A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

709. MADONNA AND CHILD.

Unknown (Flemish School; 15th-16th century).

See also (p. xx)

"In Flemish pictures the varnish was incorporated with the surface colours, and cannot be removed without destroying at the same time the very fabric of the work. For this reason all attempts to, what is called, restore, or clean pictures of the Flemish School, result only in the destruction of the work, and by this means many fine pictures have, for all practical purposes, perished.... (This picture) is a lamentable example" (Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 119).