lii HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART

of art in the Netherlands, whence Duke William of Bavaria, as well
as the Emperor Rudolph IJ. , the two most enlightened patrons of
art among German princes, supplied their requirements. Flemings
provided for England’s needs also. It is evident, then, that the
Netherlands bad no lack of renown nor yet of highly-gifted spirits,
whose achievements, had a more auspicious fate attended them,
would have been considerable. The pictures of Jan Gossaert, sur-
named Mabuse (ca. 1470-1541), please by force of their masterly
modelling and intense colouring. Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533),
a pupil of Cornelis Engebrechtsz, has earned a worldwide reputation
as an engraver, while we possess almost no authenticated specimen
of his painting. Bernard van Orley (ca. 1492-1541) turned his
residence in Rome to good account in mastering the style of the
Raphaelesque school, which both in composition and drawing he
reproduced with considerable cleverness. If we can praise the in-
dustry only of Michiel Coxie or van Coxcyen (1499-1592) and find
the insipidity in conception and the exaggeration of form in the
work of Frans de Vriendt, surnamed Floris (ca. 1548-1570), simply
repulsive; if, again, Karel van Mander is famous principally for
his literary acquirements and Hubert Goltzius for his versatility,
still one branch of the art remains in which the Flemings achieved
and sustained a marked success, viz. PoRTRAITURE, represented in
the 16th century by the Master of the Death of the Virgin (Joos.
van Cleve ?), Jan van Scorel or Schooreel (1495-1562), Ant. Mor or
More (ca. 1512-1576), the younger Pieter Pourbus (ca. 1540-1584),
and Gortzius Geldorp (1553- ca. 1616).

The earliest approaches to genre and landscape painting which
later attained to such majestic proportions must not be allowed to
escape observation. Their germs are, in fact, already to be detected
in the works of Van Eyck. The principle of a careful study of
Nature, and delight in every phase of life, early asserted itself,
giving to every object, however insignificant, however obscure, an
artistic charm. The painting of still-life, the pourtraying of those
humorous incidents, never wanting in domestic experience, which
served to illustrate everyday life among the people, came early into
vogue, though at first (as in the case of Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1450-
1516) disagreeably qualified by the intermixture of the grotesque
(in the shape of devils’ dances). Quinten Matsys and Jan van
Hemessen had already painted genre pieces, Old Brueghel (p. liii)
and David Vinekboons rustic subjects, Patinir of Dinant and Paul
Bril landscapes, with numerous details, and Roeland Savery animal
pictures,

Among all these painters the members of the family of
Brueghel or, as sometimes written, Breughel, attract our interest most
effectually. They not only afford the most striking example of that
highly propitious practice, the hereditary prosecution of the same
craft, but also excellently illustrate the transition from the old to