Certainly These Pictures, Though
Finished To The Minutest And Most Delicate Detail, Are Lacking In
Realism Actually To A Degree That Borders On A Delicious
Absurdity.
St. Ursula and her maidens - whether really eleven
thousand or eleven - in the final scene of martyrdom await the
Stroke of death with the stoical placidity of a regiment of dolls.
"All the faces are essentially Flemish, and some of the virgins
display to great advantage the pretty national feature of the
slight curl in one or in both lips." A little farther along the
same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small but
admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St.
Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on
either side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks
as one of his best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon
Van de Paelen, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing
an old churchman with a typically heavy Flemish face; and the
rather unpleasant picture by Gerard David of the unjust judge
Sisamnes being flayed alive by order of King Cambyses. By a
turning to the right out of the Rue St. Catherine, you come to the
placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far from the shores of
which is one of those curious beguinages that are characteristic
of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little houses,
grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine, or
less strict kind of nun.
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