DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0196
OLD WORLD MASTERS
170
And the painter has done more than this: he has thrown such
atmosphere around the man that the interesting life in the old abbeys
seems to rise before us. We see the picturesque buildings set in
emerald swards and shaded by leafy trees, and surrounded by cloisters
where the monks take exercise, or read in some traceried recess; and
we peer into the halls where the artistic members of the community
are writing, composing music, copying, or painting and illuminating
beautiful miniatures in manuscripts, destined—although undreamed
of by these painters and gold-leaf workers—to bring thousands of
dollars at auction-sales five hundred years in the future and to be
prized as treasures in a then undiscovered country across the Atlantic
Ocean, whose waters were thought by those very monks to break
upon the shores of Far Cathay!
Our Carthusian Monk, in his white cassock, carries us into the
Chapel, where we see him and others of his Order in prayer at mid-
night, at early dawn, or at the vesper hour; and again with him we
stroll to the nearby river in the golden sunlight of the afternoon and
sit under the soft willows, dangling a line from a long fishing-pole
until we have a sufficient catch for supper. On our return to the
abbey we notice how heartily our Carthusian Monk welcomes a group
of arriving travellers—for the abbeys were the hostelries in the Middle
Ages—and we join them at supper in the refectory. Doubtless, too,
our Carthusian gives us a petit verre of golden Chartreuse of his own
making.
While the rules in the ancient abbeys were rigid and inflexible and
religion, of course, the chief business, it was in these secluded places
that art and learning were preserved and fostered. The world to-day
is apt to forget what civilization owes to the Mediaeval Abbey, and
Petrus Christus has brought this Carthusian Monk to tell us something
of what that is.
Petrus Christus was born at B aerie, on the southern border of
Holland, in 1410 (it is thought). In 1444 he became a free citizen of
Bruges and, as he was a follower and probably a pupil of Jan van Eyck
and Roger van der Weyden, he is classed as belonging to the School
of Bruges. Petrus Christus painted religious pictures and portraits
170
And the painter has done more than this: he has thrown such
atmosphere around the man that the interesting life in the old abbeys
seems to rise before us. We see the picturesque buildings set in
emerald swards and shaded by leafy trees, and surrounded by cloisters
where the monks take exercise, or read in some traceried recess; and
we peer into the halls where the artistic members of the community
are writing, composing music, copying, or painting and illuminating
beautiful miniatures in manuscripts, destined—although undreamed
of by these painters and gold-leaf workers—to bring thousands of
dollars at auction-sales five hundred years in the future and to be
prized as treasures in a then undiscovered country across the Atlantic
Ocean, whose waters were thought by those very monks to break
upon the shores of Far Cathay!
Our Carthusian Monk, in his white cassock, carries us into the
Chapel, where we see him and others of his Order in prayer at mid-
night, at early dawn, or at the vesper hour; and again with him we
stroll to the nearby river in the golden sunlight of the afternoon and
sit under the soft willows, dangling a line from a long fishing-pole
until we have a sufficient catch for supper. On our return to the
abbey we notice how heartily our Carthusian Monk welcomes a group
of arriving travellers—for the abbeys were the hostelries in the Middle
Ages—and we join them at supper in the refectory. Doubtless, too,
our Carthusian gives us a petit verre of golden Chartreuse of his own
making.
While the rules in the ancient abbeys were rigid and inflexible and
religion, of course, the chief business, it was in these secluded places
that art and learning were preserved and fostered. The world to-day
is apt to forget what civilization owes to the Mediaeval Abbey, and
Petrus Christus has brought this Carthusian Monk to tell us something
of what that is.
Petrus Christus was born at B aerie, on the southern border of
Holland, in 1410 (it is thought). In 1444 he became a free citizen of
Bruges and, as he was a follower and probably a pupil of Jan van Eyck
and Roger van der Weyden, he is classed as belonging to the School
of Bruges. Petrus Christus painted religious pictures and portraits