lists and Joseph fetches water from a neighbouring spring; elsewhere the risen Christ appearing to the fishing apostles, and far beyond across the waters in the background the setting of the sun in all its glory. Every scene that lends itself to the treatment has its beauty enhanced by the beauties of Nature. The one sorrowful incident in the whole story, the Massacre of the Innocents, is a mere suggestion of this cruel episode. Memlinc’s nature shrank from the interpretation of evil, and in this particular instance has admirably succeeded in commemorating the incident of the massacre without involving it in any of its horror. A pleasing innovation may also be noticed in the treatment of his portraits of donors, Peter Bultinc and his son being introduced as devout spectators of the scene presented in the stable at Bethlehem, which they humbly contemplate through an opening in the wall. “The more one examines this picture, the greater one’s astonishment at the amount of work which Memlinc has lavished on it, at the exquisite beauty of the various scenes, the marvellous ingenuity displayed in separating them one from another, and the skill with which they balance and are brought into one harmonious whole.” [Illustration: PLATE VI.--MARTYRDOM OF SAINT URSULA. This forms the eighth panel of the famous shrine, completed in 1489 for the Hospital of Saint John at Bruges, where it may be seen. The archer is a portrait of the celebrated Dschem, brother of the Sultan Bajazet, taken prisoner at Rhodes in 1482, copied from a portrait in the possession of Charles the Bold.] The Turin altarpiece was completed not later than 1478, in which year William Vrelant gave it to the Guild of Saint Luke and Saint John (Stationers); the Munich one at any rate some time before Easter 1480, at which date the donor presented it to the Guild of Tanners. But already then Memlinc had undertaken the triptych in the Hospital of Saint John painted to the order of its spiritual master, Brother John Floreins, acknowledged to be technically the most perfect work he completed before the end of 1480; and also the larger triptych for the high altar of the Hospital church. VI MASTERPIECES AND DEATH