THE VAN EYCKS AND THEIR FOLLOWERS.* Sin Msarm CONWAY begins
his book with a striking summitry of the Gothic Age, for the spirit of that time was the inspiration of the Flemish painters. This was something entirely different from the motive force which animated Italian art, and how com- pletely the difference between the two countries was realized is • The Van Eyeks and their Follower. By Sir Martin Conway, ?LP. London: John Murray. 10 2s.)
shown by a very interesting pronouncement by Michelangelo. This was recorded by Francisco D'011anda, a Portuguese miniature painter, who sat in the church of San Silvestro with -Vittoria Colonna and her friends when Michelangelo said :-
" The painting of Flanders, Madam, will generally satisfy any devout person more than the painting of Italy, which will never cause him to drop a single tear, but that of Flanders will cause him to shed many ; this is not owing to the vigour and goodness of that painting, but to the goodness of such devout person-; women will like it, especially very old ones, or very young ones. It will please likewise friars and nuns, and also noble persons who have no ear for true harmony. They paint in Flanders, only to deoeive the external eye, things that gladden you and of which you cannot speak ill, and saints and prophets. Their painting of stuffs, bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadow of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there ; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting or rejecting, and finally without any substance or verve, and in spite of all this painting in some other parts is worse than it is in Flanders: Neither do I speak so badly of Flemish painting because it is all bad, but because it tries to do too many things at ones (each of which alone would suffice for a great work) so that it does not do anything really well."
The interest of this passage is that it shows how a great Italian painter was untouched by the realistic representation of the Northerners, and it is just this realism, especially in landscape, which is the dominating spirit of the Flemings. Bellini, Carpaccio, and Perugino give us exquisite pieces of landscape, but they alwayi make their backgrounds part and parcel of the design of the whole work. It was just this difference, and the desire to push the realism of the landscape backgrounds as far as possible, that made the early artists of Bruges the founders of modern landscape painting. Sir Martin traces this river back to its source in a very interesting way, and shows in the frontispiece to his book a marvellous landscape, which can only be by Hubert Van Eyck, in an illuminated MS. in the Trivulzio collection at Milan. The importance of the elder of the two brothers is very clearly brought out in the account of the great Ghent altar-piece. Sir Martin shows how the art Of Hubert Van Eyck arose out of that of the miniaturist, and how this influence is visible in the work of the younger brother John, though he seems never to have worked except as a painter of pictures. The younger brother had enormous executive ability, but he never rose to the imaginative level shown in the planning of "The Adoration of the Lamb," which Hubert designed and largely painted. John, indeed, was a portrait rainter by nature, and in his compositions this element always comes to the front. Indeed, Flemish art, as its course through successive generations is traced in this book, shows that realism was its motive power, and causes Sir Martin to say of the
Flemish painters :-
"They were generally at heart men of this world. Their imaginations did not play easily with heavenly things. They were seldom by nature religious. The direct fact belonged to them. If they had to paint a martyrdom they set down the plain brutal story without passion and without hope. Ribora's
Apollo Skinning Marsyas ' and Gerard David's Unjust Judge' are like subjects, but Ribera clouded his drama in the majesty of shadow. David set the hideous event in the open light of the market-place. There is nothing mystical about mid or late fifteenth century religious art. The foreign element in Mending carried him a little further away from literalness, but not far. John Van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait contains the live core of all great Flemish art. There exists no Madonna picture of the school that can be placed on a level with the best of the Italians. The Andre Madonna is fine, is perhaps as fine as any produced in the North, but the seers of the South beheld the heavens opened. No such vision shone beyond the Alps."
Very interesting is the discussion of the share taken by Justus of Ghent and Melozzo da Forli in the Urbino pictures. Sir Martin inclines to the view that though the Italian largely influenced the design, Justus did the actual painting. This is a hard saying for those who love the exquisite painting Rhelorick of the man in the deep plum-coloured clothes in the National Gallery. There is only one regret to be felt about this book, which is at once so learned and so free from dulness; it is that the illustrations are not large or numerous enough. The preface explains that cost of production is the cause of the defect. Let us hope for another edition in better times.
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