They made him captain of the Flemish army, and all that was noblest and all that was best in Flanders rallied to the side of the communes; men like Louis of Gruthuise and Philip of Burgundy, and even the Lord of Chantraine, who from the walls of Sluys had threatened the frantic guildsmen during the reign of terror at Bruges. Nor under Philip’s leadership do we find the burghers guilty of the excesses—the bloodshed, the violence, the illegal confiscations—which had rendered their government so evilly notorious at the time of Maximilian’s captivity. Their chief object for the moment was to quell the German mercenaries who were scouring the whole country, pitiless in face of submission, craven when their victims showed fight. Thus, on the night of the 8th of June these marauders had surprised Deynze; before morning it had gone up in flames, and of its people but a handful were left to tell the tale; so too Courtrai, where the citizens and their wives and their children perished along with the churches in which they had sought refuge; but when they appeared before the walls of Ypres and found there the burghers of Bruges under Louis of Gruthuise standing beside their cannons, they halted and cried out for a truce. ‘What God can your master invoke to witness his oaths?’ were the scornful words hurled back to them.

It does not lie within the scope of this handbook to give any detailed account of the incidents of the campaign which followed. Save the abortive attempt to take Sluys, and Maximilian’s equally futile endeavour to obtain possession of Damme, they only concern indirectly the city of Bruges. Suffice it to say that though during the first few weeks of the struggle the Communes held their own, after twelve months’ hard fighting they were compelled to submit.

Under the circumstances no other issue was to be expected. Maximilian had behind him the strength and resources of the empire, and he was actively supported by Henry of England, who for political reasons had now become his staunch friend, whilst the Flemish mistrusted their only ally the French, and by their jealousy and suspicion foiled all their efforts to save them.

On October 30, 1489, a treaty of peace was signed. By it the communes undertook to acknowledge Maximilian as Regent of Flanders, to pay him a fine of five hundred thousand livres, of which two-thirds was to be forthcoming before Christmas, and to send deputies to beg his pardon and perform in their name the usual childish humiliations; whilst the King of the Romans agreed to dismiss his German garrison, to grant a full and complete amnesty, to confirm all the administrative acts of Philip of Cleves and his council, and to swear to observe all the rights and privileges of the county of Flanders.

When first the treaty was signed the joy at Bruges was unbounded, but when it became a question of the first instalment of the indemnity, and of assessing the amount for which each commune was liable, trouble again broke out. The three bonnes villes complained that they had been assessed unfairly and appealed to Philip of Cleves, who, foreseeing at the time that the treaty was signed that the trouble was not yet in reality over, had retired to the great fortress at Sluys, and from that vantage post was watching events.

About this time Adrien van Rasseghem, a citizen of Ghent, who had hitherto been taken for an honest man and a staunch patriot, having been corrupted by Maximilian, turned traitor and opened the city gates to the Germans. Some four nights afterwards, as he was returning home, he was attacked by a band of armed men and slain, and next day Philip of Cleves publicly avowed that he was responsible for what had happened; whereupon the Count of Nassau, Maximilian’s lieutenant in Flanders, threatened Bruges with fire and sword unless she should instantly submit and break her alliance with Philip. The burghers refused. The city and the whole country round was seething with misery. The land, long untilled, and almost bereft of inhabitants, was so infested by wolves that the peasants dared not lead out their flocks to pasture. The dikes, altogether neglected, because no man in these troublous times had leisure to repair them, had at last given way, and great part of the country-side was flooded. But this was not all. The peasants had to contend with a foe more to be dreaded than wolves and fiercer than rushing waters: English and Spanish and German adventurers were ravishing and slaying and burning everywhere. The historic castle of Maele, save the basement and one great tower, which is still standing, had been reduced to ashes, and every night the watchers on the Belfry saw the sky grow suddenly red with some new fire. In the town matters were worse. So great was the expense of the war, that from August 1 to October 27 (1490) it had cost the burghers ten thousand six hundred livres de gros, and the city treasury was empty. Trade was altogether at a standstill, for months past no vessel had entered the harbour, the foreign merchants had migrated to Antwerp, the land supplies were all intercepted by the Count of Nassau, and even rich men were starving. So real and so great was the distress, that among the crowd of famished wretches who daily waited outside the bakers’ shops to obtain a meagre pittance of bread, not a few dropped dead in the streets. Yet, notwithstanding all this, Bruges was resolute. In the hour of his necessity she would not break with the man who had risked his all to save her. Nor did Philip of Cleves show himself less generous. As soon as he knew that he alone was the obstacle to the re-establishment of peace, he wrote to the Echevins of Bruges, begging them to make the best terms they could, leaving his interests out of the question. At last, after several abortive negotiations, a treaty was signed at Damme on November 29, 1490. Bruges agreed to pay eighty thousand couronnes d’or as her share of the fine fixed by the Treaty of Tours, to make humble apology to the Count of Nassau, and to hand over to him sixty persons to be dealt with according to his pleasure; but for all that she did not escape pillage. A house-to-house visitation was made, and all the gold and silver and precious objects that they could discover the Germans laid hands on. Nassau reserved no small part of the booty for himself. It is said that the famous Hôtel de Nassau at Brussels was built with the funds thus raised, and a hundred years later, during the troubles under Philip II., his descendant William of Orange was reproached with it: le Comte Inghelbert vouloit que l’on vous hachât tous en pièces, et la maison du Comte Henri de Nassau fust faicte des amends de ceux de Bruges.

Thus disappeared amid riot and terror the last remnant of that prosperity which had so long made Bruges glorious.

As for Philip of Cleves, he held his ground manfully at Sluys for two years longer. At length, owing to an accidental explosion by which he lost all his ammunition, he was compelled to surrender to Maximilian’s English allies under Sir Edward Poynings. Nevertheless, such was the esteem in which he was held, even by his enemies, that he obtained an honourable peace. True he swore fidelity to Maximilian and resigned to him the town of Sluys with the small fortress. But he was permitted to hold the great castle until such time as Maximilian should pay him a sum of forty thousand florins, for which he was in his debt. Further, he was assured an annual pension of six thousand florins, and all his property, which had previously been confiscated, was assured to him.

Later on we find him fighting under the banner of the Cross, and presently, when he visited Rome, Pope Alexander VI. averred that to him, along with Gonzalves, was due the honour of having kept the Infidel out of Italy.

V.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Philippe le Hardi to Philippe le Beau.


V.—Genealogical Table of the Counts of Flanders from Philippe le Hardi to Philippe le Beau.

Philip ended his days in the forest of Winendael, hard-by Bruges, clad in a hair shirt and leading a life of no little austerity, perhaps by way of penance for the murder of Adrien van Rasseghem, the one blot on his character.

