CHAPTER XII.

COTEMPORARIES OF THE VAN EYCKS.

WHEN John Van Eyck became "varlet de chambre of Philip of Burgundy, a change was made in the functions of the ducal painters ; and whilst the arts were honoured in his person by increased respect and pay, the common labour of the ducal court,-such as painting standards, pennons, and banners, was entrusted to a lower class of men. When Jehan Malouel had ceased to live, in 1415, his place was filled by Bellechose of Brabant.1 Bellechose, however, was employed exclusively in Burgundy, and is only known to have painted for the convent of Carthusians at Dijon two altar-pieces, representing scenes from the lives of St. Denis and the Virgin.2

In Flanders, Jehan le Voleur was Jehan Malouel's colleague as "paintre" and "varlet de chambre," and filled a post of honour in the pleasure castle of the Duke at Hesdin. Jehan le Voleur's skill consisted only in manufacturing standards, banners, and pennons. At his death, in 1417, he was succeeded in the place of governor of Hesdin by Hue de Boulogne. Colin, or Colart le Voleur, the son of Jehan, obtained employment for many years

1 “Bellechose (Henry) de Brabant, paintre de M. S. le Duc aux gages de huit gros par jour, par lettres datées du 5 Avril, 1419.”De Salles, Mémoires p. servir, ut sup., p. 242.

2 Mémoriaux-" C'est le livre des mémoires de la chambre des Comptes."-Apud De Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, vol. i. Introd.

in the same capacity as his father. The castle, or chastel d'Hesdin, was a favourite resort of Philip of Burgundy, and a place of rest to which he retired to amuse himself at his leisure. It contrasted strangely with the pleasure palace of Louis the Eleventh near Tours, where the grounds were known to bristle with various deadly instruments intended to maim trespassers. Hesdin was as full of pitfalls and trap-doors as a modern theatre; but they only served to perpetrate the coarse though harmless jokes, in which the fun of the Middle Ages consisted. They seem, indeed, to have only suited the robust and healthy constitutions of the people of those days. A few examples, taken from the records of the castle, may not be uninteresting. A stranger issuing, for instance, from a gallery into a neighbouring passage, was startled by the sudden apparition of a wooden figure spouting water. A wetting and a fright were the necessary consequences. But when the joke was carried furthest, a set of brushes were put in motion, and the patient emerged with a white or a black face, as the case might be. Another still more powerful engine was one which seized a man and thrashed him soundly.

In the centre of the great gallery was a trap, and near it the figure of a hermit who prophesied. Ladies were his most frequent victims. They no sooner felt an interest in the telling of their fortune than the ceiling opened and poured forth rain; thunder-claps followed in quick succession, preceded by appropriate lightning; and, as the air grew colder, snow fell. Taking refuge from the storm, the patient entered a dangerous shelter above a pitfall leading into a sack of feathers, from which escape at last was permitted.

The castle of Hesdin was full of tricks of this description. Besides the pitfalls just described, there was in the great gallery a bridge which dropped saunterers into the water. In various places there were engines which spouted water when they were touched. Six figures stood in the hall spouting water, and wetting people in various ways. At the entrance of a gallery were eight water-jets rushing upwards, which wetted people passing, and three small pipes were so fixed close by as to cover them with flour. If the panic-stricken victims rushed up to a window and opened it, up came a figure wetting them, and closing the frame. If a splendid missal on a desk caught a curious eye, the person who went up to it was either covered with soot or dirt. A mirror close at hand betrayed the trick; but whilst the victim wondered at the blackness of his face, out rushed a flour-dredger that made him white.

The most elaborate of all these tricks was one combining almost every species of deception. A figure of a man was made to start in the great gallery, frightening people by talking or crying. At the noise, the loungers in other rooms rushed in, upon which a number of figures, armed with sticks, came forth, driving every one pellmell to the bridge, where they fell, of course, into the

water.

Such were the rude and practical pastimes of our regal forefathers of the fifteenth century.

Colart le Voleur was the author of all these mechanical jokes, for which the Duke requited him with a sum of a thousand livres. He, together with Hue de Boulogne, however, was generally employed in painting banners and pen

nons.

The name of Colart le Voleur disappears from the

ducal records in 1443, and Hue de Boulogne died in 1449; when his son, Jehan de Boulogne, succeeded him as "paintre" and "varlet de chambre." But the post of governor of Hesdin was given to Pierre Coustain, who took the title of "paintre des princes," and appears upon the register of the Corporation of St. Luke, under that name, in 1450.

Pierre Coustain and Jâcques Hennecart were "paintres de M. D. S.," and managers of the "entremetz" at Bruges, when Charles the Rash was married, in 1468.1 Olivier de la Marche has given us a glowing account of these "entremetz," which startled lords and ladies by their cumbrous mechanism. His enthusiastic pen describes the famous lions who roared so well, without hurting the company, and the beauteous shepherdess who turned her compliment so elegantly to the new princess; but he forgets the arts, and despises pictures. He recollected upwards of ten "histories" in the streets that led to Charles's palace; but their subjects had escaped him, with the exception of two representing Eve and Adam in Paradise, and the Marriage of (1) Alexander and Cleopatra. He tells us of two figures painted as supporters to the arms of Burgundy-one St. Andrew, and the next St. George ; but mentions no pictorial work produced by any of the painters present at that time as being worthy of record or admiration.2 Van der Goes, we know, was one of these, and his well-known talents might have elicited something worthy of remark; but silence reigns upon that point. It seems that Tournay, Gand, Yprès,

1 See, for all these court painters, De Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, ut sup., vols. i. and ii.

2 Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, 8o, Gand. 1566, p. 524.

Cambrai, Arras, Douai, Valenciennes, Louvain, Antwerp, Brussels, Bois le Duc, Dordrecht, Gorcum, each furnished painters, sculptors, or workmen for the occasion. One Amand Regnault was paid 10 sols per diem for running to Ghent, to Audenarde, and other "good towns," in search of the best workmen in the country-" painters as well as others." Jacques Daret, master-painter of Tournay, leader of other painters, is one of those who received the highest pay, having had for sixteen days' work, at the "entremetz," 27 sols per diem. The pay others varied from 6 to 24 sols, and more; the wages being paid according to a tariff made out for the occasion by the elders and juries of the corporation of painters in Bruges. Out of a list of upwards of three hundred thus employed and paid, but a few are remembered at this day except Van der Goes; of him no notice has been taken by De la Marche.

of

The earlier painters of Haarlem are almost as unknown as those whom De la Marche omitted to record. Franz Mostert, who lived in Haarlem in 1550, was ignorant of the artists who first practised there; and it is only to Van Mander that we owe the preservation of the names of Albert Van Ouwater and Gerard of St. John. Albert Van Ouwater was the author of an altar-piece in the chapel of the Romans of Haarlem Cathedral, founded by the pilgrims to St. Peter's. The subject of the altarpiece was illustrative of the founders, and represented pilgrims, in a landscape, in the various stages of their

1 Reiffenberg, ut sup., Appendix. De Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, ut sup.

2 Van Mander, p. 206.