel Wolgemut of Niirn- 
 berg, and the painter Hans Holbein the Elder of 
 Augsburg. 
 
 The Master 'E. S.' was the first great engraver of 
 Northern Europe Martin Schongauer, almost a con- 
 temporary of his, was the second great engraver, and 
 carried the art to a higher point of development than 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 207 
 
 any other artist till the coming of Diirer. Engraving, 
 so far as the North is concerned, first attained the rank 
 of an art in the neighbourhood of Roger, One of 
 the earliest existing prints is from an engraving after 
 Roger's * Descent from the Cross.' Engraving was 
 not of course invented by Roger or any pupil of his. 
 There were probably many centres from which the 
 art took its rise. Any time for centuries the method 
 of printing engravings might have been put into 
 practice, had there been any popular demand for 
 cheap works of art. Artists had Jong been accus- 
 tomed to engrave monumental brasses and details of 
 goldsmith's work. Probably the taking of impressions 
 from small engraved plates, such as goldsmiths 
 frequently made for ornamental purposes, was a 
 process well known to workmen as one of the ordinary 
 methods for testing the progress of their work. 
 Printing in one form or another is a much older 
 process than people think, even leaving the Chinese 
 out of the question. Patterns were printed on pieces 
 of stuff all through the Middle Ages. It has been 
 recently stated that there is, amongst Archduke 
 Rainer's /<?///'/, a piece of paper on which Arabic 
 prayers were printed in the ninth century. What 
 determined the application of engraving to the 
 purpose of multiplying prints was not any fortunate 
 discovery made by some lucky individual, but the 
 growth of a popular need which could only thus 
 
2o8 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 receive satisfaction. The popular demand for cheap 
 works of art arose in the more advanced parts of 
 Europe about the middle of the fifteenth century, and 
 engraving and printing quickly flourished everywhere 
 in response to it. The important question is not who 
 first printed from an engraved plate, but what man 
 or set of men first made it a definite part of their 
 life's work to engrave plates for the sake of the 
 multiphcation and sale of impressions from them. It 
 seems probable that this was done in the lower part 
 of the Rhine valley at the time when the arts of 
 that district were ruled by Roger van der Weyden. 
 At all events, the first engravers of the North worthy 
 the name of artists were pupils or imitators of Roger, 
 and the most notable amongst them was ' E. S. of 
 1466.' 
 
 He is called of 1466 from a date found on several 
 of his best prints, but others are forthcoming with the 
 years 1461, 1464, and 1467 signed upon them. We 
 do not know his name, nor the place of his birth, 
 nor anything for certain about him except what we 
 can gather from his works themselves. Their spirit 
 suggests that he was a native of the Rhine valley. 
 The mystic ideal is stronger in him than in Roger. 
 His style of design, however, bears Roger's impress. 
 The scenes of his activity were various. He is found 
 at one time working for the Burgundian court, at 
 others appearing in different German towns. He 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 209 
 
 must have visited the pilgrimage resort of Einsiedlen, 
 for he engraved two plates of the famous Madonna of 
 that place. His works are numerous, and he had 
 many followers. There are altogether two hundred 
 different existing prints by him or his assistants. 
 
 His most famous engraving is the larger of the two 
 Madonnas of Einsiedlen. It is signed E., and dated 
 1466. In this work the German element predomin- 
 ates over the Flemish, but the influence of Flanders 
 is there. The general arrangement of subject is as 
 follows. A gallery at the top supports a group 
 consisting of the Trinity surrounded by a choir of 
 angels. This gallery symbolizes Heaven. Under it 
 is the shrine of Einsiedlen, where the Virgin sits 
 above the altar with the Child upon her lap, a holy 
 abbot standing on one side of her and an angel on 
 the other. Pilgrims reverently stand or kneel upon 
 the chapel floor. The origin of this arrangement is 
 not Flemish ; it is wholly and particularly German. 
 In fact, it is borrowed from the mystery plays, so 
 common all over Europe and especially in Germany in 
 the fifteenth century. The Mysteries were originally 
 acted in Church, and then the rood-loft was used to 
 represent heaven, a stage erected below it s}-mbolizcd 
 the earth, whilst the floor of the nave was the place 
 of the devils and the damned. The actors of 
 Mysteries, driven from the church into the market- 
 place, as by the fifteenth century they almost every- 
 
2IO THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 where had been, still employed a similar arrangement 
 for their stage. Thus the gallery of heaven in the 
 engraving is directly borrowed from the stage 
 arrangements of the Mysteries. The architecture of 
 the chapel is the debased German Gothic of the day, 
 and possesses no peculiarly Flemish elements. It 
 is in the technique and the figures that Flemish 
 influence must be sought. 
 
 When considering the figures three factors have to 
 be taken into consideration : the old traditions and 
 influences of the mystic school of Koln, still alive in 
 such artists as the Westphalian painters, and the 
 Master of the Lyversberg Passion ; the traditions and 
 influences of the old schools of wood-sculpture in all 
 parts of Germany and the Low Countries ; the new 
 realistic tendency which was more clearly manifested 
 in the Low Countries than elsewhere, but which was 
 not peculiar to them, being the inevitable tendency of 
 art all over Europe. The presence of these three 
 factors is visible in this engraving. 
 
 The whole conception of the design descends from 
 the mystics. The company of angels around the 
 Trinity, the actual presence of the Virgin in her 
 shrine, the devout expressions of the pilgrims, all 
 come from this source. Had the Koln school never 
 existed this print would have been otherwise de- 
 signed. 
 
 The influence of the schools of wood-sculpture is 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 211 
 
 even more visible. The normal old German altar- 
 piece was not a picture but a great pile of carving 
 flanked by two doors, which shut up over it like a 
 box. These doors, or wings, as we call them, were 
 primarily intended to keep the carvings clean. They 
 had to be decorated, and so their panels were more or 
 less roughly painted. By degrees the painting of the 
 panels improved until we find such wings as those 
 upon which the Lyversberg Passion was painted ; 
 but the painted wings were always subordinate to the 
 carved wood centre-piece. The wood-carver did not 
 trust to his chisels alone for his effect. His work 
 was not complete till the whole of it had passed 
 under the hands of the painter and emerged gay with 
 colour and bright with gold. The Einsiedlen print 
 has a conspicuous aspect of solidity. The back- 
 ground of the chapel is dark, and the figures are 
 strongly relieved against it. Moreover, the whole 
 depth of the picture could easily have been rendered 
 in sculptured wood. There are in it no large open 
 spaces or wide-extending vistas, difficult of translation 
 into sculpture and bas-relief. 
 
 Consider further how the nature of the material 
 employed by the wood sculptor must have influenced 
 and visibly did influence the character of his sculp- 
 tured figures. Toughness and grain are the two 
 important qualities of wood. It yields easily to a 
 
 sharp tool, yet its toughness makes the carving 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMIST ART. 
 
 durable. Moreover, it is possible to cut wood deeply 
 and into thin pieces. A much sharper relief can be 
 carved in wood than in stone. Wood can be under- 
 cut more deeply. Small thin pieces can be left 
 standing out separate from the mass. All this is 
 rendered possible by the toughness of the material. 
 On the other hand, the grain is a master which must 
 b3 obeyed. It is easier to cut along it than across it. 
 Ridges and filaments of wood are only strong if they 
 run with the grain. Straight forms are more readily 
 produced in one direction and curved forms in others. 
 Thus the nature of the wood enters as a factor into 
 the design ; the designer must bear the grain in mind 
 or his design will have to be modified in execution. 
 The human figure carved in wood naturally tends to 
 present certain characteristics. Subtly curved surfaces 
 being difficult to render, the nude is no oftener intro- 
 duced than can be helped. Sculptured wooden figures 
 are generally draped. The surface does not admit of 
 fine working up like the surface of marble ; forms are 
 therefore boldly rather than delicately rendered, and 
 paint and gilding are acceptable aids. Drapery 
 consists of large, almost flat spaces broken by angular 
 bends and folds. 
 
 All these characteristics of design mark the figures 
 of the Einsiedlen print. The choir of angels could 
 be carved in wood without modification ; the robes 
 which hang over the parapet are more suited for 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 213 
 
 carving than painting. A school of artists nur- 
 tured in the use of paint would not have designed 
 such drapery. The same is even more the case with 
 the figures under the archway. The drapery outHnes 
 are all long and straight ; the figures are buried 
 inside their garments. The nude figure of the child 
 Christ is the feeblest part of the whole. All the 
 faces, moreover, are boldly rendered. Few of them 
 have much charm of feature ; their parts are some- 
 times wrongly and always roughly proportioned. 
 The hair of the bearded men is specially reminiscent 
 of wood-sculpture. The peculiar dragging back of 
 the beard against the chest was a natural expedient 
 for strengthening the neck of a wooden figure. 
 
 On to this old German stock the * Master E. S/ 
 grafted the vivifying influence of Flanders. Van 
 Eyck had raised the northern schools to the level 
 of expressive art ; before him painters had been 
 content to convey a religious idea. Jan van Eyck 
 made his pictures primarily expressive of pictorial 
 ideas. They were fine works of art, apart from all 
 question of meaning ; finely executed and finished 
 things. Therefore the meaning with which they were 
 weighted smites the spectator with previously unex- 
 ampled force. Again, Jan painted individuals, not 
 personified qualities. He gave each figure an all- 
 round and not a one-sided character. Roger, as has 
 been said, mingled something of this individualism 
 
214 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 with the old reHgious spirit, and painted in the new 
 more briUiant and fine technique. The 'Master E. S/ 
 introduced at second-hand the new individuaHsm into 
 an art quite ready to receive it. There was plenty of 
 strength in the old German work, but it was of a 
 blundering and careless kind. The influence of 
 Flanders turned German workmen into artists, and 
 enabled them to discipline and direct their powers. 
 All the delicacy in this print comes from Flanders. 
 The attempt to give each face an individual expres- 
 sion is Flemish. Whatever tenderness can be 
 observed, as, for example, in the face of the holy 
 Abbot, descends from the mystic school of the Rhine 
 valley, whatever ruggedness, from the old German 
 schools ; but the complete and careful characterization 
 of such a face as that of the bareheaded pilgrim 
 holding his hat was the gift of Jan van Eyck and 
 Roger. 
 
 Without pausing over the engravings by the ' Master 
 E. S.' further than to note that two of them merely 
 reproduce Roger's compositions, we may at once 
 turn to the more renowned Martin Schongauer of 
 Colmar. Little is known of his life, and that little 
 has resulted from prolonged investigation and discus- 
 sion. Kaspar Schongauer, a native of Augsburg, 
 removed to Colmar about the year 1445, and there 
 settled down as working goldsmith. Shortly after 
 his arrival a son was born to him and named Martin. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 215 
 
 Doubtless, like Durer, the future artist received his 
 first instruction from his goldsmith father. Whether 
 he likewise learnt the rudiments of painting at 
 Colmar we do not know, but that is also probable. 
 A foundationless report mentions an otherwise un- 
 known artist as his first master. While still a 
 lad he would in the natural course of things go 
 forth for his years of travel, and the Low Coun- 
 tries would as naturally be the goal of his steps. 
 Lambert Lombard distinctly states that he worked 
 under Roger van der Weyden, and nothing could be 
 more likely. His earliest engravings belong to about 
 1465, when he was twenty years old and probably 
 took up the mastership of his craft. The British 
 Museum possesses two of his drawings dated 1469 
 one of which belonged to Albrecht DUrer. These 
 drawings show that Martin's style was fully developed 
 when he was twenty-four years of age. We do not 
 know when he settled down at Colmar, but it was 
 probably at the close of his Wanderjahre, about 1464 
 or 1465, just after Roger's death. In 1473 he painted 
 a fine picture of the Virgin before a hedge of roses, 
 still in the Church of S. Martin at Colmar, for which 
 it was painted. It is the only one of his pictures 
 certainly known to us, though a * Death of the 
 Virgin' in the National Gallery is often confidently 
 ascribed to him, and there are several pictures from 
 his workshop still to be seen in the Museum at 
 
2i6 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 Colmar. His period of activity was short, for he 
 died in 1488 ; nevertheless, besides the many pictures 
 which he certainly painted, and for which he was 
 widely famed, he left no less than one hundred and 
 sixteen engravings done by his own hand. 
 
 The influence of Roger van der Weyden is plainer 
 to be seen in Martin Schongauer than in any other 
 German artist. He did not sink his own individu- 
 ality in that of his master, but he brought an open 
 and impressible mind to the study of the works 
 of the Brussels artist. The portrait of him at 
 Munich shows a thoughtful and gentle personality, 
 though there is a suggestion of possible wildness 
 in the background. The face is of an almost sensual 
 type, yet it contains no look of grossness. There is 
 an aspect of lazy power about the man, who is obvi- 
 ously younger than the late added inscription would 
 suggest. It is a youth who stands before us with 
 smooth rounded cheeks, and a moustache just budding 
 on his upper lip. 
 
 A comparison between Schongauer's engraving 
 of the 'Three Kings ' and Roger's picture of the same 
 subject at Munich will serve to show the dependence 
 of the one on the other. The engraving is not a 
 copy of the picture, but it is obviously suggested by 
 it. Every figure in the print finds its prototype in 
 the picture. There is a plant, a hat, and a dog in 
 the one where there is a plant, a hat, and a dog in 
 
'Iiiii Virgin befoke a Hedge of Roses. By Martin Schongauer. 
 Church of St. Mariui at Cohnar. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 219 
 
 the other. Schongauer's dependence upon Roger is 
 complete even to the head of the ox. The engraving 
 is not the work of a copyist but of a pupil, following 
 his master's footsteps, but keeping a stride of his own. 
 The influence of the old wood-carving forms is seen 
 in the print, though it is scarcely discoverable in 
 the picture. The types of the men's faces differ in 
 the two, and there is a reminiscence of Koln in 
 Schongauer's 'Virgin,' independent of the Koln ele- 
 ment which Roger also introduced. Notwithstanding 
 these divergencies, a comparison between print and 
 picture will make plain the meaning of the statement 
 that Schongauer was the medium who, by his prints, 
 carried the influence of Roger all over Europe. Of 
 course * E. S.' had done something of the same kind, 
 but ' E. S.' was not so strongly influenced by Roger, 
 nor did he attain a reputation like Schongauer's. 
 Schongauer was more famous all Europe over than 
 any other Northern artist before the coming of Diirer. 
 Jacob Wimpheling relates that his prints were sold 
 in Italy, Spain, France, England, and other countries. 
 Engraving became a power in his hands. By means 
 of it he, first of all artists, appealed to the desire 
 of possession in the middle classes. Before his day 
 artists had either worked for the rich few or the 
 general public. Now it was possible for them to 
 address the humbler frequenters of fairs and markets. 
 Because Schongauer was the first thus to address 
 
220 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 the individual all Europe over he made an unpre- 
 cedented reputation. 
 
 As an artist he did not stand behind Roger. He 
 was a better draughtsman of the human figure than 
 his master. His conceptions were more artistic ; his 
 compositions were better balanced and built. But 
 Schongauer's interest for us does not lie so much 
 in his works as in the effect he produced on other 
 artists. It was through him that the savage art of 
 South German painters was first tamed. All his 
 contemporaries on the Upper Rhine and in Fran- 
 conia and Swabia meekly followed his lead. The 
 power which he thus exercised was in the main that 
 which he derived from the Van Eycks through Roger. 
 It was Roger who showed him how to combine the 
 tenderness of the old mystics with the masculine 
 force pleasant to the Teutonic heart. It was from 
 Roger that he borrowed the sweet womanly type 
 which none ever expressed better than he. He 
 retained the old wooden drapery, the lank and 
 awkward forms, which he had been born to consider 
 admirable, and from which Roger was no more free 
 than he. But he learnt to recognize the charm of 
 landscape, to look not so much for brutality and force 
 as for tenderness and grace. He learnt to beautify 
 whatever he touched, and to make each work a work 
 of art. In fact, he learnt a style ; and so working 
 upon all this with original mind he broke a way 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 221 
 
 into a new epoch, and founded a school which was 
 destined in less than half a century to produce 
 such splendid kings of art as Burckmair, Durer, and 
 Holbein. 
 
 Before quitting this too brief glance at Schongauer, 
 attention may be directed to one more of his prints, 
 wherein his weakness and his strength are plainly 
 discoverable. It is the well-known ' Crucifixion.' No 
 one can fail to notice in it the feeble drawing of the 
 nude, and the exaggeration, extending to mannerism, 
 in the broken folds of the drapery. Equally apparent, 
 on the other hand, is a tenderness of sentiment so 
 nearly allied to the work of some Italian artists, that 
 it is not difficult to imagine a trace (especially in the 
 figure of St. John) of the influence of Perugino, with 
 whom we know Schongauer to have had some com- 
 munication. At first sight this might be mistaken 
 for a revival of the mystic school, but the sentiment 
 expressed by these figures is the human sentiment 
 of sorrow. They do not carry us away into an 
 ideal world. However the print may look, the artist 
 who made it was striving to depict a historical fact, 
 clothed in such garments as the folk of his own 
 day could best understand. The faces are not mere 
 ideal creations drawn from the unsubstantial world 
 of dreams, they are the faces of men and women 
 of definite character. 
 
 The art of Schongauer was based upon reality. 
 
222 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 and therefore it had a future of development before It. 
 It was not founded upon any passing and restricted 
 phase of religious emotion. It stood nearer to actual 
 humanity than the art of a Meister Wilhelm. The 
 power by which it had been brought into this closer 
 contact with men, the power by which this new art 
 of the Upper Rhine was vivified, was the influence 
 of the Flemings conveyed through the medium of 
 Roger van der Weyden. 
 
