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neglect was more unjust than this; for Hubert transcended in genius both John Van Eyck and every other painter of the Netherlands. His grand characteristic, as chief of the Flemish school, was severity and nobleness of expression. His great quality was colour, but he failed in idealism. . . . Few men of his time in Italy, none in the Netherlands, have proved themselves as perfect as he was in anatomy, and the perspective of the human frame. But he most excelled in colour: his works are vivid, powerful, and harmonious; and had Hubert's pupils been Italians instead of Flemings, had Venice, and not Bruges, become his resting-place, he would have been the founder of a school of colour. But the tendency to realism which marked his works became exaggerated in his pupils, who, seeking for perfection more in patient arts than by superior genius, fell at once into a lower rank, and never afterwards rose from it."

From various causes, Hubert Van Eyck has left behind him but one authentic picture-the Mystic Lamb,-painted for the chapel of St. Bavon, at Ghent, part of which is preserved at that city, and part at Berlin. In its finished and complete form, it deserved the great and lasting admiration which it excited. The subject, grand and well-conceived, taken from Revelations, was well-suited to the feelings of the people, and in harmony with the religious fervour of the age :

"There sat enthroned the figure of God the Father, holding up His fingers to bless the world, with the papal tiara on his head, John the Baptist on his left, and the Virgin Mary on his right. At His feet stood the Lamb; and round the altar where he bled were all the angels,-all the saints and martyrs, peculiarly made holy by the Church of Rome. There were popes and bishops, and female saints, hermits and holy

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Interior of the Altar-piece of Ghent, by Hubert and John Van Eyck.

pilgrims, crusaders and heroes of the early Christian legends, all advancing to adore the Lamb,-all converging to one central point, through varied landscapes, on foot with staves, clad in simple tunic or sable armour. Nor, whilst the symbols of eternal happiness were thus paraded before the people, did the painter hesitate to place before

them those of punishment; for on the socket of the altar-piece was seen a picture of the tortured down below, according to the old established custom, which made the monks of old Greek churches paint that subject upon the porticoes as emblematic of the hapless state which waits on those who kept without the pale of the mother

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church. He represented also on the altar-piece the sybils who foretold the coming of our Saviour, the Annunciation and the Evangelists, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, in prominent positions - impressing on the mind of the spectator the enormity of mortal sin, destined to be purified by the sacrifice of the Lamb."

The central panel, where the Lamb is bleeding on the altar, is attributed to John Van Eyck, who shewed himself almost equal to his brother Hubert, but with less knowledge of anatomy. A feebler outline in his figures, thinner limbs, harder and more angular draperies, are also remarkable. His colouring also lacked the true harmony for which Hubert is remarkable. His shadows wanted vigour and warmth, and he was not able at all times to conceal the traces of manipulation. But, notwithstanding all, the picture is a vivid and powerful one, to whose excellence it is scarcely possible to do justice, and it requires no ordinary powers of description to give a faint idea of its beauties.

Hubert left the Mystic Lamb unfinished. He had only completed its upper portion when he died, in 1426. He was buried, on the 18th of September, in a vault below the crypt of the chapel of Burluuts and Vydts. The following translation of his epitaph exhibits the pious spirit of the painter and his times :

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"Take warning from me, ye who walk over me: I was as you are, but am now buried dead beneath you. Thus it appears that neither art nor medicine availed me : art, honour, wisdom, power, affluence, are spared not when death arrives. I was called Hubert Van Eyck. I am now food for worms. Formerly known and highly honoured in painting; this all was shortly after turned to nothing. It was in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and twenty-six, on the 18th of September, that I rendered up my soul to God, in suffering. Pray God for me, ye who love art, that I may attain to His sight. Flee sin, turn to the best (objects), for you must follow me at last."

The arm with which he wielded so remarkably the pencil and the brush was severed from Hubert's body, and suspended in a casket above the portal of St. Bavon, where it still remained in the sixteenth century.

