Though not actually a pupil of Jan Van Eyck, ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN acquired after him the greatest celebrity. As early as 1436 he filled the honourable post of official painter to the city of Brussels. The chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the Chamber of Justice in Hotel de Ville. According to the custom of the time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority. The principal picture showed how Herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands; and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of a miracle. The wings contained an example of the justice of the Emperor Trajan. These pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having probably been burned when Brussels was besieged in 1695. In the Museum of the Hospital at Beaune is one of the most important of his works still in existence, _The Last Judgment_, though in this it is generally supposed he was assisted by Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling. It contains several portraits, notably those of the Pope, Eugenius IV., who stands behind the Apostles in the right wing, and next to him Philip the Good. The crowned female in the opposite wing is probably Philip's [Illustration: PLATE XXII.--JAN VAN EYCK PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S WIFE _Town Gallery, Bruges_] second wife, Isabella of Portugal, whose portrait Jan Van Eyck went to Lisbon to paint before her marriage. On the outer sides are excellently painted portraits of the founder of the Hospital, Nicolas Rolin, and his wife. This work has been classed with the Van Eycks' _Adoration of the Lamb_, and the _Adoration of the Shepherds_ by Hugo Van der Goes, as crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting. In 1450 he visited Italy, where he painted the beautiful little altar-piece which is now in the Staedel Institute at Frankfort, for Piero and Giovanni de'Medici. Another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the Berlin Museum, executed for Pierre Bladelin. In the centre is the Nativity, with a portrait of Bladelin kneeling, and angels. On the one side is the annunciation of the Redeemer to the ruler of the West--the Emperor Augustus--by the agency of the Tiburtine Sibyl; on the other to those of the East--the Three Kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where the child appears to them in a star.