 It would be interesting to track the course of this 
 Flemish influence through all the parts of Germany 
 to which it penetrated. At Ulm, for example, the 
 painter Hans Schuhlein,* who flourished during the 
 last quarter of the fifteenth century, awoke at the 
 touch of Flanders, and laid the foundations of a 
 school whose style was a development from that of 
 Roger. Schuhlein was soon surpassed by a younger 
 contemporary, named Bartholomaus Zeitblom, one of 
 the most gifted men of his day, and an original 
 artist. He learnt engraving in Schongauer's studio, 
 and only late in a variegated life turned his attention 
 to painting. But these, after all, are only the minor 
 lights of art-history ; we must turn from them to the 
 masters of greater men. 
 
 Wolgemut was born at Nurnberg in 1434, and 
 died there at an advanced age in 15 19. He enjoyed 
 much fame in his lifetime, but his memory was over- 
 * See the wings of the high altar of Tiefenbronn Church. 
 
The Nativity. By Bartholomaus Zeitblom. Ulm. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 225 
 
 shadowed by the greater renown of his pupil, 
 Albrecht Diirer. The in- 
 vestigations of students have 
 at length availed to reinstate 
 him in the position that is 
 his due. We possess no 
 authentic life of him, other 
 than that deduciblc from his 
 works. Doubtless he learnt 
 the rudiments of art in Niirn- 
 berg, where a school of de- 
 corative artists was at work, 
 borrowing its style, in almost 
 equal parts, from the schools 
 of Koln and Prag. The his- 
 torically interesting Imhof 
 altar-piece, in the Lorenz 
 Church at Niirnberg, or the 
 wings of the Deichsler altar 
 in the Berlin Museum, show 
 the kind of level attained by 
 the better artists of the local 
 school in the early years of 
 the fifteenth century. Wol- 
 gemut's apprenticeship ended, 
 he too went off on the Wan- 
 derschaft^ and probably spent 
 
 Virgin and Child. From 
 
 A NURNBERG AlTAR-PIECE. 
 
 Berlin Museum. 
 
 some years in the Rhine valley. 
 
 He learnt the 
 Q 
 
226 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 rudiments of engraving, and his prints enable us to 
 trace the development of his style. One of the earliest 
 represents * Lot and his Daughters,' and is founded 
 upon some picture of Meister Stephan's School. The 
 same may be said of a print of the ' Last Supper. 
 Two engravings of the martyrdoms of St. Andrew 
 and St. Bartholomew are copied from wing panels 
 (at Frankfurt), which formed part of the altar-piece 
 of St. Lorenz of Koln ; whilst a ' St. Ursula and her 
 Maidens' is taken from a picture similar to one in 
 the Koln Museum. 
 
 A developing artist in mid-fifteenth century was 
 not likely to remain satisfied with what the decaying 
 Koln School could teach him. Like his contem- 
 porary, Albrecht Dlirer the elder, Wolgemut not 
 improbably spent some time "with the great artists 
 in the Netherlands." Certain of his prints seem 
 founded on, to us unknown, Flemish originals. 
 Others are copied from the rare engravings of that 
 excellent Flemish artist, the so-called ' Master of 
 1480.' Now it was that Wolgemut, like ' E. S.' and 
 Martin Schongauer, learnt the charm of delicate 
 handling. His figures become more anatomically 
 correct ; he gives charm to the mere grouping of 
 lines. By degrees he attains technical dexterity 
 under the educating influence of Flanders. Further 
 than this, he adopts the Flemish ideals of form. In 
 all his works it is henceforward plain, that the 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 227 
 
 memory of Flanders is a governing influence with 
 him. From Flemish artists he borrowed the blue 
 sky, fading down to a white horizon ; from them the 
 
 The Nativity. By Michael Wolgemut. Zwickau. 
 
 blue distances, the green tree-dotted slopes, the fore- 
 grounds alive with insect and flower. They taught 
 him to love the sheen of water and the hght of day. 
 
 Moreover, from them he adopted, and was the first 
 
 Q2 
 
22S THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 to carry to Nurnberg, that method of painting which 
 the Van Eycks perfected, and to which Roger gave 
 currency. 
 
 In all these respects Wolgemut depended upon 
 the artists amongst whom Roger was leader, but it 
 need not be affirmed that Roger was his master. 
 Wolgemut may never have been in the Netherlands ; 
 but some one somewhere brought Roger's influence 
 to bear upon him, and he became a new creature in 
 consequence. He next fell within the orbit of Martin 
 Schongauer, and learnt the best-known technique of 
 engraving from him by copying some of his prints 
 so carefully that the copies are scarcely less precious 
 than the originals. When Wolgemut returned to 
 Niirnberg he was a different man from when he left. 
 He brought back with him experience of foreign 
 work, a new style of painting, a new style of engrav- 
 ing, and above all, the new aim of art, the examin- 
 ation and interpretation of nature. With these he 
 laid the foundation of the Niirnberg school. He 
 cams home possessed of that ground-work of know- 
 ledge which, enlarged upon and extended in new 
 directions by his own original force, made him, in 
 course of time, the only artist in Europe wholly 
 suited to educate Durer. 
 
 Turning lastly from Franconia to Swabia, from 
 Niirnberg to Augsburg, the influence of the Flemings, 
 gathered up into the hand of Roger, and impressed 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 229 
 
 Upon the rude but powerful artists of the rising local 
 school, manifests itself again as the directing force 
 which set them upon the road that swiftly led to 
 greatness. Hans Holbein the elder, born about 
 1460, and Burckmair, born in 1472, were the two 
 Augsburg artists first worthy of individual fame. 
 The traditions of Flanders came to both of them, 
 and modified their artistic development. Later in 
 their careers both felt the influence of the Italian 
 Renascence, and yielded themselves willingly to it, 
 but it was the traditions of Flanders, indirectly con- 
 veyed to them, that raised them from the rank of 
 craftsmen-decorators, and made them artists. 
 
 Hans Burckmair is said to have been a direct 
 pupil of Schongauer, but seeing that Schongauer 
 died when Burckmair was only sixteen years old, the 
 Colmar artist's influence upon the young painter 
 must have come rather through his works than his 
 personal teaching. Hans Holbein the elder is more 
 likely to have worked in Schongauer's studio, for 
 not only did Schongauer enjoy European reputation, 
 but, being of an Augsburg family, his fame was 
 likely to take hold upon the artists of that city. 
 When, therefore, young Augsburg journeymen went 
 off on the WandcrscJiafty Colmar was one of the 
 places to which they would certainly bend their 
 steps. 
 
 Schongauer's engravings of course influenced many 
 
230 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 men with whom he himself never came in contact. 
 They were spread further abroad than any painter's 
 pictures could be. They were cheap, and young 
 students could buy a few for themselves and study 
 them at home as they could not study the good 
 pictures they might happen to see. A visible con- 
 nection between the style of an old and young painter 
 usually implied at that time a direct personal con- 
 nection between the two, but it is unsafe to assume 
 any such direct connection between Schongauer and 
 his followers. Michelangelo in his youth copied 
 Schongauer's print of ' St. Anthony tormented by 
 Demons.' Raphael borrowed from another the type 
 of Christ-Child which he employed in one of his 
 earlier Madonnas.* All the German artists, there- 
 fore, whose style of design is obviously founded on 
 that of Schongauer, were not necessarily pupils of 
 his, any more than all the painters whose works show 
 Flemish influence were pupils of Roger van der 
 Weyden. 
 
 Schongauer's astonishing fame was largely due to 
 the fact that he was the first to come before the 
 public of Europe as the exponent of a process. 
 Engraving had become the important factor in inter- 
 national art. Henceforward local schools could not 
 remain isolated, as was possible before. Roger lived 
 when, all over Germany, there was a tendency 
 * See Muntz, Raphael, 2nd edition, p. 86. 
 
St. SiiBAMiAiN. L,Y Hans Holbein the Elder. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 233 
 
 towards increased art production. He lived at the 
 centre, and was the recognized head of that northern 
 school which was pre-eminent both in artistic power 
 and technical skill. In the time of his activity, and 
 amongst the artists who surrounded him and formed 
 their style upon his, the new method of engraving 
 and printing from copper-plates was likewise em- 
 ployed and developed as a fine art. Thus Roger's 
 spirit found its way not merely into some dozens of 
 pictures, but into thousands of beautiful works, 
 strewn broadcast over the face of Europe and at- 
 tracting the attention always bestowed upon novelties. 
 The greatness of a man often depends more upon 
 his personal fitness to fill a central place already 
 prepared by the circumstances which likewise fashion 
 him, than upon the exceptional largeness of his 
 talents. Few artists produced a visible effect upon 
 so wide an area as Roger van der Weyden ; yet he 
 was neither a great artist nor a great man. His 
 pictures possess a certain charm, but they are seldom 
 instinct with any depth of thought or power of imagin- 
 ation. Van Eyck and Mem ling were both greater 
 artists than Roger, yet he produced a more visible 
 effect than they. Without Van Eyck, Roger would 
 never have risen above mediocrity. All of excellence 
 that there was in him was borrowed from Jan. Yet 
 Van Eyck's art would never have covered Europe and 
 laid the foundation of many schools without Roger, 
 
234 THE INFLUENCE OF FLEMISH ART. 
 
 or some one of like character in his place, to give it 
 currency, Roger's weakness and dependence upon 
 others enabled him to mingle together the various 
 factors that were wanted to make a palatable popular 
 art. Painters everywhere could mould the pliant 
 product as they pleased. At Colmar, NUrnbcrg, 
 Augsburg, Ulm, they made something different of it. 
 There is little similarity between Holbein the younger 
 and Durer the younger, yet they were only removed 
 from Roger by two generations of artists. If their 
 work be closely inspected and pulled into its con- 
 stituent parts, .some elements will always be found 
 which they owe, through Roger, to the great Van 
 Eycks. 
 
 All art, like all human labour, is continuous. One 
 generation carries on what its predecessor began, and 
 there is solidarity between the works of all the gener- 
 ations of mankind that have ever existed. Step 
 by step the powers of men advance. Step by step 
 discoveries are made and the boundary of the undis- 
 covered is pushed back. Each generation must not 
 only add to but preserve the heritage which its 
 forerunners have given to it. For the vases of truth 
 are passed on from hand to hand, and the golden dust 
 must be gathered into them, grain by grain, from the 
 infinite shore. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 The names of only two of the great Flemish 
 artists of the fifteenth century can be called generally 
 famous. Few people have never heard of Van Eyck, 
 and to fewer still is the name of Hans Memling 
 altogether unknown. Roger van der Weyden was 
 really a more important personage than his pupil 
 Memling, but his importance is more likely to be 
 evident to an historical student than to a lover of 
 pictures for their own sakes. Roger's works have 
 been much scattered about, and many were for 
 centuries assigned to his famous pupil, so that much 
 of Memling's renown ought by rights to belong to 
 his master. Though, however, Memling's name has 
 never passed through a period of total eclipse, it was 
 for some time partly forgotten, and was preserved 
 only in the misspelt form of Hemhng. Moreover, the 
 details of his life fell into oblivion, and a legend was 
 constructed to supply the defect of facts. He was 
 
236 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 fabled to have been wounded in battle, taken to the 
 hospital of St. John at Bruges, and there nursed and 
 restored to health, in return for which charity he 
 painted the pictures to the possession of which that 
 institution now owes its world-wide fame. The 
 falsity of this little tale has been revealed by the 
 labours of modern investigators, and the true frame- 
 work of the artist's life has been rediscovered. It 
 seems likely that he was by birth a German, born 
 about the year 1430. Where he spent the first part 
 of his life we do not know. It is alone evident that 
 at some time he came directly under the influence of 
 Roger van der Weyden, for not only did he adopt 
 that painter's types even for individual figures, but 
 the existence of one picture is recorded, of which the 
 centre panel was painted by Roger and the wings by 
 Memling — a combination easily explained if Memling 
 was at that time a workman in Roger's employ. It 
 is not, however, till Memling was over thirty years 
 of age that we get any certain knowledge about him. 
 His earliest authentic picture now known is the 
 altar-piece belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. It 
 represents Sir John Donne with his wife and daughter 
 kneeling before the Virgin and Child. It must have 
 been painted after 1461, because the Knight and his 
 lady wear the collar of the livery of the Rose and 
 Sun, an order instituted in that year. It was probably 
 painted before 1466, because only a daughter is repre- 
 
BANS MEMLING. 237 
 
 sented, whereas in that year a son was born. It 
 was at all events painted before 1469, the year of 
 the Knight's death* Thus between 1461 and 1466 
 Memling emerges upon the scene as an artist, and 
 an artist already in the full enjoyment of his powers. 
 Where he was then residing we do not know. The 
 picture may have been painted in England ; we have 
 no proof to the contrary. On the left wing, bearing 
 F. representation of John Baptist, the artist's patron 
 saint, he has introduced into the background what 
 must be a portrait of himself in his working attire. 
 An anonymous Italian writer of the sixteenth century 
 describing a no longer extant portrait of Memling 
 by himself, says that it depicts a " man rather stout 
 than otherwise, and of a ruddy complexion." Such 
 is the build and appearance of the workman in this 
 wing. He seems, moreover, to be thirty-two or 
 thirty-three years of age, which is about what he 
 ought to have been at the time in question. f 
 
 In the year 1478 we know from documentary 
 evidence that Memling had already been long resi- 
 dent at Bruges. He continued to reside there up to 
 
 * Brighton Art Loan Exhibition of 1884, Catalogue. 
 
 t Mr. Weale has called attention to an etching after one of 
 Memling's numerous pictures of his patron saint, John the 
 Baptist, upon which it is stated in an old handwriting that this is 
 a portrait of Memling by himself. The character of the artist is, 
 however, so plainly visible in his work, and is so totally different 
 from the character of this meagre, hairy enthusiast, that the 
 attribution cannot be accepted. 
 
238 HANS ME ML INC. 
 
 the time of his death in 1495. Bruges was the city 
 where all his best work was done, and with it, in the 
 days of its highest glory and wealth, his name is 
 inseparably coupled. It is impossible now to pass in 
 review all or even most of Memling's chief existing 
 works. He was probably a more prolific painter in 
 oil than any of his predecessors. Jan van Eyck was 
 slow by disposition, and moreover the Flemish system 
 of oil painting was new in his hands. Roger van der 
 Weyden developed a more rapid technique, but the 
 development must itself have been a work of time. 
 Memling inherited the labours of his predecessors, 
 and was thus enabled to work faster than they, whilst 
 at the same time attaining at any rate as perfect 
 a degree of finish as Roger. In one respect Memling 
 differed greatly from Jan van Eyck; he laid less 
 stress upon light and shade. His pictures are all 
 illuminated by an equable light, seldom rising to 
 great brightness, and never sinking to strong shadow. 
 He did not aim at the same perfect rendering of 
 solid form by means of shade. This made his task 
 simpler, for he had more spaces of flat colour to deal 
 with, and he avoided the necessity of carefully work- 
 ing out solid forms from point to point. Memling's 
 pictures charm us rather by their harmony of colour 
 and grace of outline than by their distribution of 
 light and shade. His work being thus simplified 
 he was able to paint faster, and, besides, he did not 
 
HANS MEMLING. 239 
 
 endeavour to introduce the same multitude of details. 
 So he made more pictures even than Roger, and from 
 amongst them a tolerably large number survive in 
 more or less perfect condition. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of glancing hastily at many 
 of his works, it will be better to consider rather what 
 was his quahty and position as an artist both in- 
 dividually and in relation to his fellows, turning, as 
 wc want them, to those of his paintings which best 
 express his several gifts and weaknesses. 
 
 The most finished, the best designed, and the most 
 famous of his works is the little shrine of St. Ursula 
 in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges,* into which 
 the relics of the Saint were removed in the year 1489. 
 All the wonderful story of the Saint's life was painted 
 on six panels, three on each side of the shrine. It 
 so happens that just about the same time (1490-95) 
 Carpaccio was likewise painting f in Venice the same 
 beautiful tale, and a comparison between the work 
 of these two men is of the highest interest, and will 
 serve to manifest some of Memling's most remarkable 
 characteristics. 
 
 Carpaccio in the main chooses courtly and cere- 
 monial incidents from the legend for the subjects of 
 his pictures— the sending and receiving of am- 
 bassadors and the like — all of them events happening 
 in cities which are so many repetitions of the artist's 
 * Phot. Braun and Nohrin^. t Phot. Naya. 
 
