And

We must pass now from Touraine to the Bourbonnais, from Fouquet to his successor, the Maître de Moulins, the last great artist of the French tradition before its destruction by the Italian invasion. here, though the Maître de Moulins is essentially and typically French, we have to do with a distinct recurrence of influence from the north. If the paintings of Moulins were in the main like the Bourbon sculptures, offshoots of the Touraine school, it is none the less evident that the Maître de Moulins also learned from a Flemish master, namely, Hugo van der Goes. But besides this there is yet another Flemish influence which still requires elucidation. The whole question centres round a very interesting little diptych at Chantilly (No. 107), there attributed to Memlinc. The discovery of the artist of this work would probably unravel many complicated problems in the history of French and Flemish painting. In the left-hand wing of this diptych is represented Jeanne de France, the fourth daughter of Charles VII, born in 1435, and married in 1452 to Louis II of Bourbon. She is kneeling before a prie-dieu spread with a fleur de lisée cloth in an open landscape. Before her stands a child-angel holding by a strap a coat-of-arms with the double blazon of France and Bourbon. This angel at once reminds us of Fouquet's armbearing angels in the Hours of Étienne Chevalier finished about five years before this picture, which we may date, by the age of the princess, about 1465. But if it reminds us of Fouquet on the one hand, it is also the direct model for the Maître de Moulins's typical child-angels. On rising ground behind Jeanne de France stands St. John the Baptist, a figure reminiscent

design of this interesting imitator. Mr. Yates Thompson's is clearly by the same hand that executed the Book of Étienne Chevalier; The Taking of Jericho in execution at least is another's. This same assistant can, I think, be recognized in four detached miniatures from the Histoire Ancienne jusqu'à César' also belonging to Mr. Yates Thompson. These miniatures show extraordinary poetical invention: the Pompey riding away from Pharsalia is a masterpiece in this way; but they have nowhere the peculiar incisiveness of line, the structural grasp and assurance, of Jean Fouquet.

of Rogier van der Weyden; he directs the princess's gaze towards the vision of the Virgin and Child enthroned in the sky. She sits on a faldstool, and her feet rest on the crescent moon, over which the drapery falls in graceful folds; behind her are brilliant rays of glory which mingle with the sky in a rainbow edge. Now, this Madonna is scarcely more than a variant of the Madonna in the Maître de Flémalle's Madonna from Aix (No. 30); the glory, the crescent moon, and the falling drapery are all to be seen there; on the other hand it is even more evidently the original of the Madonna in the Moulins triptych, where, too, we have the glory with rainbow edges, the faldstool, and the crescent moon. We thus get a direct line of descent from the Maître de Flémalle9 to the Maître de Moulins, and in this unknown painter of the Chantilly diptych, who was influenced alike by Fouquet, the Maître de Flémalle, and van der Weyden, we have perhaps the master of the Moulins painter and his predecessor at the court of the Bourbons. Whether he was French or Fleming it is hard to say; but if the latter, his art became modified by his milieu, and the Chantilly diptych shows in its whole composition and treatment French influence.10

But, as I have said, there is another and more definite Flemish influence to note, namely, that of Hugo van der Goes. The earliest of the pictures by the Maître de Moulins at the Pavillon de Marsan is the Nativity from Autun," which we can date approximately by the age of the donor. He is the Cardinal Jean Rolin, son of the celebrated Chancellor Rolin who kneels before van Eyck's Virgin. He died in 1483, and as he is here an old man we may assign the execution of the panel to about the year 1480. This picture is based on the works

of Hugo van der Goes. The whole treatment of the theme recalls his Nativities at Florence and Berlin, while the eager gesture and open mouth of the shepherd pointing over the railing is an imitation of Goes's somewhat overstrained dramatic presentment. We notice, too, a peculiarity both in the St. Joseph and the cardinal which is significant, the extremely high placing of the ear, and consequent upon this a curious effect-all the features being, as it were, retroussé. Now this, too, is a mannerism of van der Goes particularly noticeable in the Magdalen of the Portinari altarpiece, a face, by-the-by, which seems almost to have given the type for the Madonna in the Autun picture. Goes-like, too, is the full, fleshy modelling of the eye-sockets and cheeks, while something of the peculiar finesse and vivacity of the hands may be traced to the same source, though in this, as in other matters, the Moulins painter has a grace and elegance which are peculiarly French.

