ART OF THE LOW COUNTRIES

“They sit there in the shadow and shine Of the flickering fire of the winter night, Figures in colour and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and half light.”

The art of the North is that of Protestantism, Catholicism is that of the South. This is the first impression borne in upon us by a quick survey of the rooms devoted to the art of the Netherlands and of Germany. The delight in life that is so marked in the Italian school has given way to a sterner, more prosaic, more realistic ideal. The traditions of a classic past, deeply rooted in the beautiful land where nature is so kindly, have no hold on these other lands where the conditions of life are hard and strenuous. In Italy the Catholic Church preserved the traditions of saints and rules the life of the people. In the fifteenth century the Reformation swept over Europe and divided the continent into two opposing camps of faith, the Catholic and the Protestant. The northern countries declared for the Protestant faith. The Madonna was no longer the presiding inspiration of genius there, the legends of saints no longer furnished the theme of northern painter’s dreams. Art patronage became secular instead of ecclesiastical.

Portraiture, landscape-painting, genre-painting—and by genre-painting I mean the painting which takes its subjects from the small incidents of everyday life—these have replaced the old ideals. Instead of altarpieces we have great portrait groups of the members of guilds and corporations. Early portraiture was very faithful. Every wrinkle, every line was set down.

Protestant art has ever been the art of the people, and realism is the note of this art. The brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck were the chief exponents of realism. They were born at Eyck-sur-Meuse, and they lived and died there. If not the first inventors of the modern process of oil-painting, they brought it to perfection, and, above all, they brought it into common use. Up to this time tempera was the usual medium for painting. Tempera consisted of grinding the colours with chalk and laying them on with water, with white of egg, with size, or the juice of unripe figs. Damp was the chief enemy of tempera. The Italian artists had tried to mix their colours with oil and the result had been unsatisfactory, for the great objection to the use of oil was the long time it took to dry. The brothers Van Eyck understood chemistry, and they did not rest in their experiments until they had discovered a medium which hastened the drying and did not involve the necessity of exposing the colours to the sun. Nowadays we mix our colours with an oil medium, and we varnish them when the picture is finished. By the Van Eyck’s method the varnish was incorporated with the surface colours.

Look at this wonderful painting by Jan Van Eyck (1390–1440); it is the portrait of Jan Arnolfini and his wife (186). They stand in a room that is a model of elegant neatness. She is dressed in the rich and ample garments that were the fashion of the day; her gaunt husband, holding her hand, stands beside her. He looks somewhat of a caricature with his big hat drawn down to his ears, his fur-bordered tunic from under which peep his thin legs and slippered feet. His right hand is raised. We feel that this worthy couple looked just as they do in this picture when they stood for Jan Van Eyck more than four hundred years ago. He painted them with relentless fidelity.

See how perfectly the colours are preserved, how fresh is the green of the woman’s immense mantle—fresh as if it had been painted yesterday. Jan Van Eyck knew the nature of every colour, how one colour affects the others. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Turner did not know chemistry as applied to painting, or they were in too great a hurry to obtain their effects. Their colours darken and crack; we can guess only at the first glow of their pictures. Those of Van Eyck appear as they looked when they left the easel. How marvellous also is the minuteness of the details. See the circular mirror behind the husband and wife, with scenes of the Passion let into its frame. Every object in the room is reflected therein—the oranges on the window sill, the slippers on the floor; two additional figures in a room beyond are seen through an open door. A branch brass chandelier hangs from the ceiling; this chandelier still exists. At the woman’s feet in the foreground is a poodle. The whole picture is a page of the intimate, orderly, religious life of the time. Above is the signature of the artist, which, in its ornamentation and its clearness, is a work of art. “As I can, not as I would,” is the motto inscribed—the motto that resumes all Van Eyck’s hopes and aims. By the side of this great picture is a small portrait believed to be that of Jan Van Eyck himself. It shows a middle-aged man with a red kerchief wound round his head, and it is painted with unequalled strength, truthfulness, and minuteness.

Gerard David (1450–1523) was a painter of exalted and religious feeling. “A Canon and his Patron Saints” (1045) is full of fervour, but I think his most typical picture is “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine” (1432)—a theme often chosen by painters of the Middle Ages. This picture shows a walled garden, beyond which we see the buildings of a town. The Virgin is seated on a throne, the infant Christ is on her knee; He bends forward to place a ring on St. Catherine’s finger. On the right is seated St. Barbara holding an open book, and St. Mary Magdalene with the vase of precious ointment in her lap. As is usual in these pictures, we see the donor, Canon Richard Van der Capelle, accompanied by his greyhound, kneeling before the Madonna and the Child. Every detail in the picture is carried out with marvellous care, and through every detail breathes the religious genius of the painter.

