A Pensive Grace Seems To Be Cast
Over All, Even The Very Children." This Estimate, After The Lapse
Of Considerably More Than Half A Century, Still, On The Whole,
Stands Good.
"In Ghent there is a struggle." Approaching Ghent, indeed, by
railway from Bruges, and with our heads full of
Old-world romance
of Philip van Artevelte, and of continually insurgent burghers
(for whom Ghent was rather famous), and of how Roland, "my horse
without peer," "brought good news from Ghent," one is rather
shocked at first, as we circle round the suburbs, at the rows of
aggressive new houses, and rather tempted to conclude that the
struggle has now ended, and that modernity, as at Brussels, has
won the day at Ghent. Luckily the doubt is dissipated as we quit
the splendid Sud station - and Belgium, one may add in parenthesis,
has some of the most palatial railway-stations in the world - and
find ourselves once again enmeshed in a network of ancient
thoroughfares, which, if they lack wholly the absolute quiet, and
in part the architectural charm, of Bruges, yet confront us at
every corner with abundance of old-world charm. I suppose the six
great things to be seen in Ghent are the cathedral of St. Bavon
(and in the cathedral the great picture of the "Adoration of the
Lamb," by Hubert and Jan van Eyck); the churches of St. Michel,
with a "Crucifixion" by Van Dyck, and St. Nicholas; the wonderful
old houses on the Quai des Herbes; the splendidly soaring Belfry;
and possibly the Grande Beguinage, on the outskirts of the town.
The cathedral has the usual solitary west tower, as at Ely, that
we have now come to associate - at Ypres and Bruges - with typical
Belgian churches. The great Van Eyck is hung in a chapel on the
south of the choir, and the services of the verger must be sought
for its exhibition. The paintings on the shutters are merely
copies by Coxie, six of the originals being in the Picture Gallery
in Berlin. Their restoration to Ghent, one hopes, will form a
fractional discharge of the swiftly accumulating debt that Germany
owes to Belgium. The four main panels, however, are genuine work
of the early fifteenth century, the reredos as a whole having been
begun by Hubert, and finished by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The centre-
piece is in illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12):
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches,
and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing."
One may question, indeed, if figurative language of the kind in
question can ever be successfully transferred to canvas; whether
this literal lamb, on its red-damasked table, in the midst of
these carefully marshalled squadrons of Apostles, Popes, and
Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something ludicrous. One
may question all this, yet still admire to the full both the
spirit of devotion that inspired this marvellous picture and its
miracle of minute and jewel-like execution.
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