In this connexion should be considered the little picture of the Virgin and St. Anne Enthroned from the church of St. John at Joigny.12 This shows a very similar influence upon a French painter, the figure of the old man to the right behind St. Anne, with his rather prominent eyes and fleshy lips, bearing the closest resemblance to van der Goes's types. might almost be tempted to suppose that this was a yet earlier work of the Maître de Moulins if it were not for a different colour scale and technique, but it certainly shows the kind of milieu out of which the Moulins paintings sprang.

We

But to return to the Autun picture, which, early as it is, cannot be the work of a novice. Here already the unknown master has found himself, for with all the reminiscences of van der Goes, it is no mere imitation, but the definite creation of a very distinct and original genius. In spite of the seriousness, the genuine feeling with

12 Reproduced on page 371.

which the scene is imagined, we find again the essentially French qualities, the frankness of perception and presentment which engenders wit, in the rendering of the old cardinal, and, more pointedly, of the keen eyes and fat belly of his favourite lap-dog, to whom a cardinal's robe is only a particularly comfortable sleeping place, and who has evidently long ago appointed himself master in the episcopal house.

The hands are here already highly characteristic of the master; the gestures are peculiarly vivacious, not to say voluble, and contrast somewhat with the staid solemnity of the faces. They are more elegant, less angular than van der Goes's, but they have his long, bony fingers. A constant peculiarity with the artist is his tendency to show the whole of the palm of the hand, and this is always rendered with astonishing minuteness and skill, showing the lines in a very unusual manner. This peculiarity, very rare among painters, would alone suffice to establish the authorship of the Donatress and Saint recently acquired by the Louvre (No. 108). The landscape in the Autun picture is also of importance, for here, too, our artist is very individual. It has a curious look of modernity: the fresh positive greens contrasted with a pale blue sky across which white clouds sweep, the sense of movement and life, the fresh breeziness of the sky and the atmospheric blue distances, are all rare in the art of the period, and remind one more than anything else of some of Millais's earlier work. The charming little portrait lent by Mme. de Yturbe 13 gives us precisely the same characteristics. The girl stands in the embrasure of a mullioned window which gives on to a wide, sunlit, spring landscape with the same fresh greens, same breezy sky. It is a sympathetic and intimate portrait, and though it has none of the penetrating psychological imagination of a Fouquet-the Maître de Moulins be

13 Reproduced on page 373.

the

longs altogether to a slighter, more superficial order of creators-it gives us in an unusual degree the sentiment of the aristocratic life of the period. It is essentially civilized, polished, and refined; it belongs to the new world of the Renaissance. Italian fashions might alter the forms, they could scarcely refine upon the spirit which is expressed here. In the details of form we find once more the same mannerisms, the eyes drawn backwards and upwards, and a curious twisting of the tip of the nose away from the spectator. This recurs in the Brussels and Agnew pictures, and is one among many points which establish, in my opinion beyond doubt, the attribution to the Moulins painter of the Glasgow picture, St. Victor and a Donor. 14 This, which used always to pass as a van der Goes—an interesting corroboration of the influence of that master-is now generally admitted to be by the Moulins painter, but the attribution is still disputed. One notices, however, all his characteristics, the brilliant green landscape, the bright sky and white clouds, and in the figures the vivacious and sensitive hands, while the donor has the peculiar averted nose. But the Moulins painter is recognizable here also by the singular handling of the paint. He paints with a full-loaded brush and gets at once a solid impasto and a peculiarly brilliant porcelain smalto. By this technique he obtains a strikingly brilliant and enamelled lustre in his very positive local colours. He chooses these, however, with such refined taste that in spite of the extreme brilliancy of his pictures one cannot accuse him of crudity. That the Glasgow picture is the stateliest and most dignified of all his known works is true, but it has too many points of likeness with the rest to allow us to reject it from the series of his paintings. It is not so, however, with two or three other works attributed to the master at Paris. The portrait of the Dauphin Charles

14 Reproduced on page 373.

Orland (No. 110) has none of his characteristics either in form, colour, or handling. Two other pictures from the Louvre (Nos. 104 and 105) are more puzzling; they are two wings of a triptych, dated 1488, and represent Pierre II de Bourbon and Anne of Beaujen. These are the same personages in almost the same poses that recur in the great triptych of Moulins painted ten years later. In the later work the faces are idealized and rejuvenated. The two panels are entirely in the style of the Maître de Moulins, but they have not his peculiar quality. Indeed, the differences of quality are so great as to have led M. Benoît to create provisionally two painters, the 'Master of 1488,' and 'Master of Moulins.' The difficulty of this supposition is that there are not two masters, there is only one spirit, one creative idea, in all these works, the difference being only of the more or less complete expressions thereof. Had we not the Autun picture, which proves that the Maître de Moulins had arrived at full mastery by 1480, we might have thought that the Louvre panels were by an earlier painter whose style was taken up and perfected by him; as it is we are forced, I think, to consider them as atelier pieces, perhaps replicas, differing only in their quality from the works of the master himself.

