other artists of Northern Italy, which appear to have been executed with a medium but little dissimilar in body and surface. As regards the use of a coloured varnish by Broederlain, the fact appears to admit of no doubt. The partial flaying which the panels have undergone has laid bare large spaces where the old varnish has disappeared. Wherever this has occurred, the colour is pale and grey; so that, according as the parts are in a better or worse state of preservation, the picture is more or less powerful in tone. This use of coloured varnishes in the pictures of the early Flemish school, and the effect which their removal produced on pictures, explain, to a certain extent, why we possess so many old pictures of the period strikingly cold and grey in tone. Nothing is more likely than that, in the process of cleaning, the varnish which acted as glazing has been removed, and the colours have been changed from the tone which they were originally intended to possess.

A few sentences will close this record of the painters who immediately preceded Hubert, John, and Margaret Van Eyck.

Whilst Broederlain contributed to the pictorial riches of the Carthusians of Dijon, Jehan Malouel was busily employed in the adornment of its walls.

Jehan Malouel appears to have been a colourist of sculpture rather than a painter. We have said that he failed in the shrines of De la Baerse. He seems, however, to have succeeded better with other works. He coloured and gilt five wooden altar-pieces for the Carthusians of Dijon: he composed a wooden picture of the Virgin, with St. John, St. Peter, and St. Anthony, and he

We

ornamented a quantity of jousting harness for a tilt. He performed these minor services in the lifetime of the first of the French dukes, and was assisted in his labours by a painter named Hermann of Cologne.' On the succession of John to the ducal crown he was promoted, and figures in the lists as "paintre de M. D. S. et varlet de chambre," his salary being twenty livres a month. find him at Paris and Compiègne in 1406, painting tilting harness for John the Duke,3 and in the following year again in Burgundy, and at his labours in the convent near Dijon. He had the honour, in 1415, of painting his master's likeness, which was sent by special messenger to the King of Portugal." Jehan Malouel then disappears from the ducal accounts, and is succeeded by Henry Bellechose de Brabant, Jehan le Voleur, and Hue de Boulogne, of whom we shall treat hereafter.

4

1 De Laborde. Table Alphabet, vol. iii. pp. 551, 565.

2" A Jehan Malouel, paintre et varlet de chambre de M. S. le Duc, III.XL livres qui deuz lui estoient pour ses gaiges de XX livres par mois. III.XL liv."-Compte de Robert de Bailleux, 14111412. De Labord. ut sup., vol. i. p. 23-4.

3" A Jehan Malouel, paintre et varlet de M. D. S. auquel M. D. S. en récompense de ce qu'il avait demeuré devers lui à ses frais et despens tant à Paris comme à Compiègne par l'espace de cinq mois, commenciés au mois d'avril MCCCC et six, et finis continuellement, tant pour aider à faire plusieurs harnois de joustes pour le dit seigneur et aucuns de ses gens, pour jouster à la feste des nopces de M. S. le Duc de Thouraine, et de M. S. le Conte d'Angoulesme, nagaires faictes audit Compiègne, comme pour plusieurs autres choses de son mestier que M. D. S. lui fit faire, la somme de XL. escus d'or."-Compte de J. Chousat. De Lab. ut sup., vol. i. p. 17.

4 Comptes de Jean de Noident, 1407. De Salles, ut sup. p. 161. 5 Comptes de Jean de Noident, 1415. De Salles, ut sup., pp. 137-8.

CHAPTER II.

HUBERT VAN EYCK.

JEAN SANS PEUR, who succeeded his father in the Duchy of Burgundy, did not inherit the sentiment of art for which that prince was famous. He sold costly miniatures and gold and silver statues to pay his debts, and found no lack of a better painter at his court than Jean Malouel, whose abilities were not of a high order, and whose labours never rose in character above the most ordinary level. Pride, and perhaps some filial affection, led Jean Sans Peur to order that a suitable monument should be raised to his father's memory, and the sculptors, Claux de Vernes and Claux Sluter, produced a tomb which for many years remained in the Chartreuse of Dijon. A glance at the numerous figures which decorate this monument will convince even the superficial observer that, however well the sculptors may have understood the picturesque in the general features of their work, they were worthy of less notice as artists of feeling and sentiment. Their figures express, in most instances, physical suffering, intended for gravity or melancholy. Short and overclad bodies are defective in attitude, and questionable taste pervades the subject generally. Art in such hands as these, or under such patronage as that of Jean Sans Peur,

could scarcely be said to progress. It remained, indeed, almost stationary at Bruges and in Burgundy; whilst far away, in the Pays de Liège and in the republican town of Ghent, it flourished among the Van Eycks.

