The _ring_ St. Agnes is presenting to St. Catherine denotes the bond which unites the two virgin-martyrs, and attests that both are worthy to be spouses of Jesus Christ.] [Illustration: ST. CATHERINE AND ST. AGNES. Painting attributed to Margaret Van Eyck. (M. Quedeville’s Collection.)] the features of his _fiancée_, the Princess Elizabeth (1428). The influence exercised by his labours is thought to have brought about that tendency to brilliancy and realism which, after its first manifestation in the earliest Spanish manner, gave way before the encroachments of Italian genius, only to reappear in all its power in the great national school. Among the best pupils that Van Eyck left behind him at Bruges, we must not omit the name of Hugo van der Goes, whose works are rare. Roger van der Weyden, of whose paintings but few are now extant, was the favourite pupil of John of Bruges, and the master of Hemling, whose reputation was destined to equal, if not to surpass, that of the chief of his school. “Hemling,” says M. Michiels, so eminent a judge on this subject, “whose most ancient picture bears the date 1450, possesses more sweetness and grace than the Van Eycks. His figures charm by an ideal elegance; his expression never exceeds the limits of tranquil feeling and agreeable emotion. Quite contrary to John van Eyck, he prefers the slender and rich character of the Gothic (Fig. 252) to the heaviness and scanty detail of Roman architecture. His colouring, although less vigorous, is softer; the water, the woods, the sites, the grass, and the distances of his pictures cause a dream-like feeling.” A kind of instinctive reaction was manifested in the pupil, but the master was not altogether forgotten. We shall, however, find elsewhere the effects of his direct influence; but in order not to have to return to the school of Bruges, we will first mention Jerome Bosch, who, contrary to his countryman Hemling, sought after opposition of effects and singularities of invention; and next Erasmus, the great thinker and writer, who was also a painter in his day;[37] lastly, Cornelius Engelbrechtsen, the master of Lucas van Leyden, born in 1494. The latter was as famous with the pencil as with the graving tool, and introduced into all his works a powerful and sometimes strange originality which caused him to be looked upon as the first painter of “_genre_.” Lucas van Leyden must close our list of the artists who opened out the paths which were destined to be followed, though with many a diversity of method and of style, by Breughel, Teniers, Van Ostade, Porbus, and Schellincks. At the head of these masters was subsequently to rise the magnificent Rubens, and the energetic Rembrandt, the king of the palette, the great chief of the school, who [Illustration: Fig 252.--“St. Ursula.” By Hemling.]