Cities of Belgium. Grant Allen's Historical Guides. Allen Grant

call attention here to the meaningless way in which huge pictures like B. van Orley’s Crucifixion, with subsidiary scenes from the Passion, reproduce the form of earlier winged pictures, which becomes absurd on this gigantic scale.

      The Church of St. Jacques stands in the street of the same name, conveniently near the Hôtel du Commerce. It is a good old mediæval building (12th century, rebuilt 1457-1518), but hopelessly ruined by alterations in the 17th century, and now, as a fabric, externally and internally uninteresting. Its architecture is in the churchwarden style: its decoration in the upholsterer’s. The carved wooden pulpit is a miracle of bad taste (17th century), surpassed only by the parti-coloured marble rood-screen. A few good pictures and decorative objects, however, occur among the mass of paintings ranged round its walls as in a gallery. The best is a panel of the old Flemish School (by Dierick Bouts, or more probably a pupil), in the left aisle, just beyond the second doorway. It tells very naïvely the History of St. Lucy (see Mrs. Jameson). Left, she informs her mother that she is about to distribute her goods to the poor, who are visibly represented in a compact body asking alms behind her. Centre, she is hailed before the consul Paschasius by her betrothed, whom she refuses to marry. She confesses herself a Christian, and is condemned to a life of shame. Right, she is dragged away to a house of ill-fame, the consul Paschasius accompanying; but two very stumpy oxen fail to move her. The Holy Ghost flits above her head. The details are good, but the figures very wooden. Dated, 1480.

      Beside it is an extravagant Lancelot Blondeel of St. Cosmo and St. Damian, the doctor saints, with surgical instruments and pots of ointment. The central picture shows their martyrdom.

      Further on hangs a good Flemish triptych (according to Waagen, by Jan Mostart), representing, the prophecies of Christ’s coming: centre, the Madonna and Child; with King Solomon below, from whom a genealogical tree rises to bear St. Joachim and St. Anna, parents of Our Lady. R. and L. of him, Balaam and Isaiah, who prophesied of the Virgin and Christ: with two Sibyls, universally believed in the Middle Ages to have also foretold the advent of the Saviour. The stem ends in the Virgin and Child. Left, the Tiburtine Sibyl showing the Emperor Augustus the vision of the glorious Virgin in the sky: right, St. John the Evangelist in Patmos beholding the Apocalyptic vision of the Woman clothed with the Sun. This is a fine work of its kind, and full of the prophetic ideas of the Middle Ages.

      Pass round the Ambulatory and Choir to the first chapel at the east end of the right Aisle. It contains an altar with the Madonna and Child in Della Robbia ware, probably by Luca. Also, a fine tomb of Ferry de Gros and his two wives, the first of whom reposes by his side and the second beneath him. This is a good piece of early Renaissance workmanship (about 1530). The church also contains a few excellent later works by Pourbus and others, which need not be specified. This was the church of the Florentine merchants at Bruges (whence perhaps the Della Robbia) and particularly of the Portinari, who commissioned the great altar-piece by Van der Goes now in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova at Florence.

      The other churches of Bruges need not detain the tourist, though all contain a few objects of interest for the visitor who has a week or two at his disposition.

       F. THE ACADEMY

      [The Académie des Beaux-Arts, which formerly occupied the Poorters Loodge (or Guild Hall of the citizens within the gates) has a small but valuable collection of pictures, removed from the destroyed cathedral of St. Donatian and other churches of Bruges, which well repays a visit. You will here have an excellent opportunity for studying Jan van Eyck, whose work I shall more particularly notice when we arrive at Ghent. It is interesting, however, here to compare him with his great successor, Memling, who is represented at the Academy by a fine triptych. The little gallery also contains some admirable works by Gerard David, one of the latest of the old School of Flemish painters, whose work may thus be observed here side by side with those of his two chief predecessors. Owing to the ruinous state of the original building the collection has been transferred to a temporary apartment, beyond the Hospital bridge, near the Church of Notre-Dame. No tourist should leave Bruges without visiting this interesting collection.]

      The Museum is situated (at present) in a house on the right-hand side of the Rue Ste. Catherine, nearly opposite a new church. Go to it past the Hospital of St. John. Admission daily, 50 c. per person.