1. ADORATION OF THE LAMB (center panel), GHENT, H. and J. van Eyck

2. DESCENT FROM THE CROSS, THE ESCORIAL, PROVINCE OF MADRID, SPAIN

Roger van der Weyden

PLATE 99

2. THE HARVESTERS, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, Pieter Bruegel, the Elder.

PLATE 100

Germany and Spain as well, took on his characteristics. Even in Italy where he travelled in 1450, his influence made itself felt, as did also that of his younger contemporary, Hugo van der Goes representing similar traits, and that of his pupil Memling in whose work sweetness and elegance take the place of the poignancy of his master's expression.

The mixture of realism and compassion that Roger exemplified is found pretty generally throughout the course of Flemish painting from its beginning to the time that it was transformed by the ideals of the Italian Renaissance. Its evolutions can be traced in the work of the painters mentioned above and in that of Thierry Bouts, Gerard David, Massys, Bosch (who brought humor, fantasy and buffoonery into the tradition) down to Pieter Bruegel who was the connecting link between medieval painting, the purpose of which was the edification of the onlooker, and modern painting which pleases or interests without moral suggestions. (Pl. 100: 2.) Bruegel was the starting point of Teniers, Brouwer and the whole Dutch art of the seventeenth century.

At about 1475 the school of Cologne had come to its end. Three or four generations of artists in that city had painted. the same subjects, sweet saints and angels worshipping an ever mild Virgin and Child. The German genius, earnest and vehement, found a fitter outlet in the Flemish style and by the end of the fifteenth century, all of German painting was an offshoot of that art. Martin Schongauer was a follower of Roger van der Weyden. His greatest activity was engraving, in which branch the German artists excelled and by means of which their work came within reach of the middle classes, then rapidly growing in intelligence and importance. Matthias Grünewald of Colmar, the most ecstatic and uncouth of painters, was a disciple of Schongauer. (Pl. 100: 1.) In Nuremberg worked an important local school which produced Albert Dürer. Hans Holbein came out of Augsburg; lesser

people were painting in many cities. All expressed the national characteristics in a style founded on that of the Low Countries.

Of the two greatest German artists Holbein was in good part the product of the Italian Renaissance (which in the course of commerce had early spread to Augsburg, his native town), though the foundation of his art was German and Flemish. His assimilation of Southern influence is shown in the elegance of his outlook in his historical compositions as well as in his marvellous portraits than which none so exact had been painted since the work of JanVan Eyck. (Pl. 101: 1.)

of

Dürer, a generation older than Holbein and of a more remote locality, accepted Italian teaching to a less degree and remains the most typical and the greatest of German artists. He combined, however, with the mystical and didactic spirit of Gothic times the curiosity and the self-confidence of the Renaissance. He was an engraver — perhaps the greatest engravers and his manner of painting shows the impress of that art. Strength, intensity and imagination are his great qualities. In the Four Evangelists (Pl. 101: 2) the earnest and uncompromising attitude of the young Reformation is manifest.

The main difference between the character of the art of the North and of Italy should by now be apprehended. Italian art displays the "Classical spirit" - measure, restraint, good manners. When the art of the North became free of the direction of the theologians in the fourteenth century, it had no tradition of balanced values to fall back upon. Expression, not beauty was its aim. If one compares the Crucifixion by Grünewald (Pl. 100: 1) with the same subject by Fra Angelico (Pl. 102 : 2) the difference between the two points of view becomes at once plain. Fra Angelico expresses the grandeur of sorrow. Christ is divine; a noble group shows Mary swooning, upheld by St. John, Martha and Mary Magdalen; two or three of the saints bow their heads or cover their eyes, but most of the onlookers seem to be meditating rather than to

be the spectators of an execution. The three crosses tower high in the picture and the low level horizon induces a feeling of tranquility. Grünewald on the other hand tears passion to tatters. He also treats his subject as a mystery but the expression is pushed to the point of caricature. The central figure is one of fascination and horror, a gigantic, livid corpse; the gaunt St. John the Baptist points out the fulfillment of his prophecy. The Virgin in a frenzy of agony faints in the arms of a delirious St. John Evangelist, and the background is murky night and the swift flowing river of Jordan. These two pictures1 typify the great tendencies that have formed later phases of European art, the realistic and expressive qualities on the one hand and the search for a balance of all qualities on the other.

V.

RENAISSANCE

In the time we now take up, the early fifteenth century namely, Italian art was evolving its own version of the new naturalistic, worldly spirit in a style founded upon the arts of antiquity. Italy had passed out of the medieval stage; its people had developed to a point where its ancient culture could be appreciated. This was the beginning of the Renaissance (or Rebirth), a term applied to the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries in Italy and in the rest of Europe to the sixteenth when its principles became general. The life of this world then took the place of the eternal life in men's thoughts; the philosophers of antiquity became the guides instead of the Church Fathers; the Pagan ideal struggled with the Christian ideal, and choice minds of the time tried to reconcile these contradictory points of view. Medieval collectivism was displaced by individualism and from this time on, the histories of individual artists occupy a more important place than heretofore.

1Of course they are extreme examples. No other artist anywhere is as strident as Grünewald and Fra Angelico is closer to the calm, symbolical idea of the earlier time than to the naturalists with whom he belongs in date.