THE GERMAN, FLEMISH, AND DUTCH BASED ON THE HANDBOOK OF KUGLER. ENLARGED AND FOR THE MOST PART RE-WRITTEN. BY DR. WAAGEN, DIRECTOR OF THE ROYAL GALLERY OF PICTURES, BERLIN. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. IN TWO PARTS. - PART II. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1860. The right of Translation is reserved. BOOK V. THE TEUTONIC STYLE. FOURTH EPOCH, 1600-1690. SECOND DEVELOPMENT OF THE TEUTONIC FEELING FOR ART. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.-RUBENS. Ir was at this time that Netherlandish painters, religious as well as historical, returned once more to those realistic forms of expression in art peculiar to the Teutonic race. This reaction appears to us, it is true, under conditions very different from those proper to the period of the Van Eycks, but, at the same time, under those conformable to the spirit of the age. That feeling for reality of which the Van Eycks were the exponents was not only an intensely native element, but one which also acted strongly and multifariously on other countries, extending even, by means of Antonello da Messina, scholar of Jan van Eyck, to the school of painting in Venice. Now in the 17th century it was Venetian art, in her turn, which greatly assisted the redevelopment of the Teutonic feeling at home. In the same proportion as the influence of the Florentine and Roman schools had operated injuriously upon the northern painters of the preceding generation, especially by means of that ideal element so foreign to the native Netherlandish feeling, did Venetian art now act beneficially on painters congenial to herself in aim. In her productions all that Netherlandish masters had most sought to attain-truth of nature in conception, and beauty and harmony of colourwas seen for the first time developed in the utmost perfection, while the other great qualities of general keeping, |