^So^-fefe^ 
 
 I 
 
ERASMUS AS A PAlK-TER. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 
 Sir, — It is a well -attested historical fact 
 that Erasmus practised the art of painting 
 and won the praise of contemporaries and 
 rivals. There can be no doubt that he painted 
 a picture of Christ on the Cross, with Mary 
 and St. John, which was in the monastery of 
 Emmaus, near Gouda, where and for which 
 it was probably executed. Tliis picture, 
 wliich bore the inscription — 
 
 ITacc De.siderius, ne spornas, Pinxit EraBmus, 
 Olirn in Steinaeo quando latebat Agro." 
 
 (Despise not this picture, for Erasmus painted 
 it when formerly he was in retirement in the 
 country near Stein.) This picture lias long 
 since disappeared and all traces of it have been . 
 lost. Now another, and undoubtedly im- 
 portant, picture has come to light in America 
 which is claimed to be the only existing 
 work of Erasmus. It is in the fonn of a 
 triptych on wood, the centre panel 45in. by 
 33in., and the two wings 45in. by 13|in. ; 
 it was imported into America by M. F. Klein - 
 berger and sold to Mr. E. A. Faust, of St. 
 Louis. It fonned the subject of an article 
 in Art in America of last December by Mr. 
 M. W. Brockwell, who has now elaborated 
 his essaj'' into a quarto 'monograph ninety- 
 eight pages (privately printed in New York), 
 with numerous illustrations. The brochure 
 forms an important and welcome addition to 
 art literature and to Erasmus biography. 
 
 To judge even from so uncertain and often 
 misleading a guide as photographs of pictures, 
 there can be no doubt that the work is by a 
 Netherlander of about 1500. Its ascription 
 to Erasmus is based on an inscription on an 
 oval shield held by an armoured and mounted 
 soldier (in the centre panel), and having as 
 its centre the head of a wild-looking infidel ; 
 the lettering around the outer edge of the 
 shield clearly reading " Erasmus P. 1501," 
 and evidently contemporaneous with the 
 painting itself. It is an inscription rather 
 than a signature in the strict meaning of the 
 word ; and as there are no pictures existing 
 with the signature of Erasmus, this work 
 must rank as by that great man unless some 
 very destructive evidence to the contrary can 
 be produced. Mr. Brockwell has made out an 
 excellent case in favoiu* of what is unques- 
 tionably a remarkable example of early 
 Flemish art. 
 
 The liistory of the picture is unfortimately 
 neither clear nor long. Until recently it was 
 in the South of France, its last owner stating 
 that it was formerly in the collection of the 
 late King of Portugal, wliilst " tradition says 
 that at the time of the Napoleonic v*^ars it was 
 removed from Antwerp." There can be no 
 doubt that it was in the collection of the 
 Comte d'Espinoy, whose pictures were sold 
 at Versailles in 1850 ; it was lot 437, it was 
 fairly fully described, the signatiu-e and date 
 being both mentioned. There is thence an 
 apparent gap in the liistory until 1873 ; and 
 on December 15 of that year an article 
 appeared in the Brussels Journal des Beaux 
 Arts with the title " L' Unique Tableau 
 d'Erasmo Retrouv6," in which it is stated 
 that the picture was then in the care of Heris, 
 the museum expert, to whom it was sent from 
 Lisbon to be cleaned. It is perfectly certain 
 that so remarlcable a picture by so great a man | 
 must have formed the subject of many articles I 
 in the French and other Continental art 
 and other joui-nals about the time of its sale 
 in 1 850 ; and further search may unearth 
 some of these. In the meantime I caii 
 8uppl\ ;'.M , --Hnt 1!mI- ^.,of to Mr 
 
 Brockwell. This picture forms the subject of 
 a passage in the fourth volume of F. Feuillet 
 de Conches' s " Causeries d'un Curieux," 
 Paris, 1868, a collection of essays on art 
 which probably first saw light in some 
 French review. In the course of a chapter on 
 " L'Art sous Henry VIII." the author 
 says (p. 182) :— 
 
 Grand connaisseur en mati^re d'art, firasme 
 dessinait auissi et peignait ses heures. Un Curieux 
 de Lisbonne possede de lui un triptyque signe, 
 bien compost, d'une execution seche et gothique, 
 il est vrai, mais cependant satisfaisante. Au 
 centre est le Christ crucifix entre les deux larrons. 
 Les saintos fenimes sont au pled de la croix. Les 
 volets offrent les details de la Passion. Celui de 
 gauche est une pieta. j 
 
 It is clear from this that M. Feuillet de! 
 Conches either saw the picture or had read 
 somewhere a full description of it. It must 
 have formed the subject of a good desal of 
 discussion in art circles between (if not 
 before) its sale in 1850 and the writing of the 
 " Causeries d'un Curieux." If its history 
 cannot bo traced farther back than 1850, the 
 same difficulty ought not to exist respecting 
 its wanderings since that date. To complete 
 the history of this interesting picture Mr. 
 Brockwell has much yet to discover ; and in 
 the course of his researches he will probably 
 find out that Charles Reade did not write ai 
 book with the title " Cricke.t on the Hearth 
 [p. 41, note) I 
 
 Yours obediently, 
 
 W. ROBERTS. ! 
 
 Could Erasmus Paint ? 
 
 By 
 
 ERASMUS : Humanist and Painter. 
 Maurice W. Brockwell. ^ ' , ■ 
 
 Tills little monograph advances the in- 
 teresting theory that the great renaissance 
 scholar had the gift of painting as well as of 
 philosophy. Mr. Brockwell bases his con- 
 tention upon a picture in the possession 
 of a French nobleman of Flemish descent, 
 and statements by contemporaries that 
 Erasmus knew how to wield the brush. 
 The painting is signed. But a signature 
 is the simplest thing under the sun. 
 Every machine-made fiddle is authentically 
 signed "Stradivarius." Some of the othef 
 proofs submitted by Mr. Brockwell are 
 more persuasive, and the picture itself, at 
 least the reproduction of it given in this 
 volume, has decided merit. In fact, that 
 would appear to be the chief argument^ 
 against the claim that Erasmus 'Tr nif,^ 
 It is entirely too good for an only opus. 
 However, ho bones will be broken in Mr. 
 Brockweir& controversy, because the repu- 
 tation of Erasmus will not stand or" fall 
 on the merits of this triptych. 
 
