sult, and it was not until towards the end
of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of FRANCISCO
GOYA (1746-1828). Of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of
art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place.
Like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when
there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be
observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face
of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching
it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he
was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten
years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not
the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more
satirical from the necessity for concealment. In his more outspoken
works, such as the _Disasters of War_, and the series of prints called
_Los Caprichos_ and _Tauromachia_, he is too brutal not to affect the
ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. Velasquez
himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and
idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers
of repulsion. Goya, being exactly the opposite of Velasquez in
temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject;
and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the
standard of chastity" required. But between the extremes of brutality
and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting
that nothing can diminish the reputation of Goya, however much it is
likely to be enhanced. To the modern Spanish painter he is probably as
fixed a beacon as Velasquez.

[Illustration: PLATE XX.--MURILLO

A BOY DRINKING

_National Gallery, London_]

_FLEMISH SCHOOL_

I

HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK

In 1383, on the death of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the
Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same
year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a
Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines
within it. To the strong-handed policy of Philip and his successors
during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of Netherlandish
art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous
repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developin