IN THE NETHERLANDS. lvii master of the whole range of artistic material. To the greatest fer- tility in the domains of ecclesiastical art he adds an intelligent and enthusiastic appreciation of the ancient gods and heroes. He looks upon these latter more with the eye of a Virgil than of a Homer, and often depicts them in the spirit of an orator rather than in that of a poet. He shows that he has most affinity for the fleshy figures of the Bacchic myths, and paints them with a freshness and energy possessed by none of his contemporaries. His brush is as much at home in important historical compositions as in the richly-coloured allegories, by which his age tried to make up to itself for the want of genuine poetic sensibility. He paints alike portraits and land- scapes, the battles of men and the fighting of brutes, the gallant love-making of the noble and the coarse pleasures of the vulgar. This versatility is peculiarly his own, although he possesses cer- tain characteristics in common with his contemporaries, just as he shares with them the same national atmosphere and the same tra~- ditionary precepts. Rubens (d. 1640) occupied this field along with several other painters. No wonder, then, that similar characteristics are observable in his works and those of others, and that they so closely resemble one anot jonally to be confounded. Abraham Janssens (1567-1632) comes very near to Rubens in freedom of brush and in the impassioned action of his figures. Indeed there were few of Rubens’ contemporaries who escaped his influence, pervading as it did the whole field of art, inspiring in an especial manner the engraver. The most notable of Antwerp artists who were contempo- raries of Rubens are Gerard Seghers or Zegers (1591-1651); Theodore Rombouts (4597-1637); Cornelis de Vos (1585-1651), one of the first portrait-painters of the time; Gaspar de Crayer (1582-1669), who evinced in his quiet compositions a charming vein of thought; Lucas van Uden (1595- ca. 1672), who painted in many instances the landscape in the background of Rubens’ pictures; and, finally, Frans Snyders (1579-1657), who placed his extraordinary talent for animal painting at the disposal of the great chief. Of Rubens’s most distinguished disciple, Anthony Van Dyck (born at Antwerp 1599, died in London 1641), owing to the shortness of his sojourn in his native city, few important works are retained. After being initiated in painting first by Henry van Balen, later by Rubens, he visited Italy in his 24th year, where Venice and Genoa especially fascinated him, as they had done his master before him. From 1626 to 1632 he lived at Antwerp, after that in London, in the service of Charles I. It was not only the fashion then prevailing in aristocratic circles which engaged Van Dyck in portraiture. Portraiture made the strongest appeal to his proclivities as an artist. He does not shine in the invention of gorgeous or stirring scenes; but in the refined and animated pour-