240 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 own Venice. The finest and most deservedly popular 
 of the series is the picture in which the angel of God 
 appears as a dream to St. Ursula while she sleeps 
 in her own little bed. There are but two figures in 
 the picture — the rest of the space is occupied hy 
 the interior of the bed-room, wherein, like Faust in 
 Gretchen's chamber, you may trace the sweet in- 
 fluences of the maiden owner by the little things she 
 has left about : the little desk with its hour-glass, the 
 shelf or two of books, the slippers by the bed-side, 
 the shrine and basin of h^j37\ater on the wall, and 
 the plants in pots on tHjj^ll^f the latticed window. 
 The angel bearing ^^^rSBranch, the bright promise 
 of the crown of j^%™/lom, enters gently with the 
 dav/n light at Ui^Bot. Maid Ursula herself is the 
 very incarnatidiJ^ peace. She has slept the long 
 night thro^nAso still, with her face resting on her 
 little h^BpPiat the bed-clothes are not disturbed by 
 one^S^^n fold. There is no restlessness in her 
 m^ fc^ Her face is unutterably calm and sweet — 
 the lace of one over whom the years have passed 
 without one ruffling touch. Nor indeed could aught 
 ruffle her gentle heart, for peace abides in her. The 
 promise of a violent death comes thus, and without a 
 movement of the slumberer is thus received. The 
 subject was altogether suited to Carpaccio's heart. 
 He painted it with delight. The picture is his 
 master-piece. For Memling, on the contrary, it is a 
 
HANS MEMLING. 241 
 
 subject of small importance, a very minor incident. 
 He only introduces it into the background of one of 
 his panels — paints the angel flying in a great hurry 
 into Ursula's bedroom, and the awakened saint sitting 
 bolt upright in bed in an attitude of obedient atten- 
 tion. The charm of the legend for Memling lay in 
 its character as a tale of adventure. Norseman-like, 
 the idea of these eleven thousand travelling virgins 
 pleased him by its quaintness, by its resemblance to 
 a fairy tale. He only chose five subjects for his six 
 panels, three of them being incidents on the voyage 
 up the Rhine, one the reception of the pilgrim multi- 
 tude by the Pope, and one the martyrdom of the 
 entire company. The whole tale is, to the painter^ 
 a romance full of incident. He wishes in telling 
 it in his pictures to attract attention to the facts as 
 he knows them. Moreover, by preference he chooses 
 incidents which happened in the country. Cities are 
 his background — in three cases the city of Koln 
 painted from sketches made on the spot ; but always 
 he pictures his young saintesses at the outskirts of 
 the town. The open air and the strong-flowing river 
 are the scenes he loves best. 
 
 Memling indeed aUvays loved water, and especially 
 flowing water ; he introduces it whenever possible 
 into the background of his pictures. Often it is a 
 stream turning a mill-wheel ; sometimes it is a brook 
 crossed by a wooden bridge ; sometimes a lazy river 
 
242 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 brightened with snowy swans. He was the first man, 
 so far as I know, who ever drew the form of a river- 
 bank correctly, and it is clear that much of his time 
 at one period of his life must have been passed in an 
 undulating country watered by fair streams — such a 
 country, indeed, as is to be found up the Rhine a 
 few miles above Koln. But if Memling possessed a 
 northerner's love of incident and adventure, it was in 
 a different spirit from the poets of the Edda. What 
 was wild and weird had no more charms for him than 
 for his Venetian contemporary. His character was 
 not in sympathy with strength but with purity. He 
 never painted a stormy sky or a rugged landscape, 
 but only smiling meadows under the evening sun- 
 light of a summer day. 7'he fairy tale attracted him 
 rather than the hero song. The simple adventures of 
 errant maidens were his theme, not the hazardous 
 wanderings of armed knights. It seems strange that 
 the sturdy burghers of Flanders, phlegmatic in peace 
 and fiery in war as they often proved themselves, 
 should have found pleasure in idyllic works of art, 
 rather than in more soul-exciting subjects. Yet 
 such was the case. A few centuries had removed 
 them very far away in thought from the savage ideals 
 of their forefathers ; the great age of monks and nuns 
 and mendicant saints had left its mark upon them, 
 and now, just at the eve of the Reformation, the artist 
 of their choice paints on the shrine for the supposed 
 
HANS MEMLING. 243 
 
 bones of an unreal saint a fairy tale enshrining th^ 
 scarcely believed relics of an ancient faith. 
 
 How thoroughly the spirit of a fairy tale reigns in 
 these pictures, one has but to glance at them to see. 
 The eleven thousand virgins of English noble birth^ 
 all bareheaded and clothed in the rich costumes of 
 the fifteenth-century Burgundian court, go sailing up 
 the Rhine, tightly packed together in little boats. 
 There is something of Flemish literalness in it all, 
 and yet it is a literalness of a fanciful kind. Each 
 scene looks like a picnic. There is the real Koln 
 in the background, the ship (a real ship) at the quay, 
 and twelve young ladies landing on the shore. But 
 for the presence of an angel in the background, we 
 should not have supposed that anything miraculous 
 was intended. It is in the sudden changes, the 
 surprising succession of events, that the fairy element 
 comes in, just as in any other fairy tale where the 
 fascination lies in rapid changes of scene and cir- 
 cumstance by supernatural agency, though each 
 individual incident, taken alone, may be perfectly 
 natural and ordinary. Princesses and milkmaids are 
 common enough mortals, but the sudden elevation 
 of a milkmaid to be a princess, the sudden trans- 
 formation of surroundings and attire, is the sur- 
 prising work of the fairies, and the charm of the tale 
 lies in the surprise. Even so is it with Memling's 
 
 pictured tale. In one panel you see the pretty 
 
 R 2 
 
244 HANS MEMLTNG. 
 
 company landing at Basle, and without a moment's 
 pause starting off one after another along the road 
 to Rome, each so wrapped up in her own thoughts 
 that no two walk together side by side. They step 
 along daintily with the skirts of their pretty dresses 
 held carefully up. Then comes the magic trans- 
 formation. In the next panel the four or five hundred 
 miles of journey, with its alpine fastnesses, its forests, 
 and its dangers of every kind, have been safely 
 accomplished without fatigue, and we find ourselves 
 in Rome, watching the arrival of the un-travel-stained 
 company. Along the level country road, in through 
 the gate, and up the street of the city, they come 
 to the portal of a church, where the Pope and his 
 cardinals are assembled to receive them, whilst at 
 the same moment Prince Conon, Ursula's betrothed, 
 likewise arrives with his knights, and all joyfully 
 receive baptism together at the hands of the priests. 
 We do not see them again until the time of their 
 departure from Basle in company with Pope, bishops, 
 and cardinals on their return journey. The picture 
 is of exceeding beauty, — the little ship packed with 
 such well-dressed and gently-demeanoured personages, 
 the Pope seated in the midst, radiant of countenance, 
 and pouring forth words of holy wisdom, to which 
 the devout company pay reverent and delighted 
 attention. The remaining two panels contain the 
 martyrdom : in the first of them the maidens are 
 
Ursula received by the Pope. By Hans Memling. Bruges. 
 
HANS MEMLING. 247 
 
 being shot down and Prince Conon dies in the arms 
 of his bride ; the other panel is reserved for the 
 death of the glorious Ursula alone. But these 
 martyrdom pictures are quite unreal. The soldiers 
 are perfect gentlemen. Their chiefs look on with 
 smiling wonder and a kind of reverent delight. The 
 beholder, at a first glance, may receive some notion 
 of violence and the like, but another look is re- 
 assuring. Clearly no harm is being done ; it is only 
 a pantomime. The soldiers, who look as though they 
 were shooting arrows at the maidens, soon win our 
 confidence. For all their acting, their eyes betray 
 them, and we trust them instinctively. From a hasty 
 glance we might think the girls in the boat were 
 being killed, but we soon see that they are not ; they 
 throw their arms about and shrink behind the gun- 
 wale as if they were frightened ; but they are bad 
 actresses ; we see through it all at once, and the 
 innocent deception raises a smile. 
 
 The same spirit manifests itself in all Memling's 
 treatments of miraculous subjects, as for example, in 
 the charming panel at Munich, for which the ' Light 
 of the World'* has been suggested as a name, 
 though even that is not satisfactory. The picture is 
 a work of the old school, in that it is a kind of 
 painted chronicle, the several incidents being in- 
 troduced together, artificially separated one from 
 * Phot. Hanfstaengl. 
 
248 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 another by buildings, walls, or mounds of earth. 
 The subjects represented begin with the Annunci- 
 ation, the Gloria in Exceisis, and the Nativity ; then 
 follows the whole story of the Coming, Adoration, and 
 Departure of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and 
 Massacre of the Innocents. The remainder of the 
 picture is devoted to incidents in the Christian story 
 following upon the Resurrection. First the Resurrec- 
 tion itself, then Christ as the Gardener, Christ on the 
 way to Emmaus, Christ appearing to the Virgin, and 
 again His appearance to the fishing disciples ; the 
 Ascension, Pentecost, and the Death and Assump- 
 tion of the Virgin bring the tale to an end. For 
 such a work the old name, ' The Seven Joys of the 
 Virgin,' seems as good as any. The central incident 
 in the foreground is the 'Adoration of the Magi,' 
 and the greater part of the background is devoted 
 to the journey of the kings, all the chief incidents of 
 which are related in succession. Away in the farthest 
 distance the three wise men, standing each on the 
 summit of a mountain, behold with wonder the 
 miraculous star. Seized alike with the desire to find 
 the new-born King of whose advent they are thus 
 made aware, they start upon their several journeys, 
 each with a company of mounted followers. They 
 accidentally meet together at a bridge where their 
 three roads converge. Presently they are seen 
 again, saluting Herod in the courtyard of the palace, 
 
HANS MEMLING. 249 
 
 whilst a few yards farther on the Jewish monarch 
 appears taking counsel with his advisers. The 
 cavalcade comes into sight again in the foreground, 
 and at length the far-travelled kings kneel in 
 adoration before the Babe of their search. Their 
 stay is but brief, and we soon behold the gay com- 
 pany riding away along another road, which brings 
 them to the shore of a calm land-locked lagoon, 
 where three ships await them, embarking upon which, 
 each king with his men, they sail peacefully home- 
 ward along the waters towards the half-buried sun 
 in the west. 
 
 However little this grouping together of the inci- 
 dents may please the fastidious taste of a scientific 
 age, the picturing of the incidents themselves cannot 
 fail to call forth praise. They are painted, like the 
 incidents in the Ursula series, with an excellent story- 
 telling faculty. If we except the three kings on 
 the tops of their hills, all the miraculous parts of the 
 legend are left out for the spectator to supply from 
 his memory. Those incidents only are chosen which 
 lend themselves to pictorial treatment, and few 
 pieces of Flemish landscape are better than the 
 view of the lagoon with the three vessels dropping 
 gently down the tide into the golden sunset. But 
 the most charming parts of the panel illustrate two 
 of the early incidents relative to the life of Christ. 
 The first is the apparition of the angel to the 
 
250 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 shepherds. The flock of snow-white sheep are grazing 
 all around upon a hill-top, whilst their three simple- 
 hearted guardians sit or lean upon the grass, one 
 of them playing a bagpipes for the diversion of the 
 rest. Just then the white-robed messenger of heaven 
 appears gently before them. There is no hurry or 
 flutter about him, nor is there any sign of fright in 
 the men. The piper stops his tune, though without 
 taking his fingers from the pipes or rising from the 
 ground. All three listen with rapt attention, and 
 the angel speaks his message with a quiet and gentle 
 earnestness. 
 
 Sweeter still, though almost invisible because so far 
 away in the distance (in the upper left-hand corner), 
 is the little picture of the * Flight into Egypt.' The 
 road along which the travellers must go winds among 
 undulating meadows and leafy copses. Already the 
 morning portion of the way has been accomplished ; 
 it is the hour of rest. The ass is unsaddled and 
 turned adrift to graze according to his will ; Joseph 
 has gone aside to fetch water from a fountain, whilst 
 the Virgin and Child rest under a date tree, which 
 bends down to them of itself and offers them its 
 ripe fruit. It is a little idyl that a poet might have 
 sung. The same subject has been painted with 
 some frequency, but nowhere is the beauty of it so 
 sweetly or so simply shown as here. 
 
 Memling excelled in painting such religious fairy 
 
HANS MEMLING. 251 
 
 tales. He was not in reality a religious artist. None 
 of his pictures give evidence of any passionate faith 
 or enthusiasm such as animated the old artists of 
 Koln. Nor does he ever succeed in representing 
 any of the grander Scriptural conceptions. A favourite 
 subject of fifteenth and early sixteenth century artists, 
 for example, was the Apocalyptic poem. So popular 
 was it that, even before the introduction of movable 
 types, one of the first books ever printed was an illus- 
 trated Apocalypse, which ran through several editions 
 we know of, and doubtless many that have not come 
 down to us. Diirer also, almost during the lifetime of 
 Memling, published such a set of prints — the finest 
 work of wood-cutting up to that time made, and the 
 finest pictures of the poem made at any time. His 
 great and strong imagination entered into the exalted 
 and mystic spirit of the poem, and his hand expressed 
 it with rough and resistless energy. For the wing of 
 his most famous triptych^ Memling had to handle 
 the same subject, and he did it conscientiously, as he 
 did everything he put his hand to ; but it was not a 
 work of love, and this part of the picture was not 
 a success. Symbolic stones fall flaming into a real 
 sea, devils and dragons perform their appointed tasks, 
 but the whole thing is dead. The subjects have not 
 been grasped by the painter's imagination, and do not 
 come forth hot from the deep of his soul. Even the 
 * At Bruges. 
 
252 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 four riders, who were often pictured with great power 
 by northern artists, are here nothing but strangely- 
 bedizened men, galloping furiously along islands 
 little larger than the horses they ride. The feebleness 
 of invention in this part of the picture becomes all the 
 more apparent by contrast with the noble figure of St. 
 John seated in the foreground, beholding and writing 
 down his vision of wonder. Not that he is the John 
 a reader of the Apocalypse would be likely to imagine, 
 or indeed one that a person to whom the poem was 
 well known and well understood would be apt to 
 admire. There is indeed an earnestness and solemnity 
 in the face, but it lacks fire and force of character. 
 Nevertheless, the conception of the man as one 
 beholding, with reverent and long-continued atten- 
 tion, marvellous sights, to him alone revealed, is 
 certainly fine. The gentle and observant mind in him 
 is full on the stretch, his eye seems to be endeavouring 
 to penetrate still further, to be watching so as to miss 
 nothing of the swiftly-changing vision. On his lap is 
 a parchment volume wherein he writes with the imple- 
 ments of a professional scribe, St. John being the 
 patron of the illuminators' guild at Bruges. 
 
 Jan van Eyck was a man of fact, his work is an 
 attempt to state the uttermost truth about things. 
 He loved to elaborate their solid shape with perfect 
 veracity. In his pictures light and shade, texture, 
 colour, and outline, have about equal stress laid upon 
 
HANS MEMLING. 25J 
 
 them. In this respect he is one of the most complete 
 of artists. Roger van der Weyden in his turn cared 
 less about solid form, and less about light and shade. 
 He laid chief stress upon outlines, striving to make 
 them graceful so far as in him lay. Hugo van der 
 Goes was neither a colourist nor a great delineator. 
 He was a man of passion, desirous of producing great 
 and striking effects. He therefore laid emphasis 
 upon light and shade, as all passionate artists are 
 inevitably led to do. Memling was neither passionate 
 like Hugo, nor earnest like Jan van Eyck. He was 
 formed of milder stuff. In his pictures, therefore, no 
 stress is laid upon shadow, neither is he a colourist 
 in the proper sense of the term. The people of his 
 dreams were dwellers in a land where "there is light 
 alike by day and alike by night." They did not tread 
 the work-a-day world betwixt glare of sunshine and 
 gloom of cloud. The heavens over their head are 
 ever clear, a perpetual evening light fills the air. 
 It is a land " in which it seemeth always afternoon," 
 a place like 
 
 '* the island-valley of Avillon, 
 Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
 iJeep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns 
 And bowery hollow crowned with summer sea." 
 
 It is in fact the country of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 which " had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, 
 
254 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and 
 the Lamb is the light thereof." Now and again 
 indeed Memling hankers after a little brilliancy, as 
 when he would paint a star above the cradle of the 
 Child, or would illumine the airy pathway of the 
 ascending Christ. Yet even in these cases he flies 
 to gilding for refuge ; he will not purchase light by 
 shadow — the only sacrifice whereby it can be attained. 
 All this is in perfect keeping with the general drift of 
 his art. He was a painter of fairy tales, not of facts. 
 The world seen through his eyes assumed mellower 
 tones. He beheld not men of violence ; he loved not 
 the iron-handed. His ideal was the Prince of Peace. 
 Thus Memling returned at one time even nearer to 
 the old religious ideal of the artists of Koln than his 
 master had done. In one or two cases, notably in the 
 St. Ursula series, which may have been painted after 
 a journey to the capital city of the Lower Rhine, he 
 paints Madonnas and Saints unmistakably suggested 
 by pictures of Meister Wilhelm's school. But the 
 times were no longer what they had been. Roger 
 van der Weyden had gone exactly far enough in 
 that direction, he had carried along with him the 
 whole body of northern artists, and formed the most 
 powerful school of the century in the north of 
 Europe. Memling did not attain the same influence. 
 His own pictures were popular, he had his due share, 
 and perhaps more than his due share, of pupils, but 
 
HANS MEMLING. 255 
 
 he did not found a school as Roger had done, and 
 did not even restrain to any perceptible degree the 
 decline of that school after Roger's death. The new 
 tendencies became yearly stronger. A generation 
 more was to see the transfer of the centre of art-life 
 in the north from Flanders to Franconia. Diirer was 
 about to come to the front and lead all his contem- 
 poraries in willing thraldom. Memling was to be 
 succeeded by Patenier, Lucas van Leyden, and 
 Quentin Massys, every one of them men of a new 
 cast of thought, men to whom the ideals of Memling 
 were nothing but a dream from which they were glad 
 to be awakened. 
 
 In spite of his naturally mediaeval cast mind, it 
 was, however, impossible for Memling in those 
 rapidly advancing days not to be in some degree 
 carried away. In the last years of his life, and 
 especially in his last picture, the ' Crucifixion ' at 
 Liibeck,* he begins to show plainly the influence 
 produced upon him. He there strives after that 
 greater energy of expression which was foreign to his 
 own nature, but which the taste of the day began to 
 demand ; and curiously enough, at the same time that 
 he takes this step, he harks back more plainly than 
 in any other picture to the work of his master Roger, 
 frankly borrowing from his ' Descent from the Cross ' 
 one entire figure and the suggestion for three more. 
 * Phot. Nohring. Chromolith. Arundel. 
 