The scarcity of Hubert Van Eyck's pictures is owing, doubtless, to the wanton mischief and destruction perpetrated by the iconoclasts of 1566, and the plundering of the Spanish troops during the wars of the Duke of Alva. None of the pictures extant under the name of Hubert can confidently be attributed to him: they are very inferior productions. John has suffered less severely, and many of his pictures remain bearing authentic signatures and dates;-one of the most remarkable and beautiful of which, a Newly Married Couple, is in the National Gallery. His finest work, commanding attention by its importance as a composition, and the splendour of execution, is the altar-piece of the Santa Trinita Museum of Madrid.

Of the pupils of the Van Eycks, the most eminent were Petrus Cristus and Gerard Van der Meire. The former was the first to follow John Van Eyck in the practice of oil-painting, and received, no doubt, the lessons of the elder brother also, whose style he followed much more faithfully than that of John. Of Van der Meire very little is known. Hugo Van der Goes is said to have studied under John Van Eyck, but he formed his manner as much from that of Hubert as from that of John; and it is not unlikely that he studied under both brothers. He had the vigour and perfect finish that marked their style, without their noble sentiment, beauty of expression, or knowledge of the human form. Rising to eminence after the death of his master, he shared with Van der Weyden the patronage of the rich Burgundian court, noblesse, and citizens. He was free master of the Guild of St. Luke at Ghent, in 1472, and is supposed to have painted some miniatures in the Breviary of Cardinal Grimani, in conjunction with Memling.

The other painters who contributed to form the school of Bruges were

Roger Van der Weyden, Justus or Jodocus of Ghent, and Hans Memling, with numerous imitators of them and of the Van Eycks. The greatest work of Van der Weyden is the altar-piece at Beaune: the subject is the "Last Judgment." As a painter, he possessed many good qualities, marred by some imperfections. He had a good knowledge of anatomy, and was happy in the reproduction of the real in nature. Harmonious in composition and finished in design, he abounded in varied and good expression; but his conceptions were rarely noble.

It is extremely difficult, it appears, to determine who Justus or Jodocus of Ghent really was. He is supposed to have been a pupil of Hubert Van Eyck, but during the whole period of his youth, and the time of his tuition under Hubert Van Eyck, his name can only be traced as the painter of a lost picture-the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. At Genoa, in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria di Castello, there is a tempera picture of the Annunciation on the walls of the cloisters, bearing the inscription, "Justus d'Allamagna, pinxit, 1451." The question arises, was he the same artist who, during his stay in Flanders, produced the picture of St. John the Baptist? or was he an artist of the same name, coming to Italy, and settling at Genoa for the rest of his days? The conclusion the authors of "The Early Flemish Painters" come to is, that Justus d'Allamagna was a painter partaking of the Flemish and Rhenish manners, and exhibiting the religious sentiment of the latter, combined with the more material tendency of the former to imitate nature. They cannot conceive him to have been a pupil of the Van Eycks, with whose pictures and method this mural painting has nothing to do. They do not believe him to have known the methods of the Van Eycks; because, forty-one years after the alleged discovery of oil-medium-in 1451, when Roger Van der Weyden was so well received in Italy, in consequence of knowing it, Justus d'Allamagna, had he been Van Eyck's pupil, would have known and practised oils, and would doubtless have preferred to exhibit his talent in the new practice, rather than in the old manner of tempera, in which the Italians excelled. An altar-piece in Santa Agatha, at Urbino, executed in 1468-74, was painted by Giusto da Guanto for the brotherhood of Corpus Christi. The subject is the "Last Supper." This work, considered a masterpiece, the only known and authentic one of Justus of Ghent, leads to the conclusion that the painter was "one of those who upheld the fame of Flemish art with no less power than Van der Goes, imprinting on his works many of the characteristic features of that great artist. Of fair attainments in the art of composition, he exhibited the quality of good arrangement, without surpassing in this other masters of the school." His general system of colour leads to the belief that he was as vigorous in general intonation as Van der Goes, but browner and more transparent in his shadows than that master. In comparison with Petrus Christus, he was free from the fault of sombreness, and a reddish tinge overspreads his flesh-tints.