ERASMUS: HUMANIST 
 AND PAINTER 
 
ERASMUS AS A 
 
 PAINTER 
 " CHRIST ON THE CROSS " 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES 
 Sir, — At the present moment, when the mani- 
 fold activities and journeys of Erasmus are 
 under review in many lands, it may be desir- 
 able definitely to determine that in his early 
 years he practised the art of painting. 
 
 Having at the age of 17 entered, as a novice, 
 the house of the Canons Regular of St. 
 Augustine of Emmaus at Steen, near Gouda, 
 Erasmus beyond doubt painted about 1484 a 
 picture, still " lost " since 1755, of " Christ 
 on the Cross with Mary and St. John."" Dirk 
 Evertsz van Bleijswyck in 1667 recorded its 
 existence at Delft. Houbraken in 1718 informs 
 us of its being then in the esteemed cabinet 
 at Delft of Prior Cornelius Musius, who added 
 the two-lined inscription, a hexameter and a 
 pentameter : — 
 
 Haec, Desiderius, ne spernas, pinxit 
 
 Erasmus, 
 
 Olim in Steinaeo quando latebat Agro." 
 Martinet, Descamps, Bredius, and Hofstede de 
 Groot, as well as Wurzbach in 1906, refer to 
 Erasmus's having painted that work. 
 
 It happens that in 1917 in a private collec- 
 tion in the Middle West of America I came 
 upon a large triptych of " Christ on the Cross," 
 the centre panel measuring 45in. by 33in.. whichi 
 was fully insciibed: ** Erasmvs P. 1501. "j 
 It was determined that this triptych had been 
 at Versailles in January. 1850, in the collection 
 (No. 437) of the Comte d"Espinoy, who traced 
 back to Netherlandish ancestors in 1514. Re-, 
 search showed that it was to be identified withj 
 the " magnifique triptyque du celebre Erasme, 
 signe: Erasmus P. 1501 "" which was the sub- 
 ject of an article entitled " L"unique Tableau 
 d" Erasme Retrouve,'" published in the Journal \ 
 des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles of December 15,' 
 1873, and so recorded in 1906 by Wurzbach. 
 This triptych again disappeared from view until 
 in 1917 it was imported into New York from 
 the South of France. Further investigation led 
 me to make this triptych the subject of a 
 monograph, privately printed, on " Erasmus: 
 Humanist and Painter,"' in which I claimed this 
 to be the only authenticated painting by him 
 now known to exist. Probably few to-day 
 would, without investigation, regard Erasmus 
 of Rotterdam in the role of a painter and 
 immediately recognize this as his a-rra^ 
 
 ^Eyoptvov. 
 
 As Erasmus in another context declared: 
 " Tandem Bona Causa Triumphat."" 
 Yours obediently, 
 MAURICE W. BROCKWELL. 
 Richmond, July 17. 
 
ERASMUS: HUMANIST 
 AND PAINTER 
 
 A STUDY OF A TRIPTYCH 
 IN A PRIVATE CC TION 
 
 BY 
 
 i 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINIEP 
 1918 
 
 .K .V. .'J ,,?.V»Ov\ .U. 
 
ERASMUS: HUMANIST 
 AND PAINTER 
 
 A STUDY OF A TRIPTYCH 
 IN A PRIVATE COLLECTION 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE W. BROCKWELL 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 1918 
 
To 
 A. B. F. 
 
 and 
 U.E.M.B. 
 
"TANDEM BONA CAUSA TRIUMPHAT" 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The appearance in the United States, and the subse- 
 quent addition to a private collection in the Middle West, 
 of the only signed and authenticated picture by Erasmus 
 is so unique an event in art history that a detailed con- 
 sideration of all the issues involved calls for permanent 
 record. That is especially the case in regard to a work 
 which had been forgotten for half a century, but which 
 has now been recovered — apparently for the second 
 time. 
 
 The present writer cannot do better in a short Preface 
 than make his appeal to the reader by quoting from a 
 translation of the Preface of the "Apophthegmes," pub- 
 lished in 1531 and dedicated to the Duke of Cleves, by 
 "Desyderius Erasmus Roterodame.'' The openings 
 words are: 
 
 ''unto a dukk's soone oi^ his country 
 
 "For asmoche as ye did so gentely afore receive the 
 other little books whiche I had then sent as a poor earn- 
 este penie . . .,1 have thought good at this present 
 to joyne to the saied books some other thing rather more 
 mete for your noblenesse, and also (excepte I bee moche 
 deceived) more profitable for your studies.'' 
 
 M. W. B. 
 
 New York 
 June 8, 1917 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I The; Int^rnai, Evidence of the Triptych . . 15 
 
 II The Description of the Triptych ... 23 
 
 III The Pedigree Established 31 
 
 IV Erasmus, Humanist and Painter ... 41 
 V Portraits of Erasmus 81 
 
 VI No Other Picture by Erasmus Known . . 87 
 
 VII Concluding Remarks 90 
 
 Index 96 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 I A Triptych by Erasmus . . . Frontispiece 
 
 11 The Centre: Panel 22 
 
 III The ShieIvD (a fragment of the centre panei.), 
 
 SHOWING THE Signature of Erasmus, together 
 WITH THE Date 1501 24 
 
 IV The Wings (inside) 26 
 
 V The Wings (outside) 28 
 
 VI Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Hoi^bein the 
 
 Younger, in the Louvre 82 
 
I 
 
 THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE TRIPTYCH 
 
I 
 
 THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE 
 TRIPTYCH 
 
 There can be no doubt that the painting which forms 
 the raison d* etre of the present monograph is from the 
 hand of some Netherlander who flourished circa 1500. 
 