CHAPTER XXIII

The Architects and Architecture of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century

FROM the commencement of the fourteen hundreds until the dawn of the struggle with Maximilian, which ended in the final catastrophe of 1490, the city of Bruges was growing almost daily more picturesque and more beautiful. Most of her public and private buildings date from this period, and those of them which were erected earlier were now enlarged and adorned with sculpture and painting. We have seen poor Louis of Maele laying the foundation stone of the Hôtel de Ville at the close of the previous century, but it was certainly not completed until the opening years of the fourteen hundreds. The documents are still in existence which prove a fact not generally known that at this time no less an artist than John van Eyck was gilding and colouring the façade. The stately octagonal lantern, the crowning glory of the Belfry, was erected some sixty years later, in 1482, when the signing of the Treaty of Arras had re-kindled hope; the same year the chevet of the Cathedral was commenced and the Church of St. Jacques completed, whilst the southern aisle of Notre Dame and the beautiful Paradise porch at the foot of the tower date from the middle of the century. About this time too the present aisles and transepts and choir were added to the Church of St. Gilles, the Jerusalem Church was finished, the Church of

The “Paradise” of Notre Dame and Gruthuise.

the Beguins and the Hospital Church of St. John rebuilt, and a host of convent chapels and chantries and shrines were springing up all over the city.

In 1477 the beautiful building in the Place des Biscayens, which is now the Municipal Library, was erected for a Custom House; the architectural gem which adjoins it, the guild-hall of the porters, dates from seven years earlier, and all over the town the great city companies—there were no less than forty-seven of them—were building for themselves chapels and courts, a few of which exist to the present day, notably the Shoemakers’ Hall in the rue des Pierres and in the same street the hall of the great guild of masons; the beautiful shrine which the painters erected in the rue d’Argent (it is now the Chapel of the Josephite nuns) and dedicated to their patron St. Luke; and the Smiths’ Chapel in the rue des Maréchaux, in front of which every year, on the feast of St. Eligius, the horses of Bruges were blessed. Strangely enough the building in question now serves as a stable. The foreign merchants, too, were vying with one another in the erection of sumptuous palaces, where the traders of each nationality dwelt together in almost monastic seclusion.

Note amongst those still standing the Black House, as it is called, a grim, weird-looking building behind the theatre. It is erroneously said to have been used later on as the Court House of the Inquisition, and of course is in consequence haunted. A most interesting habitation this, with mullioned windows in which much of the beautiful old green glass is still remaining, protected on the outside by wrought-iron grills. It contains a spacious hall with a timber roof, vast chambers with low ceilings moulded all over with fruit and flowers and foliage, and a suite of apartments panelled in cedar, the whole fast falling to decay. Then there is the Paris Hall, where French merchants formerly congregated, now degraded into a pot-house called Charles le Bon. The façade has been spoiled with whitewash and plaster, but the old gables at the back are still brown and beautiful, and have endured nothing worse than the caresses of time. At the corner of the rue des Pelletiers at its junction with the rue Flamande, stands an old mansion of beautiful grey stone, embellished with sculpture and Gothic windows rich in geometrical tracery. Unspoiled and unrestored, it is still a fair and stately building. It was once the hall of the merchants of Genoa.

Looking on to the canal at the end of the rue Espagnole stands a spacious habitation which has evidently seen better days. Here dwelt the merchants of Spain. A little further down on the banks of the same canal was the loveliest palace of all, the Maison des Orientaux, the home of the great traders of the Hanseatic League (1480). The builders were already at work at it in the month of August 1478,[41] and when it was completed three years later, it was one of the most beautiful edifices in brick in the city of Bruges. Zegher van Maele, who lived early enough to behold it in all its glory, affirms of the tower that in his day there was not its equal in all Flanders, and Guiccaiardini, who wrote in the early sixteen hundreds, informs us that all the iron work in the interior was gilded. Mark Gheeraert’s plan of Bruges, published in 1562, furnishes an illustration of this wondrous mansion. It was a large, oblong-shaped, crenelated building, four storeys high, with slender turrets at each corner corbelled out from the walls at the second storey, and terminating in iron finials surmounted with metal flags. The façade giving on the Place des Orientaux was divided into five vertical panels or bays with round-headed arches. In these the windows were placed, and the spaces between each storey were filled with flamboyant tracery. Adjoining the main building, but slightly in the rear, there was a turreted annex of smaller dimensions, though conceived in the same style. This, perhaps, was the refectory, for all the inhabitants dined at a common board. In front of this building was a spacious courtyard, two sides of which were formed by the façade of the refectory and the eastern façade of the main building, and the other two by beautiful crenelated walls with a slender and very graceful turret at their angle. The tower and spire which called forth the admiration of Van Maele sprang from the side of the main building, which gave on the courtyard, and for the rest, towers, turrets, chimneys were everywhere adorned with graceful panelling or dainty Gothic tracery in moulded brick. All this splendour is among the things which have been. Only a fragment of the old palace now remains: the main building, shorn of its tower, its pinnacles, and its upper storeys, and there is now nothing left to indicate its glory of former days. This piece of vandalism was committed about a hundred years ago, when the prosperity of the city of Bruges was at its lowest ebb. The proprietor at that time was without the means of keeping so extensive and costly a mansion in repair, and the city fathers either could not or would not come to his assistance.

It was not only, however, by these public or semi-public buildings that Bruges was enriched during the period we are now considering. At this time, and more especially during the long peace of over thirty years which followed the great humiliation of 1437, there appears to have been a veritable mania for construction. From Duke Philip himself to the meanest householder in Bruges, every man seems to have been afflicted with it.

Hooded Fire Place in the Gruthuise

Those of the great burgher-nobles who already possessed palaces enlarged and embellished them; the new men who had recently amassed fortunes vied with the old aristocracy in the magnificence and luxury of the mansions which they now built; plain, well-to-do merchants were everywhere constructing those roomy, comfortable abodes, which, with their high stepped gables and their façades enriched with stately panelling and Gothic tracery, still render the streets and squares and waterways of Bruges the most picturesque in Europe. Even working men, humble members of the great guilds of smiths, or masons, or carpenters, were making their homes beautiful with the fruit of their handicraft; constructing canopied niches at street corners, or over the doorways of the hovels in which they lived, and placing in them graven images of Our Lady or of some favourite saint; hammering out exquisite lanterns, which it was their delight to hang before them, from brackets of no less dainty fashion; fabricating, of wrought-iron, those quaintly beautiful trade signs by which it was their wont to call attention to their avocations; making door, and lintel, and chimney, and rafter comely with fruit and foliage, fascinating with heraldic devices, and grotesque and leering heads, and the images of devils and of saints.

Much of this work has of course disappeared, but some of it still remains to bear witness to the skill and the energy and the devotion of these poor toilers.

