The hotels de ville built during the Burgundian period afford an excellent example of the new economic tendencies prevailing at the time, but they are by no means the greatest works of art illustrating this period of Belgian efflorescence. Neither in the Town Hall of Bruges, begun in 1376 by Jean de Valenciennes, nor in those of Brussels (1402 to 1444), built by Jacques van Thienen and Jean de Ruysbroeck, or of Louvain, completed in 1448 by Matthieu de Layens, still less in the pretty municipal buildings of Oudenarde or destroyed Arras, can we find any adequate representation of the wonderful intellectual and artistic movement which placed the Netherlands, during the fifteenth century, at the head of Northern European civilization. This can only be realized by a careful study of the pictures of the period, generally known as the works of the Early Flemish School. [_INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT_] Before trying to determine the position of this school in the history of Art, it may be well to give a rapid survey of the intellectual movement under the Burgundian regime, and to show that in every department, literature, architecture and music, the civilization of the period produced some remarkable works. In this way, the Netherlands of the fifteenth century are comparable with the Italian republics and principalities which flourished at the same time. In Belgium, as in Tuscany and Umbria, all arts were cultivated at the same time and sometimes by the same man, and people and princes took an equal interest in all the manifestations of human genius. One would have to go back as far as ancient Greece to find such a harmonious development, and the world has never produced it since. Literary activity was perhaps the least brilliant, owing mostly to the division of languages. Though the intercourse between the Flemish and the Walloon parts of the country was intimate and never constituted an obstacle in the work of unification, Belgium can scarcely boast of one common literature at the time when its nationality was founded.