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IN THE NETHERLANDS.
ten painters, such as enable us to form a really distinct and vivid
conception of their character as artists; yet this old Netherlands
school was busy for eighty years; nor was its activity confined to
Bruges and Ghent alone, but was shared by Antwerp, Brussels, and
in the North by Leyden and Haarlem. One important cause of this
absence of reliable accounts lay in the new direction taken by the
Netherlands school of painting in the 16th century, which had the
effect of depreciating the works of their predecessors in the general
estimation, and finally of committing them to oblivion. For the
Netherlands, like the rest of the North, became subject to the spirit
of the Italian Renaissance.
The infiuence of the Renaissance reached the Netherlands, as it
reached Germany, in the 16th century. Under the Burgundian rule
literature had already been alienated from the popular sympathies,
and even so it was now with pictorial art. In the domains of
Architecture and Sculpture the breach with previous native styles
seems to have been less abrupt than in thedomain of painting. The
narrow Gothic house, with its stepped gable, long held its ground;
and although Italian modes of ornamentation attained the ascend-
ancy in the first half of the 16th century, yet in the second half
the national genius powerfully re-asserted itself. Among the most
important Renaissance buildings in the Netherlands are the House
of the Salmon at Malines (p. 163) and the old Maison de Ancien
Greffe at Bruges (p. 37), The Town Halls of The Hague, Leyden,
and Amsterdam, the old Meat Market at Haarlem (p. 355), and the
Weigh House at Nymwegen (p. 450) belong to the later period. The
Netherlands are peculiarly rich in decorative works in wood, stone,
and brass. The monuments of Cownt Engelbert IT. of Nassau and his
wife, in the Groote Kerk at Breda, and that of Archbishop William
of Croy, in the church of the Capuchins at Enghien (p.8), are among
the finest productions of Renaissance art in the north of Europe.
The chimney-pieces (Bruges), carved stalls (Dordrecht), and altars
(Hal) also must not be forgotten. The Musée Plantin at Antwerp
contains an interesting collection of Renaissance furniture.
The Flemish Painters of the 16th cent., who were entirely sub-
ject to the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, produce a less favour-
able impression. For Italian forms and even colours found no
response in the inmost spirit of the Flemish painters, and the result
was often mere frigid prettiness or artificial idealization. Just as we
prefer the popular ballad to the Latin verse of our school-days, so we
prize the unadorned Flemish style more highly than unsuccessful
imitations of the Italian. The 16th century was, it is true, of a
different way of thinking, and hailed this inroad of the Renaissance
upon their native art as a sign of progress. Quinten Matsys
(1466-1530) of Antwerp, the last distinguished master of the older
School, yielded to the new current under the influence of Leonardo
da Vinci; and Antwerp especially was for a long time the capital
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