Amongst the nobles who about this time enlarged their palaces note Louis of Gruthuise, whose grandfather John had erected, probably during the closing years of the previous century, that portion of the Hôtel de Gruthuise which skirts the left bank of the river. The stupendous kitchen, of which we give a sketch, dates from this period. Not content with this magnificent pile, Louis added thereto, in 1464 or thereabouts, the great wing at right angles to it, and thus made the home of his ancestors the most magnificent mansion in the city. Here it was that he stored his famous library, and here he entertained, in 1471, King Edward IV. and Richard Crookback. Even the upper chambers in this sumptuous abode are paved with encaustic tiles, and it is no less than three storeys high, and when it was restored some few years since, it was found that the spaces between the timber ceilings and the flooring in the rooms above were in each case filled with earth. Thus all noise is effectually confined to the floor in which it is produced. The palace is connected by a covered way with the Church of Notre Dame, and here Louis erected, in 1474, a very beautiful tribune of sculptured stone and carved oak. It is an exquisite piece of workmanship, in the flamboyant style of the period, adorned with rich tabernacle-work and fruit and flowers, and with Louis’s initials and his family arms, and his proud device, Plus est en nous, which last appears over and over again throughout the whole palace. It is in a wonderful state of preservation, and, strangely enough, seems to have entirely escaped alike the hand of the iconoclast and the restorer. Indeed, the Gruthuise tribune in the Church of Notre Dame has probably been little changed since the days when its founder and his family worshipped there more than four hundred years ago.

There are two other points of interest about this fascinating mansion. During the process of restoration there was recently discovered a secret chamber in the great kitchen chimney, and in it the skeleton of a man. Behind the same chimney there was also discovered a secret staircase leading to two underground passages branching off in opposite directions. Neither has yet been explored, but it is supposed, and probably rightly, that one of them communicates with the vaults beneath Notre Dame. As for the other, the concierge avers that it leads to the Château of Maele some four miles out of the town, a most unlikely conjecture. True there is a tradition that an underground passage exists between the Chapel of St. Basil and the château in question, and this is sufficiently conceivable. Subterranean ways and subterranean chambers are not unknown in Bruges, and they have sometimes been discovered in strange places. Only recently, when a heavily-laden waggon was entering the rue Flamande from the Grande Place, the ground sank beneath its weight, and one of the wheels was embedded in a deep hole. Some bricks in the vault of an unsuspected cavern had suddenly given way, and the vast chamber thus disclosed was afterwards found to extend for a considerable distance along the street and beneath several houses on each side of it. Moreover, St. Basil’s was originally the Court Chapel, and Maele, as we have seen, had from time immemorial been a favourite residence of the Sovereigns of Flanders. But why should the Lords of Gruthuise have secretly connected their town house with one of the ducal castles? It is much more likely that the passage in question communicated with their own manor at Oostcamp.

Chief among the parvenus who at this time laid out vast sums in bricks and mortar note Peter Bladelin, son of Peter de Leestmaker, by trade himself dyer of buckram, and who, in his youth entering the service of Philippe l’Asseuré, presently rose to the important position of Controller-General of Finance. Not content with erecting a palace at Bruges and a château fort in the open country beyond Maele, around the walls of his castle he built a whole town (1444), which he endowed with a church (1460) in honour of St. Peter, and surrounded with fortifications. This place he called Middelburg, and though it has now dwindled down to a mere village, it was at one time a centre of no small importance. Here, after the sack and burning of Dinant by Charles the Terrible in 1466, a colony of brassworkers found refuge. Bladelin obtained for them from Edward IV. the same privileges and exemption from English custom dues as they had enjoyed in their native city, and to this day a street in Middelburg is called La rue des Dinantais.

In the great quarrel with Maximilian, Middelburg took the side of that shifty prince, and the men of Bruges repaid them in 1488 by razing their fortifications and destroying their castle.

We first get a glimpse of the founder of Middelburg in the spring of the year 1452, when we find him, in company with Louis of Gruthuise, shutting the gates of Bruges in the face of a deputation of Ghenters who had come to beg that city to give them her support in their struggle with Philippe l’Asseuré, and afterwards, along with Gruthuise, going out to parley with them and trickily making them believe that they had attained the object of their mission. ‘He was a man,’ says the Flemish chronicler Chastelain, ‘of much wealth and of much sense, and the most trustworthy person in the county of Flanders, although his honesty was not to the taste of all, and many, alike gentle and simple, grieved thereat.... He was, moreover, controller of the Duke’s household, one of the four treasurers of the order of the Golden Fleece and but a plain citizen of Bruges. One excellent quality he had—he managed the Duke’s affairs marvellously well; there, where there was rent or wound, he always found means to heal or mend, and he paid cash for all goods delivered at the palace. All this the Duke was well aware of, and on this account and for other reasons he gave him the high position he held. For in sooth he was a wise man, and one to be relied on, comely alike in person and in morals, and none more industrious and diligent than he could well be found.’

THE HÔTEL BLADELIN
THE HÔTEL BLADELIN

In the rue des Aiguilles at Bruges there still stands a fragment of this worthy’s town house. It is a spacious, picturesque gabled construction of tawny brick, with a bold octagonal tower of the same material crowned with a balustrade of sculptured stone and a beautiful crocheted steeple. Beneath a canopy of delicately-carved tabernacle work, which, in its turn, is sheltered by a more substantial canopy of lead and wrought-iron and oak, note, over the doorway, a statue of the Madonna and Child, with Bladelin himself kneeling in adoration, and, in a carved niche below, a shield displaying the arms which Philippe l’Asseuré granted him. This is a restoration of some five or six years since. The original work, save some fragments of the stone canopy, had totally disappeared, but drawings fortunately existed from which it was possible to construct a facsimile.

Sir Peter Bladelin was treasurer of the Golden Fleece, and the emblems of this order appear over and over again carved on the great oak beams in the interior of his mansion.

All that is most interesting in Bruges is, somehow or other, associated with the Church of Notre Dame, and here, though his palace was in the parish of St. Jacques, Bladelin founded a chantry, which he dedicated to St. Margaret, the patron saint of his wife. It is the second chapel off the northern ambulatory, but is now completely shut off from the rest of the church and converted into a chamber for the marguilliers. Together with some interesting old pictures, and a few quaint pieces of furniture, it contains the only ancient stained-glass window in the Church of Notre Dame. This relic, however, is in no way connected with the Lord of Middelburg, and dates only from the year 1520.

Peter Bladelin died on the 6th of April 1462, and was buried in the parish church of the town which he had founded.