 The style is somewhat later than that of the exceed- 
 ingly rare artist, Albert van Ouwater {ft. 1430-60) and 
 Geertgen tot Sint Jans (1465-1493), his contemporary 
 at Haarlem. So far as we can now disentangle the 
 threads of painting in Holland from those in the schools 
 of adjoining territory, these were the earliest purely 
 Dutch painters whose works we can authenticate and 
 classify. This picture must have been painted by a 
 Hollander within a few years of their decease. Careful 
 examination shows that it comes even nearer to Cor- 
 nelis Engelbrechts (1468-1533), the master of Lucas 
 van Leyden, and Jakob Cornelisz van Amsterdam 
 (1470-1533). If we compare it with the "Calvary" of 
 the Bachofen-Burckhardt collection at Basel by Engel- 
 brechts,^ we find in each similar elements of grouping 
 and of detail as well as in the rendering of the middle 
 
 ^Exhibited at Diisseldorf in 1904 (no. 202), and excellently 
 reproduced in Clemen and Firmenich-Richartz's work, plate Ix. 
 
1 6 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 distance and the background. The strenuous grief of 
 the three figures on the Crosses and the play of Hne in the 
 free-hanging ropes may also be remarked. Yet in the 
 former the head-dresses are more decorative, there is a 
 greater variety of action and a more pronounced ten- 
 dency to over-crowding. The attitude of one of the 
 Marys here in some degrees recalls a "Deposition" by 
 Engelbrechts which was reproduced some five years ago 
 in an article on 'Xa Peinture Hollandaise ; ^ the figure of 
 the swooning Virgin in this work is allied to that of her, 
 standing with her hands clenched, in M. Vaillat's repro- 
 duction. 
 
 From among the works of Jakob Cornelisz, of Ooost- 
 sanen, or of Amsterdam, we may select the triptych of 
 the "Madonna and Saints" at Berlin, as well as the kin- 
 dred work at Antwerp. We find the same love of detail 
 in the rendering of the faces and the tree-form of the 
 background. Moreover, the elaborately decorative 
 treatment of detail in the "Mount Calvary," of the Rijks 
 Museum at Amsterdam, finds an echo here. In the 
 former Christ bears His Cross and is accompanied by 
 the executioner in the right background very much as in 
 the left panel of the present triptych; the figures on 
 horses to the right of the Cross are met with again in 
 our centre panel, and the Marys on the left of the Cross 
 
 2 VArt et Les Artistes, 1912, vol. xv, p. 146. 
 
Internal Evidence of Triptych 17 
 
 are grouped with just as much conviction as in our ex- 
 ample/ 
 
 In view of the frequent pictorial representations of 
 ''Calvary" in the Netherlands circa 1500, we do not won- 
 der at the similarity of the present work to that lent 
 from Aix-la-Chapelle to the Dusseldorf Exhibition in 
 1904 (No. 56) and catalogued as being by a Lower 
 Rhine master of 1510. The mounted soldiers, several 
 other participants in the dread scene, and the violently 
 contorted thieves in their death agony in each of those 
 works, as well as in a ''Crucifixion" in the National Gal- 
 lery (No. 1040) are akin in style.* 
 
 In the south aisle of the Cathedral of St. Sauveur at 
 Bruges is, or was in 1914, a representation of "Christ on 
 the Cross," with "Christ Bearing His Cross," and the 
 "Deposition." The three subjects there form one com- 
 position on a single panel, instead of being represented, 
 as here, in a triptych. The former was long falsely at- 
 tributed to Gerard van der Meire — a half-mythical art- 
 ist at the best — but has been more accurately described 
 by Fierens-Gevaert as of the School of Bruges, circa 
 
 ^ In former times the attribution of pictures by Jakob van Am- 
 sterdam was fantastically inexact. The "Salome" at the Hague 
 was at one time or another ascribed to Lucas van Leyden, Quentin 
 Matsys, Albrecht Diirer, and Timoteo Viti ! 
 
 * It is, or at least used to be, officially catalogued by Poynter as 
 a XV Century picture of the ''German Westphalian School.'* 
 The wings are at Liverpool. 
 
1 8 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 1500/ We find both in it and in the present triptych an 
 architectural background on the left and other similari- 
 ties of style. 
 
 In the gaily apparelled but earnest figure to the left of 
 the Cross, whom we may assume to be the Centurion 
 Longinus, is reflected something of the mediaeval knight- 
 errantry of Albrecht Diirer's ''Trumpeter and Drum- 
 mer/' of 1500, at Koln. Each is conceived in the same 
 mood as Diirer's engraving of the "Ensign Bearer," 
 of that year. Five years earlier, during his first visit 
 to Venice, Diirer had drunk at the spring of the Italian 
 Renaissance. 
 
 Were we to continue our investigations further, we 
 should find that many elements in the composition in the 
 left panel of our triptych are to be found again some 
 years later in the centre portion of the well-known "En- 
 tombment" by Quentin Matsys at Antwerp. 
 
 In the present rendering there is undoubted evidence 
 of an oncoming desire to centralize the main action 
 round numerous groups, arranged to pass from left to 
 right through a pictorial and far-stretching landscape 
 which usually extends across a sandy and rocky country. 
 Thus for the "Crucifixion" is substituted in time the 
 "Procession to Calvary," various renderings of which 
 
 ^ Peinture en Belgique, vol. i, p. 69, plate xliii. Friedlander : 
 
 ^'Meisteriverke der Niederldndischen Malerei" Brugge, 1902, no. 
 120, plate Iv. 
 
Internal Evidence of Triptych 
 
 19 
 
 were a century later painted by different members of the 
 Brueghel family. The Antwerp gallery (No. 31), the 
 Koln gallery (No. 599), the former Wedewer collection, 
 and that of Lord St. Oswald contain such composi- 
 tions.^ In them the ground gradually rises toward 
 the right, where we see the "Calvary'' on an eminence. 
 Rather similar pictures are given to "Velvet" Brueghel 
 at Tournai, and to Jan in the Uffizi (No. 761 his). 
 
 Earlier than the rendering of the three Scenes of the 
 Passion, as here seen, in separate panels in accordance 
 with tradition and ecclesiastical instruction, Dirk Bouts 
 had set forth his gruesome but attractive Scenes from 
 the Legends of Saints in which he made the landscape 
 continuous throughout by carrying it over from the 
 wings into the centre. The "Martyrdom of St. Eras- 
 mus" is typical of such treatment. 
 
