the history, the principles, the motives, the methods of that mode of art which expresses itself in pictorial form are involved in more error and misrepresentation than happens in the case of any of its allies. for this the nineteenth century, and particularly the teutonic nineteenth century, with its inability to understand art in any form save that of music, is chiefly responsible. every effort has been made to isolate it as an independent form of art, to confine it to “easel painting” on panel or canvas, or to wall decorations conceived after the same fashion and on the same lines, to reduce it to certain schools and individuals and localities; in a word, to make it a highly specialised form of personal expression, like lyric poetry or theological heresy. this is to miss its essential character and deny its primary function.

painting is the use of colour and the composition of lines and forms for sheer joy in this{220} particular kind of beauty; for the honouring of the most honourable things; for the stimulating of high and fine human emotion; for the symbolical (and therefore sacramental) expression of spiritual adventures and experiences that so far transcend the limitations of the material that they are not susceptible of intellectual manifestation. painting is primarily and in its highest estate an ally and an aid of architecture, as are also sculpture and (in a less intimate degree) music, poetry, and the drama, all working together for the building up, under the inspiration of religion, of a great stimulus and a great expression. as a thing by itself it fails of half its power, but, like all the arts, it can be used in this way, though indifferently and only within certain limitations. to say, therefore, that painting as an art began with giotto or cimabue or duccio, is absurd; there was great painting long before them, and some of it reached heights even they could not attain. of course most of it is gone, vanishing with the destroyed or remodelled buildings, where it worked intimately with architecture, scraped off by “restorers,” whitewashed by iconoclasts, done over by easel painters, so it is hard to judge it justly, but a few fragments remain in france and italy{221} that give some idea of its original power and beauty.

similarly, illumination is not a handicraft or an industrial art; it was frequently great art of a very distinguished quality, and so was the painting of carving and sculpture, an art not disdained by the van eycks themselves. from the earliest beginnings of the middle ages there was great painting, and the duccios and massaccios and memlings only added to it certain different, and not always admirable, qualities, while devising novel methods that made possible novel modes of expression.

and here enters another misconception that has done much harm: the van eycks did not invent oil painting, if by the phrase is meant the oil painting of the nineteenth century. this, the use of mechanically ground pigments already mixed with an oil medium, is a trick hardly more than a century old, and is a time-saving device for the obtaining (which it does not succeed in doing), at the least expenditure of time and thought, of the effects originally produced by the old method that held from the time of hubert van eyck down to that of sir joshua reynolds. this old method consisted in dividing the work of a painter into{222} three stages—drawing, modelling, colouring—each of which had to be done laboriously and to perfection. after the picture had been drawn completely and in every detail it was modelled in a thick underpainting of impasto with its varied reliefs and textures, and then the colour was applied; successive coats of transparent pigment, one imposed on the other, each being allowed to dry before the next was put on. the result was, amongst other things, that depth, resonance, and transparency of colour that mark the great painting of the past and are absolutely unobtainable by the use of the opaque and muddy pigments squeezed out of collapsible tubes. in this earlier method there was no short road to success; a painter could not sweep in his broad masses of paint with a few masterly strokes, masking his lack of proficiency in drawing by daring and theatrical brush work, and making amends for his opaque and unbeautiful colour by a stunning exhibition of a delusive chiaro-oscuro. everything was built up laboriously and conscientiously; it was consummate craftsmanship, with much in common with stained glass, orfèverie, and even with architecture. no wonder a painter’s training frequently began with a goldsmith; it demanded the most exquisite and conscientious craft{223} and there was no substitute that a public trained in eye and quick in appreciation could be induced to accept. temperament was no excuse for incapacity; daring brush work made no amends for lack of competence; for once painting was on a par with the other arts, and a painter was as much a master of craft, and as rigidly held to its highest standards, as a musician or a master builder.

of course there always had been fresco-painting, and here the method was quite different, for the colour had to be applied swiftly and once for all to the wet plaster. here the technique was direct and instantaneous, quite unlike that of panel painting, and though it was no more adaptable to the vagaries of temperamental expression, it opened up new possibilities of which painters were always trying to take advantage. giotto himself, being the greatest master of this particular mode, was always working along these lines, and later velasquez combined them with the possibilities inherent in the development of underpainting as a thing final in itself, without the laborious and studied glazing of successive coats of pure colour.

