d his own son, also named Roger, his pupils, but innumerable
works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures,
block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable.
It was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the Van Eycks
pervaded all Germany; for it was only after the death of Jan Van Eyck,
in 1441, that the widespread fame of Roger Van der Weyden induced
Germans to visit his studio at Brussels. Martin Schongauer, one of the
greatest German masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been
his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others.

It is in HANS MEMLING (_c._ 1435-1494), whom Vasari states to have been
the pupil of Roger, that the early Netherlandish School attains the
highest delicacy of artistic development. His poetical and profoundly
human qualities had a special attraction for the "Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood" inaugurated by Rossetti and Holman Hunt in the middle of
the nineteenth century. This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably
also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital
of S. John at Bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a
sick soldier after the battle of Nancy. In feeling for beauty and grace
he was more gifted than any painter except Hubert Van Eyck, and this
quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his
contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is
rightly his share. Compared with the works of his master, Roger Van der
Weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less
meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his
women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. His outlines are
softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half
tones is observable. His colours are still more luminous and
transparent. On the other hand he is inferior to Van der Weyden in the
carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the
rendering of the full brilliancy of gold.

In 1467 Memling was a master painter at Bruges, and painted the portrait
of the medallist, Nicolas Spinelli, which is now in the Royal Museum at
Antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at Chatsworth. His most famous
works, those in the Hospital at Bruges, belong to a somewhat later date,
the _Shrine of S. Ursula_ not being completed till 1489. The _Adoration
of the Kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earli