256 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 This conservation of individual figures is one of 
 Memling's frequent habits. He was not creative in 
 the sense that Diirer and Tintoret were creative. 
 Both of those geniuses seem to have so overflowed 
 with ideas that life was not long enough, as Diirer 
 expressly tells us, to give form to a tithe of them. 
 Memling, like several of his contemporaries, adhered 
 in the main to a certain not inconsiderable number 
 of figures, which he painted again and again in 
 different combinations. All the subjects given him 
 were of a certain type and class, and the actors 
 suited for one set of parts were suited for all the rest. 
 To take one example, where many might be cited, 
 Memling makes continual use of the same angel in 
 several of his 'Madonna' pictures. It is a smiling 
 angel, sometimes playing on an organ, but usually 
 offering to the Child an apple, type of the sin which 
 He was born to take away. This angel appears first 
 in the Duke of Devonshire's picture of the Virgin 
 with Sir John Donne. It comes again in the Belve- 
 dere 'Madonna,'* in the Uffizi ' Madonna,' f in a 
 * Madonna' at Worlitz, in the St. Catherine altar-piece 
 at Bruges, and I believe in the * Madonna' which 
 perished at Strassburg during the Franco-German 
 War. The original of the type was borrowed from 
 Van Eyck, and may be found on the Ghent altar- 
 piece, and again on the outside of the little altar- 
 * Phot. Miethke and Wawra. f Phot. Alinari. 
 
HANS MEMLING. 257 
 
 piece at Dresden,"^ where it was probably painted 
 by a pupil. This is sufficient to show that Mem- 
 ling was not an original artist. In almost every one 
 of his pictures there are strong reminiscences of 
 Roger van der Weyden, indeed Memling the artist 
 was Roger's greatest work. He was not original, 
 he had to be taught every word and phrase of the 
 language he was to employ. Once taught it he 
 scarcely modified it at all ; he did what was better, 
 he used it. He told the pretty tales that were given 
 him, and made them prettier in the telling. He 
 brought forth secret things of great price by the 
 magic he had not invented but acquired. His was 
 not the very greatest work, but it was honest and of 
 value. 
 
 One of the chief secrets of Memling's success was 
 that he knew the limits of his powers. There is the 
 same absence of ambition in him as in Fra Angelico. 
 He gave more pains to the designing of things than 
 the Florentine friar, but it was pains of a humble 
 kind. He was not on the search after novelty. He 
 took the art of the day as he found it, worked to the 
 best of his power according to the rules he had been 
 taught, yielded without obstinacy to whatever in- 
 fluences were brought to bear upon him, and so by 
 degrees attained greater certainty and facility of 
 hand. But he never tried to effect anything beyond 
 
 ^ Berlin Phot. Co. 
 
 S 
 
253 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 his powers. He did not waste his energies in 
 struggling after what to him must ever have remained 
 unattainable. With such a temperament alone was 
 work possible of the kind he produced. The atmo- 
 sphere of peace is breathed throughout it. To lose 
 oneself in a picture of his is to take a pleasant and 
 healthy rest. The struggling world is exchanged for 
 a world of gentleness and peace. It has not been 
 given to many men to leave so rich a heritage. 
 Memling's success is fraught with a lesson not for 
 artists alone. Moreover, because Memling always 
 kept within his powers, we hardly perceive, except 
 after much seeking, what the limits of those powers 
 were. It is by his failures that a man shows the 
 boundary between what he can do and what he 
 cannot. One who never fails appears greater than a 
 more powerful artist who fails continually because he 
 tries to attain what is beyond his reach. The works 
 of a man of many struggles may possess elements of 
 grandeur and present effects that surprise, but they 
 cannot be instinct with peace. One to whom peace 
 is the breath of his art-life must, by the nature of 
 things, be humble and obedient, drawing from others 
 the knowledge which can only be attained first of all 
 by a struggle, and reaping the reward which his 
 predecessors and contemporaries have sown, and of 
 which they have been unable, or only partly able, to 
 garner in the fruits. 
 
HANS MEMLING. 259 
 
 From the days of Van Eyck onwards portrait paint- 
 ing had formed a large part of every good artist's work. 
 Jan van Eyck was employed by the people about the 
 Burgundian court to paint their likenesses with perfect 
 frankness. A few of them wanted to be in the 
 proximity of the Madonna, but for the most part, not 
 without the painter's visible approval, they were satis- 
 fied to be depicted alone. Roger van der Weyden 
 quickly adapted himself to the twofold requirements 
 of the day. For pious folk he painted the religious 
 altar-pieces they wanted, and introduced portraits of 
 the devout donors in the proper places. But he also 
 executed with like skill a number of single portraits, 
 and in this branch of art likewise set the fashion after- 
 wards followed. Every one of Jan van Eyck's 
 portraits is wholly different from every other. The 
 pictures are all as characteristically individual as the 
 persons portrayed. In Roger's portraits, on the con- 
 trary, there is a greater similarity. He looked at all 
 men from a more subjective point of view, and instead 
 of losing himself in them, he comprehended them in 
 himself Thus all Roger's portraits bear the stamp of 
 his own cast of mind upon their faces. Moreover, 
 they are done in a way that could be imitated. They 
 catch the expression of the sitter, but pass over 
 detailed marks of character. No one who had not 
 tlie insight, the patience, and the richly-endowed 
 artistic nature of Van Eyck could have made such 
 
 S 2 
 
26o HANS MEMLING. 
 
 portraits as he made. But these qualities were not 
 transferable. A school of portrait painters of that 
 fibre could not arise. Roger's method of portrait 
 painting, on the contrary, could be taught and learnt. 
 Hence it came to pass that a great many portraits 
 exist bearing more or less the characteristic marks of 
 Roger's treatment and commonly assigned to his 
 hand, but in reality the work of pupils of his school. 
 Memling's single portraits now remaining are of this 
 kind; but they are only five in number. His patrons 
 seem to have been mostly pious people. Worldly- 
 minded folk went to other artists for what they wanted. 
 A man who wanted an altar-piece was well advised 
 to go to Memling. Thus it comes to pass that most 
 of Memling's portraits are either included in the midst 
 of heavenly and saintly personages, or they form at 
 least the halves of diptychs, the other halves consisting 
 of a Madonna or a patron saint. The best of such 
 diptychs is the Madonna with Martin van Newenhoven, 
 in the Academy of Bruges. There is another, an 
 unknown man with St. Benedict, in the Uffizi at 
 Florence,"^ but this has been divided into two parts 
 which came to be considered separate pictures. 
 Perhaps some of Memling's other portraits are like- 
 wise parts of divided diptychs, and if so the number of 
 single figures might be still further reduced. Certain 
 it is, at any rate, that Memling painted a man better 
 * Phot. Alinari. 
 
HANS MEMLING. 261 
 
 in an attitude of devotion than anyhow else. Not 
 that he gave him much fervour of expression, but he 
 was thus enabled to bring him harmoniously into 
 that somewhat unreal atmosphere of peace in which 
 his imagination was alone free to range. Portraits by 
 Memling, included in altar-pieces, exist in such 
 quantity that it is difficult to choose from amongst 
 them any one as typical of the rest. In the * Madonna 
 with St. George,' "^ belonging to the National Gallery, 
 there is a rather uninteresting kneeling donor. The 
 Duchatel * Madonna 'f in the Louvre contains the 
 portraits of a father and mother, with their seven sons 
 and twelve daughters, kneeling before the Virgin's 
 throne. Compared to Van Eyck's or Hugo's portraits, 
 there is in these one and twenty people a remarkable 
 lack of individuality. The lack indeed is more apparent 
 at the first glance than it becomes upon a closer in- 
 spection. Memling's personality hangs like a veil 
 between the beholder and the persons portrayed. The 
 veil is least obscure on the side of the women. Their 
 individual characters, though all cast in similar moulds, 
 can be traced with tolerable ease. The little boys also 
 in the background were evidently pleasant objects to 
 the artist, and he painted them with care and brought 
 out their boyishness distinctly. But the strong and 
 frowning father was not much to his liking, and he 
 set him down carefully but with little love. 
 
 * Berlin Phot. Co. and Braun. + Phot. Braun. 
 
262 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 A family of parents, boys, and girls are likewise 
 portrayed upon the wings of the St. Christofer altar- 
 piece at Bruges. The father was by name Willem 
 Moreel, a special patron and friend of Memling's. 
 Not only did he order this large altar-piece of the 
 painter, but at other times he caused him to paint 
 the three separate portraits of himself, his wife, and 
 one of his daughters. Moreel, or Morelli, as his 
 name should be, was the descendant of a Savoyard 
 family long resident in Bruges. He had a large 
 connection with Italian merchants, was at the head 
 of a banking establishment called the Bank of Rome, 
 and was one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Bruges. 
 About him personally we know little more than that 
 he was a successful man of business. Memling paints 
 him as an artist would who knew his face well ; he 
 catches his bright, capable expression, and the pecu- 
 liar position of the lips which indicate the strength 
 of his will. It is the only strong-willed face in any 
 of Memling's pictures. The lads behind him have 
 the vivacity of their father, but no trace of his force 
 of character yet visible on their faces. The girls are 
 all one much like another ; if you look carefully you 
 can see their little individualities peeping out ; but 
 the painter's ideal of feminine sweetness (never better 
 incorporated than in the St. Barbera standing behind) is 
 more or less seen by him in every woman's face, and 
 thus his insight into individual character is crippled. - 
 
Martin van Newenhoven. By Hans Memling. Br noes. 
 
HANS MEMLING. 265 
 
 Unquestionably the finest of Memling's portraits 
 is, however, none of these, but the half-length figure 
 of Martin van Newenhoven in an attitude of devotion 
 before the Madonna. The man himself is no very 
 superb specimen of humanity ; he has a bright and 
 pleasant though rather foolish face ; but such as he is 
 Memling has caught the idea of him, and placed him 
 visibly and knowably on the panel. Further, he has 
 not only made a likeness but a picture of him, and a 
 fine picture too. Its colouring is unusual and most 
 beautiful. The textures of the garments are superb, 
 and not only are the little landscapes seen through 
 the open windows full of the charm that Memling 
 always threw into his backgrounds, but the charm 
 extends to the interior of the room, with its stained 
 glass windows, panelled walls, looking-glass, and other 
 pieces of furniture. This patient elaboration of the 
 interior is, doubtless, due to the fact that Memling 
 had recently seen and admired Jan van Eyck's 
 portrait of the Arnolfini, which was at Bruges. That 
 both pictures have a convex mirror on the farthest 
 wall^ reflecting the backs of the persons whose faces 
 are turned to the beholder, is no mere coincidence. 
 
 The Virgin here, though beautiful, is not superior 
 to several of Memling's other Madonnas. The Child 
 is inferior to most. Of all Flemish painters, except 
 perhaps David, Memling was by nature best disposed 
 for painting infants. In this branch of art we have 
 
266 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 to go to Italy for the finest work. The Italians had 
 an inborn and national deUght in the fairness and 
 sweetness of womanhood and infancy. So far as I 
 know, there is only one really superb picture of an 
 infant in the world painted by a northern artist up 
 to the time of Reynolds, and that is a child Christ 
 by Durer in the Uffizi at Florence. Even it is not a 
 generally attractive picture, but for perfect sympathy 
 with the weakness, the tenderness, and the mystery 
 of babyhood it has no parallel in the world. The 
 new-born babe in Hugo's 'Nativity' comes next, not 
 in attractiveness, for it is hideous, but in veracity. 
 Jan van Eyck carried the ugliness of his children to 
 an extreme, and in labouring at details which he had 
 not sympathy to unite nor tenderness rightly to 
 understand, he produced a series of diminutive old 
 men which are more hideous than can well be 
 imagined. Of Memling's children two at least are 
 of a high order of merit — the child Christ on the lap 
 of the Virgin in the St. Catherine altar at Bruges 
 and the Christ borne by St. Christofer in Moreel's 
 picture in the same town. The former is a genuine 
 baby, and is by all means the best of the two ; He 
 has that look of uncertainty in the management of 
 His little limbs which is the peculiar fascination in a 
 child, whilst at the same time He possesses the graces 
 of soft and rounded forms which only little children 
 can own. The other Child is older, and already a 
 
HANS MEMLING. 267 
 
 man in gesture and expression ; but, regard being 
 had to the legend of St. Christofer, His appearance 
 is just what it should be. For here He is not the 
 Child of the sacred history, but a visionary re-incarn- 
 ation come down for a moment to reward the saint's 
 charity. A child, it is related, came one night to his 
 hut (at the edge of a ford, across which he M^as wont 
 to carry travellers for the service of God), and prayed 
 to be taken across in the storm. As he went, the 
 waters rose higher, and the child became heavier, and 
 the strong man was puzzled, and hard put to to come 
 to the other side. Nevertheless he came safely forth, 
 and then the child revealed to him that he was 
 his master Christ, and so vanished away. At the 
 moment chosen by the painter the saint is looking 
 up, wondering at the weight of his strange burden, 
 and the child, holding on to his hair with one hand, 
 and blessing with the other, is smiling at the wonder 
 of his gigantic bearer. The tale, were there but 
 space to tell it at length, is one of the most beautiful 
 of mediaeval legends, and it has seldom been better 
 rendered into painting than here. 
 
 The picture is by some held to be Memling's 
 masterpiece, and parts of it indeed are excellent, but 
 it was not by a work of this class that the artist's full 
 powers could be brought out. Gentle, cordial, affec- 
 tionate, humble, painstaking as Memling must have 
 been, his best works are those of the St. Ursula series 
 
268 HANS MEMLING. 
 
 type, where his fancy could play about bright and 
 fairy-like creatures, where no storm nor the memory 
 of a storm need ever come, where no clouds darkened 
 the sky, and not even the brilliant tones of sunset 
 gave forecast of a coming night. Such a man as 
 Memling could never found a school, or flourish in 
 spite of opposition and neglect, but, born at a time 
 ripe for his coming, growing up under the tutelage 
 provided just at the right moment for him, he was 
 enabled to climb almost without difficulty to the 
 highest level attained by contemporary artists. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 Painters of what we had best go on caUIng 
 the Gothic period, that is to say, of the twelfth, 
 thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, aimed at sug- 
 gesting thoughts to the beholder of their pictures, 
 not at presenting visible facts. They tried to take 
 him up to heaven and show him the everlasting 
 hierarchies, the immortal saints, and the personified 
 powers of life. Thus they were not compelled to 
 employ the similitudes of all the objects of nature, 
 but only those which the use and wont of preachers, 
 poets, and theologians had fastened upon as specially 
 emblematical of heavenly things. Their works, more- 
 over, were intended to serve as architectural decorations, 
 and so had to be painted under severe restrictions. 
 In the National Gallery there hangs a late Venetian 
 picture representing a great procession going past the 
 Scuola di San Rocco on a gala day. The exterior 
 of the Scuola and its neighbouring houses is adorned 
 
270 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 with a number of oil-paintings resting upon carved 
 mouldings or fastened to pillars. A glance at the 
 picture is sufficient to show how utterly the ordinary 
 oil-painting fails when employed as an architectural 
 embellishment. Pictures which are to adorn and 
 form part of a building, especially a building of the 
 Gothic type, must consist of figures, separated one 
 from another, all standing in simple and restful 
 attitudes, and all plainly relieved against a light 
 ground. The Gothic artists understood this, and 
 their pictures (excepting of course merely decorative 
 patterns) were painted with plain or gilt backgrounds. 
 The gold background is the rule in early panel 
 pictures and miniatures. In elaborate works it was 
 covered with diaper patterns inwrought with colours, 
 and the figures usually stood upon tesselated or plain 
 pavements. 
 
 The first sign of a closer approach to inanimate 
 nature appeared in the introduction of flowers. The 
 songs of the knightly poets were full of the joy of 
 spring, of the flowery meadows, the green trees, and 
 the clear sky. The climate of heaven was pictured 
 as thus ever fair — fields lit by the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness and carpeted with unfading flowers. Thus the 
 Virgin and Saints in the fourteenth century were 
 usually depicted by the painters of Koln standing 
 or seated upon flowery turf, the rest of the back- 
 ground being still of burnished gold. The flowers 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 271 
 
 were painted individually with perfect veracity and 
 love, and none of the Van Huysems and Van Os's of 
 later schools ever caught the sentiment of the stars of 
 the field as their scorned predecessors of a forgotten 
 day had done. 
 
 It was not until the centre of the art-life of Northern 
 Europe was shifted by the powerful impulse of the 
 Van Eycks to the Low Countries, that the element 
 of landscape became important in works of painting. 
 The * Adoration of the Lamb ' is the first picture with 
 a fine landscape background. The veracity of Jan 
 van Eyck led him to look at nature in the same 
 objective fashion as he looked at man. He took 
 things as they are, little and great together, and 
 thought no more scorn to spend his time in fixing the 
 lineaments of a floating cloud than in tracing the 
 outlines of a human lip. Between the landscape back- 
 ground painted by Jan van Eyck in 1432 and the 
 landscapes with figures painted by Gerard David and 
 Joachim de Patenier, in the early years of the follow- 
 ing century, lies the development now to be traced. 
 
 Jan van Eyck we know was a traveller ; even if we 
 had not known it otherwise, his pictures would ac- 
 quaint us with the fact. The palm trees, clear skies, 
 and snowy mountains in the background of the 
 * Adoration of the Lamb ' never flourished in the 
 flats of Flanders, yet they bave been painted from 
 nature direct by the help of an observant eye. It is. 
 
