Meanwhile the contest in which the burghers of Bruges had become involved through the disputes between the States of Flanders and Maximilian over the guardianship of his son, was precipitating the decay of the town which the relentless forces of Nature had long since decreed. As early as 1410 the navigation of the great haven of the Zwijn had become impeded, and so rapidly had the silting up advanced that before the close of the century no vessel of any considerable draught was able to enter the port of Damme. Entirely engrossed in the safeguarding of the remnant of their privileges, no serious effort was made to combat the mischief, and in the end Bruges found herself absolutely cut off from the sea. On the other hand, in the enjoyment of peace and the greater security it engendered, Antwerp was slowly asserting herself and gradually attracting to her quays the merchant princes from the littoral of the Zwijn; and as commerce imperceptibly gravitated towards the city by the Scheldt the foreign consuls one by one forsook the doomed emporium of the Hanseatic League. Memlinc, pursuing the even tenor of his life, continued to produce with unabated ardour and undiminished skill, and with this period--the last fourteen years of his life--is associated the most celebrated of all his works, the marvellous Shrine of Saint Ursula, the gem of the priceless collection preserved to this day in the old chapter-room of Saint John’s Hospital. When this masterpiece was first undertaken we are not in a position to say, but it was completed in 1489, and on the 21st day of October in that year the relics for whose safe keeping it had been designed were deposited within it. But to the eighties belong other memorable productions. In 1484 was finished the interior of the altarpiece for the Moreel chantry in the Church of Saint James, now housed in the Town Gallery at Bruges; in 1487 was painted the portrait of a man preserved in the Gallery of the Offices at Florence, and also was completed the wonderful diptych for Martin van Nieuwenhove, whose portrait we reproduce as the finest example of Memlinc’s work in that particular department of art; and in 1490 the finishing touches were put to the picture in the Louvre of the Madonna and Child, to whom saintly patrons are presenting the family of James Floreins, a younger brother of the donor of the triptych picturing the Adoration of the Magi which, as we have seen, was completed in 1479.