There is still in existence in the museum at Berlin a portrait of the worthy Peter. It was painted by Roger van der Weyden, or, as he is sometimes called, Roger of Bruges, the most famous of the pupils of John van Eyck (1400-1464) and is one of the master’s last and most perfect works. It is in the form of a triptych, and was undoubtedly painted for the church at Middelburg, where it most probably remained until the opening years of the sixteen hundreds, for a copy on canvas of about this date is still in possession of the church. It was discovered in 1854 by Canon Andries, at that time parish priest, behind a panel in the wall of the presbytery kitchen. He had it restored and placed it in the chancel over Bladelin’s tomb. The subject is the Nativity of Our Lord, and the artist’s method of treating it is a curious and unusual one. Lumen ad revelationem gentium: et gloriam plebis tuæ Israël; this must have been the text which inspired him. In the central panel the Divine Infant is lying on the ground, adored by His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph and angels. On the left the Cumæan Sibyl is showing the Emperor Augustus, through the open lattice window of a typical Flemish apartment, an apparition of the ‘Light to enlighten the Gentiles.’ The Emperor, arrayed in the richly-embroidered garments of the fourteen hundreds, is in a kneeling posture, and holds his cap in one hand, whilst with the other he offers incense from a Gothic thurible. On the right-hand panel are the Magi presenting their gifts, and along with them Bladelin himself kneeling in adoration, whilst, in the background, is a view of the town of Middelburg.

The mansion called De Zeven Torens (the Seven Towers) in the rue Haute (Nos. 6 and 8) was also erected during this period. Who was its builder is uncertain, nor has its early history come down to us, but we know that Charles II. of England dwelt there two hundred years later, from June 1656 to February 1658, and when Mark Gheeraerts made his famous plan of Bruges in 1594 it was still a magnificent building, with four graceful towers springing from the façade which gives on the rue Haute, and three on the opposite side of the house. These have long since disappeared. The whole building was remodelled, probably during the course of the eighteenth century, and it is now, alas! no longer beautiful.

The Ghistelhof, in the rue des Aiguilles, so called from its having been at one time the home of the powerful lords of Ghistelle, has fared better. Erected in the year 1460, with its mullioned windows and high pitched roofs, and far above them its beautiful brown cylindrical tower crowned with a steeple of red tiles, it still forms a most picturesque group, though there can be no doubt that, in the heydey of its glory, it was a much more spacious and magnificent building than it is at present.

Then there is the Hôtel d’Adornes,[42] of which the Jerusalem Church was at one time the private chapel. These buildings were erected by two brothers, Anselm and John Adornes, the former in the year 1428, and the latter in 1465. The courtyard of the ancient palace, with its gables and Gothic windows, and beautiful wrought-iron, is a quaint and comely corner, and the little old-world sanctuary, though it has suffered much from the ravages of time, and more from the devastations of man, is no less pleasing. The plan is sufficiently uncommon, perhaps unique: a nave without aisles, and, at the east end, a huge tower of which an upper storey forms the sanctuary. This is approached from the nave by two

THE GHISTELHOF
THE GHISTELHOF

staircases with balustrades of wrought-iron, and separated from it by a sculptured rood screen. The general effect is very curious, the high altar being thus

COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL ADORNES.
COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL ADORNES.

raised some ten or twelve feet above the rest of the church. The building is lighted by eight windows, six of which are filled with ancient stained glass (1482-1560), with portraits of the founders and other members of the family, along with their wives and their patron saints. In the centre of the nave is an altar-tomb on which repose the effigies, carved in stone, of Anselm Adornes, the son of one of the founders, who died in Scotland in 1483, and his wife, Margaret van der Banck.

Beneath the choir, and slightly below the level of the nave, is a dark and gloomy crypt, the atrium to the Holy Sepulchre. This is approached by a passage so low that it can only be traversed by going on hands and knees, and so narrow that but one person can enter at a time. The sepulchre itself, which is behind an iron grill, is said to be a facsimile of the Holy Tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathæa. One of the founders of the Jerusalem Church is known to have visited Palestine. When Philippe l’Asseuré was contemplating a new crusade, he applied to this man for information as to the holy places, and there is still in existence an account of the pilgrimage which his son Anselm made to Jerusalem. Within the sepulchre, covered with a veil of richly-worked point lace, lies the effigy of the dead Christ, so realistically modelled that, in the dim light of the single taper which illumines the vault, it is difficult not to believe that one is in the presence of a corpse.

Note yet another glorious mansion—a stately pile of red brick at the end of the rue du Vieux Bourg. It is still a building of vast proportions, and in former times it was considerably larger. When Mark Gheeraerts made his map it was adorned with a beautiful steeple, and to this day it possesses a stupendous Gothic doorway through which there would be no difficulty in driving a coach and four. A house with marked features this, and a face full of expression—a house which one instinctively feels must have a story. Perhaps Peter Lanchals dwelt here; certainly in later and calmer days it was the home of Mark Laurin, Lord of Watevliet and Canon of St. Donatian’s, and a staunch supporter of the New Learning, who numbered among his guests and intimate friends Erasmus, and perhaps too Sir Thomas More and Cuthbert Tunstall. Presently tenants of another sort inhabited its hospitable walls. Here for three weeks dwelt the Merry Monarch before he went to the Zeven Toren.

TOMB OF ANSELM ADORNES
TOMB OF ANSELM ADORNES

For the rest, the Craenenburg in the Grande Place, of which we have already spoken; the great brown brick house with a tower and a grey stone gable by the Pont St. Jean Nepomucene, and where later on Perez Malvenda hid the relic of the Precious Blood; and, most famous of all the palaces of Bruges, the Princenhof of Philippe l’Asseuré; these too were erected during the period we are now considering, and there are others no less magnificent, all trace of which has long since disappeared; amongst them the mansion of Jean de Gros, where Maximilian was imprisoned. But if this sumptuous residence has been swept away, Bruges still possesses a sample, sadly mutilated indeed and shorn of all its splendour, of its founder’s handiwork—the aisle which he built in 1472 off the southern side of the choir of St. Jacques.

And what of the architects who designed, and the masons and carpenters and other craftsmen who together produced all these glorious buildings? The names of some of them have come down to us—Nicholas Willemszuene, for example, who was Master Mason of the city of Bruges from 1414 to 1436, and Dean of the Guild of Masons from 1426 to 1432; he constructed the southern turrets of the Hôtel de Ville, and probably also the beautiful house of the Florentine Consuls (1429); George Weylaert, Dean of Masons in 1468 and 1473 and 1482; he was the architect and builder of the Church of St. Jacques, all his work is perfectly executed, and the brick moulding of the windows is especially excellent; Vincent de Roode, Master Mason of the Hospital of St. John, and probably the author of the beautiful chapel, now sadly defaced, erected in 1475; and, greatest of them all, Jan van de Poele, member of the Guild of Masons from 1472 to 1516. The most beautiful monuments erected in Bruges during this period are from his designs. He was not only an architect and a builder but a sculptor of no mean order. The stately octagonal tower of the Belfry is perhaps his work; the beautiful façade of the Palais du Franc, of which we shall have something to say later on, is certainly so, and it was he who designed the chevet of the Cathedral of St. Sauveur, with the ambulatory and the seven bays of the apse, and also the Maison des Orientaux, whilst we find him furnishing five statues for the adornment of the chantry of Peter Lanchals. Van de Poele’s work in the Cathedral is not only in itself exceedingly beautiful, but it bears witness also to his skill as an engineer. He conceived and successfully carried out the daring scheme of converting the seven huge windows of the apse into arcades, whilst at the same time retaining the ancient triforium and clerestory above them. Thus the Cathedral of Bruges affords a perhaps unique example of a structure of the thirteenth century supported by piers and arches of the fifteenth. Van de Poele did not live to complete the chevet; he died in 1520, and the work was carried on and at last completed in 1527 by Ambrose Roelandts and John Beyts, each of them Master Masons and perhaps his pupils.

