Note (return) — Chapter XIII · 50

Roger van der Weyden was a contemporary of the Van Eycks, born at Tournai. His early pictures in Brussels are lost. He visited Italy in 1439, and was treated with distinction at Ferrara. His Flemish realistic cast of mind and artistic power remained utterly unaffected by the grand Italian pictures with which he came in contact; so did his profound earnestness, which must have been great indeed, since its effects are felt through all impediments down to the present day. His expressive realism chose subjects in which the sentiments of grief and pity could be most fitly shown. He sternly rejected any suggestion to idealise the human form, and paint heads, hands, or feet different from those in ordinary life. 'It is the simplicity with which he gives expression by large and melancholy eyes, thought by projections of the forehead, grief by contracted muscles, and suffering by attenuation of the flesh which touches us.' The deadly earnestness of the man impresses the spectator at this distant date. 'There is no smile in any of his faces, but there is many a face wrung with agony, and there is many a tear.' He objected to shadow in every form, and filled his pictures with an invariable atmosphere and light—those which belong to dawn before sunrise. Among his finer works are a triptych 51 belonging to the Duke of Westminster, a 'Last Judgment' in the Hospital at Bearne, and a large 'Descent from the Cross' in Madrid. In the triptych in the centre is Christ with black hair, which is unusual, in his left hand the globe. On his right is the Virgin Mary, on his left St John the Evangelist; on the right wing is St John the Baptist, on his left the Magdalene.