Bruges, the scene of his stupendous lifework and his home for nearly the last thirty years of his life, was fast settling down to utter stagnation and the general poverty it superinduced. One needs to realise the measure of her decay to understand the possibility of such a personality as Memlinc’s fading from the public memory. True, he had founded no school to perpetuate his art and cherish his name and reputation. Twice we find mention of apprentices in the register of the Guild of Painters--a John Verhanneman, inscribed on 8th May 1480, and a Passchier Van der Meersch, in 1483. Neither attained the rank of master-painter. Nor is it known that any of the three sons inherited their father’s talent or followed his profession. However, we remember that Rumwold De Doppere, writing of his death in the year it occurred, asserted that he was “then considered to be the most skilful and excellent painter in the whole of Christendom,” while Van Vaernewyck, as late as 1562, tells of the houses of Bruges being still filled with paintings by Memlinc among other great artists. And yet so completely was he forgotten within a century of his death that Van Mander, when preparing his biographies of Netherlandish painters (published in 1604), could only learn that he was in his day “a celebrated master who flourished before the time of Peter Pourbus”--that is, before 1540! Neglect and disdain followed speedily on forgetfulness, and the scattering of his priceless works commenced. The magnificent picture of the Passion of Christ in the Turin Museum, which adorned the altar of the chapel of the Guild of Saint John and Saint Luke in the Church of Saint Bartholomew until 1619, was then removed to a side wall, and five years later sold to make room for an organ! The no less famous painting “Christ the Light of the World,” which graced the altar of the chapel of the Guild of Tanners in the Church of Our Lady until 1764, was then removed to the house of the dean, who a few years later sold it to a picture-dealer at Antwerp for 20 _l._! And so these masterpieces were made the sport and spoil of picture-dealers and traffickers in curiosities. Under Spanish rule further toll was levied on the art treasures of Bruges, and of what escaped the vulgar vandalism of the Calvinists, whose utter inability to create was only equalled by their senseless capacity for destruction, the French revolutionaries, whose sense of the beautiful in art not all their irreligion had sufficed to stifle, claimed a considerable share. Fortunately the ultimate defeat of Napoleon made restitution in a measure possible, and so the Moreel triptych, seized on 23rd August 1794, and the Van Nieuwenhove diptych, carried off in the same month, were recovered in 1815. Still the fact remains that Bruges at this date possesses only seven of Memlinc’s works. The remainder are dispersed among the galleries of the Continent--in Brussels and Antwerp; in Paris; in Madrid; in Rome, Florence, Turin,