acquired after him the greatest celebrity. As early as 1436 he filled
the honourable post of official painter to the city of Brussels. The
chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the
Chamber of Justice in Hotel de Ville. According to the custom of the
time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern
observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority.
The principal picture showed how Herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh
century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who
would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands;
and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied
to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of
a miracle. The wings contained an example of the justice of the Emperor
Trajan. These pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having
probably been burned when Brussels was besieged in 1695.
In the Museum of the Hospital at Beaune is one of the most important of
his works still in existence, _The Last Judgment_, though in this it is
generally supposed he was assisted by Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling. It
contains several portraits, notably those of the Pope, Eugenius IV., who
stands behind the Apostles in the right wing, and next to him Philip the
Good. The crowned female in the opposite wing is probably Philip's
[Illustration: PLATE XXII.--JAN VAN EYCK
PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S WIFE
_Town Gallery, Bruges_]
second wife, Isabella of Portugal, whose portrait Jan Van Eyck went to
Lisbon to paint before her marriage. On the outer sides are excellently
painted portraits of the founder of the Hospital, Nicolas Rolin, and his
wife. This work has been classed with the Van Eycks' _Adoration of the
Lamb_, and the _Adoration of the Shepherds_ by Hugo Van der Goes, as
crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting.
In 1450 he visited Italy, where he painted the beautiful little
altar-piece which is now in the Staedel Institute at Frankfort, for Piero
and Giovanni de'Medici.
Another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the Berlin
Museum, executed for Pierre Bladelin. In the centre is the Nativity,
with a portrait of Bladelin kneeling, and angels. On the one side is the
annunciation of the Redeemer to the ruler of the West--the Emperor
Augustus--by the agency of the Tiburtine Sibyl; on the other to those of
the East--the Three Kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where
the child appears to them in a star.
One of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a
triptych in the Munich Gallery--the _Adoration of the Kings_, with the
_Annunciation_ and the _Presentation in the Temple_ in the wings. The
figure of the Virgin in the _Presentation_ is particularly pleasing for
its simple and unaffected realism. _S. Luke painting the Virgin_, also
in the Munich Gallery, is ascribed to Roger.
No painter of this school, the Van Eycks even not excepted, exercised so
great and widely extended an influence as Roger Van der Weyden. Not only
were Hans Memling--the greatest master of the next generation in
Belgium--and his own son, also named Roger, his pupils, but innumerable
works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures,
block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable.
It was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the Van Eycks
pervaded all Germany; for it was only after the death of Jan Van Eyck,
in 1441, that the widespread fame of Roger Van der Weyden induced
Germans to visit his studio at Brussels. Martin Schongauer, one of the
greatest German masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been
his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others.
It is in HANS MEMLING (_c._ 1435-1494), whom Vasari states to have been
the pupil of Roger, that the early Netherlandish School attains the
highest delicacy of artistic development. His poetical and profoundly
human qualities had a special attraction for the "Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood" inaugurated by Rossetti and Holman Hunt in the middle of
the nineteenth century. This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably
also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital
of S. John at Bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a
sick soldier after the battle of Nancy. In feeling for beauty and grace
he was more gifted than any painter except Hubert Van Eyck, and this
quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his
contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is
rightly his share. Compared with the works of his master, Roger Van der
Weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less
meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his
women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. His outlines are
softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half
tones is observable. His colours are still more luminous and
transparent. On the other hand he is inferior to Van der Weyden in the
carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the
rendering of the full brilliancy of gold.
In 1467 Memling was a master painter at Bruges, and painted the portrait
of the medallist, Nicolas Spinelli, which is now in the Royal Museum at
Antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at Chatsworth. His most famous
works, those in the Hospital at Bruges, belong to a somewhat later date,
the _Shrine of S. Ursula_ not being completed till 1489. The _Adoration
of the Kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. The
famous shrine of S. Ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole
of the outside is adorned with painting. On each side of the cover are
three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the
sides. The latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the
centre on one side is a Coronation of the Virgin, on the other the
Glorification of S. Ursula and her companions, with two figures of
Bishops. On the gable-ends are the Virgin and Child with two sisters of
the hospital kneeling before them, and S. Ursula with the arrow, the
instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her
mantle. On the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather
larger compartments, is painted the history of S. Ursula.
Of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the _Marriage of
S. Catherine_, which is also in S. John's Hospital at Bruges. The
central figure is that of the Virgin, seated under a porch, with
tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head:
beside her is S. Catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest
ever painted by Memling. Behind her is an angel playing on the organ,
and further back S. John the Baptist. On the other side kneels S.
Barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the Virgin,
and still further back is S. John the Evangelist, a figure of great
beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. Through the
arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a
rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the
two S. Johns. The panel on the right contains the beheading of the
Baptist, on the left the Evangelist in the Isle of Patmos, where the
vision of the Apocalypse appears to him--the Almighty on a throne in a
glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow.
The whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in
character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition.
IAN GOSSAERT (_c._ 1472-1535), called JAN VAN MABUSE from his native
town of Maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the Abbey
of Sainte-Aldegonde. It is possible therefore that he might have formed
an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the
art of painting in the studio of a master. Memling, Gerard, David, and
Quentin Massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not
known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. In 1508
he went to Italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both
by the work of the Renaissance painters and by the antique. The
_Adoration of the Kings_, which was lately purchased from Castle Howard
for the National Gallery for L40,000, was painted before he went to
Italy.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer
of commerce from Bruges to Antwerp, this latter city first became and
long continued the centre of art, and especially of Netherlandish
painting. Here it is that we find QUENTIN MASSYS, the greatest Belgian
painter of this later time. He was born
[Illustration: PLATE XXIII.--JAN MABUSE
PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET
_Louvre, Paris_]
probably in 1466. His father is said to have been a blacksmith and
clockmaker, and there is a tradition that Quentin only forsook the
hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful
lady. Be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of
Belgian art. He distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last
period and the beginning of the next. A number of pictures representing
sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form,
such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness
and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the
religious painting of the Middle Ages, though at the very end of them.
