1 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART

Geertgen tot Sint Jans (ca. 1465-95), are there represented but by
few works. The most influential personality is that of Dierick
Bouts (ca. 1410-1475), who removed from Haarlem to Louvain
about 1450, and with his industrious pencil announced the funda-
mental characteristic of Dutch painting, in his delicate appreciation
of landscape beauty.

The early-Flemish School culminated in Hans Memling (Mem-
linc), the pupil of Van der Weyden. According to a legend, which
in earlier times received general credence, Memling, having been
wounded at the battle of Nancy, was carried to Bruges, where, in
gratitude for the tender care bestowed upon him in the Hospital of
St. John, he painted numerous pictures. This story may be placed
in the same category as those of Diirer’s maleyolent spouse and of
the licentiousness of the later Dutch painters. Memling was born
somewhere in the vicinity of Mayence (possibly at Mémlingen, near
Aschaffenburg) about the year 1430; was, in 1471, already actively
engaged as painter and permanently established in Bruges, where
in 1480 he became a well-to-do house proprietor in the Vlamincdam,
and died in 1494. The little we know of him personally is in some
measure compensated for by the greatnumber of his works still extant.
Bruges, in particular, can boast of possessing literally a Memling
museum. In the Academy is the Triptych with the St. Christopher,
in the Hospital of St. John the so-called St. John Altar, the
Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna with Martin van Nieuwenhove,
the portrait of a lady, and, finally, the Ursula casket, the most
ornate and captivating illustration of legendary lore bequeathed by
the art of this early period. In Memling, indeed, it may be said
the school of Van Eyck exhibits its highest attainments. Pure and
luminous colouring is combined with correct drawing; a keen per-
ception of Nature with a coherent sense of the beautiful. Crowe and
Cavalcaselle, in their history of old Flemish Painters, speak of
Memling as a lyric bard, and if his forms lack ideality, he knows
how to give them the impress of a winsome beauty. His Madonnas,
whose golden hair falls over the shoulders, or is gathered up in
luxuriant tresses, combine dignity with loveliness.

Other painters who may be regarded as offshoots of the older
school are Gerard David (ca. 1460-1523), and Jean Provost of Mons
(1462-1529), both in Bruges, in the S., and Jacob Cornelissen or
Jacob van Oostsaan (flourished in Amsterdam 1500-30), and
Cornelis Engebrechtsz (4468-1533) of Leyden, inthe N. Gerard David
is a fine colourist and distinguished for the tender sweetness of his
female figures, but dramatic conception is as foreign to him as to
Memling.

We have, indeed, abundant cause to deplore the fanaticism of
the iconoclasts and the ravages of the religious wars, when we pro-
ceed to sum up the number of authenticated old Flemish pictures
still in existence. Scarcely, indeed, do we possess mementoes of