Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/128

Rh a new idea of populousness. After we descended from the tower a bit of antiquity was pointed out to us that would have interested your young people more than any view in Belgium. It is an old well covered with an iron canopy wrought by Quentin Matsys, the "Blacksmith of Antwerp," who, before blacksmiths were made classic by Scott's "Harry of the Winde," fell in love with the pretty daughter of a painter, and left his anvil and took to painting to win her, and did win her, and for himself won immortality by at least one master-piece in the art, as all who have seen his "Misers" at Windsor will testify.

Antwerp is rich in paintings. Many masterpieces of the Flemish painters are here, and, first among the first, "Ruben's Descent from the Cross." Do not think, dear C., that, before I have even crossed the threshold of the temple of art, I give you my opinion about such a painting as of any value. I see that the dead body is put into the most difficult position to be painted, and that the painter has completely overcome the difficulty; that the figures are perfect in their anatomy, and that the flesh is flesh, living flesh; but I confess the picture did not please me. It seemed to me rather a successful representation of the physical man than the imbodiment of the moral sublime which the subject demands. Another picture by Rubens, in the church of St. Jacques, was far more interesting to