(_α_) Among the early Flemish masters, the brothers Van Eyck, Hubert, and John are exceptionally distinguished in the early half of the fifteenth century, and it is only recently that their true merits have once more been established. It is now an established fact that they discovered, or at least they were the first to fully perfect, the process of oil-painting. Looking at the great advance they made we must now assume that a distinct series of stages in the course of this progress to its culmination could be set forth. We have, however, no historical array of works of art preserved for us whereby we could illustrate such a gradual process. We are face to face at one moment of time with the beginning and final consummation. For painting of greater excellence than that of these two brothers it is almost impossible to imagine. Moreover, the works that have come down to us, in which the mere type is already dispensed with and overcome, not merely display a grand mastery in drawing, arrangement, grouping, ideal and exterior characterization, enthusiasm, clarity, harmony, and delicacy of colouring, dignity and repose of composition; but we must add that the entire wealth of painting respectively to nature's environment, architectonic accessories, backgrounds, splendour and variety of material, drapery, style of weapons, ornamentation, and much besides, is already treated with such fidelity, with such an instinctive sense of what is pictorial, and with such a technical virtuosity, that even later centuries, at any rate from the point of view of thoroughness and truth, have been unable to produce any more consummate result. We are, however, more strongly attracted by the master works of Italian painting, if we contrast them with this Flemish school, because the Italians, along with the completest expression of soul-life and the religious sense, retain throughout the ideal of spiritual freedom and imaginative beauty. The figures of Flemish art delight us, no doubt, by virtue of their innocence, _naïveté_, and piety; nay, in the depth of their emotional life they, in some measure, surpass the work of the most excellent Italian artists; but the Flemish masters have never been able to attain to a beauty of form and a freedom of soul comparable with that of the Italians. Their Christ-babes are, in particular, badly modelled; and for the rest their characters, whether men or women, however strongly, subject to their dominant expression of religious fervour, they may display a sterling character in their relation to secular interests sanctified by the depth of their faith, nevertheless appear to us lacking in a significance which can exalt itself over such a piety, or rather, as dominated by it, do not appear able at the same time to be essentially free, instinct with imagination and the enterprise of superior qualities.