307. Beyond the door, Rubens: **Triptych, to adorn a tomb, for the funerary chapel of his friend Rockox. Compare, for size and purpose, the Moretus tomb in the Cathedral. It shows the painter’s early careful manner, and represents in its _central piece_ the Incredulity of St. Thomas. On the _wings_, the Burgomaster Nicolas Rockox, and his wife, for whose tomb it was painted. The wings are finer than the central portion. This early work, still recalling Van Veen’s academic tone, should be compared with the Van Veens and also with Rubens’s fine portrait of himself and his brother, with Lipsius and Grotius, in the Pitti at Florence. It marks the earliest age, when he was still content with comparatively small sizes, and gave greater elaboration to his work, but without his later dash and vigour. M. Rooses thinks ill of it. 781. *Fine farmyard scene by Rubens, with the story of the Prodigal Son in the foreground. One of the many signs of his extraordinary versatility. Beyond, on either side of the great Rubens, to be noticed presently, are two pictures by his master, Otto van Veen: 480, The Calling of Matthew, and 479, Zacchæus in the Fig-Tree. These two careful works recall the later Italian Schools, more particularly Titian, and are good examples of that careful academic transitional Flemish art which Rubens was to transform and revivify by the strength of his own exuberant and powerful personality. They are admirably placed here for comparison with 297. Rubens’s famous altar-piece of the Crucifixion, for the Church of the Franciscans, commonly known as the =**Coup de Lance=. In this splendid work Rubens is seen in one of his finest embodiments. The figure of Christ has fine virility. St. Longinus, to the L., on a white horse, is in the very act of piercing his side. The Magdalen, embracing the foot of the Cross, as ever, throws up her arms with supplicating gesture. To the R. is the Madonna. Behind, a soldier is engaged in breaking the limbs of the Impenitent Thief (always on Christ’s L.) who writhes in his torture. The whole work is full of Rubens’s life and bustle, well contrasted with the academic calm of the Van Veens beside it. Even those who do not love Rubens (and I confess I am of them) must see in such a work as this how his great powers _succeeded_ in effects at which his contemporaries aimed ineffectually. Boldly dramatic, but not sacred.