races respectively in
the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives
of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. In this
circumstance consists the high significance of this school when
considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is
characteristic of the Greek feeling--from which was derived the
Italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the
conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as
portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to
the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on
the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal
personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and
in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental
peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating
fidelity.

"While the Greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such
as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms,
the Netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in
nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details.

"In opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying
tendency of the Greeks, the Netherlanders developed a purely realistic
and landscape school.

"In this respect the other Teutonic nations are found to approach them
most nearly, the Germans first, and then the English."

But whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing
features of Netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin
from which the practice of painting in northern Europe proceeded. For
in taking Melchior Broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as
far back--with the exception of certain rude wall paintings--as the
earliest examples take us; and having seen how in Italy the whole
history of the art is traceable to Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, through
the Byzantines, at least a century before Broederlam comes under our
notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from Italy that it
spread to Cologne, and from Cologne to the Netherlands. So far as is
known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than
to Italy for the influences which formed this school. Nevertheless it
was a collateral branch of the same stock--Byzantine art--and the family
resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two bra