the Hospital of Saint John.

The panel in the National Gallery, which may be ascribed to 1475, arrests our attention for the moment. It presents to us the Blessed Virgin and Child in attitudes closely corresponding to those in the earlier Donne triptych, but both are more pleasing figures in respect of pose, the attitude of the Madonna in particular being less constrained and the expression happier and more natural. The figure of the angel too has gained in gracefulness. The donor under the patronage of Saint George appeals to one as a living personality. Of these two figures a lady critic complains that they are “characteristic examples of Memlinc’s inability to depict a really manly man”; and she endeavours to give greater point to this criticism by contrasting the painter’s methods with those of John van Eyck, wholly of course to the disadvantage of the former. In the present case the identity of the donor remains a mystery: he may not have been the really manly man the idealist would require, and also he may have been the man of reverent and sweet disposition revealed to us in this portrait. It is for the softening and idealisation of the face from the reality, however, that fault is commonly found with Memlinc as a portrait-painter. But, after all, what is this idealisation of the subject but the highest aim and truest concept of art? It is no difficult matter for the competent painter to produce a counterpart of the outward flesh with all its peculiarities, even to the last wrinkle and the least significant blemish, and be awarded the palm for “stern realism”; but to conceive the inner soul of the man, to seize and fix that conception on panel or canvas, surely that is the higher art? It is true that in the men whom Memlinc portrayed there is a marked similarity of expression, arising obviously from the fact that they are usually pictured in an attitude of devotion, and that in the frame of mind this attitude imposed they suffered some loss of workaday individuality. But surely it is not to Memlinc’s discredit that his clients were of the devotional order? Nor is the criticism of the Saint George as mild and effeminate any more to the point; for when the appeal is from Memlinc to Van Eyck one is forcibly reminded of the votive picture of the Virgin and Child by that master in the Town Gallery at Bruges, in which we have the donor under the patronage of a Saint George whom for sheer inanity of expression and utter awkwardness of demeanour it would be hard to beat. And yet in neither instance, we may safely assume, was the figure the type the artist would have created for the valiant knight of the legend. Apart from this, a careful study of Memlinc’s many works will reveal to the most exacting a sufficiency of evidence that his art was equal to any demands that might have been made of it; of his preference for the milder and more religious type of man, however, there can be no doubt.

It were idle to speculate as to the length of time Memlinc devoted to the production of his pictures, seeing the meagreness of the data afforded us for the purpose. His peculiar technique, however, which avoided the accentuation of light and shade, and thereby simplified the scheme of colouring, lent itself to rapid execution. Even so, paintings like the altarpiece in the Royal Museum at Turin and that in the Royal Gallery at Munich must have made heavy calls on his time through a number of years. As examples of the powers and wealth of resource of the artist these masterpieces stand almost alone. The architectural setting of the former, a wholly imaginary Jerusalem, is so contrived as to assist in the most natural manner the precession of the Gospel story from the triumphal entry into the Holy City to the Resurrection and the manifestation of Christ to Mary Magdalene. As without conscious effort the eye is guided along the line of route followed by the Redeemer, one treads in imagination in the Divine footsteps through the hosannahing multitude in the extreme background on the right, and turning to the left arrives at the Temple steps in time to witness the casting out of the buyers and sellers; descending thence and bearing gradually towards the right a turn of the street leads one to the scene of the Last Supper, which Judas has already left to confer with the priests under a neighbouring portico as to the betrayal of his Master; and eventually one arrives at the Garden of Olives, to be confronted in rapid succession with the Agony and the picture of the sleeping disciples, the rush of armed men, Judas’ traitorous kiss and Peter in the act of striking at Malchus. Following the multitude for some little distance one reaches the heart of the city, where the successive incidents of the Passion are grouped each under a separate portico showing on to a spacious courtyard in the very centre of the panel—Christ before Pilate and his expostulating wife, the Flagellation, the Crowning with thorns and mocking of Our Lord, Christ before Herod and the Ecce Homo, with the preparations for the Crucifixion going on the while in the open courtyard. These completed, the mournful procession passes under a palace gateway into the forefront of the picture, bears to the left and issues through the city gate, where the Mother of Christ, the beloved disciple, and the holy women have gathered together, into the open country, where at the foot of the hilly way that skirts the city walls Simon of Cyrene comes forward to relieve the fallen Saviour in the burden of the Cross; presently the procession is lost to view at a bend of the road only to reappear on the slopes of Calvary, which is triplicated here for the purpose of re-enacting the three scenes associated with it—of the Nailing to the Cross, of the Death of Our Lord, and of the Descent from the Cross. Lower down on the left we assist at the Entombment and at the Deliverance of the Just from Limbo, and further away we witness the Resurrection and, in the far background, the manifestation of Our Lord to Mary Magdalene. Viewed as a whole it is a marvel of composition enhanced by a brilliancy of colouring, and every scene in it a delicately finished miniature. Apart from the architectural setting, the three Calvaries, and the duplication of the Holy Sepulchre imposed by the necessity of representing both the Entombment and the Resurrection, the most captious can discover nothing to abate the enthusiastic admiration which this altarpiece excites, or one’s wonder at the masterful manner in which Memlinc has succeeded in developing the story of the Passion in some twenty scenes necessitating the introduction of considerably over two hundred figures, apart from the animal and bird life that supplements them, within the narrow compass of a panel only fifty-five centimetres high by ninety centimetres in breadth! The extreme corners of the foreground are filled in with exquisite portraits of the donors, the miniaturist William Vrelant and his wife, for whom one feels that Memlinc has tried to excel himself in this masterwork.

Scarcely less surprising as a composition is the story in bright luminous colours told in the Munich altarpiece, a work of considerably larger dimensions (80 by 180 centimetres), commonly described as “The Seven Joys of Mary,” but for which the more appropriate title has been suggested of “Christ the Light of the World.” It is the story of the manifestation of Our Lord to the Gentile world in the persons of the Wise Men from the East, closely correspondent, as was Memlinc’s wont, to the Gospel narrative and Christian tradition, except perhaps in this one respect, that the artist’s innate love of moving water has suggested to him the original conceit of depicting the departing Magi as setting sail for their distant homes across the boundless waters. This portion of the background and the greater wealth of surrounding landscape greatly relieves the architectural setting, which is not so overpowering as in the Turin altarpiece. The composition too, as becomes the subject, is teeming with the joy of life in varying aspects. Here we have the gay