But this was not all; even the very stonework at Bruges, and this was no doubt also the case in other Flemish cities, glowed with gold and colour; sculpture, statuary, tracery, the mouldings of doors and arches and windows were not unfrequently thus embellished; we have seen Van Eyck and other artists engaged in illuminating the niches and the carved figures on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville; there is an ancient picture of the interior of Notre Dame which represents the capitals of the nave radiant with gold and vermilion; vestiges of polychromy within and without, on woodwork, on plaster, on iron, on stone, have been discovered all over the city. It is no exaggeration to say that Bruges at the opening of the fourteen hundreds, the richest, the mightiest and the loveliest city of Northern Europe, was at this time steeped in harmonious tints. She had already entered upon the autumn of her existence, but, like Nature, she had arrayed herself in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours, and the cunning workers who had woven and embroidered it--the painters of frescoes and the stainers of glass, the illuminators of vellum and the illuminators of stone--were the precursors and fathers and founders of the most glorious school of painting which the world has yet produced. The Van Eycks, the Memlincs, the Van der Weydens, all the Flemish primitives, whose marvellous pictures still fill us with admiration, lived and moved and had their being in the beauty which these men created. The statues, the miniatures, the mural painting of these poor craftsmen were the models which inspired their first work, and there is reason to believe that the insatiate thirst for colour which their predecessors had experienced led indirectly to the famous discovery which rendered its execution possible. In a country like the Netherlands, devoid of precious marbles, there was only one way of satisfying it--to find some artificial means of colouring the material at hand, and in that damp, changeable climate the pigment applied must needs be of a nature to withstand the vagaries of weather. The monk Theophilus, a writer often quoted in the twelfth century, gives exact formulæ for mingling colour and oil, but the pigment thus obtained was far from being satisfactory; a second coat could not be applied until the first was completely dry, and the length of time which it took in drying rendered it practically useless, at all events for the painting of pictures.