Somewhat thus discoursed to me an enthusiastic young Belgian painter, as we stood together admiring that grand work of art, the carved oak pulpit in the cathedral of St. Gudule, at Brussels.
This pulpit is a work to which the term unique may be applied with scrupulous fidelity.
The admiration drawn from you by sculptures in wood elsewhere culminates in presence of this singular creation of genius. No description can adequately place it before you or render it justice. In its exquisite architecture and sculpture, a poem as grand as that of Milton is spread out before you.
An outline, only, the merest outline, can be attempted to supply description.
Adam and Eve apparently sustain the terrestrial globe. An angel chases them from Paradise, and Death pursues them. The life-size figure of Adam, in particular, is admirable. Carved in marble, it would have been something for Canova to have been proud of. The preacher stands in the concavity of the globe, which is overshadowed by the branches of the tree of good and evil, covered with birds and animals characteristically grouped. By the side of Adam is an eagle; on that of Eve, a peacock and a squirrel.
To the top of the tree is attached a canopy upheld by two angels and a female figure symbolical of truth. Above stands the Blessed Virgin with the infant Saviour, who, with a cross in his hand, crushes the head of the Serpent, whose hideous body, in huge folds, twines around the tree. "This pulpit was made," said, or rather sang, to me, the old gray-haired sexton or bedeau, to the tune in which he had shown the lions of the cathedral for more than thirty years—"This pulpit was made by Verbruggen, of Antwerp, in 1699, for the Jesuits of Louvain. Upon the suppression of their order, it was presented to this cathedral by the empress Maria Theresa. This pulpit—"
Here I interrupted him with questions as to Verbruggen—what was known of him? Had he left any other works? and so on, to the end of the chapter. All in vain; I could obtain nothing but a negative shake of the head, and a hint that it was time to close the cathedral doors.
My stay in Brussels was prolonged many weeks; and besides my attendance on Sundays, I frequently, in my rambles between the grand park and what Mrs. Major O'Dowd calls the Marchy O'flures, strayed into St. Gudule to admire the finest specimens of stained glass in the world; to read the inscriptions on the tombs of the Dukes of Brabant, and to feast my eyes and imagination on the grand old pulpit.
In the course of these visits I became better acquainted with the bedeau in charge, and after some persuasion and a few well-timed attentions, the old man at last acknowledged to me that there was something more than mere names and dates connected with the history of the pulpit.