olour are everywhere most wonderful. There
may be acres of rich purple where the bugloss hides the grass, or of
brilliant yellow where the large golden daisies grow thickly together,
or of sky-blue where the convolvulus has smothered a field of oats.

PAINTING IN PORTUGAL.[5]

From various causes Portugal is far less rich in buildings of interest
than is Spain. The earthquake has destroyed many, but more have perished
through tasteless rebuilding during the eighteenth century when the
country again regained a small part of the trade and wealth lost during
the Spanish usurpation.

But if this is true of architecture, it is far more true of painting.
During the most flourishing period of Spanish painting, the age of
Velasquez and of Murillo, Portugal was, before 1640, a despised part of
the kingdom, treated as a conquered province, while after the rebellion
the long struggle, which lasted for twenty-eight years, was enough to
prevent any of the arts from flourishing. Besides, many good pictures
which once adorned the royal palaces of Portugal were carried off to
Madrid by Philip or his successors.

And yet there are scattered about the country not a few paintings of
considerable merit. Most of them have been terribly neglected, are very
dirty, or hang where they can scarcely be seen, while little is really
known about their painters.

From the time of Dom Joao I., whose daughter, Isabel, married Duke
Philip early in the fifteenth century, the two courts of Portugal and of
Burgundy had been closely united. Isabel sent an alabaster monument for
the tomb of her father's great friend and companion, the Holy Constable,
and one of bronze for that of her eldest brother; while as a member of
the embassy which came to demand her hand, was J. van Eyck himself.
However, if he painted anything in Portugal, it has now vanished.

There was also a great deal of trade with Antwerp where the Portuguese
merchants had a _lonja_ or exchange as early as 1386, and where a
factory was established in 1503. With the heads of this factory,
Francisco Brandao and Rodrigo Ruy de Almada, Albert Duerer was on
friendly terms, sending them etchings and paintings in return for wine
and southern rarities. He also drew the portrait of Damiao de Goes, Dom
Manoel's friend and chronicler.

It is natural enough, therefore, that Flanders should have had a great
influence on Portuguese painting, and indeed practically all the
pictures in the country are