In the central panel the gigantic form of the saint is seen wading through a river with the infant Jesus on his shoulders, and leaning on the trunk of a young tree which he uses as a staff. He cannot understand how it is that so small a burthen should weigh so heavily, and, wondering, turns his head to behold the child, who, with a smile on his face, lifts one hand to bless him, whilst with the other he steadies himself by grasping a white linen bandage which is wound round the saint's head. On his right stands the Benedictine saint, Maurus, in his monk's habit. One of Moreel's daughters was a Benedictine nun, and it was doubtless on this account that Memlinc introduced his portrait. On the other side St. Gilles caressing the doe whose life he saved by receiving an arrow, which a huntsman had aimed at her, in his own arm. The figure of the saint is very fine, his face is the most beautiful in the whole composition. The reason why he is here introduced is not apparent. The left wing shows the donor with his five sons and his patron, St. William; the right, his wife, her patroness, St. Barbara, and their eleven daughters. The figures of St. George and St. John the Baptist are painted in grisaille on the outer side of the shutters. These last are probably not Memlinc's work. Mr. Weale thinks that they may have been added in 1504 by order of John and George Moreel, two of the sons of the donor. This picture is one of the most beautiful of Memlinc's later works. Unfortunately it has suffered much from the ravages of time and restorers. The lower portion of the face of one of the donor's sons has been clumsily repainted, and the removal of the _glacis_ has chilled, and to a certain extent spoiled, the harmony of the scheme of colour. We have said that Hans Memlinc was the greatest of all the Flemish masters of the fourteenth century save only the brothers Van Eyck. Mr. Weale places him on a higher pinnacle. In his estimation Hubert alone surpassed him. John van Eyck, he says, saw with his eyes, Memlinc beheld with his soul, and he adds--we are quoting from memory--that Memlinc was the most poetical and the most musical of all the Bruges painters. If this be so we can only say that John was more apt to portray what he saw than Hans what he imagined, that if Memlinc idealised the Flemish type he at the same time denaturalised it, that if his figures are more refined they are also less human. That Memlinc was inspired by the true spirit of poetry no one can deny, but his imagination sometimes runs away with him and his verses are not wholly devoid of false quantities. In other words, by reason of the multitude of scenes which he not unfrequently introduces in single panels, his pictures sometimes lack the beauty and the dignity of simplicity; and though he at first composed in symmetrical groups, after the manner of his predecessors, in his later work he sacrifices too much to his love of the picturesque.