In his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to
Massys. At the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into
sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take
pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures.
In subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving
couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and
with great success. The pictures of his later period are also
distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the
figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters
or even actual life size.
Among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length
figures of Christ and the Virgin. These must have been very popular in
his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. Two heads of
this class are at Antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the
National Gallery in one frame (No. 295).
The most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of
_The Misers_, or _The Money Changers_, at Windsor Castle--of which there
are numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. _The
Money Changer and His Wife_ at the Louvre is undoubtedly his.
LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, as he was called (his real name being Luc Jacobez),
was born in 1494, and died in 1533. He was a pupil of a little known
artist, Cornelis Engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of
Memling. Lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early
development. He painted admirably--though his authenticated works are
very scarce--drew, and engraved. He pursued the path of realism in the
treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind.
His heads are generally of a very ugly character. At the same time his
form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by
the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings,
attracted a number of followers. In scenes from common life he is full
of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then
a somewhat coarse sense of humour. One of his most important works is a
large composition of _The Last Judgment_, which is at Leyden.
Very early in the sixteenth century--beginning in fact, as we have seen,
with Jan Mabuse in 1508--the Netherlandish and German artists made it
the fashion to repair to Italy, attracted by the reputation of the great
masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the
purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. For it appears
that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling
for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such
general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of
the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement--in
short, all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal."
But the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no
successful result. Being based on no inherent want on the part of their
own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of
something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in
mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true
feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them
they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and
violence in attitude. The pictures of this class, even of religious
subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they
selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with
an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable.
The most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the
department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist
upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. As in every other
respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of
history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be
sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of
their principal pictures.
The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before
mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large _Adoration of the Kings_ in the
National Gallery the most important picture of his pre-Italian period is
the _Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane_ at Berlin. Nearly all his works
subsequent to 1512, by which time he had settled in Brussels, are
characterised by all the faults above mentioned. Their redeeming quality
is their masterly treatment. Among those of religious subjects the
smallest are as a rule the best. The _Ecce Homo_ at Antwerp, so
frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly
modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size
_Adam and Eve_, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield,
Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the
mythological subjects such as the _Danae_ at Munich, and the _Neptune
and Amphitrite_ at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are
attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his
acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery,
and the _Girl weighing Gold Pieces_, in the Berlin gallery, is also
worthy of mention.
BERNARD VAN ORLEY, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the
catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Massys and
Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been
immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Duerer which is
now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria,
Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her
successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and
there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly
apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _Holy Family_ in the
Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is
the _Pieta_ in the Gallery at Brussels.
IAN SCOREL, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have
been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native
country--Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pass
through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity
as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer
of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he
died, he painted the picture of the _Virgin and Child_, with donors,
which is now in the Town Hall.
A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the
Berlin Gallery.
The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Massys had
painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money
Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of
similar subjects. First among these was his son, JAN MASSYS, born about
1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's
footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition.
More interesting were the Breughels, namely, PIETER BREUGHEL the elder,
born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and
Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good
examples of his various subjects, notably a _Crucifixion_ and _The Tower
of Babel_--both dated 1563--and secular scenes like _A Peasant Wedding_
and a _Fight between Carnival and Lent_, which are full of clever and
droll invention.
His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of
subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan,
called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape
painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject
pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality,
are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more
accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.
It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish School
chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth
century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its
glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of
painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters
have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come
to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to
find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From
the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady
demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a
really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the
eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish,
talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the
present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable
Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside
their own country.
Typical of these is JOOS VAN CLEEF, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.
According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court
of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in
England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have
disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with
any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his
time--the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the
portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.
His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His
well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and
transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.
II
PETER PAUL RUBENS
Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands
during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between
the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in
1577.
"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united
with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and
healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest
details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the
fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most
admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and
finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school,
however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian
masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few
painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.
To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and
difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they
thought to emulate the grandeur of Michel Angelo, and to exhibit their
learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became
the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial
views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naive
perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared.
"In proportion as the Flemish painters lost the proper conception of
form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed
of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their
desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and
in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures
were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz
Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old
inheritance of the school.
"Some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled
them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to
portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or
they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of
detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. Although
a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were
visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a
mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution."
That Rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily
admitted. He was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a
variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room
left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as
one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for
the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he
was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or
intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical
learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings
servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he had no enemies.
Something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was
necessary to make Rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was
environment. Had he remained in Flanders all his life we should have
been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. He was too
big, that is to say, for the flower pot. He needed to be bedded out, so
that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities
for expanding under suitable conditions. It was in Venice and Mantua, in
Florence and Rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the
giants.
Rubens was born in 1577 at Cologne, where his father, a jurist of
considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at
Antwerp in 1566. He was christened Peter Paul in honour of the saints on
whose festival his birthday fell--29th June. At the age of sixteen he
was placed as a page in the household of the widowed Countess of
Lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was
apprenticed first to Tobias Verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to
Adam Van Oort. The latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that
Rubens was soon committed to the care of Otto Vennius, at that time
Court painter to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, her
husband; he prospered so well that in 1600 Vennius advised him to go to
Italy to finish his education as a painter.
Rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in
painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general
education and manners that he was recommended by the Archduke to
Vincenzio, Duke of Gonzaga, whose palace at Mantua was famous for
containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which
within the next quarter of a century were purchased by King Charles, the
Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Arundel. The influence exerted on
the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by
Waagen:--