During the next fifty years many and beautiful were the pictures
produced throughout Flanders. All of them have a jewel-like brilliance
of colour, approaching in brightness the hues of the Richard II.
diptych. The landscape backgrounds are charming miniatures of towns
by the side of rivers with spanning bridges. The painting of textures
is exquisite. But the Flemish face, placid, plump, and fair-haired,
prevails throughout. In the pictures of Paradise, where the saints
and angels play with the Infant Christ, we still feel chained to the
earth, because the figures and faces are the unidealized images of
those one might have met in the streets of Bruges and Ghent. This is
not a criticism on the artists. The merit of their work is unchallenged;
and how could they paint physical beauty by them scarce ever seen?
Yet when all has been said in praise of the Flemish School, the brothers
Van Eyck, the founders of it, remain its greatest representatives,
and their work is still regarded with that high and almost universal
veneration which is the tribute of the greatest achievement.




CHAPTER V

THE RENAISSANCE


Who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and
steadily? Does he not look absorbed in his book? Certainly the peacock,
the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is
still another animal in the distance--a lion! Can you see him? He is
walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted
as though it were hurt. The story is that this particular lion limped
into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other
monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion's fore-paw was hurt.
He raised it up, found what was the matter, and pulled out the thorn;
and ever afterwards the lion lived peacefully in the monastery with
him. Now, whenever you see a lion in a picture with an old monk, him
you will know to be St. Jerome. He was a learned Christian father who
lived some fifteen hundred years ago, yet his works are still read,
spoken, and heard every day throughout the world. He it was who made
the standard Latin version of the Scriptures. The services in Roman
Catholic churches in all countries are held in Latin to this day, and
St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, is the
version still in use.

Here you see St. Jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading
to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is!
You must go to the National Gallery to enjoy all the details, for the
original painting is only 18 inches high by 14 inches broad, and the
books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost
in this beautiful photograph. The study is really a part of a monastery
assigned to St. Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such
possessions. He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel
to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. He has taken
off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.

The painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy
idea of St. Jerome. Others have sometimes painted him as they thought
he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years.
But at the time this picture was painted, about the year 1470, St.
Jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than St.
Jerome in the desert. One reason of this was that in Italy, in the
latter half of the fifteenth century, St. Jerome was considered the
patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of
the Roman Empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people
of the day.

[Illustration: ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY
From the picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery,
London]

Of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of
learning in the fifteenth century, which started in Italy, spread
northward, and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII. Before the
fifteenth century, Italians seem to have been indifferent to the
monuments around them of ancient civilization. Suddenly they were
fired with a passion for antiquity. They learnt Greek and began to
take a keen interest in the doings of the Greeks and Romans, who in
many ways had lived a life so far superior to their own. Artists studied
the old statues, which taught them the beauty of the human figure.
The reacquired wisdom of the ancients by degrees broke down the
medieval barriers. There was born a spirit of enterprise into the world
of thought as well as into the world of fact, which revolutionized
life and art. The period which witnessed this great mental change is
well known as the Renaissance or 'rebirth.'

When you first looked at this picture you must have thought it very
different from the two earlier ones. Such a subject could only have
been painted thus in an age when men admired the scholar's life. Though
the figure is called that of St. Jerome, there is really nothing
typically saintly about him; he is only serious. The subjects chosen
by painters of the Renaissance were no longer almost solely religious,
but began to be selected from the world of everyday life; even when
the subject was taken from Christian legend, it was now generally
treated as an event happening in the actual world of the painter's
own day.

The manner in which this picture is painted is still more suggestive
of change than the subject itself. Our artist knew a great deal about
the new science of perspective, for instance. One might almost think
that, pleased with his new knowledge, he had multiplied the number