the art of painting was never a rigid and immobile system; every painter was striving for{224} new methods and new developments, and frequently finding them; in the end, as the old artistic sense died away, virtuosity took its place, and this found its opportunity through the elimination of all the old elements of craftsmanship and a development of the qualities of breadth and swiftness inherent in fresco-painting, together with the dash and bravura that offered themselves through the clever manipulation of the thick and solid and suave material of the old underpainting. in a word, the tendency was toward combining drawing, modelling, and colour in one process, obtaining final effects in one operation; and while this meant a possible slouching of drawing, a substitution of surprise and bravado for consistent modelling, a loss of all depth and resonance of colour, and the putting of a premium on such quite unimportant (and sometimes vicious) matters as dashing brush work, it must be admitted it did permit “temperament” to express itself with a swiftness and mobility impossible before, granting always that this is desirable.

now in the working of this revolution the van eycks had no part whatever. they did not invent “oil painting” or anything like it. they{225} were the greatest painter-craftsmen ever known, and they and the generations that followed them in flanders and italy held faithfully to the old threefold mode of operation until tintoretto, velasquez, and rubens began to merge the three in one and to lay the foundations for the present lamentable subterfuges of the salon and the royal academy. what they did do was this: until hubert’s time every painter had been searching for some medium which would not mitigate the perfect transparency of their hand-ground colours and would dry quickly. all kinds of viscous things had been employed—white of egg, fig juice, and other less seemly media—but none was wholly satisfactory. oil was the natural thing, but oil was an unconscionable time in drying. hubert van eyck found some oil medium (or varnish) that dried quickly and this at once became the universal medium. it was a great discovery and a great boon, but it had nothing whatever to do with “oil painting,” which did not actually come into existence until the dark days of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, therefore the skirts of the van eycks are clear and we can absolve them of all responsibility.{226}

there never was a school of such consummate craftsmanship as this of flanders. the van eycks, memling, van der weyden were the most perfectly trained, the most comprehensively competent, and the most conscientiously laborious artists ever known; also they understood drawing, composition, and lighting as no others ever did, while their sense of beauty of colour, either in itself or in subtle and splendid combinations, was unique. they were not portents, sudden meteors shooting across a dark sky, they simply continued and developed a long and glorious tradition. long before them the monasteries had been producing great art of every kind—frescos, illuminations, stained glass, embroidery, painted sculpture—and it was all art of the greatest. when hubert painted the “adoration of the lamb,” he merely gathered together all these arts and manifested his enormous and astounding synthesis in concentrated form, and better than any one had ever done before. all the intricate delicacy of jewel work, all the vivacity of clean-cut sculpture, all the suavity of silken needlework, all the flaming splendour of stained glass are brought together here in one astonishing combination, and to this era-making synthesis is added the living light and the human appeal of the poignant beauty of the world, and the transcendent magic of the supernatural, sacramentally and visibly set forth.

this, which very well may be the greatest picture in the world (it does not matter), was ordered from hubert van eyck when he was nearly fifty years old, he having been born about 1366 in the province of limbourg and coming of a long line of painters. it was ordered by jodocus vydts, a worthy burgher of ghent, as an altar-piece for a chapel he had built and endowed (according to the pious and admirable practice of those good catholic times) in the cathedral of st. bavon. for ten years he worked at his masterpiece, and then death overtook him in the year 1426, when his work was only partly finished, when his brother, jan, took it up and brought it to a triumphant conclusion in 1432. it is a great triptych of twenty-two painted panels and its preservation has been nothing short of miraculous. philip ii tried to carry it off in 1558, the protestants to destroy it in 1566, and the calvinists to give it away to queen elizabeth in 1578. it was nearly destroyed by fire in 1641, dismembered and packed away in 1781, carried off (parts of it) to paris in 1794. in 1816 most of the wings were{228} sold to a shrewd dealer for $20,000 and by him to the berlin museum for $80,000; finally the adam and eve panels were taken to the brussels museum, and a set of copies attached to the mutilated remainder in the cathedral of st. bavon.

