with this Roman Catholic land.
Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that
do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of
either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the
Netherlandish unknown mystic masters.

But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him
painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its
decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous
space-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a
scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things
happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in
this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and
you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot,
with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the
Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his
religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the
Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at
the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van
Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He
is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are
prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young
girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold
than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and
without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the
Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy
standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens
as a portraitist and took no odds of him.

Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the
Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and
bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the
Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic
versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick
with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have
had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure
such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his
two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in
Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a
masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, th