predilection for landscape ornamentation, two delightful glimpses of country life enchanting the eye as it wanders down the transepts and out on to their porches. If in these pages attention has perhaps been somewhat too exclusively devoted to the portraits of men left us by Memlinc, obviously enough because of the greater interest they excite by the stories known of their careers, it must not be supposed that he proved himself less skilful as a portrayer of women. As a rule the wives of the donors in his pictures are of the homely type, but they appeal to us none the less as typical examples of the womankind of a burgher community in which the virtues of the home were cherished and sedulously cultivated. Two exceptionally fine specimens of male and female portraiture, which most likely belong to this period, are the bust of an old man in the Royal Museum at Berlin and that of an aged lady, recently acquired by the Louvre for the very substantial sum of 200,000 francs. If, as has been suggested, these are portraits of husband and wife, it is regrettable that they should have strayed so far apart, but the latter we have selected for illustration as perhaps the best available example to demonstrate Memlinc’s aptitude for the interpretation of the dignity of old age in woman. More amazing perhaps than the magnitude of the work Memlinc achieved is the dearth of information concerning him that has been vouchsafed to us. Until 1860 nothing whatever was known of the story of his life, and what has been since discovered is almost entirely due to the painstaking researches of one or two individuals. These revealed the fact of Memlinc’s marriage, the name of the woman he chose for his wife and that of her father, the fact that she bore him three sons--John, Cornelius, and Nicolas--the year of his wife’s death, the record of house property bought by him, the date of his own death and his place of burial, and this is the sum total of the material at our disposal, apart from his paintings, with which to build up his biography. The Shrine that is his masterpiece once completed, the only other dated work of which we have any knowledge is the polyptych altarpiece which hangs in the Greverade chantry of the Cathedral at Lubeck. This bears on its frame the date 1491; but the execution of the painting is very unequal, and it appears probable that the greater part is the work of pupils. Perhaps Memlinc felt that he had lived his life, and was content to lay aside palette and brush in the consciousness that he had given the world of his best. May-be, too, as the years began to tell, there grew a yearning for the privacy of home life in more intimate communion with the motherless children from whom he himself was soon to be parted. All too speedily the end came, for he passed away on the 11th of August 1494, at a ripe old age considering the average length of days meted out to man in his time. VII EFFACEMENT AND VINDICATION OF HIS TYPES