Hans Memling was a pupil of Van der Weyden, but much less is known of him than of his master. Where he was born or dwelt are both uncertain. His pictures were admired, and praised, and sought in Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was rescued from oblivion by the historian Van Mander, who says,

"Respecting some of our painters, whose existence is more known to me from looking at their pictures, than from knowledge of the period in which they lived, I would mention first of Bruges - a celebrated master in the early times, named Hans Memmelinck."

He is, however, dismissed in a few lines, to make room for mere traders in art. Posterity tardily recognised the genius of this painter, but occupied itself less in examining his merits, than in frivolous arguments as to the mode of spelling his name :—

"The great characteristic feature of Memling was his grace and poetry of delineation. His pictures were lyrics, not epics, like Van Eyck's: but Memling had a master who sought the graceful-not, like John Van Eyck, a teacher of ascetic tendencies. Memling, under Van der Weyden's teaching, succeeded in perfecting, or in realizing, much that was but in part achieved, and more that was only promised, by his master. ...... He was so elegant and simple in the broader features of the art, his landscapes were so autumnal and warm in tone, that the faults of studied symmetry and overcrowding can scarcely be said to have been obtrusive. . . . . Although he failed to seize from amongst the various models with which he was acquainted, a noble or ideal type, a soft meek beauty is to be found in most of his delineations; and he shewed an elevated taste in depicting the Madonna, with her yellow hair sweeping down her shoulders, fastened to her high and noble forehead with a diadem, or turning round the ear in graceful locks-her grave and lofty mien expressing dignity and religion."

The schools of Bruges, of Ghent, and of Brussels produced numerous imitators of Memling's manner. Some of them were servile copyists, but many were of commanding talent. In some peculiarities of their master's style they excelled him; in others they fell far below him. It was not to be expected that they should excel their model in art. More than any others, the Flemings possessed the art of imitation; and we see them, after Memling, acting on an uniform principle, and merely varying in slight particulars of manner. Who those imitators were it is now impossible to say.

The school of Louvain, inferior to that of Bruges or of Brussels, was founded in the latter part of the fifteenth century, by the efforts of Dierick Stuerbout, a Dutchman, who in 1462 left his native city Haarlem, and took up his residence at Louvain. His manner partakes so much of that of Van der Weyden and of Memling, that no doubt exists that he was a pupil of the one, and fellow-student with the other. He was appointed painter to the corporation in 1468, and adorned the town-hall with a series of pictures intended to deter the judges from acts of favouritism and untruth. He died in 1478, leaving his great work, the "Last Judgment," unfinished:

"The influence which Flemish art indubitably wielded cannot be a matter of surprise, when we see the vigour of its constitution. Its great competitor and superior, Italian art, destroyed and humbled it, but before that time its influence was felt in many portions of that country, in the Rhenish cities, in Westphalia, on the Danube, in Swabia, France, Portugal, and Spain. It soon supplanted in Cologne the school which reigned there; changing all the aspirations of religion, and superseding them by its own material sentiment. The art of the Van Eycks leads up through Van der Weyden, and through Martin Schoen, to Albert Duerer. It affected, through the school of Augsburg, the Noric painter, Wohlgemuth."

The joint production of Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle is one of the most satisfactory books we have seen, and the illustrations, of which, by the publisher's liberality, we are enabled to give specimens, are worthy of the book. The history of the schools of painting is, by this addition, now nearly completed. The labours of Kugler, Eastlake, Head, and of the authors of the "History of the Early Flemish Painters," have well-nigh exhausted the subject. One volume more is yet required to complete the series,that of the History of Art in England; and although it may seem premature to demand it at present, the time cannot be far distant when it must be produced.

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