 «See ''The Nostell Collection;' 1915, p. 211, by the present 
 writer. 
 
II 
 
 THE DESCRIPTION 
 
n 
 
 THE DESCRIPTION OF THE TRIPTYCH 
 
 Centre Panel 
 Christ on the Cross 
 Christ is seen on the Cross placed on rising ground 
 between the two thieves. The breath has just left His 
 body. On His left the impenitent thief has died after 
 undergoing great suffering. The penitent thief still 
 struggles in the final pangs of death. On the ridge of 
 high ground at the back is Longinus, in the fanciful at- 
 tire of a Roman soldier with a Renaissance shield and the 
 lance; by his side stands another soldier. In the left 
 foreground, near the foot of the cross, the fainting body 
 of theVirgin is supported by St. John, accompanied by 
 two other Marys who kneel. Further back stands anoth- 
 er female figure who wrings her hands with grief. In the 
 foreground a whippet lies on the ground, its nose pointed 
 upward in the direction of two mounted soldiers who 
 have luxurious armour and horse trappings; the one 
 nearest the front has slung from his left shoulder a 
 magnificent oval shield having as its centre the bronze 
 head of an infidel, and along the outer edge of its face the 
 inscription : 
 
 "Erasmus P. 1501" 
 
24 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 The background is irregular and bounded by a range 
 of hills on the side of which in the distance is the City of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Dexter, or Left, Wing 
 Christ bearing His Cross 
 Accompanied by a motley throng, one of whom is 
 about to strike Him with a heavy stick, Christ falls be- 
 neath the weight of the large Cross. His steps are di- 
 rected by an executioner, in fanciful attire, who clutches 
 at His robe. In the left foreground kneels St. Veronica, 
 holding the Sudarium that bears the imprint of the 
 Sacred Face. The background is formed by a mediae- 
 val castle with its massive portal, portcullis, walls, and 
 towers/ 
 
 On the back of this wing is a full length representa- 
 tion in grisaille of St. Piatus. He stands within a re- 
 cessed portal between fanciful columns. His head is 
 tonsured, and he wears ample ecclesiastical robes. In 
 his hands he holds a globular emblem. Resting against 
 his right side is a large processional cross, the foot of 
 which stands on the step of the doorway, with the name 
 of the Saint inscribed in front: 
 
 *'Sanctus Piatus" 
 
 ^ The possibility of identifying this castellated building with 
 the Abbey of St. Bertin is an interesting sidelight on the question, 
 and will be dealt with later (page 90). 
 
24 Eras>nus: Humanist and Fainter 
 
 The backgro) 
 of hills on the s 
 Jtrxt: 
 
 id bounded by a range 
 distance is the City of 
 
 yoss 
 
 r >' in rung, one of whom is 
 
 to iU a.. ui. ;i Heavy stick, Christ falls be- 
 
 .ae large Cross. His steps are di- 
 -mer 'v, fanciful attire, v v« -^it < 
 I ; - round kneels ; 
 \^mm^,.i}^m.^^ ^l^^^-'rtiB') Mlt^^^^^^t the 
 
 ■ io?i ^ti6?^^j^a&^^^i^^^^ by a mediae- 
 portal, portcullis, walls, and 
 
 lower 
 
 On the b;: 
 tion in gris : 
 cessed port 
 tonsured, anu 
 his hands he h( 
 his right side 
 which stands oij 
 of the Saint inscribed in from 
 
 full length representa- 
 stands within a re- 
 r His head is 
 KibUcal robes. In 
 Resting against 
 ross, the foot of 
 vay, with the name 
 
 'The possibility of ir\f-r^^\fvwrr- thts castellated building with 
 bbev of St. 1 (; sidelight on the question, 
 
Description of the Triptych 
 
 25 
 
 This Saint, Priest and Martyr, was born at Benevento 
 in Italy. A zealous monk, he went to Tournay and 
 preached there nine weeks, founding in due time the 
 Church of Notre Dame of Tournai. He was crowned 
 with martyrdom A.D. 286. His body was enshrined 
 in the Collegiate church which bears his name at Seclin, 
 a village between Lille and Tournai. During the inva- 
 sion of the Normans the relics of S.S. Bavo, Wandrille, 
 Aubert, Wulfran, Wasnulf, Piatus, Bainus, Winnoc, and 
 Austreberte were conveyed to St. Omer and there se- 
 cured for forty years, according to the Chronicle of the 
 Normans in Duchesne, An. 846. The relics of St. Pia- 
 tus were in another invasion conveyed to Chartres, and 
 in part still remain there in the Collegiate Church of the 
 Canons.® 
 
 ® The chapel of St. Piatus at Chartres is reached by a staircase 
 on the south side of the Central chapel of the Apse. Over the 
 door that gives access to it is a XIV Century grisaille representa- 
 tion of St. Piatus in ecclesiastical robes. There still remains at 
 Tournai an XI Century church dedicated to this saint. In the 
 famous tapestries woven at Arras in 1402 by Pierre Fere for 
 Toussaint Prier, who presented them to the cathedral at Tournai, 
 the history of St. Piatus and St. Eleutherius is told in picturesque 
 detail. The body of the former is borne to Seclin, and there heals 
 the sick. We see also ^'Comment Saint Piat vint a Tournai pre- 
 hier le foy (precher la Poi)." Elsewhere this saint is rarely met 
 with. But he may be represented, (1) carrying his own head 
 which has been cut off; (2) with his body pierced with nails; (3) 
 with a book in his right hand ; or (4) with a maniple on his left 
 wrist. In view of the emblems by which he may be identified, and 
 the difficulty of determining the exact nature of the object he 
 holds in this picture, we may suggest that its contents are intended 
 
26 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 Sinister, or Right, Wing 
 The Deposition 
 
 The body of Christ redines on the ground and is sup- 
 ported by Joseph of Arimathaea, and the Marys who be- 
 moan their loss. From the background approaches 
 Nicodemus holding a vase in his right hand. Further 
 back on the steeply rising Calvary the two thieves are 
 still in their bodily anguish. Against the sky-line may 
 be discerned a gibbet on the one side, and the malefactor's 
 wheel on the other. 
 