272 THE RISE OF LANDS AC PE PAINTING. 
 
 curious that, so far as I know, Jan did not introduce 
 the likenesses or costumes of foreigners into his 
 pictures. The prophets and sages of old time in the 
 ' Adoration ' are indeed dressed in strange attire and 
 wear outlandish head-gear, but the artist invented 
 those himself; he did not even go on to the quays of 
 Bruges for a suggestion, still less did he bring home 
 from Portugal a sketch-book full of costumes and 
 types of face, such as Diirer made on his famous 
 journey. We shall not be far wrong in concluding 
 that upon his travels Jan van Eyck's eye was open 
 rathev to nature than to men. It must have been so, 
 for no one could have brought into art at a bound, as 
 he did, an entirely or almost entirely new factor 
 unless it had possessed the strongest attractions for 
 him. Jan van Eyck is then to be remembered not 
 only as the co-inventor of a new system of painting 
 and the originator of the great school of portraiture^ 
 but also as the founder of modern landscape art. In 
 the whole range of art history no other so truly 
 original a master can be found. Even Diirer falls 
 behind him in this respect, and of the Italians there is 
 not one to equal him, not even Giotto or Masaccio. 
 
 Of Jan van Eyck's landscapes four examples shall 
 be taken, all being backgrounds to figure pictures. 
 The most important is that on the central and lower 
 wing panels of the ' Adoration of the Lamb ' ; after 
 these come the ' Madonna with Chancellor Rollin ' at 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 273 
 
 the Louvre, the ' St. Francis receiving the Stigmata ' at 
 Turin, and the drawing of * St. Barbera ' at Antwerp. 
 They are examples of four kinds of landscape. In 
 the * Adoration ' we have a cultivated garden, in 
 the * Rollin Madonna' a view from a window over- 
 looking a city with snow-covered mountains in the 
 very far distance, in the 'St. Francis' a bit of rocky 
 wilderness by a river near a town, and in the ' St. 
 Barbera' a hillside draped with fields and dotted with 
 trees along the hedges. The landscape of heaven is 
 of course the picture of a dream, and though in all its 
 details founded upon minute study of nature, is not 
 the reflection of any particular spot. The other three 
 examples are evidently taken • direct from nature ; 
 indeed, in the case of the * RoUin Madonna,' Mr. 
 Weale has identified the town in the background as 
 Maastricht. The same qualities that Jan brought to 
 bear upon the painting of portraits he manifested in 
 the treatment of landscape, and by means of them 
 attained similarly fine results. Once again he had to 
 decide what selection to make out of the infinity of 
 objects presented by nature, and again he determined 
 by industry to depict as much and to omit as little 
 as possible, and in selecting it was his aim to render 
 the character of a scene in the same way that he 
 endeavoured to render the character of a man. In 
 the * St. Francis ' landscape, for example, he imitates 
 with perfect veracity the bedding of a sandstone rock 
 
274 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 and the wilderness all around is of fitting kind, as 
 any one acquainted, for example, with Rustall 
 Common near Tunbridge Wells may verify for him- 
 self. The only mistake is that the growth of flowers 
 in the close grass is too luxuriant for a sandy soil, 
 but the presence of the saint and the miraculous vision 
 overherid may surely be excuse enough for that. 
 The flowers themselves would please a botanist as 
 well as the stratified rock would satisfy the student of 
 geology. Jan van Eyck knew no more science than 
 Turner, but both of them had eyes to see and hands 
 to fashion with, and in their ignorance they created 
 what more learned men could not, with all their 
 knowledge, have built so truly together. 
 
 The delight of Jan van Eyck's art to his con- 
 temporary artists must have been that its funda- 
 mental principles were patent, and such as all could 
 adopt without delay. Patience, perseverance, an eye 
 careful to observe, a memory trained to retain — that, 
 was all. So the artists of Flanders and Brabant set 
 themselves with all speed to follow in the path of 
 their great leader. Gold backgrounds were hence- 
 forward abjured, except by some old-fashioned and 
 now forgotten painters, and every one began to open 
 his eyes to the world of nature. It was an auspicious 
 hour. A new epoch was about to dawn, creation was 
 widening to the view of men. Curiously enough, 
 however, the landscapes chosen for painting were 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 27$ 
 
 never yet the flat lands, but always hilly country 
 watered by a stately river, or at the least by a 
 winding stream — country such as that along the 
 valley of the Maas. The beauty of the flats and 
 fens was one day to be learnt by the Dutch, but 
 only after they had watered with their blood the 
 soil they had wrung from the sea, and so made it 
 dearer than a thousand countries of mountain and 
 primeval forest. 
 
 In two of Roger van der Weyden's pictures, the 
 Middelburg and St. Columba altar-pieces, the town 
 of Brussels is introduced into the background. But 
 landscape does not occupy an important position 
 with Roger, and in this, as in other matters, his 
 sympathy for. the old Koln school comes visibly to 
 the fore. In the case of at any rate one picture, 
 his great ' Descent from the Cross,' he employed a 
 gold background again, and many of the panels 
 painted in his school are similarly adorned. It was 
 a common custom with Roger's followers to copy 
 single heads out of their master's large groups. 
 Such single heads always have gold backgrounds, 
 usually dotted over with little black dashes. Ex- 
 amples of school pictures of the kind may be seen 
 in the National Gallery, the Brussels Museum, and 
 elsewhere. Just as the strength of Jan van Eyck's 
 portraiture faded somewhat under the hand of Roger, 
 
 so it was with his landscape. But even as Memling 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 (and the followers of Roger generally) gave a wider 
 extension to the school of portraiture, so also did 
 they enlarge the boundaries of the landscape art. 
 
 As landscape painters, the most prominent of 
 Roger's followers were Dirck Bouts and Hans Mem- 
 ling. The former was an artist of power, whose 
 pictures are always worth looking at."*^ He occupied 
 the position of official painter to the municipality of 
 Louvain, and his pictures were of a municipal as 
 opposed to a courtly type. His models for prophets 
 and saints are chosen from the craftsman class rather 
 than from the nobility. His women are all honest 
 house-wives and burgher maidens, dressed indeed in 
 sumptuous garments, but wearing them in anything 
 but a high-born style. Though all Bouts' pictures 
 bear the traces of Roger van der Weyden's influence, 
 they also prove that the painter had imbibed much 
 of the spirit of Jan van Eyck. Bouts came nearer 
 to Van Eyck than Roger did, or perhaps cared to 
 do. The younger artist was a more thorough 
 Fleming, more downright and straightforward than 
 his Tournai-born master. Thus he not only bestowed 
 upon nature a more intimate study, but he painted 
 the faces of men with minuter accuracy. Still he 
 
 * There are two of them in the National Gallery, one a 
 * Madonna with Saints ' ascribed to Hugo van der Goes, the 
 other a dated portrait of the artist himself ascribed to Memling. 
 The ' Exhumation of Saint Hubert' in the same gallery is not 
 by Bouts. 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 277 
 
 was not so good an artist as Roger ; he had not the 
 swiftness of insight to seize gestures and expressions, 
 
 The Last Supper. By Dirck Bouts. Louvain. 
 
 and his technical knowledge, as to perspective and 
 the like, contained many gaps. He was a good 
 colourist, and where patience availed he was strong ; 
 
278 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 where genius was essential he took a place in the 
 second or even the third rank. 
 
 In many of Bouts' pictures the landscape Is the 
 main thing-, and the figures are almost of the nature 
 of accessories. The same cannot be said of the 
 works of any earlier master, so that in this respect 
 Bouts showed himself original. The wings of the 
 * Adoration of the Magi ' at Munich, and the remark- 
 able picture of newly-risen souls in the ' Garden of 
 Paradise' (if that indeed be its subject) now at Lille, 
 are good examples of Bouts' style as a landscape 
 painter. The Lille picture is certainly founded on a 
 study of the * Adoration of the Lamb.' A hilly garden 
 watered with the Fountain of Life and shadowed by 
 scattered clumps of trees, fills the whole panel. It 
 is peopled by companies of almost nude people, 
 whom their gestures and expressions show to be 
 under the influence of religious emotion. Each com- 
 pany is conducted by an angel to the Fountain of 
 Life, and thence to the summit of a mountain (pro- 
 bably meant for the Mount of Olives), where falling 
 down to adore they are carried up to heaven in turn 
 and received within the sunset-tinted clouds. 
 
 It is remarkable that Bouts was the first to at- 
 tempt the painting of sunset ; Memling and several 
 others followed him, but he led the way. We may 
 imagine him at Louvain, after his day's work was 
 done, wandering forth into the fields and watching 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 279 
 
 With delight the golden orb sink behind the myriad- 
 coloured tapestries of the west. The evening alone 
 in these northern climes rendered him the harvest 
 of rich tint which his colour-loving eye delighted in 
 with the avidity of an Arab. What the painter loves 
 to behold he sooner or later strives himself to create. 
 Claude was not altogether the first " to set the sun 
 in heaven." Bouts was before him by some two 
 centuries, more or less. In the St. Christofer wing 
 the full round orb of the westering sun stares you in 
 the face from out of a sky barred with red stripes of 
 cloud. The rocky precipices of the river-bank shut 
 in the view on either hand ; the rippled water leads 
 past many a castle-crowned hill, Jike a highway 
 paved with gold, to the golden portal of the sunset. 
 The idea of the landscape might have been taken 
 from the Rhine by the Lorlei rock, or possibly 
 enough from some unrecognized scene in the Liege 
 country. The transparencies, reflections, shadows, and 
 ripple-forms of the water have been carefully studied 
 from nature, and the rocky precipice on the left, if 
 something exaggerated in steepness, is certainly 
 founded upon a natural original, for no artist at that 
 time could have invented so just a form for the 
 stratification of the rock. The precipice on the 
 other side is a good deal less natural ; it is the kind 
 of thing that might have come out of the painter's 
 head. In order to fill the backg-round with th^ 
 
2So THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 unwonted aspect of full sunlight, the foreground is 
 made darker than had ever before been done. It is 
 only by a contrast with darkness that light can be 
 shown. No man, much less a painter of Bouts' power, 
 could have learnt at the first attempt how to treat 
 correctly a subject so new and so difficult. Landscape 
 art had to be practised by the Van de Veldes, 
 Cuyps, Claudes, and Turners of the future before its 
 expressional power could be complete. Bouts could 
 not attain completeness, he could only feel after 
 some expression, however inadequate, for the beauty 
 which he saw daily fleeting before him, and which he 
 would so gladly fix for ever upon a panel of his own. 
 The humble craftsman of Louvain, for humble 
 every touch of his brush shows him to have been, 
 is therefore memorable not so much for what he 
 attained as for what he attempted and led others to 
 attempt. He lengthened the scale of light and shade. 
 He added evening to the daylight which alone had 
 been attempted before him. And, in his choice of 
 landscape, he enlarged the visible area of earth and 
 sky brought into the background, and diminished in 
 proportion the scale of his figures. He shows us 
 as only Van Eyck had done, and he but seldom, 
 wide stretches of country and vistas of valley. He 
 heightened the canopy of his sky and widened its 
 curtains, and so gave to nature more of the dignity 
 which had previously been reserved for human or 
 
The Entombment. By Dirck Bouts. Natiotial Gallery. 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 283 
 
 saintly personages. Comparing the Archbishop of 
 Koln's 'Madonna' with this St. Christofer, we get 
 a measure of the change which a century had pro- 
 duced. In the former the Virgin is colossal, the 
 background is a curtain, and the foreground a green 
 carpet of turf with an arabesque of flowers ; in the 
 latter, though the hero is a legendary giant, his figure 
 is relatively small in a panel, nine tenths of which 
 is occupied by river and rock, mountain and sky. 
 
 After Bouts landscape became more and more a 
 subject of attention to artists. Memling, who seems 
 likewise to have been a pupil of Roger van der 
 Weyden, added to the traditions of the art of Bruges 
 the same element that Bouts had made popular at 
 Louvain. His peculiar disposition "half helped, half 
 hindered him." He loved fairy tales, and could only 
 paint with success pictures the subject of which was 
 of the fairy kind, or could be treated in that spirit. 
 Thus the only landscape that he could paint success- 
 fully was the landscape of his own fairy-land, where 
 it is always day, always fine weather, always spring- 
 time, always warm, and always calm. No stormy 
 skies, no rocky precipices, no raging seas, no flaring 
 sunsets could he depict. Now and again he had 
 to paint a sunset ; if so he put it away in the 
 corner of a large picture, and filled all the rest of the 
 sky with the tender afternoon glow of a summer's 
 day, which he loved best. He could not bring 
 
284 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 himself to throw the foreground into shadow as Bouts 
 had done. All his foregrounds are lit in the same 
 manner, and were probably painted first, the back- 
 ground being afterwards added, and if a sunset was 
 necessary, why it had to be painted in. Some of the 
 prettiest pieces of Memling's landscape are to be 
 found in the background of the Munich picture 
 of the * Light of the World.' That picture includes 
 a multitude of incidents occurring at all hours of the 
 day and night — the Magi beholding the star, the 
 angel appearing by night to the shepherds, the 
 Resurrection early in the morning, and the Ascen- 
 sion at the moment of sunset. The sunset in this 
 case is painted in one corner, the edge of the depart- 
 ing orb being red on the western horizon of still 
 lagoon. All the rest of the picture is in full daylight, 
 and the star is only brought into prominence by the 
 use of gold. The wide landscape, like the rest of the 
 picture, must not be regarded as one whole, but as 
 a group of little landscapes arbitrarily joined together 
 for a certain end. The structure of mountains and 
 rocks is not so good as with Van Eyck or Bouts. 
 Memling usually makes the stratification of his rocks 
 lie vertically. He thus fills his picture with a 
 quantity of mounds of ugly form, their sides being 
 steep and their caps of monotonously uniform shape. 
 The charm of his landscapes must be sought in other 
 kinds of subject. It is in country roads windng 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 285 
 
 amongst fields, in slowly meandering brooks, in little 
 bridges and water-mills, in cottages by the wayside, 
 in flowery meadows, tranquil bays, verdant shores, 
 and pleasant copses that he finds his joy and richly 
 shares it with whoever will look. Details of flower 
 and plant he paints as well as his predecessors, but 
 his special province is the widening distance, where 
 the atmosphere comes into play as a colouring power. 
 He shares with Bouts the power of carrying the fancy 
 far away into the blue, and shedding upon what is 
 distant such a charm as that wherewith memory 
 invests the past and hope the future. 
 
 Before and even after Memling's day it was cus- 
 tomary to hand over the outsides of a picture's wings 
 for a pupil to paint with monochrome figures in 
 imitation of wood-sculptures. One of the best of 
 Memling's pictures, however, — the little 'Adoration 
 of the Magi ' triptych at Bruges, — has, on the outsides 
 of its wings, two charming figures of saints, seated 
 in the foreground of a lovely landscape. No better 
 example could be quoted to show how, towards the 
 close of the fifteenth century, landscape art was 
 gaining in popularity. It had ousted the gold back- 
 ground ; now it relegated sculpture to canopies and 
 frames. The landscape background in question is, 
 moreover, one of the best Memling ever painted. 
 Generally speaking, his rock-structure is a weak 
 point, but here he has evidently had some definite 
 
285 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 scene before him as a model. It is a river view, and 
 does duty for the Jordan, where John is in the act of 
 pouring water over the head of Christ, whilst an angel 
 stands by, holding his Master's robes. The river fills 
 the bottom of a valley, lying between steep and 
 rounded hills, the slopes of which have been cut and 
 worn away below by the flowing stream, so that they 
 rise vertically out of the water, and only begin to 
 round themselves over when a point is reached where 
 the water action ceases. The form of the hills is just 
 what it would be in nature, and whilst no geologist 
 could desire a truer delineation, the artistic treatment 
 of line and colour satisfies every aesthetic requirement. 
 
 During the whole of the fifteenth century the art 
 of miniature and illumination was much practised at 
 Bruges. The miniaturists had their own peculiar 
 method ; they always painted upon parchment in 
 what were called "lime colours." In the first half 
 of the century they were not organized into a guild ; 
 nevertheless it was legally decided by the magistrates 
 of the town, in giving judgment on an important 
 case, that no miniaturist might trespass upon the 
 domain of the painters' guild, and no painter might 
 make miniatures for sale. A miniaturist might only 
 paint in lime colours on parchment ; he might not 
 employ oil colours, neither might he paint on panel. 
 The nearest approach to an ordinary picture per- 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 287 
 
 mitted to him was a painting upon parchment glued 
 on to panel, and of pictures done in that way a few 
 survive."^ About the year 1457 the booksellers, 
 printers, binders, scribes, miniaturists, and others 
 whose business was the making of books of one kind 
 and another, associated themselves into a religions 
 confraternity under the patronage of St. John the 
 Evangelist. They agreed upon rules to regulate the 
 exercise of their trade, and, in June 1457 (Beffroi, iv. 
 238), they obtained a confirmation from the munici- 
 pality, and thenceforward took their place amongst 
 the recognized guilds of the town. From this time 
 onward no one could work as a painter of miniatures, 
 within the commune of Bruges, unless he were a 
 member of the guild of St. John the Evangelist. 
 At the end of the fifteenth century we find a few 
 artists belonging both to the painters' and minia- 
 turists' guilds, Gerard David being the most notable 
 instance ; but, as a rule, the two crafts were kept 
 entirely distinct. 
 
 The history of miniature painting in Flanders is 
 thus independent of the history of oil painting. Of 
 course the two arts acted and reacted upon one 
 another, though not to the extent we might have 
 expected. Types of figures are the same, and the 
 feeling for character is similarly strongly expressed 
 
 * One by Gerard David's wife belonging to Mr. Willett, and 
 one by G. David in the Camarin di S. Theresa at the Escurial. 
 
