The art associations of the Low Countries were most powerful during the latter half of the fourteen hundreds, precisely the period when Flemish art attained the zenith of its magnificence. They were united to one another by ties of the closest friendship: members of one guild never had any difficulty in obtaining admission to another, and some painters seem to have belonged to several guilds at the same time. From the middle of the fourteen hundreds onwards, delegates from all the painters' guilds in the Netherlands were wont to meet together every three years in some town or other, where they spent several days discussing topics of common interest, comparing notes, and communicating to one another any new professional discoveries that had been made: hence the remarkable uniformity in the technique of all the Flemish pictures of the period which have come down to us. Such were the institutions which produced some of the greatest painters whom the world has ever seen. They never considered themselves, and were never considered, superior to other craftsmen, but in those days, be it borne in mind, every craftsman was an artist. ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN Roger van der Weyden was born at Tournai in the year 1400; he was apprenticed to the Tournai painter, Robert Campin, on the 5th of March 1426, and admitted a free master of the Guild of Saint Luke in that city on the 1st of August 1432. The above facts are established by local contemporary documents, which are undoubtedly genuine, but though the archives of Tournai have been searched through and through, with a view to finding a possible ancestor for Roger van der Weyden, only this much has as yet been discovered concerning his parentage--that his father's Christian name was _Henry_ (_sic_), and that he died before the year 1435. We learn, however, from some entries in the town accounts of Louvain that one _Henrich van der Wyden_ was living in that city in 1424, and that he was a sculptor by trade. Was this man Roger's father? It is not absolutely certain, but there is good reason to believe that before he was a painter Roger himself handled the chisel. This is in itself significant; and though it seems at first sight improbable that a citizen of Louvain should have been the father of a son born at Tournai, when we remember that citizen's calling, and that the sculptors of Tournai were in those days famous throughout Europe, the difficulty disappears. Henrich, we may be very sure, would have made frequent visits to Tournai on account of his professional pursuits; nor is it in the least unlikely that upon one of these occasions he should have been accompanied by his wife, or that during the sojourn there she should have given birth to a son.