 The back of this wing is inscribed : 
 "S. Vince:ntius'' 
 
 The Saint holds an open book in his right hand, and 
 the palm branch of a martyr in his left. A Deacon and 
 Martyr (circa 304), he is most often rendered with a 
 book and a palm branch, but he may appear with two 
 ewers, a crow and a millstone. He was specially vener- 
 ated at Tarbes, as the Apostle of the South of France. 
 
 In the arch above the portals are two groups of 
 winged putti who grasp the thin loose-falling ends of a 
 wreath of foliage, caught up in the centre and drawn 
 
 to symbolize perpetual life. It is thus contrasted with the cross 
 that stands for suffering. We might have expected to see this 
 saint accompanied by St. Eleutherius, his fellow patron saint of 
 Tournai. The latter is not to be confused with the saint of the 
 same name who was one of the companions of Dionysius, or St. 
 Denis, of Paris, who usually carries his own head. St. Eleu- 
 therius of Tournai may hold a scourge, a heated oven, or the 
 model of a church. 
 
26 hrasi/.As. u unui/iist and Painter 
 
 Sinister, or Right, Wing 
 The Deposition 
 
 The body of Christ reclines on the ground and is sup- 
 ported by J oseph of Arim. nd the Marys who be- 
 moan their loss. From lir rround approaches 
 Nicodemus holding a vase in i.i^ ; nd. Further 
 back on the steeply rising Calvary ' ieves are 
 still in their bodily anguish. Aprs t ine may 
 be discerned a gibbet on the one si 'factor's 
 wheel on the other. 
 
 The back of this wing is inscribed : 
 
 "S. ViNCENTlUS" 
 
 The Saint holds an open book in his right hand, and 
 the palm branch fif ^^ffi)ii^^'iii'^fii^ left. A Deacon and 
 Martyr (circa 304), he is most often rendered with a 
 book and a palm branch, but he may appear with two 
 ewers, a crow and a millstone. He was specially \ - 
 ated at Tarbes, as the Apostle of the South of France. 
 
 In the arch above the portals ' . v 
 
 winged putti who grasp the thin ! a 
 wreath of foliage, caiu \in in ?)wn 
 
 to symbolize perpetual life. j . > > c . . u^s 
 
 that stands for suffering. We might hav ♦ see this 
 
 saint accompanied by St. Eleutherius. ■ 1 saint of 
 
 Tournai. The latter is xiot to be cont^ .int of the 
 
 same name who was one of the companions oi Dioiiy^ius, or St. 
 Denis, of Paris, who usually carries his own head St Eleu- 
 therius of Tournai may hold a scourge, a heated oven, or the 
 model of a church. 
 
Description of the Triptych 
 
 27 
 
 outwards at the sides. This motif is perhaps best ex- 
 empHfied in Flemish art in Gherard David's "Judgment of 
 Cambyses/' of 1498. It is also found in religious paint- 
 ings by Memlinc. It was, doubtless, introduced into 
 Netherlandish art from Italy, and in some way derived 
 from the decoration of sarcophagi there recently exca- 
 vated. It, of course, occurs in Andrea Mantegna's San 
 Zeno altarpiece. 
 
 This triptych, which contains so much fine colour, is 
 on wood. The centre panel measures 45 inches by 33 
 inches (1.16 x 0.84), and the wings 45 inches by 13% 
 inches (1.16x0.34) each. 
 
 Where is there a similar work attested by such a sig- 
 nature or even tentatively accepted by the critics? We 
 must postulate that its author was the great Humanist 
 and Scholar Erasmus. As we shall see, he was known 
 to Houbraken and others to have been a painter in early 
 manhood. Yet today few would, without investigation, 
 think of Erasmus of Rotterdam in this role. 
 
1 
 
III 
 
 THE PEDIGREE ESTABLISHED 
 
Ill 
 
 THE PEDIGREE ESTABLISHED 
 
 The present picture was until recently in private pos- 
 session in the South of France. When it arrived in this 
 country, it was in a dirty, although absolutely pure, 
 state. Not until after the removal of the surface dirt 
 did the signature and the intrinsic merits of the painting 
 become visible. It was said by its late owner to have 
 been formerly in the collection of the late King of Portu- 
 gal, and tradition says that at the time of the Napoleonic 
 wars it was removed from Antwerp. 
 
 There is no difficulty in placing reliance on the date 
 1 501 which we find on the shield in the centre panel. 
 Erasmus may, however, have been engaged upon it 
 before then, and in consequence of his multifarious liter- 
 ary researches have only completed it in that year. As 
 we shall see (pages 53-55), at one time or another during 
 that busy year he was at Courtembrune, St. Omer, Lou- 
 vain, Tournahens, Steen, and elsewhere. 
 
 The slow space at which Netherlandish artists of the 
 XV Century proceeded, even when their attention was 
 concentrated upon a given task, is proverbial. The 
 severe restrictions under which they worked, the sound 
 technique of their panel pictures, the honesty of their 
 
32 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 labours, and the care with which their work, when com- 
 pleted, was valued must have in some degree affected 
 Erasmus also. But, surely, none but the indefatigable 
 student that we know him to have been would have at- 
 tempted to fill in his leisure hours by painting. Still he 
 was then most anxious to increase his slender means to 
 further his scholastic researches. 
 
 In spite of the contradictory opinions of ancient writ- 
 ers and modern critics, careful research will show the 
 history of this unique painting during the XIX Century. 
 For unique it certainly is today, although we must not 
 imagine that other pictures from the same hand did not 
 exist in the XVI and perhaps XVII Century, when so 
 many precious works of art perished without leaving 
 any trace of the esteem in which they were held. 
 
