1525-69) who painted, at the same time, genre pictures of a popular character and who remained absolutely free from Italian influence. The same opposition which divided society and religion reflected itself in Art. [_RUBENS_] Though he succeeded in transforming their methods, Rubens is nevertheless the spiritual descendant of the Italianizants. It is from them and from his direct contact with the works of Michael Angelo and Titian that he inherits his association of spiritual sublimity with physical strength. Adopting without reserve Michael Angelo's pagan vision of Christianity, he transformed his saints and apostles into powerful heroes and endeavoured to convey the awe and majesty inspired by the Christian drama through an imposing combination of forceful lines and striking colouring. Rubens was chosen by the Jesuits to decorate the great church they had erected in Antwerp in 1620. Such a choice at first appears strange, considering that, on several occasions, Rubens does not seem to conform to the strict rule which the powerful brotherhood succeeded in imposing on other intellectual activities. Translated into poetry, such works as the "Rape of the Daughters of Lucippus," "The Judgment of Paris," "The Progress of Silenus," would suggest a style very much akin to that of Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, and, needless to say, would never have passed the Church's censor. For the reaction against the moral license and the intellectual liberty of the previous century was by now completed. Higher education was monopolized by the reformed University of Louvain and the new University of Douai, and no Belgian was allowed to study abroad. All traces of Humanism had disappeared from Louvain, where Justus Lipsius remained as the last representative of Renaissance tendencies strongly tempered by orthodoxy. Scientific novelties were so much distrusted that when, in 1621, Van Helmont dared to make public his observations on animal magnetism, he was denounced as a heretic and obliged to recant. For fear of exposing themselves to similar persecutions, the historians of the time confined themselves to the study of national antiquities. The theatre was confined to the representation of conventional Passions and Mysteries and to the plays produced every year by the Jesuits in their schools. Illustration: PULPIT OF SAINTE GUDULE, BRUSSELS (EIGHTEENTH CENTURY). _Ph. B._