Turn up at the corner by the Municipal Council-Room and take the first street to the L., which leads you into the Place St. Jacques, occupied by the Church of St. Jacques. The façade, with the two towers, was Romanesque, but has been restored in such a wholesale way as to destroy its interest. The remainder of the church is Gothic. Walk round it so as to observe its features, noticing in particular the quaint stone spire of the right-hand tower. The interior might be good, were it not spoiled by tawdry decorations. The pulpit has a marble figure of the patron, St. James, with the pilgrim’s staff and gourd, emblematic of his connection with the great place of pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostella. The vaulting has been freed from excrescences, and is excellent of its kind. The High Altar has a figure of St. James above, and a painting of his martyrdom beneath.
This walk will have led you through the principal part of early Ghent. Hence you may return either by the Cathedral, or by the chief line of business streets which runs direct from the Pont du Laitage to the modern Palais de Justice and the Place d’Armes.
C. THE CATHEDRAL
[The local patron saint of Ghent is St. Bavon, a somewhat dubious personage, belonging to the first age of Christianity in Flanders, of whom little is known. Legend describes him as a “Duke of Brabant” in the 7th century (of course an anachronism). He seems to have been a nobleman of Hesbaie who spent his life as a soldier “and in worldly pleasures”; but when he was 50, his wife died, and, overwhelmed with grief, he gave up all his possessions to be distributed among the poor, and entered a cell or monastery in Ghent, of which St. Amand (see later) was the founder. Of this he became abbot. At last, finding the monastic life not sufficiently austere, the new saint took refuge in a hollow tree in a forest, and there spent the remainder of his days. His emblem is a falcon. The monastery of St. Bavon long existed at Ghent; some of its ruins still remain, and will be described hereafter. To this local saint, accordingly, it might seem fitting that the Cathedral of Ghent should be dedicated. But in reality the building was at first a parish church under the invocation of St. John the Baptist, and only received the relics and name of St. Bavon after 1540, when Charles V. destroyed the monastery, as will be described hereafter.
The real interest of the Cathedral centres, however, not in St. Bavon, nor in his picture by Rubens, but in the great polyptych of the Adoration of the Lamb, the masterpiece of Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert, which forms in a certain sense the point of departure for the native art of the Netherlands. This is therefore a convenient place in which to consider the position of these two great painters. They were born at Maaseyck or Eyck-sur-Meuse near Maastricht; Hubert, the elder, about 1360 or 1370; Jan, the younger, about 1390. The only undoubted work of Hubert is the altar-piece in St. Bavon, and even this is only his in part, having been completed after his death by his brother Jan. Hubert probably derived his teaching from the School of the Lower Rhine, which first in the North attained any importance, and which had its chief exponents at Maastricht and Cologne. Of this School, he was the final flower. Though not, as commonly said, the inventor of oil-painting, he was the first artist who employed the process in its developed form, and he also made immense advances in naturalness of drawing and truth of spirit. Jan was probably a pupil of Hubert; he lived at Ghent while the great picture of the Adoration of the Lamb was still being completed; later, he was painter by appointment to the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, and had a house at Bruges, where he died in 1440. He was also employed on various missions abroad, accompanying embassies as far as to Portugal. His painting, though less ideal and beautiful than that of his great successor Memling, is marvellous in its truth: it has an extraordinary charm of purity of colour, vividness of delineation, and fine portrayal of character. Indeed, all the early Flemish artists were essentially portrait painters; they copied with fidelity whatever was set before them, whether it were fabrics, furniture, jewellery, flowers, or the literal faces and figures of men and women.
Hubert and Jan van Eyck, however, were not so much in strictness the founders of a school as the culminating point of early German art, to which they gave a new Flemish direction. Their work was almost perfect in its own kind. Their successors did not surpass them: in some respects they even fell short of them.
The Adoration of the Lamb is by far the most important thing to be seen at Ghent. But it is viewed at some disadvantage in the church, and is so full of figures and meaning that it cannot be taken in without long study. I strongly advise you, therefore, to buy a photograph of the entire composition beforehand, and try to understand as much as possible of the picture by comparing it with the account here given, the evening before you visit the picture. You will then be able more readily to grasp the actual work, in form and colour, when you see it.
The Cathedral is open daily (for viewing the pictures, etc.) from 5 to 12, and from 3.30 to 6. Between 12 and 3.30 you can also get in by knocking loudly on the door in the West Front.]
Go straight from your hotel to the Cathedral,—built as the parish church of St. John about 1250-1300; re-dedicated to St. Bavon, 1540; erected into a Bishop’s see, 1599. Stand before the West Front at a little distance, to examine the simple but massive architecture of the tower and façade.
The great portal has been robbed of the statues which once adorned its niches. Three have been “restored”: they represent, centre, the Saviour; L., the patron, St. Bavon, recognisable by his falcon, his sword as duke, and his book as monk; he wears armour, with a ducal robe and cap above it; R., St. John the Baptist, the earlier patron.