The family of Van Eyck had its origin in the Duchy of Limburg, on the banks of the Meuse, where numerous cities, free and powerful like those of Flanders, prospered and increased. It arose and progressed there, deriving vigour and experience from the earlier efforts of miniature. painters and illuminators. As far back as the fifteenth century, the Duchy of Limburg sent forth to foreign lands men whose names are preserved in the annals of art, and whose fame inspired the following verses to a contemporary chronicler :—

"Es hætte kein Maler zu Koln oder Mastricht,

(So gibt die Aventure bericht,)

Eine Kriegergestalt gemalt so schoen,

Als der Knap zu Ross war anzusehn." 1

One of these men was Pol van Limburg, who, in company of his two brothers, entered the service of John, Duke of Berry, a prince whose fame reposes upon his patronage of art and literature, and who, favoured by the countenance of Charles the VIth of France, his brother, rebuilt the palace of Bicêtre, which had previously been the residence of the English bishop of Winchester. manuscript of Josephus at the "Bibliothèque Nationale," in Paris, is filled with miniatures executed by these brethren, and is the sole remaining monument of their

1 Parcival, Ritter Gedicht. By W. von Eschenbach, fol. Augsburg 1477, not paged.—Brit. Mus.

skill.' Hasselt in Limburg was, we believe, the birthplace of Jean de Hasselt, painter and "varlet" of the Count of Flanders; and Liège was that of Hennequin de Liège, who built the tomb of Charles V. at Rouen.2

The family of Van Eyck cannot be traced with certainty higher than Hubert, who first brought it to renown. He was born at Maaseyck in 1366. Probably the oldest members of his line are Joes Van Eyck and Margaret Van den Huutfanghe his wife, whose names were registered in the Guild of Painters at Ghent in 1391.4 Hubert became a member of the fraternity in 1412, and Margaret his sister in 1418.5 Many suppose that Joes and

1 Pol Van Limburg was in the service of Jean de Berry from 1400 to 1416. The inventory of property left at his death by that prince in the latter year is preserved in the Bib. Ste Geneviève in Paris, and contains the following entry: "Folio 267 verso. Item: un livre contrefait d'une pièce de bois peint en semblance d'un livre ou il n'y a nul feuilletz, couverts de veluzan et blanc à deux fermoers d'argent esmaillé aux armes de Monseigneur, lequel livre Pol de Limbourg et ses frères donnèrent à mondit seigneur aux estraines mil CCCC. et dix. Pris. XL. 1. parisis." "Item, une layette, plusieurs cayers d'une trés riche heures que faisait Pol et ses frères trés richement historiées et enluminées." Pris. Vc. Liv. De Labord. La Renaiss. des Arts. 8vo. Paris 1850, p. 165.

2 De Laborde, les Ducs de Bourg. Mandt. du roi, vol. i. p. xxii. 3 V. Mander. ut sup. p. 199. Van Vaernewyk, Historie van Belgis, fol. Ghendt, 1574, c. 47, p. 119.

⚫ 4 Mr. Goetghebuer, of Ghent, notes the entry as follows: "Vide Carton, Annales de la société d'émulation de Bruges pour l'étude de l'histoire et des antiquités de la Flandre. Tom. v. 2e Serie, Nos. 3, 4, 8vo. Bruges, 1847, p. 325." "Sont inscrits comme confrères: Un Meester Joes Van Hyke, y est admis en 1391, avec sa femme Mergriete van den Huutfanghe."

5 Ibid. p. 268, "Sente Bamesse anno xiiijc. en xij. was Hubrecht Van Eycke, Guldebroeder van Het Onser Vrouwe gulden up de rade van den chore van Sint Jans te Ghend." Ibid. p. 325, "Meester Hubrech Van Hyke y est inscrit sous la date de 1412, et en 1418, sa sœur Mergrieta Van Hyke."