them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to
find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From
the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady
demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a
really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the
eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish,
talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the
present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable
Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside
their own country.

Typical of these is JOOS VAN CLEEF, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.
According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court
of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in
England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have
disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with
any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his
time--the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the
portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.
His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His
well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and
transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.

II

PETER PAUL RUBENS

Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands
during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between
the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in
1577.

"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united
with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and
healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest
details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the
fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most
admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and
finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school,
however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian
masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few
painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.
To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and
difficult positions and strongl