Here too he painted for the Guild of St. Luke that portrait of his pale, sad-faced, patient wife, which at present hangs in the Academy at Bruges. Though she looks considerably older, the quaintly-worded legend on the frame informs us that at this time she was only thirty-three years of age--_Conjunx meus Johannes me complevit anno 1439º 17º Junii, etas mea triginta annorum, als ich kan_; and lastly, here, not much more than twelve months afterwards, on July 9, 1440, the great painter died. They laid him to rest in the cloister of St. Donatian's, and it would seem that his obsequies were celebrated with some circumstance, for the city archives inform us that three bells were tolled:--Donatian, Leonard and Bernard. It is still the custom at Bruges to toll several bells at solemn funerals. They are rung one after the other at intervals of perhaps half a minute, beginning with the highest bell, and ending with the _bourdon_. The effect produced is very solemn and very striking and somewhat uncanny. Some two years after John's death his bones were translated to the Baptistry Chapel in the interior of St Donatian's. His widow continued to hold, and no doubt to inhabit the house in the _rue de la Main d'Or_ until 1443. On June 4, in that year, she paid the ground rent for the last time. In all that concerns _technique_ John was the equal, perhaps the superior of his great brother. His _mise en scène_ is perfect. He arranged his figures in symmetrical groups, clad them in glorious apparel, and set them in the midst of fair courts, or stately shrines, rich in sculpture and polished marble and costly hangings. He delighted in the _clair-obscur_, in the lustre of gold, in the shimmer of silk, in the scintillation of gems. In the wealth and variety of his palette and in the richness and depth and harmony of his mellow colouring he is unsurpassed. In spite of his realism and his love of detail his pictures are full of poetry, and if, as Mr. Weale says, he only saw with his eyes, he has somehow or other managed to make us see the souls of the figures he painted, but they lack the seriousness, the grandeur, the simple dignity of Hubert's sublime creations.