Until the end of the thirteen hundreds the houses of Bruges were all constructed of wood, and the designs of the buildings of brick which at this time began to take their place, with their lofty gabled façades, adorned, as they generally were, with a vast Gothic arch, were perhaps inspired by the reminiscence of the wooden edifices which preceded them. This is the opinion of the learned architect and archæologist Verschelde, who, for years, had made the ancient buildings of his native town his especial study, and Mr. Weale and Canon Duclos are of like opinion; but the most casual observer cannot fail to be struck with the resemblance which these great arches bear to the huge windows so common in the gables of churches of the thirteen and fourteen hundreds, and it may well be that it was from these that the architects of the brick dwellings of the period we are considering and of the similarly adorned timber façades of the century which preceded it alike drew their inspirations.

So too the series of panels or bays which presently superseded the single arch. These formed a frame for the windows of the various stages, and terminated at the summit, sometimes in pointed, more frequently in round-headed arches, which were at first filled with geometrical tracery. So like are they to the long, narrow windows usual in the public buildings of the period that a mansion thus adorned might easily be mistaken for some old Gothic church or hall with its windows bricked up converted into a dwelling-house.

Later on, towards the close of the century, the geometrical tracery above the highest storey became flamboyant, and the spaces in the panels between the various stages were similarly enriched. Jan van de Poele was probably the first to introduce this innovation, witness the Hôtel des Orientaux. One of the most beautiful specimens of this kind of ornament is to be found in the façade of an old red brick mansion, now divided into three houses, Nos. 38, 36 and 34 in the rue de Jerusalem, which dates from the opening years of the fifteen hundreds. In the rue Pré aux Moulins there is a smaller but yet more beautiful example of the same date; in the rue Queue de Vache, a whole series of houses on either side of the way, and, most beautiful of all, the charming bay window which Herman van Oudvelde, in his day Dean of Goldsmiths, added to his house at the foot of the Pont Flamand in 1514. This system of ornamentation, which gradually grew more and more elaborate as time progressed, continued to be employed until the middle of the sixteen hundreds, or perhaps even later. There is hardly a street in the city which does not contain one or more, often a long, unbroken series of façades thus adorned.

VAN OUDVELDE’S WINDOW BY THE PONT FLAMAND
VAN OUDVELDE’S WINDOW BY THE PONT FLAMAND

The tower, too, was a very ordinary feature, not

QUAI DU ROSAIRE
QUAI DU ROSAIRE

only in public buildings and palaces, but in the ordinary domestic architecture of mediæval Bruges. Indeed, at the opening of the fifteen hundreds, as Mark Gheeraert’s map bears witness, Bruges was a city of steeples. They have, however, for the most part disappeared, and those that have come down to us can be almost counted on the fingers. The old mansion in the rue aux laines, to which we have just called attention, possesses, as we have seen, one. It is at the back of the house, and the summit alone is visible from the street. A stone’s throw from it, on the further bank of the Roya, hard-by the Quai du Rosaire, there is another—a beautiful, red brick, dilapidated structure, crowned with a silvery steeple, the last tower erected in mediæval Bruges. Those in the rue des Aiguilles we have already noted. There is a fifth in the Place Memlinc, very tall and very slender, octagonal in shape and wholly devoid of ornament. When the Smyrna Consuls, who dwelt in the house to which it is an adjunct, first erected it, it was not so comely as it is to-day. The waxing and waning of four hundred summers and the rude embraces of wind and weather have marvellously beautified it, and the blushing brick of which it is constructed is now all shot with gold. Close by, in the Place des Biscayens, there is another and a more stately tower of grey stone. It stands alongside of the Poorters Logie, a sort of mediæval club-house where the burghers in days gone by were wont to hold convivial meetings. There is a seventh and very beautiful tower on the ramparts at the end of the rue des Carmes. It adorns the home of the great military guild of St. Sebastian. There is an eighth by the École Normale, a mere ruin, the last remnant of the habitation of a kindred society—the Crossbowmen of St. George and St. Denis. It is a great square tower of red brick, which originally was considerably higher than it is at present, and it contains a very curious stone staircase with a beautiful groined ceiling. This building is the property of the town, and the corporation intend to restore it and convert it into a clock-tower for the École Normale and furnish it with a carillon.

The list of ancient turreted mansions in Bruges is completed by the Hôtel Gruthuise. Here are two octagonal towers, one of them of considerable dimensions and no less curious than pleasing.

It will be interesting to note that the taste for towers has recently revived in the city of Bruges. At least five new buildings are provided with them, nor do they compare unfavourably with some of the work of the builders of former days. Notably the red brick tower of the Académie in the rue Ste. Cathérine, from the designs of Monsieur de Wolf, who at present occupies the position of city architect, and the station clock-tower, of which the steeple is a reproduction in miniature of the glorious steeple which once crowned the Belfry.

As for the material employed by the ancient architects of Bruges, it was chiefly brick, not the smooth, fine grained, sharp edged kiln brick beloved of the modern English builder, but beautiful, rough surfaced, clamp brick, for the most part small in dimensions, in hue sometimes red, sometimes what is technically called white, more often parti-coloured, always fair to look on, exceedingly durable, and in some cases carved like stone. No less pleasing were the tiles and slates with which they roofed their buildings, the former flat, oblong, ruddy, of slender dimensions, the latter of similar shape but not quite so small, and their colour! grey, purple, green, and, when the sun shines on them, silver shot with gold. Go up into the Belfry on some glad summer’s morning, look down on the ancient roofs of Bruges, and thou shalt not regret it.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Painters and the Pictures of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century

Adelard II., Abbot of St. Trond, who died in 1082, was renowned in his day as a painter. At Liège there were frescoes in the Church of St. Martin dating from the close of the nine hundreds, the Cathedral of St. Lambert in the same city was similarly adorned years before the fire which destroyed it at the end of the twelfth century, and at this epoch the artist-monks of the Abbeys of Lobbes and of Stavelot were famous throughout Europe.

