She was a woman in her freshest age,
Of wondrous beauty, and of bounty rare....
Her necke and brests were ever open bare,
That aye thereof her babes might sucke their fill....
A multitude of babes about her hong,
Playing their sportes, that joy'd her to behold;
Whom still she fed whiles they were weake and young,
But thrust them forth still as they wexed old.
The Faërie Queene, i. 10. xxx. xxxi.
653. HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Unknown (Early Flemish: 15th century).
This picture, formerly ascribed to Roger van der Weyden, and called "The Painter and his Wife," is delightfully typical of the Flemish ideal both in man and woman—"the man shrewd and determined, the woman sweet and motherly." "They are not fine of figure nor graceful of limb, but, with hardly an exception, their faces tell us that they are men of tried capacity and learnt experience. Through the eyes of many of them glances a happy, childlike soul enough, but the mind is almost invariably a slow-moving, solid power ... and such as they, were the artists who painted them; they possessed the same industry, they admired the same qualities. The virtue of honest strength, which made the men of Flanders the merchant princes of Europe, was the virtue whose traces the artists of Flanders loved to observe.... They care little for mystery, little for pity, little for enthusiasm.... They love a man whose visage tells the strength of his character, who has weathered the buffetings of many a storm, and bears on his visage the marks of the struggle" (Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 104).
654. THE MAGDALEN.
Later School of Roger van der Weyden (Early Flemish: 1400-about 1464). See 664.
See also (p. xix)
Known for the Magdalen by the small vase at her feet—emblem, in all the religious painters, of the alabaster box of ointment—"the symbol at once of her conversion and her love." In these "reading Magdalens" she is represented as now reconciled to heaven, and magnificently attired—in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity. "It is difficult for us, in these days, to conceive the passionate admiration and devotion with which the Magdalen was regarded by her votaries in the Middle Ages. The imputed sinfulness of her life only brought her nearer to them. Those who did not dare to lift up their eyes to the more saintly models of purity and holiness,—the martyrs who had suffered in the cause of chastity,—took courage to invoke her intercession" (Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 205). Hence the numerous Magdalens to be met with in nearly every picture gallery; in art decidedly there has been "more joy over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine that need no repentance."