_Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).
This beautiful work was formerly in the collection of Mr.
Beckford at Fonthill, where it was described as the Burial of a
Bishop by Jan Van Eyck. It has also been ascribed to Gerard Van
der Meire (see 1078) and to Thierri Bouts (about 1420-1475).
This latter painter--called by early authors Thierry, or Dierik
of Haarlem, from the name of his native town, and by modern
writers Thierri Stuerbout,--was town's painter of Louvain, and
a pupil probably of Roger van der Weyden. His principal works
are now in the Brussels Museum. Other pictures in the Gallery
attributed to him by some critics are 664, 774, and 943. Van
der Meire, Justus of Ghent, and Albert Van Ouwater have also
been suggested as the painters of this picture; it closely
resembles the "Raising of Lazarus" ascribed to the last-named
painter in the Berlin Gallery.
St. Hubert was originally a nobleman of Aquitaine, much addicted to
all worldly pleasures, and especially to that of the chase. But one
day in Holy Week, when all good Christians were at their devotions, as
he was hunting in the forest of Ardennes, he encountered a milk-white
stag bearing the crucifix between his horns. Filled with awe and
astonishment, he renounced the pomps and vanities of the world, turned
hermit in that very forest of Ardennes, was ordained, and became
Bishop of Liège. So the legend runs, embalming, we may suppose, the
conversion of some reckless lover of the chase, like the wild huntsman
of the German legend. And at Liège he was buried, but thirteen years
afterwards his body was disinterred, and lo! it was found entire; even
the episcopal robes in which he had been interred were without spot or
stain. A century later the body was removed from Liège and reinterred
in the abbey church of the Benedictine monks of Ardennes. The Emperor
Louis le Débonnaire assisted at the translation of the relics, and
the day was long kept as a festival throughout this part of Flanders.
This is the subject of the present picture, of which the scene is laid
in the choir of a beautiful Gothic church. On the altar behind the
principal group stands a shrine, on which is a little figure of St.
Hubert with his hunting-horn. The royal personage assisting represents
Louis le Débonnaire. The picture is of wonderful beauty, finished in
every part (abridged from Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary Art_,
pp. 431, 432). Though it is thus an historical picture, the artist
takes the figures from his own time, and the heads, like miniatures
in character and delicacy of expression, are doubtless portraits--the
whole scene being a picture of a Flemish Cathedral on some festival
day. Notice, as a particularly interesting little piece of life, the
man flattening his nose against the screen on the left, with a jeering
expression, as if he "didn't half believe it all." It is a piece of
living grotesque, exactly such as meets one in the sculptured stones
of a mediæval cathedral itself--"peeping round the corner at you and
lurking in secret places, like a monk's joke whispered in church"
(Conway's _Early Flemish Artists_, p. 17).