It is still the custom at Bruges to toll several bells at solemn funerals. They are rung one after the other at intervals of perhaps half a minute, beginning with the highest bell, and ending with the bourdon. The effect produced is very solemn and very striking and somewhat uncanny.
Some two years after John’s death his bones were translated to the Baptistry Chapel in the interior of St Donatian’s.
His widow continued to hold, and no doubt to inhabit the house in the rue de la Main d’Or until 1443. On June 4, in that year, she paid the ground rent for the last time.
In all that concerns technique John was the equal, perhaps the superior of his great brother. His mise en scène is perfect. He arranged his figures in symmetrical groups, clad them in glorious apparel, and set them in the midst of fair courts, or stately shrines, rich in sculpture and polished marble and costly hangings. He delighted in the clair-obscur, in the lustre of gold, in the shimmer of silk, in the scintillation of gems. In the wealth and variety of his palette and in the richness and depth and harmony of his mellow colouring he is unsurpassed. In spite of his realism and his love of detail his pictures are full of poetry, and if, as Mr. Weale says, he only saw with his eyes, he has somehow or other managed to make us see the souls of the figures he painted, but they lack the seriousness, the grandeur, the simple dignity of Hubert’s sublime creations.
All this is exemplified in a marked degree in the St. Donatian’s altar-piece in the academy at Bruges. The scene is laid in the apse of an old Byzantine church, glowing with gold and colour—perhaps St. Donatian’s. The columns are of shining porphyry—red, purple, green; the pavement is of encaustic tiles of the colour of amber, the brown walls are of stone, in the background beyond the choir pale green light streams through arched windows set with little circular panes of bottle glass. Our Lady with her Divine Child on her knee forms the central figure of the picture. She is seated beneath a canopy on a sculptured throne, her outer garment is silken and of the colour called Indian red, her kirtle is dark blue, a mediæval carpet is spread beneath her feet. On her right hand stands St. Donatian, a noble figure, but with a face too stern for a saint’s. In one hand he holds his pastoral cross and in the other his traditional wheel with five lighted tapers. He is attired in a cope of indigo and gold brocade lined with crimson silk and edged with sable. On the left kneels the donor, George van der Pale, Canon of St. Donatian’s—thick-necked, asthmatic, kindly, obese, a devout old Flemish gentleman. In one fat trembling hand he holds his half-open Breviary, in the other his reading glass; he is robed in a white surplice, his spectacle-case hangs at his side. The portrait is full of detail, very life-like and evidently unflattered. Behind him stands a youth in polished mail, who naïvely raises his helmet as, with his left hand on the canon’s shoulder, he presents him to Our Lady—his patron, St. George; a very loyal, large-hearted, human, joyous saint, who, one feels quite sure, will regard with a lenient eye the shortcomings of his clients and do his best to help them, but for all that he seems to have the air of being not quite at ease, not quite sure perhaps whether the poor old canon is worthy of an introduction. May be this strangely fascinating figure is also a portrait.
As for the scheme of colour, it is simply glorious. Gold gleams everywhere. We see it in the blue brocade of the canopy and in the blue brocade of St. Donatian’s cope; there are threads of it in the intricately-embroidered borders of Our Lady’s robe; it glisters round her neck and on her fingers and in her hair. St. George’s armour is all golden, and on the other side of the picture there stands St. Donatian arrayed in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours; even