 There can be no question whatever that this is the 
 triptych on wood, measuring ii6 cm x 84 cm (exactly 
 the right measurement) which belonged to Comte 
 d'Espinoy. The detailed description given in the cata- 
 logue shows that our picture was that belonging to the 
 Comte, "dont la vente aura lieu au domicile du defunt, 
 rue du Regard 5, Versailles, Jan. et Fev. 1850.'' It was 
 in fact No. 437 in the sale catalogue which pointed out 
 that "des soldats et deux cavaliers entourent le Cal- 
 vaire. L'un des deux cavaliers porte, attache sur Tepaule, 
 un bouclier sur lequel est representee une tete de bronze 
 
Pedigree of the Triptych 
 
 33 
 
 avec cette inscription: 'e:rasmus. p. 1501."' Surely, 
 nothing could be more precise. 
 
 The catalogue (which included 951 paintings) adds 
 that "la rarete des Tableaux d'Erasme rend celui-ci ex- 
 tremement precieux. Cette composition capitale est 
 d'ailleurs d'un merite incontestable, et peutetre est-ce 
 celle qui est mentionnee par les biographes sous le titre 
 du Calvaire'' ® 
 
 The sale lasted twelve days, and the introduction to 
 the catalogue tells us that Hyacinthe Frangois Joseph, 
 Comte d'Espinoy, Lieutenant General, Grand Croix de 
 rOrdre de St. Louis, grand officier de la Legion d'hon- 
 neur, was born at Valenciennes March 22, 1764. As a 
 young soldier he was received by the Buonaparte family 
 at Ajaccio and so met Napoleon, then a second lieuten- 
 ant in the ist regiment of the Artillery of La Fere, who 
 happened to be home on leave. The friendship then 
 made lasted for a great many years. They were together 
 at the memorable siege of Toulon in 1793. There exist 
 several letters which during the Year IV of the Re- 
 public passed between these two young soldiers and Ber- 
 thier. The Comte died in 1848, at the age of 86. 
 
 It does not seem to have occurred to the compilers of 
 the catalogue to remark that the Comte traced back 
 
 ^ If the reference is to that which belonged to Musius, we do 
 not agree. We deal with that point later in this monograph 
 (p. 46). I now find that a portion of that sale catalogue is on 
 the back of the picture. 
 
34 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 to Netherlandish ancestors. Pierre de Melun, Prince 
 d'Espinoi, Marquis de Roubaix, Baron d'Antoing de 
 Werchin, et Connetable et Senechal hereditaire de Hain- 
 ault, was a son of Hugues created Prince d'Espinoi in 
 1545. After Tournai was besieged by the Prince of 
 Parma, d'Espinoi went to Antwerp, and eventually re- 
 tired to France where he died 1594. The residence of 
 the family at Antwerp as far back as the XVI Century is, 
 doubtless, the origin of the tradition which, as we saw 
 (page 31), has accompanied this picture. 
 
 Guillaume, Prince d'Espinoi, Connetable de Flandre, 
 Seneschal de Hainault, possessed the seigneurie de Ron- 
 court about 1 61 7. According to Rietstap, members of 
 the Melun family were Comtes d'Espinoy from Nov. 28, 
 1 5 14, Princes d'Espinoi from 1545, and Dues et Pairs de 
 Joyeuse in Oct., 1814. He gives their' arms as: D'Azur 
 a 'sept besants d'or ^, 3, et i; au chef du meme. These 
 are exactly the same as those assigned to Frangois de 
 Melun, 31st provost of the Abbey of St. Bertin at St. 
 Omer.^^ It would not have surprised us to find these 
 besants d'or (which may have been lemons, treated her- 
 aldically and having the appearance of circles) worked 
 into this picture. Thus they might have been sought for 
 in the ornamental shield on the left fore-arm of the 
 mounted soldier to the right of the Cross, or even on 
 
 See Tableau des Armoiries in Wallet's "Ancienne Cathedrale 
 de St. Omerr 
 
Pedigree of the Triptych 
 
 35 
 
 the collar of the whippet. (An instance of the decora- 
 tion of a dog's collar with the arms of its owner is found 
 in Gherard David's well known altarpiece in the Nation- 
 al Gallery.) Had these besants d'or been so introduced 
 they would, of course, have indicated that Frangois de 
 Melun (or one of his near relations) was the donor of 
 the picture. Frangois v/as son of Jean Vicomte de 
 Melun; he succeeded Jean de Bourgogne (one of the 
 bastards of Philip le Bon, Duke of Burgundy) as 31st 
 provost in 1499. Designated Bishop of Cambrai in 
 1502, he became Bishop of Arras in 1509. From 151 5 
 he also occupied the see of Therouanne. He was also 
 provost of Lille. He died Nov. 23, 1521. We must 
 not forget that the Melun and d'Espinoy families recog- 
 nized each other as being of the same house, and the 
 similarity of the arms bears this out.^^ Their devise 
 was Virtus et Honor, and their cri d'armes: "a Moy 
 Melun.'' It is clear also that they acted up to their 
 family motto. Nor must it be thought that these refer- 
 ences to the Melun and d'Espinoy families are merely a 
 side issue in regard to the importance to be attached to 
 this newly found triptych. For, as we shall see, one of 
 Erasmus's patrons was the Bishop of Cambrai, whose 
 
 See Woodward: ''Heraldry J' i, 358, and Mailhol: "Diction- 
 naire/' i, 1127. See also "Armorial de Tournai et du Tournaisis" 
 in "Memoires de la Societe Historique de Tournai,^' 1859, vi, 286 ; 
 vol. i, 1853, published forty-three "Lettres inedites de Pierre de 
 Meleun," dated between 1579 and 1583. 
 
36 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 brother was Abbot of the monastery of St. Bertin at St. 
 Omer which the future Humanist certainly visited of- 
 ten in 1 500- 1 50 1. But exactly to what extent that city 
 and this picture were related at that date cannot unfor- 
 tunately be now stated with precision. 
 