His contemporary was Mabuse (1470–1541), a most conscientious painter, whose elaborate finish and brilliant colouring are very noticeable in all his works (656, 946, 1689). This latter picture, “Portrait of a Man and his Wife,” is quite a masterpiece of finished detail and of breadth of effect. There are many portraits by him, and, although Mabuse was not equal to the best painters of his time, we must note the high perfection of finish in all his pictures.

Quentin Massys (before 1460–1530) was perhaps the greatest Belgian painter of his time. He raised the school of Antwerp to a higher level than that of any other Flemish school. He is usually called the smith of Antwerp, because he began life as a blacksmith. He gave up this profession to take up art, for which he had shown signs of genius almost from childhood. He had little feeling for real beauty of form, but he had an earnestness, a tenderness, and a clearness of colouring that redeemed all his faults. The one picture that we have by him in the National Gallery is the “Salvator Mundi and the Virgin Mary” (295). The colouring of the Christ is somewhat heavy, but there is so much delicacy of feeling, so much expression that it ranks among the masterpieces we possess.

Roger Van der Weyden (1400–1464) some say was a pupil of Jan Van Eyck, but very little is known about him. That he was a native of Tournay, that he was deeply religious, that he visited Italy, that he wielded a great influence over the early Flemish school, and that Memling was his pupil is about all that we know about Van der Weyden. The three pictures in the National Gallery (664, 711, 712) show the intensity of his faith. The two last are heads and hands of the Madonna and of Christ on a gold background.

“Husband and Wife” (653), sometimes called “The Painter and his Wife,” is often ascribed to Roger Van der Weyden, but now is generally held to be by a member of his school. The man has a resolute and serious face, “the woman is sweet and motherly.” I should like to think it is a portrait of Van der Weyden and his wife, but it is doubtful.

“A Reading Magdalen” (654) belongs to the school of Van der Weyden; it is believed to be by one of his pupils. The Magdalen is dressed in the cumbrous draperies of the time. I cannot imagine how women walked thus attired. Her hair is gathered under a heavy coif, and she is reading; at her feet lies the alabaster box of ointment. Her face is plain, but there is in it so much sweetness, so much absorption in her study that it attracts the beholder.

There are a great many legendary records concerning Memling, the painter of Bruges. One of the most charming tells that, at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, where Count Charles the Bold lost his life, a wounded soldier was brought into the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. His name was Memling. He had been a painter before he became a soldier; during his long convalescence love for his art returned, and there also returned the old enthusiasm for religion. Tradition says he loved the young nun who spent her days nursing the sick and who used to sing and pray in the chapel. The soldier recovered from his wounds and he took to painting once more. He painted the marvellous pictures that are still in the Hospital of St. John and that are the treasures of the place. The reliquary of St. Ursula is among them. It is a shrine about four feet in length. On one of its gable ends is a painting of the Madonna and Child with two of the sisters of the order kneeling before them. On the other is the picture of St. Ursula with the arrows that were the instrument of her martyrdom and the Virgins hiding under her mantle. There are medallions of Ursula painted on the ceiling of the shrine, showing the saint leading up to heaven a procession of maidens martyred with her. I can imagine the young nun Memling loved inspiring his work, and being the unconscious model from which he painted. Through the picture “The Virgin and Infant Christ enthroned in a Garden” (686) breathes the spirit of Memling’s art. The figures are seated in a peaceful enclosure. Oh, how serene is the light that shines over the alleys! The Virgin has an angular charm of her own with her high arched eyebrows, her lofty brow, her beautiful slim figure, her long hair, and her mild eyes under drooping lids. On her right is an angel playing a guitar, on her left is St. George trampling under his feet the dragon which symbolises sin. In the front is the donor of the picture kneeling to the divine Infant, who is turning over the pages of a book His mother is holding while He listens to the angelic music. It is a picture that sets us dreaming and thinking of that wonderful story. There are two other pictures by Memling (709, 747). His landscape backgrounds are always very clear, and are peaceful, as was his soul.