Before passing to Hubert van Eyck, the painter of the original of our
next picture, please compare carefully the picture of Richard II. and
this of the Three Maries, looking first at one and then at the other.
The subject of the visit of the Maries to the Sepulchre is, of course,
well known to you, but let us read the beautiful passage from St.
Matthew telling of it, that we may see how faithfully in every detail
it was followed by Hubert van Eyck.

In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day
of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the
Sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the Angel
of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone
from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning,
and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did
shake, and became as dead men.

Surely this would be thought a beautiful picture had it been painted
at any time, but when you compare it with the Richard II. diptych does
it not seem to you as though a long era divided the two? Yet one was
painted less than fifty years after the other. It is the attitude of
mind of the painter that makes the difference.

In the diptych, although the portrait of Richard himself was a likeness,
the setting was imaginary and symbolic. The artist wished to tell in
his picture how all the Kings who succeed one another upon the throne
of England alike depend upon the protection of Heaven, and how Richard
in his turn acknowledged that dependence, and pledged his loyalty to
the Blessed Virgin and her Holy Child. That picture was intended to
take the mind of the spectator away from the everyday world and suggest
grave thought, and such was likewise in the main the purpose of all
paintings in the Middle Ages. But we are now leaving the Middle Ages
behind and approaching a new world nearer to our own.

Hubert van Eyck, in attempting to depict the event at the Sepulchre
as it might actually have occurred outside the walls of the City of
Jerusalem, was doing something quite novel in his day. His picture
might almost be called a Bible illustration. It is at least painted
in the same practical spirit as that of a man painting an illustration
for any other book. It is not a picture meant to help one to pray,
or meditate. It does not express any religious idea. It was intended
to be the veracious representation of an actual event, shown as, and
when, and how it happened, true to the facts so far as Hubert knew
them.

[Illustration: THE THREE MARIES
From the picture by Hubert van Eyck, in Sir Frederick Cook's Collection,
Richmond]

He has dressed the Maries in robes with wrought borders of Hebrew
characters, imitated from embroidered stuffs, such as at that time
were imported into Europe from the East. The dresses are not accurate
copies of eastern dresses; Hubert would scarcely have known what those
were like, but was doing his best to paint costumes that should look
oriental. Mary Magdalen wears a turban, and the keeper on the right
has a strange peaked cap with Hebrew letters on it. Hebrew scholars
have done their best to read the inscriptions on these clothes, but
we must infer that Hubert only copied the letters without knowing what
they meant, since it has not been possible to make any sense of them.
In the foreground are masses of flowers most carefully painted, and
so accurately drawn that botanists have been able to identify them
all; several do not grow in the north of Europe. The town at the back
is something like Jerusalem as it looked in Hubert van Eyck's own day.
A few of the buildings can be identified still, and a general view
of Jerusalem taken in 1486, sixty years after the death of Hubert,
bears some resemblance to the town in this picture. The city is painted
in miniature, much as it would look if you saw it from near at hand.
Every tower, house, and window is there. You can even count the
battlements. The great building with the dome in the middle of the
picture, is the Mosque of Omar, which occupies the supposed site of
Solomon's Temple.

Some people have thought that perhaps Hubert van Eyck, and his brother
John, actually went to the East. Many men made pilgrimages in those
days, and almost every year parties of Christian pilgrims went to
Jerusalem. It was a rough and even a dangerous journey, but not at
all impossible for a patient traveller. Dr. Hulin, who has made
wonderful discoveries about the early Flemish painters, found a
mention, in an old sixteenth-century list, of a 'Portrait of a Moorish
King or Prince' by Van Eyck, painted in 1414 or perhaps 1418. If he
painted a portrait of an oriental prince, he may have visited one
oriental country at least, or at any rate the south of Spain. Probably
enough during that journey he made studies of the cypress, stone-pine,
date-palm, olive, orange, and palmetto, which occur in his pictures.
They grow in the south of Spain and other Mediterranean regions, but
not in the cold north where Hubert spent most of his days.

It is difficult at first to realize what an innovation it was for Hubert
van Eyck to paint such a landscape. In the Richard II. diptych there
is just a suggestion of brown earth for the saints to stand upon, but
the rest of the background is of gold, as was the common practice at
the time. The great innovator, Giotto, in some of his pictures had
attempted to paint landscape backgrounds. In his fresco of St. Francis
preaching to the birds there is a tree for them to perch on, but it
seems more like a garden vegetable than a tree. Even his buildings
look as though they might fall together any moment like a pack of cards.
Hubert not only gives landscape a larger place than it ever had in
any great picture before, but he paints it with such skill and apparent
confidence that we should never dream he was doing it almost for the
first time.