. Stories of the Flemish & Dutch artists, from the time of the Van Eycks to the end of the seventeenth century . e ends of which float behind a black coat he carries a red collar witha medallion. As a whole the work is exceptional and pro-digious for those times, in respect of drawing,attitudes, conception, and the purity and excep-tional finish of the execution. The stuffs aredraped in the manner of Albrecht Dilrer, andthe colours—the blue, red, purple—are unchange-able, and so beautiful that one would say thatthey were in their first freshness, and they carrythe palm over every othe
. Stories of the Flemish & Dutch artists, from the time of the Van Eycks to the end of the seventeenth century . e ends of which float behind a black coat he carries a red collar witha medallion. As a whole the work is exceptional and pro-digious for those times, in respect of drawing,attitudes, conception, and the purity and excep-tional finish of the execution. The stuffs aredraped in the manner of Albrecht Dilrer, andthe colours—the blue, red, purple—are unchange-able, and so beautiful that one would say thatthey were in their first freshness, and they carrythe palm over every other work. The accomplished painter of whom I amtelling was one of the most scrupulous observers,and one might well believe that he had set outpurposely to prove the falsehood of Plinysassertion, that a painter who undertakes to puttogether a considerable number of persons in apicture always makes some of them alike ; becauseit is an impossibility to imitate nature, who ina thousand faces never produces two which areidentical. In the present case there are quitethree hundred figures, and not one of them at. o .s HUBERT & JAN VAN EYCK 13 all resembles another. Besides, the heads give usthe most diverse expressions—divine meditation,love, faith. The Virgin seems to move her lipsand to pronounce the words of the book whichshe is reading. The landscape shows us several exotic trees ;for, as we shall see, Jan had been on a journeyto the South in the course of painting the work,and had seen the cypress and the olive, and hadfelt the heat of southern suns and seen thedeeper blue of their skies. One can tell thenature of each little plant, and the vegetationand the ground are extraordinarily beautiful. Itwould be possible to count the hairs on theheads of the persons and In the manes and thetails of the horses, and it is all done with sucha wonderful transparency that all artists are struckdumb by it; yes, the work in its entirety andcompleteness discourages them. A number of prince
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidcu3192, booksubjectartists