 The city of St. Omer (which long formed part of 
 Flanders, but is now in the Pas de Calais in northern 
 France) takes its name from St. Andomare, or St. Omer, 
 Bishop of Therouanne who in the VII century founded 
 there a monastery named after him. St. Omer was as- 
 sisted in his apostolic labours by Mommelin, Bertin, and 
 Bertrand, brother monks from the monastery of Lux- 
 euil. And as the years went by, the city of St. Omer 
 resisted several attacks by the English, notably in 1337- 
 1339, and by the French. Priestly activities were prac- 
 tised in the monastery of St. Omer by St. Bertin, who 
 in 640 founded the Abbey which came to be known after 
 him. We are, therefore, not altogether surprised that 
 in the XVIII Century the priority of date of St. Omer's 
 foundation and that of St. Bertin's came to be warmly 
 disputed by the local authorities and partisans. 
 
 But to return to sure ground in regard to the picture's 
 history. We are fortunate in having found an article on 
 'X'Unique Tableau d'Erasme Retrouve.'' The writ- 
 
 Journal des Beaux Arts, Bruxelles, Dec. 15, 1873, p. 183. 
 Ten years later Siret in his Dictionnaire cited this article, and ex- 
 tended his earlier view. 
 
Pedigree of the Triptych 
 
 37 
 
 er says that the picture was then in the care of Heris, 
 expert of the Brussels Museum, to whom it had been 
 sent from Lisbon to be cleaned. He refers to the signa- 
 ture and date but is in error, as we shall show (page 
 48), in agreeing with Kramm that this is the picture 
 which was in the cabinet of C. Ploos van Amstel and in- 
 cluded in that sale in 1800. 
 
 These are the only ascertainable facts in the history 
 during the last century or so of the "unique tableau 
 d^Erasme'' once more "retrouve/' It was imported into 
 this country early in 191 7 by M. Kleinberger. 
 
IV 
 
 ERASMUS: HUMANIST AND PAINTER 
 
IV 
 
 ERASMUS: HUMANIST AND PAINTER 
 
 It is a matter of common knowledge that the father of 
 Erasmus was Gerhard de Praet""^ of Gouda, a man of 
 much vivacity and sound scholarship. His mother was 
 Margaret, daughter of a physician of Zevenbergen. 
 
 The father went to Rome to earn a living by his pen, 
 by transcribing books. For, being an excellent penman, 
 ''there was at that time a great deal of that sort of bus- 
 iness to do." Printing had not yet come into common 
 use. The parents were never legally united in wedlock, 
 a stigma from which Erasmus was at the age of fifty 
 anxious to obtain relief by Papal dispensation.^* 
 
 Feugere : "Brasme: etude sur sa Vie," claims that this is a 
 "mot hollandais qui signifie facetieux." 
 
 ^* Surely, no one would today give any credence to the unsup- 
 ported fiction indulged in by Charles Reade in his '' Crickc^ oLL the 
 Hearth" to the effect that the marriage ceremony had been per- 
 formed in part when it was wrongfully interrupted. That his- 
 torical novelist writes: 
 
 "The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were 
 in the Church of Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with 
 blushes. . . But ere the cure had uttered a single word of the 
 sacred rite, a harsh voice cried : 'Forbear.' 
 
 " 'Forbear, man,' cried the Priest. 
 
 " 'There is no impiety, Father. This young man would marry 
 against his father's will, and his father has prayed our burgo- 
 
42 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 The boy was in these circumstances born at Rotter- 
 dam^^ on October 28, 1466^® ex illicit 0 et ut t^met in- 
 cesto damnatoque coitu. 
 
 It has come to be accepted that Erasmus was a name 
 
 master to deal with him according to the law. L<et him deny it, 
 if he can/ 
 
 "At this moment Margaret uttered a cry of despair." 
 
 It is perhaps some slight consolation to read of Erasmus, bom 
 in due course, that "the yellow-haired laddie, Gerard Gerardson 
 (sic), belongs not to Fiction but to History." 
 
 We do not forget that the same writer of romantic literature 
 seeks to portray, for the benefit of his credulous readers, 
 "Margaret, sister and survivor of the brothers van Eyck." But 
 whether John van Eyck's putative sister ever existed is a matter 
 of much doubt. The lady — for whom a Christian name was not 
 at first hazarded — is not mentioned in any document earlier than 
 1565. There is little doubt that she was merely an airy concep- 
 tion of the over-fecund imagination of the curious poet-painter 
 De Heere. (See Weale and Brockwell: ''The Van Bycks,* 
 1912, p. 22). This invention, amplified by Vaernewyck, in time 
 brought about the attribution to Margaret van Eyck of a "Ma- 
 donna" in the National Gallery (no. 708) which in recent years 
 came to be catalogued as "Flemish School." Thus Margaret, the 
 name of John van Eyck's zvife and not his sister, was officially 
 regarded as having "painted in miniature" and possessed other ac- 
 complishments. All these assumptions have long ago been dis- 
 proved. (See the present writer in "Athenaeum," April 18, 1908, 
 p. 484). 
 
 The house of his birth in the Breede Kerk bears the inscrip- 
 tion : "Haec est parva domus, magnus qua natus Erasmus." 
 
 ^® We may, without much risk, trust the researches of Richter, 
 and accept 1466 as the year of birth. De anno quo natus est apud 
 Batavos non constat. In fact the previous, as well as the follow- 
 ing, year has been put forward by some writers. It is not sur- 
 prising that the date is wrongly given on the pedestal of the 
 statue erected in his memory at Rotterdam : "Geboren tot Rotter- 
 dam den 28 Octob. 1467." The present bronze statue was not 
 erected until 1622; it replaced one of stone erected in 1557, and 
 that again was a substitute for the original wooden statue decreed 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 43 
 
 fancifully devised by its bearer and that he in conformity 
 with the pedantic taste of the time, among men of let- 
 ters, assumed names of Greek and Latin etymology. 
 Thus he would, it is urged, translate, Gerhard or Gerard, 
 the Christian name of his father and himself, into its 
 classical equivalents. Gerhard signifying, in Dutch, 
 Beloved — from Gieren, to desire — would be a suitable 
 name for a love-child. It would thus be changed by the 
 son, when he came to "y^ars of discretion,'' into Desid- 
 erius in Latin and Erasmus in Greek." This future 
 Homo Incomparabilis must have reached such years 
 almost by the time he learned to walk. He was "young 
 in years, but in sage council old." 
 
