f the Mystic Lamb was
removed from the Vijdts chapel and concealed in one of the towers. See
the MS., _Van die Beroerlicke Tijden in die Nederlanden_{b}, recently
printed at Ghent (1872), p. 146. On the same page in which Vaernewijck
relates this story he says that he refers his readers, for the lives of
the Van Eycks to his book, _Mijn leecken Philosophie int xx^e bouck_.
This book, which probably still exists on the shelves of some library,
has not as yet been discovered.

[13] "The pictures here exhibited as the works of Hemmelinck, Messis,
Lucas of Holland, A. Duerer, and even Holbein, are inferior to those
ascribed to Eyck in colour, execution, and taste. The draperies of the
three on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not
be improved in simplicity, or elegance, by the taste of Raphael himself.
The three heads of God the Father, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist,
are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness to the heads of L. da
Vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour."--_Life of
Fuseli_, i. p. 267. This is a very remarkable opinion for the period
when it was written.

[14] This appears from the following inscription of the time, on the
frame of the outer wing:--

"Pictor Hubertus ab Eyck, major quo nemo repertus
Incepit; pondusque Johannes arte secundus
Frater perfecit, Judoci Vyd prece fretus
[VersV seXta MaI Vos CoLLoCat aCta tVerI]."

[The last verse gives the date of May 6, 1432.] The discovery of this
inscription, under a coating of green paint, was made in Berlin in 1824,
when the first word and a half of the third line, which were missing,
were [imperfectly] supplied [with "frater perfectus"] by an old copy of
this inscription, found by M. de Bast, the Belgian connoisseur.

[15] [Dr. Waagen did not always hold decided opinions as to what
portions of the altar-piece of Ghent are by Hubert and John van Eyck,
respectively. There is no doubt that some of "the sublime earnestness"
which Schlegel notes in the Eternal, the Virgin, and John the Baptist,
and much of the stern realism which characterizes those figures, is to
be found in the patriarchs and prophets, and in the hermits and
pilgrims, and in the Adam and Eve; but it is too much to say that these
wing pictures can "with certainty be assigned to Hubert," and it is not
to be forgotten that John van Eyck worked in this picture on the lines
laid down by his elder brother, and must have caught so