MINOR FLEMISH PAINTERS
With the exception of Justus Sustermans (1597–1681), who was Van Dyck’s fellow-student under H. van Balen and afterwards rose to great fame as Court painter to Grand-Duke Cosimo ii. of Tuscany (whose kinsman Leopold de’ Medici is portrayed in No. 2154), and Pieter Neefs (1577?–1661?), whose Church Interiors (Nos. 2059–2064) are remarkable for the faultless accuracy and precision of his architectural drawing, there are no other painters of the Flemish school whose works at the Louvre require close attention. We must content ourselves with the mere mention of the landscape painters Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizonte, a follower of Poussin and Claude; Jan van Breda, Francisque Millet, and Mathys Schoevaerts; Carl van Falens and Anton Grief, painters of hunting scenes; Jan Miel, who worked most of his life in Italy and was completely influenced by the masters of that country; the still-life painter Gaspard Pieter Verbruggen; the battle painter Sebastiaen Francken; and the prolific painter of large altarpieces, Jacob van Oost the Elder. With Balthasar Paul Ommeganck (1755–1826) and the still-life painter Jan Frans van Dael (1764–1840) we reach the beginning of the nineteenth century, a period of absolute stagnation in Flemish art which preceded the brilliant revival of the modern Belgian school.
THE GERMAN SCHOOL
OF all the important European schools of painting, the Early German school is the one of which it is almost impossible to gain anything like an adequate idea from the pictures that have found their way into the Galleries of foreign countries. The fact is that with the exception of two or three leading masters, like Holbein and Dürer, the Early Germans found but scant favour beyond the confines of their own country until comparatively recent years—that is to say, until the majority of important examples had been systematically gathered in by the museums of Germany. Now that the importance of the German primitives and Early Renaissance painters has been generally recognised, it will be practically impossible to regain the lost ground and to fill up the serious gaps which prevent our forming an adequate idea of the evolution of German art in the museums of other countries. The Louvre is no exception to this rule. The numerical weakness of the German section is unfortunately not atoned for by the importance of the examples included, which, with but few exceptions, are of little artistic account.
Under the circumstances it would be useless to attempt a consecutive narrative of the evolution of German art as illustrated by the pictures at the Louvre, and we must confine ourselves to a brief discussion of the few noteworthy works in the collection.
“THE MASTER OF THE BARTHOLOMEW ALTAR”
The first picture of importance belongs to the period when the idealism of the Early Gothic primitives was already replaced by a strong naturalism, and the creation of types by that of clearly characterised individualities. This picture, the Descent from the Cross (No. 2737), by the unknown “Master of the Bartholomew Altar,” is so called, in accordance with German custom, from his best known work, the great altarpiece in the Pinakothek at Munich. In the large Louvre picture, which bears a close resemblance to the precious little panel by the same master in the possession of the Hon. Edward Wood, at Temple Newsam, the Saviour is being lowered from the Cross by Nicodemus into the hands of one of the Holy Women on the left, and of Joseph of Arimathæa on the right. The group is completed by St. John supporting the Virgin on the extreme left, the Magdalen and another Holy Woman on the right, and a Disciple seated on a ladder above the central group. The figures are shown, as in the Temple Newsam painting of the same subject, against a gold background framed with rich Gothic tracery. This altarpiece is believed to be the last picture by this Cologne master, who flourished between 1490 and 1515, and was in his later manner influenced by Rogier van der Weyden and other Flemish masters. This eminently important Early German picture was painted for a Jesuit establishment in the rue St. Antoine, Paris, which accounts for its presence in the French national collection.
COLOGNE PAINTERS
The “Master of the Death of Mary,” to whose school belongs the Descent from the Cross, with a predella representing The Last Supper, and a lunette with St. Francis receiving the Stigmata (No. 2738), has been identified by Wauters and Aldenhoven with the early-sixteenth-century Flemish painter Joos van Cleef the Elder, and belongs to the Antwerp rather than the Cologne school. The “Master of St. Severin,” to whom the official Catalogue ascribes the two Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula (Nos. 2738c and 2738d), was probably a Flemish painter who worked at Cologne at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the two panels at the Louvre, which were formerly at the Cluny Museum, are not from his brush. They are the work of his pupil, the “Master of the Ursula Legend,” and belong to a series of which other panels can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at Cologne.