2S8 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 in both arts, but the miniaturists had independent 
 traditions of their own. To trace the growth and 
 development of these traditions would be a work of 
 time ; the most rapid glance over the whole field must 
 here suffice. In the Gothic age France was the centre 
 of the best miniature painting, and French influence 
 was everywhere predominant. Other countries had 
 their local schools, but none of them were altogether 
 independent. By degrees, how- 
 ever, the local schools grew 
 stronger, and the French in- 
 fluence became matter of his- 
 tory only. Such a local school 
 sprang up in the Lower Rhine 
 country, with Koln for its 
 centre, and during the four- 
 teenth century miniatures of 
 the Koln type were painted 
 From THE "Hours" OF THE in many parts of Flanders. 
 
 Due DE Berri. Paris. -d . i ^i. t r- 
 
 But when the Low Countries 
 passed under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy, and 
 the great epoch of independent Flemish art com- 
 menced, miniature painting manifested a new and 
 sudden vigour, just as Flemish oil painting did. The 
 direct patronage of the Court did much to foster the 
 rising art. Duke Philip the Good, to whom Flemish 
 culture owed so much, was an ardent lover of beauti- 
 ful books. He was eager to form a library of magnifi- 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 289 
 
 cently written, illuminated, and bound volumes, and 
 for this purpose he maintained a great proportion of 
 the best workmen continually in his employ. His 
 example was imitated by the nobles of his court and 
 the wealthy men of the kingdom in general. Not only 
 were sumptuous books of devotion required in great 
 numbers, but huge editions of chronicles, romances, 
 poems, and other secular works were ordered, and it 
 became customary to illustrate them with a quantity 
 of beautifully painted miniatures, either in mono- 
 chrome or in colours. Of such volumes the consider- 
 able remnant of the Burgundian Library, now pre- 
 served in the Brussels Museum, contains many noble 
 examples, and it is only by inspecting them at first 
 hand that an idea of the multitude and excellence of 
 the works of fifteenth-century Flemish and Brabant- 
 ine miniaturists can be attained. 
 
 In an illuminated volume there are two pictorial 
 elements which can be considered apart, the orna- 
 mental borders to the pages, and the actual minia- 
 tures. The miniatures, from the very nature of the 
 case, had to be treated with more originality than 
 oil paintings demanded. They had to represent all 
 manner of subjects, and though the editor of the 
 volume usually gave tolerably minute directions as 
 to the composition of each subject, the artist was left 
 much more to his own devices in the matter than a 
 painter could be in the treatment of one of the round 
 
290 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 of religious subjects upon which painters had been 
 engaged for some hundred of years. It was the 
 miniaturists who had to learn how to depict a battle, 
 or the burning of a town, or any of the hundred 
 incidents upon which chroniclers and romance writers 
 of the time loved to dwell. Naturally, therefore, 
 miniature painters were early attracted towards land- 
 scape, and indeed there were other forces urging them 
 in the same direction. In former days manuscript 
 illumination had been the work of monks, and the 
 monastery had usually been well able to afford the 
 gold and silver which the elaborate and gorgeous 
 Gothic backgrounds required. But when the public 
 began to ask for beautiful books of devotion, what- 
 ever could be done in the way of diminishing expense 
 by the artist, now a layman and dependent upon his 
 craft for his daily bread, brought his productions 
 within the reach of a larger number of buyers. For 
 this reason diapered backgrounds, and finally plain 
 gold backgrounds, had to give way, and landscape 
 and sky of necessity took their place. Economical 
 circumstances combined with the development of the 
 national ideal towards the same result. The grow- 
 ing love of nature found a place prepared by cir- 
 cumstances for its satisfaction. 
 
 The borders show an even more marked progress 
 in the same direction. Gothic illuminators loved to 
 adorn capital letters with long and beautiful flourishes 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 291 
 
 extending all about the margin of the page, in which 
 foliation was mingled with little birds, beasts, and 
 grotesque figures, or the tail of the letter itself might 
 be fashioned into the form of some fantastic creature. 
 As long as the spirit of fantasy reigned supreme, 
 nothing is more charming than its productions of this 
 kind. But, by degrees, a change took place. The 
 nalfve little creatures become more and more natural, 
 and are combined to express incidents of folk life 
 sometimes of an unpleasantly gross character. This 
 treatment involved the loss of the free and decorative 
 character which had been the charm of the early 
 work, and soon the borders became bounded by hard 
 and fast oblong outlines, within which little pictures 
 of the ordinary kind might have been included. 
 That, however, was contrary to the idea of a border, 
 the intention of which was merely decorative. The 
 old foliation, therefore, confined within fixed limits, 
 developed into something new. The borders became 
 the home of flowers, and' the miniaturists of Bruges 
 adopted the fashion with enthusiasm. Flowers have 
 for centuries possessed special attractions for the 
 people of the Low Countries. You can hardly find 
 a Flemish painting of the fifteenth century in which 
 they do not play an important part. They had their 
 symbolic meanings, and were chosen with definite in- 
 tention to enforce the moral of the picture. In Hugo 
 
 van der Goes' * Nativity,' painted for a Florentine 
 
 U 2 
 
292 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 patron, there is a pot of flowers in the foreground — 
 the Hly for the Virgin, the columbine for the Holy- 
 Ghost, and the iris for the badge of Florence. Cut 
 flowers were the choice of the illuminators. They 
 painted them in their borders just as they lay fresh 
 upon the painter's table. And they painted them 
 with all a miniaturist's care and love of detail ; they 
 hurried over nothing, but gave them the modelling, 
 the textures, and the colours of nature as far as their 
 skill permitted. 
 
 During the last half of the fifteenth century, when 
 the art of Flemish miniature culminated, printing 
 and wood-engraving advanced with rapid strides. 
 They were destined to destroy the illuminator's art, 
 but before destroying it they helped it to its per- 
 fection. Printed books at once supplanted in the 
 market all except the best kind of manuscripts. 
 An illuminator was obliged to work with great 
 fineness and skill in order to satisfy employers, 
 rendered more than ever fastidious by the beauti- 
 ful productions of the printing press. A roughly- 
 painted wood-cut was as good as a poorly done 
 miniature, and could be made at a less cost. Already 
 before 1490 the noble author Olivier de la Marche 
 had committed a poem to the hands of a Gouda 
 printer, and though the wood-cuts in the printed 
 book were afterwards carefully coloured, in the 
 case of a few copies, the amount of work given 
 
April. From the Grima?ii Breviary. 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 295 
 
 to miniaturists was much less than that taken away 
 from them. The Bruges guild of illuminators were 
 thus forced to produce work of high excellence in 
 order to retain a market for their services. For some 
 years they remained equal to the demands made 
 upon them. The guild seems to have undertaken 
 large pieces of work and then to have divided each 
 amongst its members. Thus the finest volume illu- 
 minated and written in the last half of the fifteenth 
 century was thus made, the famous Grimani Breviary 
 now in the Doge's Palace at Venice. The leading 
 artists of the Bruges guild co-operated to produce 
 it. Some undertook the writing, others certain 
 borders, others divided the miniatures between them, 
 and eventually the pages were collected and bound 
 together into a single volume. By such co-operation 
 the work was more rapidly advanced, and a pleasing 
 variety was attained in lieu of the monotonous 
 repetition of a single man's handiwork. The Grimani 
 Breviary has long been deservedly famous, and, in 
 the old days of promiscuous attribution, it used to 
 be said that many of the pages were the work of 
 Memling himself. Modern investigation, however, 
 has shown that this could not be, because Memling, 
 not being a member of the guild of St. John, was 
 precluded from trespassing upon the monopoly of 
 the miniaturist. The pages assigned to him were 
 done by Gerard David and his wife. The Grimani 
 
296 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 Breviary stands alone in point of size and elabor- 
 ation, but other manuscripts have been recognized 
 as coming from the same source ; such are a 
 beautiful little volume in the Court Library at 
 Vienna, another at Cassel, another belonging to the 
 Rothschilds, and some half-dozen elsewhere known 
 to Mr. Weale. 
 
 The best of the Bruges miniaturists at the end of 
 the fifteenth century was certainly Gerard David. 
 But he was even more remarkable as an oil painter. 
 Up till quite recently all his pictures were assigned to 
 Memling, but the labours of Mr. Weale have given 
 him a renewed individuality. We now know the 
 best of his pictures, and find that we even possess a 
 portrait of him from his own hand. His most finished 
 works are two altar-pieces, one in the Museum at 
 Rouen, the other, representing the ' Baptism of Christ,' 
 in the Academy at Bruges. In the history of land- 
 scape painting the Baptism triptych is important. The 
 subject had long been a favourite with artists, but never 
 before had the landscape been made so important a 
 feature in the composition. One of Roger van der 
 Weyden's panels at Berlin may be taken as an 
 example of the earlier method of treatment. There 
 the landscape is merely an accessory, handled with 
 care indeed, but not finished with the same minuteness 
 as the faces and figures. With Roger the sentiment 
 of the event is supreme. But, by the end of the 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 297 
 
 fifteenth century, religious sentiment had become 
 weak. So David painted Christ, the Baptist, and the 
 angel in a perfunctory manner, but devoted himself 
 with zeal to the elaboration of surrounding natural 
 objects. He must have made many careful studies 
 from nature before he could undertake such a land- 
 scape. Compare for example the rippled water here 
 with that in Roger's ' Madonna with St. Luke,' or Bouts' 
 * St. Christofer.' Roger's ripples (if indeed the picture 
 be by Roger) are little more than symbols. Bouts 
 shows a considerable advance, and in some individual 
 wavelets leaves little to be desired, but he combines 
 them together with too much regularity. David's 
 work is evidently the result of many days of careful 
 observation. He has caused a man to wade into an 
 actual pond, and watched the concentric circles ex- 
 panding around his legs, the two systems intersecting 
 one another and passing on undisturbed to the river- 
 bank. He has made advances too in representing 
 transparencies of water, and he has not neglected 
 either the reflections or the shadows upon the surface. 
 Comparing the water here with that in which St. 
 Christofer stands in Memling's altar-piece (hanging 
 together in the same room at Bruges), the advance 
 effected by David cannot be gainsaid. Memling's 
 figures are finer, his picture enshrines a more excellent 
 religious sentiment, but his landscape cannot be 
 measured against David's. 
 
298 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 Nor was it merely in the representation of water 
 that David advanced ; he brought together a larger 
 number of natural objects naturally combined. His 
 sky is more varied with clouds, his trees are of many 
 different kinds, and are studied individually from 
 nature. His landscape has a wider spread and in- 
 cludes scenery of different characters. He has studied 
 the banks of streams as well as the surface of the 
 flowing waters, and he knows what plants grow in 
 the shallows, or clamber over the edges of the grass. 
 Moreover, he was, I believe, the first painter to think 
 of the shadow-giving nature of trees. Trees had for 
 many years formed a favourite subject for back- 
 grounds, but even by Memling they were rather 
 conventionally rendered, one by one, not grouped 
 into woods, and seldom brought into the foreground. 
 In David's * Baptism,' and again in the wing of a 
 diptych in the National Gallery, we have a wood 
 brought near us, with its domed canopy of foliage 
 above, and its labyrinth of trunks buried in sylvan 
 twilight below. In such a gloom John Baptist stands 
 with his disciples when Christ passes by. The foliage 
 too is painted with more knowledge of the differences 
 between one tree and another. In some, great boughs 
 thrust out their muscular arms as though each was 
 the bearer of an aegis, in others the branches are 
 lightly tufted with a young green spray. 
 
 Here and there David's landscapes show traces 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 299 
 
 of a tendency towards a fantastic treatment of the 
 scene. Mountains now and again threaten to over- 
 hang, or jut their sides into the air with an unusual 
 precipitancy. This exaggeration of natural forms is 
 however rare, the artist being still unwilling to 
 attract the beholder's attention away from the figures 
 which tell the tale the picture was painted to 
 enshrine. 
 
 Joachim de Patenier (died 1524), whom Diirer 
 visited and entitled the "good landscape painter," 
 felt none of the restraints which, it must be admitted, 
 operated well upon David. One of his best pictures 
 is likewise a ' Baptism of Christ,' "^ and has also a 
 * Preaching of John ' in the background. If David's 
 landscape is wide, Patenier's is much wider. It 
 embraces miles of country and opens on. every side. 
 The rippling water and clustering herbage are not 
 painted in the same minute detail, a broader handHng 
 being substituted in the foreground, for which the 
 artist felt less attraction than for the distance. Some 
 far-away cottage by the river-side, some hamlet 
 nestling against a remote hill-slope, some castle on 
 a craggy peak, blue against the transparent sky — 
 such objects were a joy to him, he loved to ponder 
 over every detail in them. Moreover, with Patenier 
 the fantastic element was of much importance. He 
 wished his landscapes to be romantic, to contain 
 * In the Belvedere, phot. Miethke and Wawra. 
 
300 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 qualities not ordinarily seen in the landscape even 
 of the Maas valley, where his own birthplace lay, 
 still less in the neighbourhood of Bruges. He would 
 have precipitous rocks rising like obelisks out of 
 water or plain. He would build them up into 
 fantastic forms, like the seracs of an ice-fall, and 
 would perch little huts upon inaccessible ledges, or 
 hollow out caves to be the hiding-places of strange 
 beasts. His rivers must pass through gorges or 
 under natural archways ; his skies must be full of 
 moving clouds ; his wide districts of country must 
 present contrasts of rocky mountain walls and fertile 
 plains. From Van Eyck downwards, the homely 
 scenery of undulating country had found its way into 
 pictures. Plenty of slow winding streams, wooded 
 meadows, water-mills, and (in miniatures) corn-fields 
 and plough-lands had been depicted. But Patenier's 
 eye wandered over a wider area ; he saw the village 
 with its wind-mill and its fields, the hill-side where 
 the flocks grazed in the sunlight, the broad river 
 with its ferry-boats, the cart-road, the mule-track, 
 and the bridge leading to the toll-gate. He saw 
 also the grandeur of wild scenery, and strove, 
 though not with perfect success, to bring that into 
 his pictures, showing thereby the possession of a 
 foretaste of that delight in nature for her own sake 
 the full enjoyment of which has been reserved for 
 the people of our own century. 
 
THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 301 
 
 Patenier's love of the wild and the fantastic 
 enabled him to paint certain subjects, such as the 
 legend of St. Christofer, better than any of his pre- 
 decessors had done. Property to depict the legendary 
 scene involved, as has been said, the representation 
 of a river rushing along in flood, with a giant hard 
 put to it to struggle across it by his wonted ford. 
 Such painters as Memling never attempted to give 
 an idea of the force of the swollen stream, but satis- 
 fied themselves with drawing a mere symbolic ditch. 
 Even Bouts was content when he had covered the 
 rock-bound river with a crisp surface of little ripples. 
 Patenier for the first time (in a picture at Madrid *) 
 rendered the force of a river in flood, its waters 
 spread abroad over miles of country, inundating 
 village, field, and town, and bearing forward their 
 burden of drowned humanity. 
 
 Patenier's example was infectious, as any student 
 of early sixteenth-century Flemish art will soon 
 discover. For several decades landscape supplanted 
 figures in the estimation of many stay-at-home artists. 
 The men who went to Italy and fell under the sway 
 of Raphael and Michelangelo wasted their lives in 
 attempting to work in a style for which by birth and 
 education they were unsuited. Those who stayed at 
 home were more and more driven to that kind of 
 Work for which nature intended them — the painting 
 * Phot. Braun. 
 
302 THE RISE OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 
 
 of their home-scenery and home-life. But they had 
 to wait for more than a century before a great painter 
 arose to ennoble the art which, in their own heart of 
 hearts, they all loved best. And then they turned 
 away from Madonnas and Saints to the cows of the 
 pasture, the pigs of the farmyard, and the horses of 
 the fair ; from the landscape of heaven with its 
 population of the blest to the flats of Holland and 
 the boers of the tavern and the skittle-ground ; from 
 the angelic hierarchies of the firmament to the ships 
 of the sea and the fishing-boats of Scheveningen. 
 
 The change was finally accomplished in the heat 
 of Revolution and the turmoil of triumphant Pro- 
 testantism, and not till it was accomplished did men 
 learn the lesson, that the power of art is independent 
 of creeds, dogmas, and philosophies, and rests alone 
 upon the exhaustless capacity of men for delight in 
 the world of nature and the realms of fancy. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TAPESTRIES.^ 
 
 When any art reaches a period of culmination, it 
 always carries others with it to a high pitch of deve- 
 lopment. Thus when architecture culminated in the 
 thirteenth century, all the decorative arts that could 
 contribute to its glory were likewise encouraged and 
 increased by its power and success. The fifteenth 
 century in the Low Countries was again the day of 
 an art maximum. Painting was the leading art, but 
 it did not stand alone. The arts of the goldsmith, the 
 engraver, the builder, the miniaturist, the furniture 
 
 * The materials for this chapter have been chiefly derived 
 from the following works : — 
 
 J. J. Guiffrey, Hist, de la 7"., Paris, 1878, etc., fol. 
 
 E. Muntz, La Tap., Paris, 1883, 8vo — a very useful popular 
 work. 
 
 Darcel, Paris, s. d., fol. 
 
 Deville, Diet. Tap., Paris, 1878-80, 4to. 
 
 M. L. A. Jubinal, Anc. Tap. historiees, Paris, 1838, obi. fol. 
 
 Arch. hist, et litt. du nord de la Franee et du midi de la Belg. 
 3* ser. t. vi. p. 170 {Les haiits-lisseurs d^ Arras et de Lille). 
 
