What is of real importance is that he introduced into the detailed realism of his precursors a note of pious fervour and tender idealism, which is the nearest approach in Northern art to the angelic sweetness of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole. Not without good reason has he been called “the Fra Angelico of the North.” Fromentin was certainly right in saying that “Van Eyck saw with his eyes, Memlinc begins to see with his soul.” It is this warmth of feeling that makes Memlinc the most lovable painter of the Flemish school, for he could neither rival the dramatic power and realistic truth of the Van Eycks, nor the firm draughtsmanship of Van der Weyden, nor Bouts’s skill in landscape painting. Nor did he take full advantage of the possibilities of the oil technique, his method remaining that of the tempera painters, although he availed himself of the new medium. The earliest work by Memlinc in the great French national collection is the charming little diptych, painted about 1475, and representing on one leaf _The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine_ (No. 2027), and on the other _The Donor, John du Celier, presented by St. John_ (No. 2027A). In the first the Virgin is seen seated in a flowering meadow in front of a rose-covered trellis and supporting the Infant Christ, who bends forward to place the ring on the finger of St. Catherine on the left. Behind the saintly bride are St. Agnes and St. Cecilia; whilst the group on the right comprises St. Barbara, with St. Margaret and St. Lucy, all accompanied by their characteristic attributes. On the other leaf the Donor is seen kneeling, with hands joined in prayer, in front of St. John the Baptist, who is pointing to Our Lord. The landscape background shows, on the left, the Apocalyptic vision of St. John the Evangelist, and on the right, St. George fighting the Dragon. This leaf, after passing through the collection of Mr. Herz and Mr. Heath, was presented to the Louvre in 1895 by Mme. André, and was thus reunited with its companion, which had been bequeathed to the Gallery fourteen years earlier by M. E. Gatteaux. It is on the whole in an excellent state of preservation, although some of the accessories in the background are so thinly painted that they have almost disappeared. MEMLINC’S “VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH DONORS”