This is a period of a return to the study of nature, of a carrying out of the feelings which seemed to be developing even in Giotto's time. No longer now was the artist to be separated from nature by the intervention of the Church, and though natural science was not advancing as fast as art was, still a growing regard for nature was the order of the day. This feeling first showed itself strongly in the Netherlands, with the brothers Van Eyck. We are told that the Van Eycks "mixed the colours with the medium on the palette and worked them together on the picture itself, thus obtaining more brilliant effects of light as well as more delicate gradations of tone, with an infinitely nearer approach to the truth of nature,"

The Van Eycks

Portrait of a merchant and his wife.

The Van Eycks regarded nature lovingly, and tried truthfully to represent her, and though many of their works were of sacred subjects, yet they were evidently studied from nature with loving conscientiousness; and so successful were they that to this day the picture by one of the brothers (a portrait of a merchant and his wife), in the National Gallery, remains almost unsurpassed. It is well worth a journey to the National Gallery on purpose to see it, and we trust all those who do not already know the picture will take the trouble to go and study it well. It is wonderful in technical perfection, in sentiment, in truthfulness of impression. Note the reflection of the orange in the mirror, with what skill it is painted. In fact the whole is full of life and beauty, - the beauty of naturalism. It is a master-piece good for all time, and yet it is but the portrait of a merchant and his wife. No religious subject here inspired John Van Eyck, but a mere merchant family, yet in many ways the picture remains, and will remain, unsurpassed. Such powerful minds as the brothers Van Eyck of course influenced all art, and they had many followers; but it does not seem that these followers had the insight into nature that characterized the Van Eycks, and the work falls off after the death of the brothers, whose names represent, and ably represent, all that was best of the fifteenth century.

Quinten Massys

In the sixteenth century Quinten Massys was the greatest and most naturalistic painter. He was said to be the "originator of a peculiar class of genre pictures, being in fact life-like studies from the citizen life of Antwerp." Here was an honourable departure from conventionality. His followers, however, having no mind to see how he was so great, were led away from the study of nature, and where are they now? Their names we all know, but who cares to see their works? Massys, the greatest painter of this period in the Netherlands, was content to take his subjects from the life of his own times, as all great men have been, from the Egyptians downwards.