304 TAPESTKIES. 
 
 maker, and many others were cultivated with success, 
 and the art of tapestry-weaving reached a degree 
 of perfection never since attained. This statement 
 will probably not command universal assent, because, 
 in the opinion of many, finer productions were turned 
 out by the looms of other countries, especially of 
 France, at a later date. Whether the forms depicted 
 and the colours combiaed in French tapestry are 
 really charming or not is doubtless a matter of 
 taste ; but tapestry, like all other arts, has its laws 
 of right and wrong, deducible from the nature of 
 the materials employed, and the method of their 
 employment, and any one who will investigate these, 
 and then compare the fifteenth-century Flemish 
 tapestries with the later products of the looms of 
 France, will find that Arras is far in advance of 
 Gobelins in obedience to fundamental laws. 
 
 The earliest hangings made in Northern Europe 
 in the Christian era were embroideries, and the most 
 famous existing specimens of such work are the 
 so-called Bayeaux tapestries, which are not really 
 tapestries at all. In these and similar hangings the 
 subjects were embroidered with greater or less elabor- 
 ation upon a plain piece of woven stuff. The work 
 was done by high-born ladies and their maidens 
 within castle bowers, or by nuns in their convents. 
 Few remnants of such hangings remain, but the 
 multitude of them that must once have existed may 
 
TAPESTRIES. 305 
 
 be deduced from the romances and songs of those 
 
 ancient days. 
 
 Stuffs adorned with woven patterns were then 
 
 usually imported from the sunny East. Fine dresses, 
 
 stat3 robes, wall hangings, and rich draperies of all 
 
 sorts were made of Oriental goods. At Vienna, for 
 
 example, the traveller may still see the imperial robes 
 
 of the Holy Roman Emperor. He will find the border 
 
 of the coronation garments of the supreme head 
 
 of Christendom embroidered with verses from the 
 
 Koran. Indeed so accustomed did Europeans become 
 
 to such embroidered hems of Arabic inscriptions, 
 
 that even when they made fine stuffs for themselves, 
 
 they adorned their edges with a hem of letters forming 
 
 no readable words, but merely put together to imitate 
 
 the to them illegible Arabic texts. Such borders are 
 
 continually seen on the draperies of the Christ, the 
 
 Virgin, and saints in paintings of the Flemish school, 
 
 whilst there are three pictures in the Berlin Museum "^ 
 
 in which the very halo of the Mother of God is adorned 
 
 with imitation Arabic letters, which if they mean 
 
 anything stand for a quotation from the words of 
 
 Mahomet. 
 
 When the weaving of fine stuffs came to be a 
 
 staple industry of the Low Countries it was divided 
 
 into two classes of work. There were the making of 
 
 tapestries, properly so called, that is to say, of woven 
 
 * Squarcione (27 A), Mantegna (27), Borgognone (51). 
 
 X 
 
3o6 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 pictures, and the making of fine stuffs for garments, 
 furniture embellishment, carpets, and other the like 
 purely decorative purposes. The latter class of work 
 was called Saracenic, because all such stuffs were made 
 in imitation of imported Oriental originals. With it 
 we need not further concern ourselves here. 
 
 Figured tapestry might be made in looms of two 
 kinds, known respectively as high warp and low 
 warp looms.^ All the larger and more important 
 tapestries were worked in high warp looms, and 
 workers in that kind were the leaders of their craft. 
 Low warp weavers turned out carpets and decorative 
 stuffs oftener than figured tapestries. 
 
 Every art is a glorified handicraft. Every art in 
 its waxing rises out of a handicraft, and in its decay 
 sinks back into a handicraft again. The art of 
 tapestry arose out of the handicraft of weaving. The 
 Low Countries were the centre of weaving manu- 
 facture in the Middle Ages. Their early municipal 
 and industrial development,- and their proximity to 
 the chief wool-producing country, England, enabled 
 them to attain command of the wool industry 
 Flanders and Brabant grew rich by their weaving 
 and their trade. Commerce brought fine examples 
 of woven stuffs under their eyes, wealth created a 
 demand for such stuffs, and an industry already in 
 
 * As to the technical process of tapestry making in these two 
 kinds of looms, see the South Kensington handbook on Tapestry. 
 
TAPESTRIES. 307 
 
 existence was ready to undertake the supply of the 
 thing demanded. Thus every year the looms of 
 Flanders turned out finer stuffs, and every year they 
 attempted to surpass the productions of the preceding 
 months. 
 
 The wealth and splendour of the Burgundian court 
 was an encouragement and a support to the luxurious 
 art. It is only necessary to look at the pictures of 
 Van Eyck, Roger, Memling, and their fellows, in 
 which the Virgin and saints wear the court costumes 
 of the day, to see what a demand must at that time 
 have existed for splendid stuffs, and how the crafts- 
 men availed to satisfy it. Note, for instance, the 
 robes of the King of Heaven in the * Adoration of the 
 Lamb ' with their jewelled borders, the hangings of 
 embroidered gold behind the throne, the rich vest- 
 ments of the singing angels ; these alone would suffice 
 to show the tendency of the art industries of the 
 day. 
 
 Before storied hangings were woven in the work- 
 shops of Flanders they were embroidered, as we have 
 seen, in princely and baronial castles. The art thus 
 from the earliest date received a secular impress, 
 and this is the most important point for the student 
 of art history to bear in mind. In the age of what 
 we may call castle-power, the central Gothic epoch, 
 most arts were chiefly employed in the service of the 
 
 Church, and thus received a strong religious impress. 
 
 X 2 
 
TAPESTRIES. 
 
 A few hunting-horns may be found carved with 
 images of the chase, a few ivory caskets adorned with 
 sculptured incidents from the poems of the Minne- 
 singers, but an overwhelming majority of the works 
 of mediaeval art that have come down to us represent 
 religious subjects. Tapestry forms an exception to 
 this law. It was the nursery of secular art. The 
 Bayeaux hangings deal with incidents of war, and 
 such no doubt were the kind of subjects which the 
 knights loved to see embroidered in their halls. 
 When the scene of the industry was transferred from 
 the bower to the workshop, and the method of it was 
 changed from embroidery to a kind of weaving, the 
 subjects chosen for representation were not changed. 
 Prescription had already fixed them. A list of some 
 of the principal Flemish tapestries recorded in the 
 inventories of the possessions of princes and nobles 
 of that time will show this to be the case. 
 
 1384. Story of Froiment of Bordiaux. 
 
 1384. Story of William of Orange. 
 
 1386. Two persons throwing flowers in a wood. 
 
 1386. Story of Alexander and of Robert le 
 Fuselier. 
 
 1387. Story of Doon de la Roche. 
 1387. Shepherds and Shepherdesses. 
 
 1387. The battle of Rosebccque (in which Philip 
 van Artevelde was overthrown), a large and very 
 famous piece. 
 

 TAPESTRIES. ^.oq 
 
 1393. Shepherds and Shepherdesses. 
 
 1394. The King of France and the Twelve Peers. 
 All the above were woven at Arras. 
 
 Duke Philip le Hardi, in 1404, possessed the 
 following amongst other tapestries : — Semiramis, 
 VArc de Bergherie, Guil. de Bomercy, Rominant de 
 la Rose, Battle of Pont-Velain, Guy of Burgundy, 
 Judas Maccabeus, King Arthur, Hector of Troy, 
 Harpin of Bourges, Florence of Rome, Percival of 
 Gaul, Lady between two lov^ers. Portraits of Madame 
 d'Artois and Monseigneur de Flandres, Dieu 
 d' Amours dit des Bergiers, and Chastel de Franchise. 
 
 In or about the year 1400 the Duke of Burgundy 
 bought tapestries depicting the Story of Jason, the 
 Story of Troy, the Story of Charles the Great, a 
 Battle, and the Twelve Peers of France. In 1420 
 he bought a * Fame ' and ' Lorens Guerin hunting the 
 wild boar.' In 1449 he bought the Golden Fleece 
 tapestries, which will demand attention later on. 
 
 Louis of Luxemburg in 1480 left fourteen pieces 
 of tapestry representing the romance of Melusine, 
 four representing the history of Julius Caesar, and 
 one of the Trionfe dcs Dames. 
 
 A few religious subjects are inventoried in the 
 court lists, but the large majority are of the same 
 kind as those above mentioned. 
 
 Besides such figured tapestries for chambers and 
 halls, a sumptuously-furnished palace required other 
 
TAPESTRIES. 
 
 decorative stuffs for the adornment of seats and 
 thrones. These stuffs were often woven to harmonize 
 with the wall tapestries, the whole forming one set 
 together. Louis of Luxemburg in 1480 had two 
 such rooms of state, in one of which the walls were 
 hung with four incidents from the romance of Godfrey 
 of Boulogne, and there were a dais, a curtain (for the 
 back of the throne), and a bed-cover to match. The 
 other room was hung with the ' Castle of Love ', and 
 had a dais and curtain besides. 
 
 Most tapestry was thus woven for the palace, but 
 no inconsiderable amount was also employed in 
 churches. Sometimes indeed a noble would bequeath 
 his pieces of the Story of Jason or the Castle of Love 
 to a church, and they would be accepted and 
 willingly hung in some part of the sacred edifice- 
 As a rule, of course, tapestry woven for a church 
 dealt with religious subjects, and probably few if 
 any of the cathedrals of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries were without at any rate some woven 
 hangings. Indeed, in the fourteenth century a 
 certain need arose in cathedrals which tapestry was 
 best suited to supply. 
 
 When the bulk of the cathedrals were built, they 
 were built in consequence of a great popular move- 
 ment, the bishops and the townsfolk being then, in 
 the main, allies having common interests, and work- 
 ing enthusiastically together towards common aims. 
 
TAPESTRIES. 311 
 
 The fact of the cathedral-building movement was not 
 the only sign of this alliance ; the plan and arrange- 
 ment of the buildings themselves was partly deter- 
 mined by it. The orderliness and ceremonial of 
 worship required certain divisions of the building 
 during the times of service, but otherwise the whole 
 interior of the church was accessible to the public 
 and they might wander where they pleased in it. In 
 the fourteenth century a change took place in this 
 respect. The clergy were' increased in number and 
 wealth, and they no longer felt the same need of 
 popular support as before. Cathedral services became 
 less popular ; they took more and more the form of 
 ecclesiastical ceremonies only concerning the clerical 
 body. The folk, left more and more to themselves, 
 became less and less reverent, and their festivals had 
 soon to be banished into the streets and market- 
 places. Then it was that nave and choir were 
 separated from one another by a stone screen, the 
 choir being surrounded by some low wall, above 
 which, from pillar to pillar, it was usual to hang 
 tapestries, thus making the choir practically a closed 
 chapel into which the folk could not even look. 
 
 In the year 1402 the master-weaver, Pierre Fere, 
 of Arras was employed to make a set of tapestries 
 illustrative of the Legend of St. Piat, which were 
 intended to close the choir of Tournai Cathedral in 
 this fashion. Some of them may be seen at Tournai 
 
312 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 to the present day. At Reims, Beauvais, and else- 
 where similar tapestries can likewise be found in 
 which the subjects represented are religious. 
 
 A certain group of churches exists in France, the 
 most famous of them being the church of St. Maurice 
 of Angers, governed in their design by the intention 
 that tapestry should form their chief internal decora- 
 tion. Large spaces of wall were left blank in them 
 where tapestries were permanently to hang. The 
 Angers tapestries together measured one hundred 
 and sixty metres long by five feet deep. They used 
 to hang all round the nave and choir of the church 
 above the great arcade. Each piece was in two rows 
 of seven compositions representing incidents from the 
 Apocalypse. A border ran all along the top depict- 
 ing Heaven ; a corresponding border at the bottom 
 represented the Earth.* 
 
 These, the most famous existing church tapestries, 
 were likewise woven in the high warp looms of 
 Flanders between the years 1380 and 1495. The 
 pictures were founded on the miniatures in a still 
 existing manuscript f which at that time belonged to 
 King Charles I. of France, and was lent by him for 
 the purpose to the Duke of Anjou, the donor of the 
 
 * See L. de Joannis, Les Tapisserics de la Cath. d" Angers^ 
 Angers, 1864, fol. B. de Montault, Not. Archeol. siir les Tap. 
 de la Cath. dA.^ Angers, 1875, 8vo. VArt. vii. (1876), p. 300. 
 
 t Biblioth^que Nationale, V^x\s, fo7tds francais^ no. 403. 
 
TAPESTRIES. 
 
 tapestries. Looking at the tapestries themselves, it 
 is easy to see that their designs come from the four- 
 teenth century. The figures are all of Gothic type, 
 but with the graceful bending forms and flowing 
 drapery outlines such as we find in work of early 
 Koln artists and their contemporaries. There is 
 something too of the sweetness of sentiment which 
 pervaded the pictorial art of the day, as, for instance, 
 in the pretty angels where they walk over the sea 
 of glass singing the song of the Lamb. St. John 
 is always standing by, looking on, and his face 
 shows several varieties of expression. His hair stands 
 on end at times with naive literalness. The back- 
 grounds are always filled with foliation finely treated 
 as a decorative arabesque. One compartment shows 
 the Lamb standing upon Mount Zion, and the 
 beholder is inclined to ask whether Van Eyck may 
 not have had the cartoon for this tapestry in mind 
 when designing his picture of the 'Adoration of the 
 Lamb.' 
 
 The church of Douai was likewise rich in Flemish 
 tapestries of the best period dealing with religious 
 subjects. Such were six pieces of the Deadly Sins, 
 nine pieces of the Story of the Three Kings, two of 
 the Story of Jacob, one of the Queen of Sheba, and 
 one of Christ's agony in the Garden. 
 
 Tapestries, again, formed convenient princely 
 presents, and the Dukes of Burgundy were notably 
 
TAPESTRIES. 
 
 generous in this fashion. Thus, in 1423 the Duke 
 paid a heavy price to the Bruges merchant, Giovanni 
 Arnolfini of Lucca, the same whose portrait by Jan 
 van Eyck adorns the National Gallery, for six 
 tapestries of Our Lady's life to be sent as a 
 present to the Pope. Duke Philip le Hardi too gave 
 several tapestries to Richard the Second's uncles, the 
 Dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster, when they came 
 as ambassadors to negotiate a peace with the uncles 
 of the King of France. On that same occasion, the 
 old chronicler tells us, the ambassadors "chose for 
 meeting-place a thatched chapel of poor appearance 
 near the ruined village of Lclingen between Calais 
 and Boulogne. Spacious pavilions were erected in 
 the neighbouring plain in the form of a camp, and 
 they were hung about within with tapestries of wool 
 and rich silk stuffs charming to the eye. The tent 
 of the Duke of Burgundy was of specially great size, 
 such as had never been seen before. The structure 
 was so rich and elegant that it delighted every one. 
 . . . To hide the aged condition of the chapel walls 
 the Due de Berri had caused woollen tapestries to be 
 hung all around, representing divers ancient battles. 
 But after the first interview the Duke of Lancaster 
 had them removed, saying that men seeking for 
 peace should not have pictures of combats and the 
 destruction of towns before their eyes. So these 
 tapestries were replaced by other gold embroideries 
 
TAPESTRIES. 315 
 
 representing the chief incidentsin the Passion of our 
 Lord Jesus, and the Duke much approved of the 
 change." 
 
 Such passages not only afford circumstantial evi- 
 dence of the multitude of tapestries which must then 
 have existed, but show the varied uses to which they 
 were put. When a prince was to make a state entry 
 into a town, or when there was to be any great civic 
 festival or procession, a crier went round beforehand 
 and invited the inhabitants to make the finest display 
 they could. Then all the house fronts were hung 
 with tapestries, or at least with painted sheets in 
 imitation of them, such as those which Hugo van 
 der Goes made with rapid skill. Or, again, in what- 
 ever house a prince was to lodge for the night 
 on a journey, the chambers were if possible hung 
 with tapestries, either carried from place to place in 
 the prince's train or collected from all the country 
 round. Thus upon the occasion of a journey of 
 Charles V. through the Netherlands, the Regent Mary 
 of Hungary gave orders that the country gentry 
 should lend their tapestry to decorate the chambers 
 at Valenciennes where the Emperor was to spend 
 a night or two. The collection was to be made at 
 the Government's expense, and it v/as guaranteed 
 that the tapestries should be returned uninjured. In 
 earlier times the wealthy Duke of Burgundy carried 
 ev^en his finest tapestries about with him. When 
 
3i6 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 Louis XL entered Paris after his coronation, Jacques 
 du Clercq relates that "the Duke of Burgundy caused 
 the hall and chambers of his H6tel d'Artois to be 
 hung with the finest tapestry that had ever been seen 
 in Paris, especially that of the History of Gideon. 
 He had also the History of Alexander, and many 
 more, all made of gold and silver and silk, and 
 because they were so many he had them hung one 
 over another." 
 
