se delightful
creatures, with their ambiguous smiles and supple grace, have all the
dangerous attraction of wicked angels. They are Ganymedes, borrowed from
mythology, not from the Bible.

"How far we are from God with this paganism of Botticelli's!" said
Durtal to himself. "What a difference between this painter and that
Roger van der Weyden whose Nativity is the glory of one of the adjoining
rooms in that magnificent Old Museum of Berlin!"

Ay, that Nativity!--He had only to turn to his notes to see it plainly
before him.

Painted as a triptych, on the right wing was an old man in front of some
wondering bystanders, burning incense to the Virgin, who is visible
through an open window above a landscape in distant perspective with
avenues undulating to the horizon; while a woman, her head dressed in a
muffler that is almost a turban, touches the old man's shoulder with one
hand and raises the other with an indescribable gesture of surprise and
joy, her face expressive of ecstasy. On the left wing kneel the three
Kings, their hands uplifted, their eyes raised to Heaven, contemplating
an Infant beaming from the heart of a star; nothing can be more
beautiful than these three transfigured faces; and these are praying
with all their heart, never troubling themselves about us.

Still, these two divisions are but accessory to the central subject
which they complement, and which is thus arranged:

In the middle, in front of a sort of ruined palace or columnar cow-shed
without a roof, the Virgin kneels in prayer before the Babe; to the
right the donor, the Chevalier Bladelin, is seen, also kneeling, and on
the left Saint Joseph, holding a lighted taper, gazes down on Jesus.
There are besides six little angels, three below at the door of the
stable and three above in the air. This is the whole scene.

It is noteworthy that the goldsmith's work, the mingled splendour of
Oriental hangings, the brocades hemmed with fur and strewn with gems of
which Van Eyck and Memling made such free use to array their figures of
the Virgin and the donors, are not to be seen in this panel. The
textures are rich and heavy, but have none of the gorgeous colouring of
the silks of Bruges or the carpets of Persia. Roger van der Weyden seems
intentionally to have reduced the whole setting of the scene to its
simplest expression, and yet, while using an unaffectedly sober key of
colour, he has produced a masterpiece of pure and lucid harmony.

Mary