Another artist whose work sheds lustre on the old town of Bruges was Gheerhardt David. For nearly four centuries his name and even his very existence were forgotten, his paintings being attributed to Memling--in itself a high evidence of their merit. Recent studies by James Weale and other scholars have given us quite a complete life of this artist, who lived between 1460 and 1523, and a number of his works have been identified. All of these seem to have been painted at Bruges, and some of the more notable ones still remain there. The municipal authorities commissioned him to paint two great pictures representing notable examples of justice such as Van der Weyden had done for the Hotel de Ville at Brussels. These depict the flaying alive of the unjust Judge Sisamnes by Cambyses, King of Persia, and are still preserved in the museum at Bruges. The museum also possesses another masterpiece by this artist, "The Baptism of Christ." Others that have been identified through painstaking study of the old archives of the city and contemporary sources are located in the National Gallery at London and in the museum of Rouen. The prosperity of Bruges was declining very fast while David was painting the last of his religious pictures and the merchants were steadily leaving the city for Antwerp, which was now rising into importance. The artists, whose prosperity depended upon the wealth of the burghers were also drifting to the new commercial metropolis on the Scheldt and the famous school of Bruges was near its end by the middle of the sixteenth century. The last artists who worked at Bruges were of minor interest. Adriaen Ysenbrant, Albert Cornelis and Jean Prévost belong to this period, and their most important works are still preserved in the city where they were executed. "The Virgin of the Seven Sorrows," in the church of Notre Dame, is attributed to the first, a triptych in the church of St. Jacques to the second, while the museum has several pictures by Prévost, including an interesting "Last Judgment," and another striking representation of the same subject by Pieter Pourbus, of which there is a copy in the Palais du Franc. The masterpieces by Jean Van Eyck in this museum have already been mentioned, and the small but exceedingly rich collection also includes a fine production entitled "The Death of the Virgin," which is now generally attributed to Hugo Van der Goes--one of the comparatively few works by that master that have come down to us. There are also several other works by P. Pourbus, and a powerful allegorical picture by Jean Prévost representing Avarice and Death. There is undoubtedly no collection of paintings in the world of which the average value is so great as that of the little group in the hospital of St. Jean, and the one in the Bruges museum--while it has quite a few of minor interest and value--would also bring a very high average if subjected to the bidding of the world's millionaire art lovers.