 The tapestries of the History of Gideon, thus once 
 again referred to, were the most famous turned out 
 of the looms of the Low Countries when the art had 
 attained perfect development. The contract for 
 them was entered into in 1449 between Duke Philip 
 the Good and Robert Dury and Jean dc I'Ortie, 
 master tapestry weavers of Tournai. It was bar- 
 gained that the cartoons should be designed by 
 Bauduin de Bailleul, artist designer of Arras, or by 
 a better if such could be found. " What is yellow in 
 the cartoons shall be of fine gold Venetian thread, and 
 what is white shall be of fine silver Venetian thread, 
 save and except the faces and flesh parts, . . . and the 
 rest of the tapestry shall be of good and fine silks, . . . 
 of the best colours that can be found." Eventually 
 the Duke also bought in the cartoons for a round 
 sum of money. The tapestries were finished in the 
 year 1453, and not in 1456, as the following passage 
 from Chastellain seems to suggest. Writing of the 
 
TAPESTRIES. 317 
 
 seventeenth chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 
 which was held at the Hague in 1456, he tells how 
 " the Hall at the Hague is one of the finest in the 
 world, and best suited for great festivals. There was 
 there hung some of the richest tapestry that ever 
 belonged to a king, and of the largest size. It had 
 never been shown before, for it had just been newly 
 made for the Duke, its subject being the miracle of 
 the Fleece in the story of Gideon, which the Duke 
 appropriated to his order." 
 
 At Paris, on the occasion of Louis XL's coronation, 
 it made, as we have seen, an equal sensation. 
 Jacques du Clercq speaks of it as " the noblest 
 tapestry ever seen in France, which the Duke had 
 had made all of gold and silk for love of the Order of 
 the Fleece which he bore, which fleece Gideon prayed 
 our Lord should be made wet and then dry, as in 
 the Bible on le pent plus aisement veoir. And this 
 he had taken for the badge of his order, not wishing 
 to take the Fleece which Jason won in the Isle of 
 Colchis, because Jason broke his faith." 
 
 The after-history of these tapestries can be followed 
 with tolerable continuity. They were used on the 
 occasion of the marriage of Charles the Bold in 1468. 
 In 1498 they adorned the church at Brussels for a 
 royal baptism. They figured in 1555 at the cere- 
 mony of Charles the Fifth's abdication. Ten years 
 later they adorned the wedding of Alexander Farnese. 
 
3i8 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 They were probably carried to Vienna in 1794, with 
 the rest of the property of the Order of the Golden 
 Fleece. The present writer believes that he saw one 
 of them hung amidst a quantity of old tapestry in 
 the Court Church at Vienna on the occasion of the 
 marriage of the present Crown Prince of Austria. 
 
 The town of Arras was of course the centre of the 
 industry at the time of its highest development. 
 The art was indeed introduced into Paris as early 
 as 1302, but it did not become a great art there. 
 It must have reached Arras about 1350, though it 
 is not definitely mentioned till 1367, when tapestry 
 weaving is spoken of as a flourishing industry. The 
 municipal authorities did all they could to foster it, 
 and the weavers rapidly increased in number and 
 wealth. The best period of the art at Arras was 
 the first half of the fifteenth century ; after the turn 
 of the century it began to decline. In the seventeen 
 years preceding 1450 forty-six new names were 
 entered in the books of the guild ; in the next seven- 
 teen years only thirteen were added. Louis XL 
 when he captured Arras (4th May, 1477) struck the 
 death-blow to the industry. The -population of the 
 town hated their new master, so in 1479 he ordered 
 the whole lot of them to be summarily expelled, the 
 town to be renamed, and a new population collected 
 to inhabit it. The new population, however, could 
 not weave, and so the town sank, as any one might 
 
TAPESTRIES. 319 
 
 have foretold. In 1484 Charles VIII. attempted to 
 reverse the fatal policy of his predecessor, but it was 
 too late ; the industry was dead. Next in import- 
 ance to Arras came Tournai, where, in 1398, regula- 
 tions were made for the governance of the art. In 
 1423 we find that the guild was an important body 
 in the town, and by the middle of the century the 
 art had reached its culmination there. The fall of 
 Arras deferred the decline of the industry at Tournai, 
 but a pestilence which visited the town in 15 13 killed 
 half the population, and dealt a blow to the tapestry 
 industry from which it did not recover. 
 
 A guild of tapestry weavers was chartered at 
 Oudenarde in 1441, and soon became prosperous, 
 whilst the art also found a convenient home at 
 Brussels. Tapestry looms were likewise worked at 
 Valenciennes, Lille, Bruges, Douai, Ypres, and Mons. 
 In these towns, however, little storied tapestry was 
 made, the chief product was of patterned stuffs for 
 furniture. Bruges was always more of a mart for 
 the sale of manufactured goods than actually a 
 manufactory. At all the towns last mentioned 
 Sayetterie eventually became the chief industry, and 
 tapestry-weaving was reduced to the second rank. 
 Sayetterie made great strides at Lille, which, after the 
 fall of Arras, became the capital of that branch of the 
 weaving industry. There the silk-weavers and the 
 tapestry-makers belonged to separate guilds, alway 
 
TAPESTRIES. 
 
 quarrelling together about the boundary between 
 their respective crafts. At last the limits of their 
 spheres of work were decided by a town ordinance, 
 which the studious reader may hunt up in the pages 
 of M. Guiffrey's splendid book. 
 
 The guilds of tapestrers jealously watched over 
 the work of their members. Thus in the year 1476 
 I'ierre du Jardin was condemned by the municipal 
 authorities of Lille, on the complaint of the tapcstrers, 
 to pay a fine and to make divers expiatory pilgrim- 
 ages because he had used yarn in a tapestry instead 
 of silk thread. The guild ordinances were very 
 precise upon these and the like matters, and even 
 influential masters did not transgress with impunity. 
 
 The existing Flemish tapestries, accessible either 
 directly or through the medium of photography, arc 
 neither sufficient in number nor in chronological 
 completeness to enable us to trace the artistic de- 
 velopment of the craft of tapestry-weaving in the 
 Low Countries. Fourteenth- century tapestries were 
 relatively small in size and chiefly made of wool. 
 As the workmen advanced in technical skill they set 
 up larger looms and they used more costly materials. 
 Occasionally we are enabled to record some definite 
 advance, as when Michael Bernard, master- weaver 
 of Arras, made the great tapestry of the battle of 
 Rosebecque, which he finished in 1387. This w.is 
 the largest and the most splendid storied hanging 
 
TAPESTRIES. 321 
 
 ever seen up to that time. The name of Jean Coussin 
 of Arras is likewise known as that of an important 
 pioneer in his craft. The tapestries woven at the 
 end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth 
 centuries were large and heavy. Eventually they 
 tore asunder by their own weight, and so had to 
 be cut up and used in smaller pieces. Technical 
 improvements must have been introduced to meet 
 this difficulty, for though the tapestries which date 
 from the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the 
 sixteenth centuries are of large dimensions, as a 
 visitor to South Kensington Museum may see for 
 himself, many of them have come down to us rela- 
 tively little deteriorated. 
 
 The best existing collection of Flemish tapestry is 
 at Madrid, and all its best pieces have been photo- 
 graphed by Laurent of that city. The Austrian 
 Emperor possesses some fine pieces not easily access- 
 ible to the student. The Cluny Museum at Paris and 
 the South Kensington Museum contain some large 
 Flemish tapestries, and a handsome series is hung 
 in the Palace of Hampton Court. The Industrial 
 Museum at Berlin possesses, amongst other Flemish 
 pieces, one in which the colours have hardly faded at 
 all. Many scattered examples are recorded and 
 photographed in Guififrey's work above referred to. 
 Few indeed of these remains date from the blossom- 
 ing time of the art ; the large majority issue from 
 
 Y 
 
322 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 the days of decadence after the year 1500 was 
 passed. 
 
 Not infrequently, especially at Madrid, the design 
 of the finer tapestries is ascribed to such masters as 
 Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, but these 
 attributions are of course baseless. Once again it must 
 be reasserted that in the fifteenth century an artist 
 had to be the member of a guild, and a member of a 
 guild might only do those kinds of work which his 
 guild was founded to promote. A painter might not 
 make miniatures ; therefore all the illuminated books, 
 Grimani breviaries, and the like ascribed to Memling, 
 Roger, or Van Eyck may be at once struck out from 
 the list of their works. Tapestry designing would 
 probably be part of the work of members of the 
 tapestrers' guilds, at all events it is not mentioned 
 as belonging to the painters' guilds, and therefore it 
 certainly was not done by painters. In the year 1449 
 Bauduin de Bailleul of Arras was the best tapestry 
 designer so far as the Duke of Burgundy and two 
 master-weavers of Tournai knew. Roger van der 
 Weyden, Petrus Cristus, Gerard van der Meire, and 
 others were the famous artists then, and the Duke of 
 Burgundy had he thought fit might have overridden 
 the guild laws if they stood in the way of his employ- 
 ing any of these men to design his Golden Fleece 
 tapestries ; he did not, however, do so because the 
 thing was not their work. 
 
TAPESTRIES. 323 
 
 The laws of tapestry design and the laws of design 
 in painting are at variance one with another. A 
 tapestry must be primarily decorative, a painting 
 primarily expressive. Tapestry has to hang on 
 walls, not always flat, or round pavilions where it 
 would certainly be liable to many folds. No refine- 
 ments of composition, therefore, are possible in the 
 design. Any one can imagine the effect that would 
 be produced by a fold down the middle of the 
 Sixtine Madonna; tapestry must be independent of 
 any such little matter. However much folded it must 
 look equally fine. Any design of figures then must 
 be loosely composed ; figures need patching about 
 rather than composing at all in the pictorial sense. 
 Moreover, no one ever looks at the wall of a room as 
 a whole ; its decoration must often be seen from close 
 at hand, and it must look well in every light and 
 from every point of view. All the traditions then of 
 pictorial art have to be abandoned by the tapestry 
 designer, and other things being equal, the best 
 designer will be the man who keeps himself to that 
 class of work. These differences were understood in 
 Flanders at the blossoming time of the art, and hence 
 came that apparently strange but really right style of 
 design which governs the distribution of figures in 
 the best large tapestries. There have been worse 
 tapestries than those for which Raphael drew the 
 
 cartoons, because, after all, he obeyed some of the 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 TAPESTRIES. 
 
 laws which must always govern this kind of work. 
 The later schools of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
 eighteenth centuries produced many a far uglier 
 hanging, and modern looms have sunk to a lower 
 depth still in their imitations of finished paintings, 
 ugly in colour, nasty in texture, unsuitable for use, 
 and incapable of giving delight. Recently one artist 
 has shown that the art need not be regarded as dead, 
 and that if a good cartoon be drawn, workmen can be 
 created capable of executing it ; but that anything 
 like a general revival can be looked for in these 
 machine-grinding days is perhaps more than the most 
 sanguine will expect. 
 
 'J. '- 
 
 
INDEX OF ARTISTS. 
 
 Bouts, Dirck 
 Lille, 278 
 Munich, 278, 279 
 National Gallery, 276 
 
 burckmair, 229 
 
 Cristus, Petrus 
 Berlin, 156 
 National Gallery, 95 
 Oppenheim Collection, Koln, 
 
 157 
 Verulam, Lord, 95 
 
 David, Gerard 
 I^ruges, 296 
 Munich, 51 
 
 National (>allery, 95, 98, 300 
 Rouen, 296 
 Mr. Willett, Brighton, 95 
 
 **E. S. OF 1466," 208 
 
 Eyck, Hubert van 
 
 Berlin, Brussels, and Ghent, 96, 
 128 
 
 Eyck, Jan van 
 
 Antwerp, 142, 145, 273 
 Berlin, 96, 129, 145, 256, 271 
 Bruges, no, 141, 153 
 Burleigh House, 95 
 Chatsworth, 95 
 Dresden, 256 
 Ghent, 96, 129, 256, 271 
 Hope, Mr. Eeresford, 95, 139, 
 144 
 
 Eyck, Jan van 
 
 Heytesbury, Lord, 95, 141 
 
 Ince Hall, 95 
 
 Louvre, 96, 97, 151, 273 
 
 Madrid, 136 
 
 National Gallery, 95, 148 
 
 St. Petersburg, 141 
 
 Turin, 141, 273 
 
 Goes, Hugo van der 
 
 S. M. Nuova, Florence, 96, 97, 
 184, 266 
 
 Holbein the Elder, 229 
 
 Koln School 
 Berlin, 48 
 Darmstadt, 48 
 Frankfurt a M., 47, 226 
 Koln. Archiepiscopal Museum, 
 
 52' 
 Koln Cathedral, 32, 37 
 Koln Museum, 37, 38, 42, 48, 
 
 50, 56, 202, 226 
 Niirnberg, 50, 56 
 Paradise Pictures, 41 
 
 Memling 
 
 Bruges, 96, 97, 239, 251, 256, 
 
 260, 262, 265, 266, 285 
 Chiswick, 95, 236, 256 
 P'lorence, 256, 260 
 Louvre, 261 
 Lubeck, 255 
 Munich, 247, 284 
 National Gallery, 95, 261 
 Smith, Mr. Vernon, 95 
 
326 
 
 INDEX OF ARTISTS. 
 
 Memling 
 
 Strassburg, 256 
 Vienna, 256 
 Wbrlitz, 256 
 
 Patenter, Joachim de 
 Madrid, 303 
 Vienna, 301 
 
 SCHONGAUER, MaRTIN 
 Col mar, 215 
 National Gallery, 215 
 
 ScHUHLEiN, Hans, 222 
 
 Stephan, Meister 
 Koln Cathedral, 197 
 
 Weyden, Roger van der 
 Antwerp, no, 164 
 Berlin, 96, 97, 164, 165, 168, 
 
 171, 275 
 Brussels, 275 
 Frankfurt a M., 178 
 Grosvenor House, 95 
 Liverpool, 95, 177 
 Madrid, 166, 178, 275 
 Munich, 108, 169, 170, 175, 
 
 2i6, 275 
 National Gallery, 275 
 
 WiLHELM, Meister, 34 
 
 \VoLGEMUT, 222 
 
 Zeitblom, Bart., 222 
 
INDEX OF PLACES. 
 
 Amiens Cathedral 
 Sculpture, 39 
 
 Angers 
 
 Tapestry, 314 
 
 Antwerp 
 J. van Eyck, 142, 145, 273 
 R. van der Weyden, 1 10, 164 
 
 Beresford Hope Collection 
 J. van Eyck, 95, 139, 144 
 
 Berlin 
 P. Cristus, 156 
 H. & J. van Eyck, 96, 128, I45 
 
 256, 271 
 Kohl School, 42, 48 
 R. van der Weyden, 96, 97, 164, 
 
 165, 16S, 171, 275 
 
 Brauweiler, 30 
 
 Bruges 
 
 G. David, 296 
 J. van Eyck, no, 141, 153 
 Memling, 96, 97, 239, 251, 256, 
 260, 262, 265, 266, 285 
 
 Brussels 
 
 R. van der Weyden, 275 
 
 Burleigh House 
 J. van Eyck, 95 
 
 Chartres 
 
 Sculpture and windows, 1 1 
 
 Chatsworth 
 J. van Eyck, 95 
 
 Chiswick 
 
 Memling, 95, 236, 256 
 
 COLMAR 
 
 Martin Schongauer, 215 
 
 Cologne. See Koln 
 
 Darmstadt 
 Koln School, 48 
 
 Dresden 
 
 J. van Eyck, 256 
 
 Florence 
 
 H. van der Goes, 96, 97, 184, 
 
 266 
 Memling, 256, 260 
 
 Frankfurt a M. 
 Koln School, 47, 226 
 R. van der Weyden, 178 
 
 Ghent 
 
 H. & J. van Eyck, 96, 128, 256, 
 271 
 
 Grosvenor House 
 R. van der Weyden, 95 
 
 Heytesbury Collection 
 J. van Eyck, 95, 141 
 
 Ince Hall, Liverpool 
 J. van Eyck, 95 
 
 Koln Archiepiscopal Museum 
 Koln School, 52 
 
 Koln, Dom 
 
 Koln School, 32, 37, 38 
 Meister Stephan, 97 
 
328 
 
 INDEX OF PLACES. 
 
 KoLN Museum 
 
 Kbln School, 37, 48, 50, 56, 
 202, 226 
 
 Lille 
 Bouts, 278 
 
 Liverpool, Royal Institution 
 R. van der Weyden, 95, 177 
 
 London, National Gallery 
 Bouts, 276 
 Cristus, 95 
 David, 95, 98, 300 
 J. van Eyck, 95, 148 
 Memling, 95, 261 
 Martin Schongauer (?), 215 
 R. van der Weyden, 275 
 
 LiJBECK 
 
 Memling, 255 
 
 Madrid 
 
 J. van Eyck, 136 
 
 J. de Patenier, 303 
 
 Tapestry, 323 
 
 R. van der Weyden, 166, 178, 
 275 
 Munich 
 
 Bouts, 278, 279 
 
 David, 51 
 
 Memling, 247, 284 
 
 R. van der Weyden, 108, 169, 
 170, 175, 216, 275 
 
 Nil RN BERG 
 
 Koln School, 50 
 
 Oppenheim Collection, Koln 
 Cristas, 157 
 
 P.\Ri>, Louvre 
 J. van Eyck, 96, 97, 151, 273 
 Memling, 261 
 
 Ramersdorf 
 Rhine School, 31 
 
 Rouen 
 David, 296 
 
 Schwarzriieindorf 
 Rhine School, 30 
 
 St. Petersburc; 
 J. van Eyck, 141 
 
 Strassrurg 
 Memling, 256 
 
 Tournai 
 
 Tapestries, 313 
 
 Turin 
 J. van Eyck, 141, 273 
 
 Venice 
 
 Carpaccio, 239 
 Grimani Breviary, 295 
 
 Vernon Smith Collection 
 Memling, 95 
 
 Verulam Collection 
 Cristas, 95 
 
 Vienna 
 J, de Patenier, 301 
 Memling, 256 
 
 Willett Collection, 
 Brighton 
 David, 95 
 
 WORLITZ 
 
 Memling, 256 
 
 Ridiard Clay and Sons, London and Bungay. 
 
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