insensibility to mysticism in
the picture gallery. There he could study Stephan Lochner's precursor,
Master Wilhelm--the first early German painter whose name is known--and
in this again he found the look of elaborate chubbiness as in the
Dombild. Wilhelm's Virgin was indeed less vulgar than the Virgin of the
cathedral; but in feeling she was equally insipid, over-finished, and
even more simperingly pretty. She was the triumph of delicate pertness,
and had the look of a stage chamber-maid with her hair crimped over her
forehead. And the child, twisted into an unnatural attitude, while he
caressed his Mother's chin, turned his face round to be the better seen.

In short, this Virgin was neither human nor divine; she had not even the
too realistic touch of Lochner, and could, no more than the other, have
been the chosen Mother of God.

It is indeed strange that these very early painters should have begun
where painting as an art ends, in mere finish and smoothness; men who
from the first put sugar in their new wine and betray their lack of
energy, of enthusiasm, of simplicity, while no faith projects itself
from their work. They are the very converse of every other school; for
everywhere else, in Italy, Flanders, Holland, Burgundy, pictures began
by being clumsy and unfinished, barbarous and hard, but at least ardent
and pious!

As he studied the other pictures in this collection, the mass of
anonymous work, the paintings ascribed to the Master of the Lyversberg
Passion, and the Master of the Saint Bartholomew, Durtal came to the
conclusion that the School of Cologne had known nothing of mysticism
till it had felt the influence of the Flemish painters. It had needed a
Van Eyck, and the yet more exquisite Roger van der Weyden, to breathe
the air of Heaven into these craftsmen. They thus had changed their
manner, had imitated the ascetic innocence of the Flemings, had
assimilated their tender piety and simplicity, and, in their turn, had
sung the glory of the Mother and mourned over the sufferings of the Son
in ingenuous hymns.

"This school may be thus summed up," said Durtal. "It is the triumph of
padding and puffing, the apotheosis of fatness and sheen, and this has
nothing to do with Christian art in the true sense of the word.

"If we want to understand the whole personal character of German
religious painting, we must study other schools than this, the only one
ever spoken of, and always with praise. We must turn