the work is one vast, comprehensive, and sacramental manifestation of the central catholic sacrament of the mass, searching and final in its symbolism, consummate in its mastery of all the elements that enter into the make-up of a great work of pictorial and decorative art, unapproached and unapproachable in its splendour of living and radiant colour. in its philosophical grasp, its technical perfection, its unearthly beauty, its communication of the very essence of a fundamental mystery, and in its evocative power it staggers the imagination and takes its place amongst the few great works of man, in any category, which are so far beyond what seems possible of achievement that they rank as definitely superhuman. so far as its spiritual content is concerned, it can no more be estimated than can the mass itself, or paraphrased in words than chartres cathedral or a brahms symphony or the venus of melos. if the van eycks are responsible for this, they rank with st. thomas aquinas and{229} shakespeare and leonardo da vinci as the greatest creative forces amongst men. of course they were not, nor the others, named. somehow each was used by something greater than he: the concentrated consciousness of his fellows, the underlying and informing time-spirit of an era—or why not god himself?—as a channel through which and by which absolute truth was communicated to man who, of his own motion, can do much, but not so much as this.

for the consummate artistry, for the perfect sense of decoration and composition, the keen and exquisite line, the perception and recording of diversified character, the poignant love of all natural beauty and corresponding rejection of all ugliness, for the technique which is that of a master in the fashioning of precious metals and the cutting of priceless gems, for the colour that is now resonant with all the deep splendour of great music, now thin and aerial with all the delicacy of far horizons and misty forests at some pale dawn in a land of dreams—for all these things we may remember hubert van eyck and his brother jan, for this is their work, but beyond this we go elsewhere, at least as far as the mass itself, for the inspiration that has made this flemish triptych{230} one of the great, revealing creations of the world.

the infinite variety of conception and rendition simply transcend experience. the three great, dominating figures—god the father, our lady, and st. john baptist—are of a byzantine majesty transfused by a passionate humanism that is almost unique in any form. from them you pass to the central panel of the “worship of the lamb that was slain,” which is as tender and personal and human as the best of fra angelico, and, like his clear visions, irradiated by a kind of paradisal glory that sets it in a heaven of its own; from this you go to the panels of singing angels and splendid attendant knights and marching pilgrims that are pages out of the daily record of life in proud and beautiful bruges, and finally you come to the adam and eve who are sheer, unadulterated realism unapproachable in its minute veracity. surely, these two men were a type of the universal genius. they balked at nothing and found nothing too difficult of accomplishment, simply because they were perfectly trained and broadly accomplished craftsmen who knew that theirs was an exacting and a jealous craft for which “temperament”—artistic or otherwise—was not, and could not be made, a substitute.{231}

it is with a feeling almost of relief that we come down nearer the earth and confront the masterpieces of jan van eyck. with hubert we are taken into a kind of seventh heaven of mystical revelation; with his brother and those that follow we come back to what is more human, more in scale with experience. great art still, as great as one can find elsewhere, and with all the mastery of methods, all the confident certainty, all the triumphant colour and the exquisite design and the faultless craftsmanship of the painted “beatific vision” itself. there once were many other pictures by hubert van eyck, but all now are gone, destroyed by the savage hands of calvinists and revolutionaries, and the “adoration of the lamb” remains alone as an isolated miracle.

jan was of another sort; equally great as a craftsman, he was a fine gentleman, a courtier, the friend of princes, and a diplomat. in those barbarous days before the culmination of the era of enlightenment, art was not a cult, isolated from life, nor were artists a sort of creature apart, made so by the possession of a then undiscovered and quite pathological affliction called the “artistic temperament.” they were good citizens and an{232} integral part of a like-minded community, serving their kind after many fashions, amongst them being the honourable and admirable craft of art. of this craft jan was past master; he painted statues and illuminated missals and fashioned stained glass; he created great altar-pieces and produced living portraits of old ecclesiastics and worthy burghers and their wives; for all i know he was an architect as well—at all events he might have been, as is proved by the wonderful drawing of st. barbara with its background of a great gothic tower under construction. a thoroughly typical example of his painting is the st. donatian altar-piece, a votive picture ordered by the excellent old canon van der paele, who is shown in adoration before our lady and the holy child and attended by st. donatian himself and st. george. mr. berenson could find no finer example than this of that “space composition” on which he rightly lays such stress; holbein could paint no more exact and characteristic portraits; all the goldsmiths of byzantium could not rival the jewel work of armour and orphreys, brocades and embroideries, and sculptures and inlays, while the colour, both in its individual parts and its composition, comes nearer the living light of the windows of chartres than any other painted colour in the world. one would like to hang this particular picture (for a time only, then replacing it over an altar where alone it belongs) in the midst of a “rubens gallery,” or a room in the luxembourg or the royal academy, and call all the world to see.

