The van der Paele altar-piece was in the sacristy of the church of St. Donatian when {62} the old basilica was destroyed by the revolutionary troops. It was taken to Paris, together with much other artistic booty, but was returned to Bruges in 1814, and is now in the Museum of the Academy of that city. The drapery round the loins of the infant Saviour is a later addition which does not appear in the excellent early copy at the Antwerp Museum, from which our illustration is a reproduction. The original at Bruges bears the inscription in small Gothic letters: _Hoc opus fecit fieri magister Georgius de Pala, huius ecclesie canonicus, per Johannem de Eyck pictorem. Et fundavit hic duas capellanias de gremio chori domini M. ccc°. xxxiiij°., completing anno_ 1436°. * * * * * At the Museum of Antwerp is the exquisite unfinished little painting of _St. Barbara_, signed and dated: JOHES DE EYCK ME FECIT 1437. The saint, with an open book on her lap and a palm-branch in her hand, is seated in front of an elaborately designed Gothic tower in course of construction. Around the tower are numerous figures of labourers, masons, horsemen, and others; and the background shows a landscape with mountains, castles, rivers, fields and trees, and a town on a hill. Technically, this picture {63} is supremely interesting, as it shows that at a comparatively late period of his life--a quarter of a century after the reputed discovery of oil-painting--Jan has not altogether discarded the practice of tempera-painting. For the whole composition, the pensive-looking saint and the widespread angular folds of her garment, the tower and the figures, are carefully drawn and shaded in brown tempera colour on a preparation of gum or white of egg. Only the part which required no special design, the sky, is painted in oil-colour. It may thus be assumed that it was the practice of the brothers van Eyck to work with oil-colours on a tempera foundation. The _St. Barbara_ also confirms Karel van Mander's statement that Jan's sketches were more complete and more carefully wrought than the finished paintings of other artists. M. Henri Hymaus suggests that this _St. Barbara_ is the very painting which van Mander mentions as being in the possession of his master Lucas de Heere at Ghent, and "representing a woman behind whom was a landscape; it was but a preparation, and yet extraordinarily beautiful." * * * * * {64}