The Netherlanders, a free people, were the first to know an art other than the traditional one. In Flanders and Holland, writers, and especially painters, began to speak no longer exclusively of God and the saints, the king and the great, but of the humble, obscure, and nameless multitude. _Genre_ painting revived for the first time since ancient days. It told the everyday life of the middle and lower classes, their somewhat gross joys, their somewhat commonplace sorrows; it showed the ale-house and the mill, the sitting-room and the retail shop. This was not edifying, it is true. The philosophy of this art is low; it hardly widens the spiritual horizon, and is of poor comfort amid the narrowness and bitterness of real life. And yet this art was a forerunner. It denoted a turning-point, the beginning of great and important things. One great king, Lewis XIV., was not deceived about it. With the sharpened keen feeling of the mighty for everything that can encroach on their superhuman dignity, he perceived at once that this new art offended against his kingly majesty. How? There are painters who dare to treat of plebeian subjects! What should that mean? Does art perhaps even fancy that it can be other than a continual homage to the greatness and omnipotence of kings? And, with an annihilating wave of his hand, he banished from his august presence these daring little pictures, these democratic works of Teniers, Ostade, Dirk Hals, and Gerard Dow, whilst uttering the historic words: “_Enlevez-moi ces grotesques._” But time stands not still; development is achieved. Modern democracy appears, and transposes all the conditions of existence of society and its members. Art cannot escape the general revolution. It experiences its influence spiritually and economically; changes its judgment hall and its mart. We do not realise the tremendous meaning of this change. The court that decided as to the worth of the artist and his work was formerly the small circle of possible patrons—princes of the Church, the great, the courtiers. To-day this court is criticism, professional criticism. In earlier times it was enough for the artist to please a few people, perhaps only one individual, if the latter happened to be a magnate. He had not to trouble himself about the crowd; moreover, the crowd followed docilely the lead from above. When Dante said: “Credete Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido, Si che la fama di colui oscura;”— What did _grido_ mean? What was _fama_? It was the opinion of a court, that of Rome or Pisa, perhaps of Ravenna. We must go to Aretino to discover a specimen of an art critic who was neither a Mæcenas like Leo X. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even a painter like Vasari, but merely an audacious spirit who arrogated to himself the right of dealing out praise and blame, and conferring glory in the name of something absolutely novel, in the name of public opinion.