echoing through the arches and among the pillars, following us down the
aisles to where we read upon the monuments the deeds of some old knight
of heathen times, whose image has survived his dust--whose works have
followed him.
After leaving the church we wandered among and through the picture
galleries in the old palaces of the city,--galleries of modern Belgian
art, with one exception, where were numberless flat old Flemish
pictures, and dead Christs, livid, ghastly, horrible to look upon. The
best of Flemish art is not in Brussels. Among the galleries of modern
paintings, that of the odd artist, recently deceased, Wiertz, certainly
deserves mention. It contains materials for a fortune to an enterprising
Yankee. The subjects of the pictures are allegorical, parabolical, and
diabolical, the scenes being laid in heaven, hell, and mid-air. In one,
Napoleon I. is represented surrounded by the flames of hell, folding his
arms in the Napoleonic attitude, while his soldiers crowd around him to
hold up maimed limbs and ghastly wounds with a denunciatory and angry
air. Widows and orphans thrust themselves before his face with
anathematizing countenances. In fact, the situation is decidedly
unpleasant for the hero, and one longs for a bucket of cold water. Many
of the pictures were behind screens, and to be seen through
peep-holes--one of them a ghastly thing, of coffins broken open and
their risen occupants emerging in shrouds. Upon the walls around the
room were painted half-open doors and windows with pretty girls peeping
out; close down to the floor, a dog kennel, from which its savage
occupant was ready to spring; just above him, from a latticed window,
an old _concierge_ leaned out to ask our business. Even in the pictures
hanging upon the walls was something of this trickery. In one the foot
and hand of a giant were painted out upon the frame, so that he seemed
to be just stepping out from his place; and I am half inclined to think
that many of the people walking about the room were originally framed
upon the walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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