interest, with none but probable divisions. Much grace and freedom is
shown in the attitudes of the persons on the shore, and strenuous
effort and despair among the engulfed soldiers. Extreme attention to
detail, the making one part as finished as another, even to the least
detail, is noticeable. The exaggerated patterns of the stuffs
observable in earlier work is absent, and a sense of proportion is
displayed in dress ornament. The free movement of men and beasts, and
the variety of facial expression all show the immense strides made in
drawing and the perfection attained in this brilliant period.

It was a time when the artist perfected the old style and presaged the
new, the years before the Renaissance had left its cradle and marched
over Europe. This perfection of the Gothic ideal has a purity and
simplicity that can never fail to appeal to all who feel that
sincerity is the basic principle of art as it is of character. The
style of Quentin Matsys, of the Van Eycks, was the mode at the end of
the Fifteenth Century and the beginning of the Sixteenth, and after
all this lapse of time it seems to us a sweet and natural expression
of admirable human attributes.

In the new wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
labels of certain exhibits, purchases and loans allude briefly to
"studio of Jean de Rome." It is an allusion which especially interests
us, as our country now holds examples of this atelier which make us
wish to know more about its master. He was a designer in the
marvellous transition period of about 1500, when art trembled between
the restraint of ecclesiastic Gothic and the voluptuous freedom of the
Renaissance; hesitated between the conventions of religion and the
abandonment to luxury, to indulgence of the senses. It is the fashion
to regard periods of transition as times of decadence, of false
standards of hybrid production, but at least they are full of deepest
interest to the student of design who finds in the tremulous dawn of
the new idea a flush which beautifies the last years of the old
method.

[Illustration: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Flemish Tapestry, about 1510. Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan,
Esq., New York]

Attributed to this newly unearthed studio of Jean de Rome hangs a
marvellous tapestry in the new wing alluded to, one which deserves
repeated visits. (Plate facing page 58.) Indeed, to see it once
creates the desire to see it again, so beautiful is it in dr