Yet one other picture ascribed to the master must be noticed, the miniature oil painting of the Assumption of the Virgin.' Here the type of the Virgin, the motive of the crescent moon, the whole décor of the scene, remind us of the Moulins triptych, while the wide-spreading landscape below, with its castles and towers embedded in trees painted with a masterly understanding of atmospheric effect, is analogous in its curious modernity with the landscapes we have discussed. Like the master, too, is the lustre of the colours and the firm flowing touch. But nowhere do we find a precise similarity in the forms,

1. Reproduced on page 371.

nowhere unmistakably the hand of the Maître de Moulins himself. The technique suggests perhaps the hand of an enamel painter.

In the triptych of Moulins itself 16 the qualities which we have studied in other pieces are summed up in a resplendent monumental composition. As far as the craftsmanship and science of painting are concerned, we may perhaps give the master of Moulins the highest place in the French school; but in his mode of conception we find him on a lower plane than the great masters we have already discussed. There is in his work a lack of that complete consistency and inevitable unity which comes of the desire to express as perfectly as possible an imaginative idea. His faces are grave and restrained; his gestures, and particularly his hands, are voluble and demonstrative. His design is often grandiose, with a colouring that, though delightful in itself, expresses a gayer, less concerned mood than the composition allows. He is the first modern French painter in this (as in other things): that he has the air of painting in order to produce a picture rather than to express an idea, and it is this that contrasts with the compelled utterance of a Fouquet or a de Limbourg.

If it is difficult to do more than indicate probable lines of development in treating of the central and northern schools of French painting, in the art of the southern provinces the difficulties are even greater, and the cross currents of influence from Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands become bewildering in their complexity. We might naturally expect to find in the earliest examples that the influence of the Sienese school at Avignon would predominate, but with the possible exception of a little Pietà in M. Martin Leroy's collection I know of no pictures which clearly demonstrate it. The habit of painting on a gold background with a stamped pattern round the border and in the halos survived till comparatively 16 Reproduced on page 365.

late, and this no doubt may have been derived from Siena.

;

Two pictures of surpassing beauty remain to give us an idea of the school of southern France in the mid-fifteenth century. One is the great Coronation of the Virgin, by Enguerrand Charenton "7; the other, the Pietà from Villeneuve-les-Avignon 18 while yet a third picture of the south French school, the Buisson Ardent, shows what it became under imported foreign influence. Of Enguerrand Charenton we know, as a result of the Abbé Requin's researches,19 that he was born about 1410 in the Laonnais, and came to Avignon in 1447. In 1453 he was commissioned to paint the Coronation, for which his priestly patron, Jean Morelli, gave him the most minute instructions. The picture is a visible presentment of the Christian doctrine, and pictorially it suffers something from the necessity for expressing such varied and complex ideas. It remains somewhat schematic, heraldic almost, rather than pictorial, and its full beauties can only be appreciated in detail. Still, only a great genius could have got from his theme so imposing a design as we have here. Italian affinities are particularly marked, and those not, as one might have supposed, Sienese, but distinctly Florentine. The scheme of colour, with its predominance of whites, pure blues, greys, and pinks, recalls Fra Angelico; while the whole tonality and the tempera technique are such as one could not match in more northern art. In the left-hand lower corner is seen the miraculous appearance of Christ to SS. Gregory and Hugh when celebrating mass at the church of St. Cross at Jerusalem. Here the church is represented in section exactly as in the predella of Fra Angelico's altarpiece in the Louvre. The buildings of the two cities of Rome and Jerusalem are painted in flat positive colours-bright 17 Reproduced on page 375. 18 Reproduced on page 377. 19 'Un tableau du Roi René de Villeneuve-les-Avignon. Picard, Paris, 1890.