No. 1997.—PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET, PERPETUAL CHANCELLOR OF FLANDERS (Portrait de Jean Carondelet, chancelier perpétuel de Flandre (1469-1544)) He is bare-headed and wears a blue robe; he is turned three-quarters to the right; his hands are folded in prayer. Painted in oil on panel. Inscribed on the frame:—“REPRÉSENTACION DE MESSIRE JEHAN CARONDELET, HAVLT DOYEN DE BESANÇON, EN SON EAGE DE 48Ā,” and, below, “FAIT L’AN 1517.” 1 ft. 5 in. × 10¾ in. (0·43 × 0·27.)] THE LATE FLEMISH SCHOOL The period of the great struggle of the Netherlands for religious and political independence from the yoke of Spain and the Inquisition was not propitious for the fostering of the Fine Arts. Not only did the troubled provinces, as was quite natural, slacken in artistic production, but a vast portion of the treasures owned by churches and monastic establishments were destroyed by the fanaticism of Protestant iconoclasts. The separation of the Protestant North from the Catholic South by the Utrecht Union in 1579 became in a way the determining factor for the future course of painting in Holland and in the Belgic provinces. The Dutchmen practically had no further use for religious painting, and devoted themselves more exclusively to the domestic genre, portraiture, and landscape; whilst the Flemings applied themselves largely to infusing new vitality into the representation of Scriptural characters and incidents which, through constant mechanical repetition, had become mere allegorical hieroglyphics, or generalised ideas without the all-important sense of pulsating life. This regeneration was the great deed of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), who, whilst still benefiting from the example of the great Italians, remained the very embodiment of Flemish character and thought, and became the founder of the second important period of Flemish national art. He was a man of exuberant vitality and boundless energy, endowed with a creative force unequalled in the whole history of art. He must rank for all time among the very giants of the brush, with Rembrandt, Titian, and Velazquez, his contribution to the progress in pictorial art being the use of pigment and sweeping brushwork as a constructive element—an advance as significant as the Venetians’ admission of light into the pictorial scheme, which with the Florentines was based entirely on linear design. PIETER BRUEGHEL