The first has here a
representation so complete that if Europe were sunk by a cataclysm from
the Baltic to the Pyrenees every essential characteristic of the great
Fleming could still be studied in this gallery. With the exception of
his Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral at Antwerp, painted in a
moment of full inspiration that never comes twice in a life, everything
he has done elsewhere may be matched in Madrid. His largest picture here
is an Adoration of the Kings, an overpowering exhibition of wasteful
luxuriance of color and _fougue_ of composition. To the left the Virgin
stands leaning with queenly majesty over the effulgent Child. From this
point the light flashes out over the kneeling magi, the gorgeously
robed attendants, the prodigality of velvet and jewels and gold, to fade
into the lovely clear-obscure of a starry night peopled with dim camels
and cattle. On the extreme right is a most graceful and gallant portrait
of the artist on horseback. We have another fine self-portraiture in the
Garden of Love,--a group of lords and ladies in a delicious pleasance
where the greatest seigneur is Peter Paul Rubens and the finest lady is
Helen Forman. These true artists had to paint for money so many ignoble
faces that they could not be blamed for taking their revenge in painting
sometimes their own noble heads. Van Dyck never drew a profile so
faultless in manly beauty as his own which we see on the same canvas
with that of his friend the Earl of Bristol.
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