As an artist, Roger van der Weyden was the equal of neither the van Eycks nor Memling, but he was greater as a master. His art combined the religious symbolism of the Middle Ages with the new naturalism of Jan van Eyck, and its effect was wide-spread. The Germans made his paintings their standard, the Italians acknowledged his greatness, and the artists of the Low Countries all formed their style under his teaching or strove to imitate his work. I have never seen a keener and juster analysis of the art of the Flemish primitives than that given by Conway, in his "Early Flemish Artists," from which I quote: "Jan van Eyck was a man of fact, his work is an attempt to state the uttermost truth about things.... In his pictures, light and shade, texture, colour and outline have about equal stress laid upon them. In this respect he was one of the most complete of artists." Roger van der Weyden "laid chief stress upon outlines, striving to make them graceful so far as in him lay.... Memling was formed of milder stuff.... He was a painter of fairy tales, not of facts.... To lose oneself in a picture of his is to take a pleasant and healthy rest." The same critic adds this beautiful characterization of early Flemish art in general: "The paintings of Flanders were not, and were not intended to be, popular. Flemish artists did not, like the Italians, paint for the folk, but for the delight of a small clique of cultured and solid individuals. They painted as their employers worked, with energy, honesty and endurance; they cared not for beauty of the more palpable and less enduring kind, but they cared infinitely for Truth; for her they laboured in humility, satisfied with the joy of their own obedience, and then, when they slept and knew not of it, she came and clothed the children of their industry with her own unfading garments of loveliness and life." Between the glorious past of the van Eycks and Memling and the brilliant future of Rubens and Jordaens, stands Quentin Matsys, the founder of the Antwerp school, who died in 1530. He was the great master of the Gothic-Renaissance transition, showing the influence of the Renaissance, while still clinging to Gothic types. His paintings include religious subjects and incidents drawn from daily life. His "women of a goddess-like delicacy with almond eyes and long slim fingers," lived a mystical life among transparent, glassy columns and carpets with exotic embroideries. The men have an air of distinction. He often leans as far toward caricature, however, as he does toward sentimentality, and there are great contrasts in his work--grimacing, long-nosed, carousing old men and lovely women. "None understands as well as Matsys how to make strong splendours of colour shine through a thin veil of mist, or how to paint the tremulous surface of life so that we see the blood running in the veins."