The great Abbey of St. Bavon at Ghent as early as the eleventh century possessed a school of artists. Some of their illuminated manuscripts have actually come down to us, and are at present in the Ghent university library. At the little town of Maeseyck in Holland they still preserve an eighth-century manuscript adorned by Harlinde and Rilinde, two of the abbesses who ruled the convent which in those days flourished there. Among the seven hundred and thirty-four manuscripts in the municipal library at Bruges, and in the library of the Bruges diocesan seminary, there are some which date from the thirteenth century, a few from the twelfth. Many of them are of rare beauty. Notably, at the city library, a thirteenth-century missal embellished with exquisite miniatures (No. 314), and, at the seminary, a Cistercian missal and a Cistercian Breviary of the fourteen hundreds, and a splendid Valerius Maximus in four volumes, with paintings which are perhaps by John van Eyck. The greater number of these books were written and illustrated in the famous Cistercian Abbey which once stood on the Dunes at Coxyde, between Furnes and Ostend, or by the monks of the affiliated house, called Ter Doest (All Saints), which Hacket founded at Lisseweghe.

Bruges in the thirteen and in the fourteen hundreds was famed for her miniaturists and her illuminators. The Bibliothèque royale at Brussels contains a whole series of manuscripts which once formed part of the sumptuous libraries of the last Flemish Counts—of Robert of Bethune, of Louis of Maele, of Philip the Rash, and which one and all bear witness to the marvellous skill and untiring patience of the men who wrote and adorned them; these assuredly were not all monks, many of them, doubtless, were laymen, members of that great artist-guild of St. Luke, of which we shall have something to say later on. Some of them basked in the smiles of princes, like John van Eyck, whom Philippe l’Asseuré enriched and to whose son he stood godfather, and who enjoyed too the patronage of the Regent Bedford; or Simon Marmion, who received from Charles the Terrible a sum equal to no less than three hundred and sixty pounds for a single book of Hours; or Jean Fouquet, the friend and confidential adviser of Louis XI. Others there were content with the position of sleek upper servant in the household of some lesser Mæcenas, and others again, who longed to hold such a post, but were unable to obtain it; men like poor Jehan Gillemer, for example, who, on the tramp in search of a patron, was presently arrested as a spy by the agents of Louis XI. and handed over to the tender mercies of Tristam l’Hermite, a circumstance, notes M. Lecoy de la Marche,[43] not too deplorable, since to it we are indebted for the details of his life which have come down to us, and are thereby enabled to lift a corner of the veil which covers the manners and customs of one of the most interesting corporations of the middle ages.

A poor, weak-spirited credulous creature was this obscure miniature painter, but for all that he seems to have had the soul of an artist and no little skill in his calling. Sometimes, indeed, he worked for princes, but he by no means despised the custom of their menials, was not above mere penmanship, and did not think it beneath him to alter or complete, even for a humble client, the unfinished work of a confrère. He journeyed half over Europe to dispose of his productions, to obtain new orders, to have his works bound in the most artistic fashion, to seek inspiration from the best models and to perfect himself generally in his art; and he used to collect wherever he went and from whomsoever he came in contact—from churches, from monasteries, from the private libraries of the nobles whose houses he frequented, from the menials whose acquaintance he made in the servants’ hall, from courtiers, from begging friars, from the chance companions whom he drank with at inns, sometimes, perhaps, new receipts for mixing his colours and for laying on and burnishing gold, more often strange forms of devotion and talismans warranted to cure every imaginable ill, from love-philtres and charms to soothe toothache and settle disputes, to astrological formulæ to drive away the devil, and, above all, to enable him to keep in order ‘those five great hulking apprentices’ at home who always would idle away their time, and whenever he ventured to say a word to them ill-used him.

Amongst the illuminators enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke were all sorts and conditions of men; from polished courtiers like John van Eyck to men doubtless of as questionable character as the obscure individual, half artist, half perhaps fortune teller, though, for the matter of that, he swore on the damnation of his soul he had had no dealings with familiar spirits, whose vagabond life the rack of Tristam has revealed to us. But whatever their social rank may have been, like the monks who worked alongside of them, the cloister was the rock from which they were hewn, and ‘the exquisite work which some of them produced is sufficient to alone explain the origin of Flemish panel painting.’

Thus, Monsieur Fiérens-Gevaert recently,[44] and Lübke and Wauters and Jules Helbig, before him, though these experts tell us that sculpture and wall painting had likewise some measure of influence, and traces of frescoes almost as old as the buildings they once adorned have of late years been found all over Flanders.

At Bruges, for example, we have the frescoes which Mr. Weale discovered at Notre Dame in the Chapel of St. Victor at the entrance to the tower. Here the lower portion of the wall was diapered in crimson and gold, and above were depicted five angels playing on instruments of music. Mr. Weale describes these paintings as exceedingly beautiful and in a sufficiently good state of preservation; alas! they have been again covered with whitewash. Others were found behind the woodwork of the churchwarden’s pew at the west end of the nave, and yet another in the southern ambulatory near the sacristy door—a beautiful figure of St. Louis, dating apparently from the middle of the fourteen hundreds, and there can be no doubt whatever that, if the whitewash were carefully removed, it would be found that the whole building is similarly adorned. So too the Cathedral of St. Sauveur and the Church of St. Jacques, and, just outside the city, the Churches of Notre Dame at Lisseweghe and at Damme, in all of which there are, or rather there were mural paintings. Indeed, those in the last church extended round the whole building. Unfortunately they were much damaged in removing the whitewash, and they have again been hidden from view. Other vestiges of wall painting have been found in various parts of the city, and we know from documentary evidence that in 1336 Jan van Jabbeke was commissioned to paint a series of frescoes in the Justice Chamber of the old Hôtel de Ville. Even the vaults and brick graves in the churchyards were thus adorned, though in ruder fashion. Several discovered at Varssenaere, in the cemetery of Notre Dame, and in the Place St. Jean, where an old church dedicated to that saint once stood, have been bodily removed and are now in the museum beneath the Belfry. They suffered very little injury in the process and are in a marvellous state of preservation.

But this was not all; even the very stonework at Bruges, and this was no doubt also the case in other Flemish cities, glowed with gold and colour; sculpture, statuary, tracery, the mouldings of doors and arches and windows were not unfrequently thus embellished; we have seen Van Eyck and other artists engaged in illuminating the niches and the carved figures on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville; there is an ancient picture of the interior of Notre Dame which represents the capitals of the nave radiant with gold and vermilion; vestiges of polychromy within and without, on woodwork, on plaster, on iron, on stone, have been discovered all over the city. It is no exaggeration to say that Bruges at the opening of the fourteen hundreds, the richest, the mightiest and the loveliest city of Northern Europe, was at this time steeped in harmonious tints. She had already entered upon the autumn of her existence, but, like Nature, she had arrayed herself in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours, and the cunning workers who had woven and embroidered it—the painters of frescoes and the stainers of glass, the illuminators of vellum and the illuminators of stone—were the precursors and fathers and founders of the most glorious school of painting which the world has yet produced. The Van Eycks, the Memlincs, the Van der Weydens, all the Flemish primitives, whose marvellous pictures still fill us with admiration, lived and moved and had their being in the beauty which these men created. The statues, the miniatures, the mural painting of these poor craftsmen were the models which inspired their first work, and there is reason to believe that the insatiate thirst for colour which their predecessors had experienced led indirectly to the famous discovery which rendered its execution possible.

