Page images
PDF
EPUB

In the Museé du Cinquantenaire are some superb examples, which alone are sufficient to illustrate the subject at its best. These are the retables of Haekendover, of the Cte. de Nahuys, and above all that known as the retable of Claude de Villa. The first-named is an instructive example of the preservation of types, for though, without doubt, work of the end of the fifteenth century-perhaps by Maître Devis or Jan van Connixloo-the costumes and architectural style are of a century earlier, carrying us back to the formulæ of Jacques de Baerze at Dijon. The retable of Claude de Villa (Plate v.) is a triptych, with each compartment crowned by an architectural decoration of ogival arches, the points of which at one time may have carried statuettes of which the culs-de-lampe now only remain. The rest of the tabernacle work is a mass of delicate tracery, lacelike in complication, yet of extreme lightness. In the centre is the principal subject, the Crucifixion. Allowing for some differences, and for more or less detail, this is the type of the pictorial compositions which are general in this class of altarpiece, and may be thus described: In a landscape a mountain of figures-men, women, soldiers on horse and on foot, the crowd of sightseers, officials and legendary figures that we associate always with the sacred scene-leads up to the extremely tall and narrow-limbed cross. On either side of this, on similar crosses, are bound the thieves, contorted in agony. With the exception of the most holy personages, all the figures are in the costume of the period, that is, of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the date of the work itself being about 1460 to 1470. The patrician ladies of the crowd, and even some of those whose names the scriptural narrative and legends attach to the sacred event, are in the richest robes of brocade and tissue of the latest and most extravagant fashion: décolletées and decked with chains and jewels. Amongst

[graphic][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »