The museum at Antwerp is rich in masterpieces by Matsys, including his greatest work, "The Entombment." This is a triptych, the panels showing Herod's banquet with the head of John the Baptist lying on the table, and St. John in the boiling oil. The "Madonna," in the same museum, is one of the sweetest faces ever painted among the hundreds of Madonnas that abound in mediæval art, and one cannot but feel that it is the very face that won the heart of the artist and caused him to adopt painting as his profession. Its resemblance to the face of the Madonna now in the Berlin museum strengthens this theory. At Antwerp also there are to be seen "The Holy Face," a companion painting to the "Madonna" just mentioned, and the gruesome yet appealing "Veil of Veronica," showing the livid face of the Saviour with drops of blood from the cruel crown of thorns trickling down across it. The museum at Brussels possesses another masterpiece, and the oldest dated picture by this artist, "The Legend of St. Anne," which was completed in 1509 for the brotherhood of St. Anne at Louvain. He also painted several strong and striking portraits, of which the best is that of Erasmus at the Städel Institute at Frankfort. Matsys was one of the first Flemish artists to present subjects of every-day life as well as religious episodes and characters. "The Banker and his Wife," at the Louvre in Paris, is the finest example of this kind. There are authenticated works by this master in a number of European museums, while a considerable number of his pictures have become lost or have not as yet been identified. [Illustration: "THE BANKER AND HIS WIFE."--MATSYS.] Matsys is the greatest name in the history of Flemish art between the masters of Bruges and the school of Rubens. It was his success that made Antwerp the Florence of the North. Among Matsys' successors Frans de Vriendt, better known as Frans Floris, was one of the most notable. He was a member of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke at the age of twenty-three, and produced a vast number of works, many of which can still be seen scattered among the churches and art collections of Flanders. He had over one hundred pupils, of whom Martin de Vos achieved the greatest fame. As this painter worked after the destruction of the image-breakers many of his religious subjects survive to this day. The Antwerp museum contains no less than twenty-three of his works, as against only four by his master. Both of these artists, however, were profound admirers of the Italian school, and the work of Floris especially--though vastly admired in his day--is now looked upon as more Italian than Flemish, more imitative than original.