All this is no exaggeration. Bearing in mind the age in which it was produced, this piece of landscape painting is in truth a marvellous achievement. Considered in itself it is worthy of the highest admiration. But instead of being a mere accessory, as was the case in the pictures of the Van Eycks, of Memlinc, of Van der Weyden, of all the earlier masters, the landscape here forms, so to speak, the dominant note of the picture. The beauty of these fair fields and woods and mountains is the first thing which attracts the spectator's attention. The sacred figures are overwhelmed and belittled and cast into the shade by the splendour of their setting, and, after all, the sacred figures should form the principal feature of a picture like this, intended for an altar-piece. On the whole we cannot help regretting that Gerard David called in the aid of Joachim Patenier. The left wing shows the donor and his little son Philip, and his patron, St. John the Evangelist; the right, the donor's first wife, her four daughters and her patroness, St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Each of these panels has a landscape background, no less beautiful and no less obtrusive than the landscape in the central panel. The triptych when [Illustration: GERARD DAVID'S 'BAPTISM OF CHRIST' _Municipal Gallery, Bruges_] shut displays five figures--Our Lady seated beneath a canopy, with the Divine Infant on her knee, and facing them the donor's second wife, her little daughter and her patroness, St. Mary Magdalene. Here there is an architectural background of open arcades, with a view beyond, perhaps of Bruges. This is perhaps the least satisfactory of the nine pictures which, to quote the words of Mr. Weale, 'can at present with certainty be assigned to Gerard David.' In the Museum of the Holy Blood there is a triptych representing the Deposition, which, according to documents preserved in the confraternity archives, was painted by David in 1520. The authenticity of this picture is, however, contested, and it is certainly far inferior to any of his known paintings.