In a country like the Netherlands, devoid of precious marbles, there was only one way of satisfying it—to find some artificial means of colouring the material at hand, and in that damp, changeable climate the pigment applied must needs be of a nature to withstand the vagaries of weather.

The monk Theophilus, a writer often quoted in the twelfth century, gives exact formulæ for mingling colour and oil, but the pigment thus obtained was far from being satisfactory; a second coat could not be applied until the first was completely dry, and the length of time which it took in drying rendered it practically useless, at all events for the painting of pictures.

For centuries artists all over Europe were vainly endeavouring to remedy this defect, and it was not until the opening of the fourteen hundreds that the problem was at last solved, but long before that period oil paint had been successfully employed for decorative purposes. We know that the sculptor Wuillaume du Gardin made use of it for his statues as early as 1341, and when Hubert van Eyck first came to Bruges at the close of the fourteenth or at the opening of the fifteenth century the practice seems to have been generally adopted. It has long been known that John van Eyck was an enlumineur des statues, and a document recently discovered in the archives of Ghent makes it quite certain that his elder brother Hubert followed the same calling; what more likely then, than that the idea should have struck him of painting his pictures with the same pigment with which he had been in the habit of decorating stone? But whatever may have led to his great discovery, certain it is, that the day on which he made it was the birthday of modern art.

The invention of oil painting has until recently been generally assigned to the year 1420 or thereabouts, but if Mr. Weale is right in his calculations, and be it borne in mind he has devoted a lifetime to the study of the Flemish primitives, and has done more to elucidate their history than any living man, Hubert van Eyck’s great oil-painting, the only picture which can as yet be certainly assigned to him, ‘The Adoration of the Lamb,’ at Ghent, cannot have been commenced later than 1415, probably even earlier. It follows then that the new process must have been invented prior to that date.

Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck, the first and the greatest of the Flemish masters, was born at the little market town of Maeseyck in Limbourg, somewhere about the year 1366. He seems to have been of an old painter family, as not only Hubert himself but his brothers John and Lambert and his sister Marguerite all followed this calling. Of his life’s story we know little, of his early years hardly anything. An illuminator of missals and an illuminator of statues, as well as a painter of pictures, perhaps, as Mr. Weale has recently suggested, he made his first studies at Maestricht or at Cologne and afterwards travelled in Spain and in Italy. By the opening of the fifteenth century he must certainly have been an artist of some reputation, for in 1413 John de Visch, Lord of Axel and Capelle, bequeathed to his daughter Mary, who was later on Abbess of Bourbourg near Gravelines, a picture which Hubert had painted. What was its subject or what has become of it is not known.[45]

He seems to have passed his middle life at Bruges,[46] and there are still in existence two pictures attributed with reason to him, which must have been painted during his sojourn there. The first represents Our Lady, St. Anne and Herman Steenken, who was Vicar of the Chartreuse of St. Anne at Woestine near Bruges, from 1402 to 1404, and from 1406 till his death on April 23, 1428. This picture is at present in the possession of Baron Rothschild at Paris; the second is now in the Berlin Gallery; it depicts the same monk, but apparently some ten years older, Our Lady and St. Barbara.

The last years of Hubert’s life were spent at Ghent. In the year 1424 we find him receiving from the aldermen of that city 6s. gr. for the sketches of two pictures which they had commissioned him to paint for them but were apparently never executed. Perhaps he had not leisure to do so. About this time Hubert must have been fully occupied. He had a triptych in hand which Robert Poortier had ordered for a chapel in honour of St. Anthony, which he had founded in the Church of St. Sauveur, at Ghent, and a statue of the same saint to gild and colour, also for Robert Poortier. For years he had been at work on ‘The Adoration of the Lamb,’ and we know that he had not completed it when death struck him down on the 18th of September 1426.

These facts, if they be facts, represent all, or very nearly all, that is known of the story of Hubert van Eyck. Perhaps we have his portrait. Amongst the crowd of figures displayed on his marvellous triptych at Ghent, note in the foreground of the outer left wing a citizen riding on a white horse. Tradition tells us that this man is no other than Hubert himself, and that the rider behind him on the brown horse is his younger brother John.

But if we know little or next to nothing of the home life and surroundings of Hubert van Eyck, his merits, says Lübke, as the founder of an entirely new mode of painting are established beyond doubt. ‘Not only by reason of the improvement which he effected in the process of mingling colour with oil, and his successful adaptation of the new method to the painting of pictures, does he justly deserve the title of Father of Northern art.’ He was the first to bring back the cultus of beauty, and the first to bend before Nature’s shrine. He was set in the midst of a plain full of dry bones, and by the might of his genius he made them live, and whilst he gave largeness and depth and reality to the conventional art of the Middle Ages he lost not one whit of its old ideal grandeur. Utterly discarding the golden backgrounds of former days, he bathed his creations in the glow of Nature’s aureole as he saw it in the green fields and fair woodlands of his native land, and whilst he set on them the impress of his own epoch and his own race, he at the same time invested his sacred figures with sublime grandeur and dignity and a certain ineffable sweetness which is altogether peculiar to himself. In this respect his painting has been rarely equalled and never yet surpassed.

No vestige of Hubert’s work remains in the city on the Roya, but hard by in the old Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent is his masterpiece, ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’—a picture, indeed, not painted at Bruges, but for all that instinct with the ethos of Bruges, which still preserves the memory of her magnificence, still keeps alive one quivering ray of her aureole, and is perhaps the most perfect reflection we have of the beauty which enshrined her at the epoch when she was fairest. Nay, it is something grander and nobler and holier than this. It is a sublime transcription in gold and colour of the poetry of the Mass, an inspiration incomparable and altogether unique. ‘Like Dante’s Divine Comedy and Bach’s Passion Music it stands, in its sphere, alone.’ Make a journey to Ghent and gaze upon this marvellous picture, and perchance its splendour shall enlighten thy soul, and then go down into the crypt and kneel before the tomb of the man who created it.

John van Eyck

We know something more of the life of John van Eyck than of the life of his master and elder brother Hubert. His junior by twenty years, like him he was born at Maeseyck, and though his pictures have little in common with the primitives of Maestricht or Cologne he seems to have made his first studies in his own neighbourhood, and later on to have accompanied Hubert to Bruges. A man of many parts and many achievements, painter of pictures, stainer of glass, illuminator of parchments, illuminator of stone—no uncommon circumstance at a time when every artist was an artisan, and every craftsman an artist—he added yet to his varied talents no little skill in diplomacy, was entrusted by his sovereign with sundry private and delicate missions, and travelled for him frequently and far, sometimes in order to paint pictures, sometimes on matters of state.

