During the next fifty years many and beautiful were the pictures produced throughout Flanders.  All of them have a jewel-like brilliance of colour, approaching in brightness the hues of the Richard II. diptych.  The landscape backgrounds are charming miniatures of towns by the side of rivers with spanning bridges.  The painting of textures is exquisite.  But the Flemish face, placid, plump, and fair-haired, prevails throughout.  In the pictures of Paradise, where the saints and angels play with the Infant Christ, we still feel chained to the earth, because the figures and faces are the unidealized images of those one might have met in the streets of Bruges and Ghent.  This is not a criticism on the artists.  The merit of their work is unchallenged; and how could they paint physical beauty by them scarce ever seen?  Yet when all has been said in praise of the Flemish School, the brothers Van Eyck, the founders of it, remain its greatest representatives, and their work is still regarded with that high and almost universal veneration which is the tribute of the greatest achievement.

CHAPTER V

THE RENAISSANCE

Who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily?  Does he not look absorbed in his book?  Certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance—­a lion!  Can you see him?  He is walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted as though it were hurt.  The story is that this particular lion limped into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion’s fore-paw was hurt.  He raised it up, found what was the matter, and pulled out the thorn; and ever afterwards the lion lived peacefully in the monastery with him.  Now, whenever you see a lion in a picture with an old monk, him you will know to be St. Jerome.  He was a learned Christian father who lived some fifteen hundred years ago, yet his works are still read, spoken, and heard every day throughout the world.  He it was who made the standard Latin version of the Scriptures.  The services in Roman Catholic churches in all countries are held in Latin to this day, and St. Jerome’s translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, is the version still in use.

Here you see St. Jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is!  You must go to the National Gallery to enjoy all the details, for the original painting is only 18 inches high by 14 inches broad, and the books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost in this beautiful photograph.  The study is really a part of a monastery assigned to St. Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such possessions.  He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk.  He has taken off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.