there is little enough left of jan’s work, and for the same humiliating reason that holds in the case of his brother. of hans memling, another wonder child, there is fortunately much. when one catalogues the list of this earliest and greatest work in flanders and recalls the wrecking with axe and torch of cathedrals, abbeys, convents, hospitals, chateaux by calvinists and sans-culottes; the pyres of smouldering pictures, the ditches filled up with pulverised glass, shattered statues, illuminated missals and graduales and books of hours; the sacred vessels and gorgeous vestments, such as hubert and jan, hans and gerard showed in their pictures, despoiled of their splendid jewels (transferred for a consideration to hebrew brokers) and melted down or used for chair covers, as the case may be; and when in this lurid light one weighs the thick hides and the muddled brains and the shrivelled souls{234} of the wreckers against even the mere artistic value of their spoils, one marvels still more at the wonders of scientific evolution and the promises of evolutionary philosophy.

memling is the third of the great trio of flemings, and though there were innumerable others whose art was near perfection, these three stand for ever by themselves apart. there is more of human tenderness in his work and a certain spiritualisation informing everything that gives a different quality; the portraiture and differentiation of character are possibly beyond what any other ever attained, but his composition as it gains in complexity and facile ease loses something of that broad and powerful directness, that supreme quality of rhythm and serenity that marked the van eycks. the colour also is less invariably sonorous, less pure and splendid and luminous both in its single tones and its harmonies, while now and then the universal flemish passion for sumptuous stuffs and gorgeous patterns and glittering accessories betrays him into a loss of unity and balance. still, any criticism is impudent; his st. ursula series, his st. john baptist, his st. bertin and floreins and moreel altar-pieces are amongst the greatest pictures that have been painted, while his portraits are pure life expressed through the terms of pure beauty.

it would be impossible to review all the work of all the great flemings. driven by the same impulse, each gave his own personality to all he did, and the sequence is as astonishing as it is priceless. gerard, david, roger van der weyden, quentin metsys, dierick bouts, lucas cranach, as well as numberless unknown whose work survives their contemporary fame, all reached their several heights of attainment on their own individual lines, and their pictures still remain in bruges and ghent, in brussels and antwerp (or remain to-day, in august, 1915) to bear witness to the full and vigorous life, the wholesome and happy religious devotion, the astonishing physical beauty of flemish environment of those last years of the fifteenth century in europe when the fair day of medi?valism came to its golden close.

between this whole-souled art of the middle ages and that of the renaissance came an intervening group that served to effect the necessary modulation from one key to quite another. mabeuse, van orley, the younger porbus, and the breughels are the chief representatives and through{236} them one sees the old and masculine qualities dying away, the new and alien elements from the south entering in to take possession. when this transition was effected it was in holland that it found its opportunity, and as the dutch provinces are outside our consideration we need not consider here the products of a school that ranged in quality from rubens to rembrandt, from frans hals to vermeer of delft. the succession was broken, the torch (with whatever flame that remained) was passed from the flemings to the dutch, and only vandyck appeared in the line of true flemish descent to demonstrate the possibilities that still remained in spite of rubens (and at the hands of his own pupil) for the development of a restrained and self-respecting and beautiful art, even though the moving spirit had been dissolved and the great tradition become no more than a memory. the great period of medi?val painting (for it was this in spirit and in truth) had begun and ended in this cor cordium, this flemish concentration of the heart of europe. it had begun with the monkish illuminations of the fourteenth century, culminated in the great century from 1395, when hubert van eyck began to paint, to 1494, when memling died, and

slowly disappeared under the influence of the renaissance, the reformation, and the spanish oppression; by the year 1600 it had ceased to exist, and the renaissance, which had established itself in all secular and ecclesiastical matters, now took over art also for the purpose of developing its own exact expression. the five centuries of catholic civilisation had come to an end.