Whilst still a young man John van Eyck parted company for a time with his brother. In the autumn of 1422 he was appointed peintre et varlet de chambre to Duke John of Bavaria, the famous Jean sans Pitié, Prince-Bishop of Liège. When that militant prelate was gathered to his fathers some two years afterwards, Philippe l’Asseuré received his heritage, and upon the recommendation of ‘plusieurs de ses gens’ he confirmed Van Eyck in his office and in all the customary honours and profits appertaining thereto,’ granting to him, over and above, an annual stipend of a hundred livres, a sum equal in current coin to about one hundred and sixty pounds.

After a short sojourn at Bruges the young painter journeyed to Lille, probably to execute some work there for his new master, for during his entire stay in that city, nearly three years, Philippe paid his house rent. In the summer of 1428 he set out on certains lointains voyages secrez which the Duke had commanded him to make, en certains lieux dont il ne voulut autre déclaration être faite. Probably Spain was the place of his destination, and the object of his journey to find Philippe a wife. If so, his sojourn there must have been of short duration, for before the end of the year we find him in Portugal busy painting ‘a most life-like portrait of the Infanta’ Isabella, who shortly afterwards became Philippe’s affianced bride. By 1433 he was again at Bruges, and in the course of the year he purchased a house in the rue de la Main d’Or, which he henceforth made his headquarters. Often from home, sometimes at Hesdin, sometimes at Lille to visit his friend and patron and to obtain from him instructions as to work which he wished him to execute, once at least, in 1435, en certains voyages lointains et étranges marches, no doubt anent matters of state, here it was that he seems to have painted most of his pictures which have come down to us, and there are a whole series of signed and dated panels for each year from 1432 to 1440, save only 1435, the year of his secret journey. He must have been residing in this house when he illuminated the statues, six of them, of the Hôtel de Ville, and received for his labour, as the town archives bear witness, 33 livres 12 escalins de gros, a sum representing in purchasing value to-day from fifty to sixty pounds.

Here he entertained the burgomaster and aldermen of Bruges, who, on July 17, 1432, repaired in a body to his studio to inspect a picture which he had just completed, and which no doubt they had commissioned, perhaps a Madonna and Child at present at Ince Bloundel Hall, near Liverpool, for this picture, one of the few that are dated, bears the following inscription: Complendum anno Domini 1432, als ich kan.

It will be interesting to note that upon this occasion John’s two apprentices made merry, for the city fathers presented them with five escalins by way of gratification. Here was born his only child, or at all events the only child of whom there is any record; we know that Duke Philippe was the godfather, and it may well be that he was present at the christening feast.

Here too he painted for the Guild of St. Luke that portrait of his pale, sad-faced, patient wife, which at present hangs in the Academy at Bruges. Though she looks considerably older, the quaintly-worded legend on the frame informs us that at this time she was only thirty-three years of age—Conjunx meus Johannes me complevit anno 1439º 17º Junii, etas mea triginta annorum, als ich kan; and lastly, here, not much more than twelve months afterwards, on July 9, 1440, the great painter died. They laid him to rest in the cloister of St. Donatian’s, and it would seem that his obsequies were celebrated with some circumstance, for the city archives inform us that three bells were tolled:—Donatian, Leonard and Bernard.

It is still the custom at Bruges to toll several bells at solemn funerals. They are rung one after the other at intervals of perhaps half a minute, beginning with the highest bell, and ending with the bourdon. The effect produced is very solemn and very striking and somewhat uncanny.

Some two years after John’s death his bones were translated to the Baptistry Chapel in the interior of St Donatian’s.

His widow continued to hold, and no doubt to inhabit the house in the rue de la Main d’Or until 1443. On June 4, in that year, she paid the ground rent for the last time.

In all that concerns technique John was the equal, perhaps the superior of his great brother. His mise en scène is perfect. He arranged his figures in symmetrical groups, clad them in glorious apparel, and set them in the midst of fair courts, or stately shrines, rich in sculpture and polished marble and costly hangings. He delighted in the clair-obscur, in the lustre of gold, in the shimmer of silk, in the scintillation of gems. In the wealth and variety of his palette and in the richness and depth and harmony of his mellow colouring he is unsurpassed. In spite of his realism and his love of detail his pictures are full of poetry, and if, as Mr. Weale says, he only saw with his eyes, he has somehow or other managed to make us see the souls of the figures he painted, but they lack the seriousness, the grandeur, the simple dignity of Hubert’s sublime creations.

All this is exemplified in a marked degree in the St. Donatian’s altar-piece in the academy at Bruges. The scene is laid in the apse of an old Byzantine church, glowing with gold and colour—perhaps St. Donatian’s. The columns are of shining porphyry—red, purple, green; the pavement is of encaustic tiles of the colour of amber, the brown walls are of stone, in the background beyond the choir pale green light streams through arched windows set with little circular panes of bottle glass. Our Lady with her Divine Child on her knee forms the central figure of the picture. She is seated beneath a canopy on a sculptured throne, her outer garment is silken and of the colour called Indian red, her kirtle is dark blue, a mediæval carpet is spread beneath her feet. On her right hand stands St. Donatian, a noble figure, but with a face too stern for a saint’s. In one hand he holds his pastoral cross and in the other his traditional wheel with five lighted tapers. He is attired in a cope of indigo and gold brocade lined with crimson silk and edged with sable. On the left kneels the donor, George van der Pale, Canon of St. Donatian’s—thick-necked, asthmatic, kindly, obese, a devout old Flemish gentleman. In one fat trembling hand he holds his half-open Breviary, in the other his reading glass; he is robed in a white surplice, his spectacle-case hangs at his side. The portrait is full of detail, very life-like and evidently unflattered. Behind him stands a youth in polished mail, who naïvely raises his helmet as, with his left hand on the canon’s shoulder, he presents him to Our Lady—his patron, St. George; a very loyal, large-hearted, human, joyous saint, who, one feels quite sure, will regard with a lenient eye the shortcomings of his clients and do his best to help them, but for all that he seems to have the air of being not quite at ease, not quite sure perhaps whether the poor old canon is worthy of an introduction. May be this strangely fascinating figure is also a portrait.

As for the scheme of colour, it is simply glorious. Gold gleams everywhere. We see it in the blue brocade of the canopy and in the blue brocade of St. Donatian’s cope; there are threads of it in the intricately-embroidered borders of Our Lady’s robe; it glisters round her neck and on her fingers and in her hair. St. George’s armour is all golden, and on the other side of the picture there stands St. Donatian arrayed in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours; even

PORTRAIT OF GEORGE VAN DER PALE From the St. Donatian’s Altar-piece of John van Eyck, in the Municipal Gallery, Bruges