preserved to us in the Van Nieuwenhove diptych. The Divine Infant, it is true, may not appeal to one in the same way as do the charming pictures of infant life in which the southern artists excelled. Whatever may be said of the fine men and intellectual women of the race, the northern type of babyhood cannot by any stretch of courtesy, apart from a mother’s loving weakness, be described as graceful. Still Memlinc’s conceptions of the Infant Saviour rank high in point of intellectuality, of expressiveness of eye, of grace of movement and charm of expression. The Donne triptych besides, from the point of view from which we are now considering it, is a valuable asset for the study of the impersonations of saints whom we find constantly recurring in his paintings: to wit, Saint Katherine and Saint Barbara—(Fromentin’s enthusiastic appreciation of these figures in the large altarpiece at Bruges has already been quoted)—Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Christopher. The same may be said of his angels. Taken from another standpoint, these early paintings of Memlinc are invaluable testimony of his rare gift for portraiture. It was a gift which may almost be taken as the specific appanage of the fifteenth century painters of the Netherlandish school. Some, like John van Eyck, used it with scrupulous exactitude, scorning to veil the palpable truth that at the moment and usually obtruded itself on his painstaking eye; others, and Memlinc prominently of their number, loved rather to seize on the fitful manifestation of the inner man and to idealise him. Both artists, taking them as types, were honest and true to their art, notwithstanding that the resulting truth in each case is deceiving, except we have very particular information regarding the individual portrayed. In any event, the Tani and Spinelli portraits are fine examples of the class, though perhaps Sir John Donne’s appeals to us more because of the fuller knowledge we have of the man. And finally, both the Antwerp and the Chatsworth paintings afford us beautiful examples of Memlinc’s art as a landscape painter, and in this respect certainly it may be safely asserted that he never produced better work.

PLATE IV.—NICHOLAS SPINELLI OF AREZZO.

Nicholas Spinelli, born 1430, was in 1467-68 in Flanders, in the service of Charles the Bold as seal engraver. He died in 1499 at Lyons, where this portrait was acquired by Denon. He is depicted holding a medal, showing a profile head of the Emperor Nero, with the inscription “NERO CLAVDius CÆSAR AVGustus GERManicus TRibunicia Potestati IMPERator.” It was bought from the heirs of Denon by M. van Ertborn, who bequeathed it to the Museum at Antwerp.

V

THE MATURITY OF HIS ART

FROM the consideration of these three works executed in the sixties we pass on to a decade of more notable achievement. The public rejoicings which had inaugurated the new reign were already dimmed to recollection in the disquieting civil and national complications that ensued, culminating in the disastrous battle of Nancy on 5th January 1477, in which the ducal troops were put to rout and Charles himself lost his life. He was succeeded by his only daughter, Mary, who on 19th August of the same year by her marriage to Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick IV., brought Flanders under the rule of the House of Austria, and thus involved the Flemish burghers in that lamentable struggle which, after many alternations of fortune, was one of the chief causes that led to the downfall of Bruges. Memlinc, as a newcomer without rooted interests or strong political bent, wholly wrapt in his art, naturally steered clear of political entanglements, though ready enough on occasion to take his share of the public burden which the fortune of war imposed, as witness his contribution to the loan raised to cover the expenses of the military operations against France. But his placid disposition shrank from the heat and ferment of public life, though his sympathies no doubt were all with the burghers and guildmen with whom he associated, among whom he found the most liberal supporters of his art to the exclusion of court patronage, and from whose womankind he selected a helpmate. Memlinc married later in life than was the custom of his day, when it was usual for craftsmen to take unto themselves a wife at the expiration of their journeymanship, after they had established their competence, paid the indispensable guild fees, and taken the no less essential vows to bear themselves honestly and to labour their work as in the sight of God; for it was only at some date between 1470 and 1480, when already a man of middle age, that he led Anne, daughter of Louis De Valkenaere, to the altar. It is impossible to determine the year, but on the 10th of December 1495 we find the guardians of the three children of the marriage acting on their behalf in the local courts in the winding-up of their father’s estate, which at any rate proves that the eldest at that time must have been still a minor, or under the age of five-and-twenty. Apart from his wife’s dowry, of which we have no knowledge, Memlinc’s circumstances were then already much above the ordinary, for in 1480 out of the 247 wealthiest citizens only 140 were taxed at higher rates, and it is on record that in the same year he purchased a large stone house and two smaller adjacent ones on the east side of the main street that leads from the Flemish Bridge to the ramparts, in a quarter of the town much affected by artists, and within the Parish of Saint Giles, beneath the spreading trees of whose peaceful God’s acre he was to find an abiding resting-place some fourteen years later, by the side of his old friend the miniaturist William Vrelant, who predeceased him by some thirteen years, to be joined there in after years by many another eminent artist, such as John Prévost, Lancelot Blondeel, Peter Pourbus, and Antony Claeissens.

That he was a busy man the record of works that have come down to us from this decade alone amply testifies. The “Saint John the Baptist,” in the Royal Gallery at Munich (1470); the exquisite little diptych “The Blessed Virgin and Child,” in the Louvre, painted (c. 1475) for John Du Celier, a member of the Guild of Merchant Grocers, whose father was a member of the Council of Flanders; the panel in the National Gallery, which we reproduce; the magnificent altarpiece in the Royal Museum at Turin painted for William Vrelant (1478); the famous triptych executed for the high altar of the church attached to the Hospital of Saint John at Bruges (1479); and the triptych “The Adoration of the Magi” presented to the Hospital by Brother John Floreins (1479), all belong to this period: while with the year 1480 are associated the portraits of William Moreel and his wife, in the Royal Gallery at Brussels; that of one of their daughters as the Sibyl Sambetha, in Saint John’s Hospital; the marvellous composition in the Royal Gallery at Munich, “Christ the Light of the World,” painted to the order of Peter Bultinc, a wealthy citizen of Bruges and a member of the Guild of Tanners; and the triptych “The Dead Christ mourned by His Mother,” in Saint John’s Hospital—let alone the numerous other works attributed to him but not authenticated or which have been lost. The bare record, however, conveys but a feeble idea of the immensity of the labour this output involved.

PLATE V.—MARTIN VAN NIEUWENHOVE.

The companion of the painting reproduced in Plate I., and is in