 Possibly this choice of his own names, if a man can 
 bestow a name on himself, is traceable to an old fable 
 slavishly copied by many of his biographers. He may, 
 however, have been given at his baptism the name of 
 Erasmus, after the Saint who was martyred under Dio- 
 cletian. For in accordance with the custom of that, 
 but not a later, period in the Netherlands he would 
 probably be baptised within twenty-four hours of 
 his birth. Subsequently, we are told, he became 
 
 upon by the civic authorities of Rotterdam in 1549. The date is 
 given correctly as 1466 at Basel, where he died. The error occurs 
 again in Thieme-Becker's "Lexikon" 1914, vol. x, p. 588. Eras- 
 mus was sure of the day, but not of the year, of his birth. 
 
 In much the same way the name of John Reuchlin, "the 
 father of modem Bible criticism," became Graecicized into Cap- 
 nio, and Swartzerde into Melanchthon. 
 
44 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 aware that epao-ixto; — Erasmius, not Erasmus — *'was 
 the name he wanted/' In fact it was given to ihis 
 godson, the son of Johannes Froben, the printer of Basel 
 of whom we are later on to hear so often. Roteroda- 
 mus, the appellative he afterwards added from the place 
 of his birth, would more accurately be rendered, as we 
 think today, Roterodamensis. It is not of much mo- 
 ment, however, for, as one American critic facetiously 
 puts it, he was in any circumstances able to *'make a 
 name for himself/' 
 
 We must pass in review the outstanding facts of his 
 career in order to recognize how they throw light on 
 him as a painter in his youth and early manhood. Hav- 
 ing commenced his studies at Gouda at the extremely 
 early age of four, he became a chorister in the cathedral 
 of Utrecht. Utrecht was, of course, an art centre in 
 quite early times." 
 
 ^® A cathedral city, it would follow the traditions of other 
 ecclesiastical centers in Germany as well as in the Netherlands, 
 and thus exert an influence on artistic activities. We judge this 
 from the plates in G. van Kalcken's "Peintures Bcclesiastiques du 
 Moyen Age,'' 1910. 
 
 We have no record of any individual native artist working at 
 Utrecht in those early times, but it is significant that the tower of 
 St. Martin in that city is found in the background of the Rolin 
 altarpiece of the Louvre as well as in the centre panel of the 
 "Adoration of the Lamb/' by the Van Eycks at Ghent. The in- 
 fluence, however^ transitory, of those two brothers would have its 
 mark. Moreover, it may yet be shown that Hubert in early years 
 worked at Utrecht, as well as at Maastricht, Haarlem and The 
 Hague — in Holland as well as in Flanders. John van Eyck was 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 45 
 
 Erasmus, or Gerrit Gerritz as we may in accord- 
 ance with civic tradition call him in these early years, 
 was sent at the age of nine to a school kept by a religious 
 brotherhood not bound by vows, at Deventer. Much 
 later in life he complained of this school that the teach- 
 ing and the books were bad, in fact it was "still in the 
 age of barbarism." Alexander Hegius, the master, 
 coming into the school-room was so much struck, we 
 read, with the theme that the boy had written that he 
 assured him that, if he would persevere, he had a great 
 future as a scholar." 
 
 At the age of twelve the boy knew Horace and Ter- 
 ence by heart. His mother, for whom he had a great 
 affection, died of the plague a year later. It has been 
 said that he "tenait de sa mere une delicatesse physique 
 et morale que nous retrouverons dans son histoire;'' and 
 in that respect we recall the early years and the sensitive 
 temperament of his contemporary Raphael who also lost 
 his mother while still a child. 
 
 In 1480 he was placed in the school of the Collation- 
 employed at The Hague from October 24, 1422, to September 
 11, 1424, and it was only on the outbreak of war that he left Hol- 
 land. 
 
 Hegius, writing to Agricola, Dec. 17, 1484, said "my school 
 is full again now, but in summer the numbers rather fell off. 
 The plague which killed 20 of the boys drove many others away, 
 and doubtless kept some from coming to us." Erasmus entered 
 the 8th, or lowest, class ; when he left, he was not above the 3rd. 
 A few years later the school numbered 2200 boys ! 
 
46 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 ary Brothers at Bois -le-Duc, and seemed destined for a 
 monastic life. But he regarded this school, as he tells 
 us later, as "a very seed-bed of monkery'' and "as a 
 place of education worthless/' At the age of seventeen 
 he entered as a novice the house of the Canons Regular 
 of St. Augustine, of Emmaus, at Steen near Gouda. He 
 soon formed an aversion from the cloister's irksome 
 round of what he considered mechanical devotions. It 
 was not that he disliked the severities of a pious life, but 
 that he felt he had no vocation for devotional exercises in 
 a conventual environment. Consequently he began more 
 and more to study the Ancient Classics. His preoc- 
 cupation had been in the main with religion. What, 
 therefore, was more natural than that he should now 
 afford himself mental relaxation by busying himself with 
 painting? We read that in 1484 he painted a picture 
 of "Christ on the Cross, with Mary and St. John." This 
 work is said to have been executed "in the style of the 
 old Dutch Masters" and to have been long in the mon- 
 astery of Emmaus, called Steyne, near Gouda. It is 
 alleged to have been begun as early as 1484. Dirk 
 Evertsz van Bleijswyck, writing in 1667, was probably 
 the earliest to record such a picture at Delft.^° Hou- 
 braken also informs us of its being in the esteemed cab- 
 inet of Prior Cornelius Musius at Delft.^' Weyerman 
 
 20 "Beschryvinge van Delff was published again in 1674. See 
 p. 364 of the 1729 edition. 
 
 21 ''Nederlantsche Konstschilders;' 1718, i, 17-19. See p. 33. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 47 
 
 also tells of it." Martinet and others refer to it as if it 
 were a miniature painted on parchment. Some have 
 urged that it was then "the only remaining one by Eras- 
 mus and more remarkable by its subject than for its 
 artistic qualities.'' Descamps has recorded that Eras- 
 mus retired to this monastery of Emmaus ''solely for its 
 library, which was the finest of the century/' and that 
 there Erasmus "applied himself at intervals to painting, 
 in which he succeeded and made the same progress as in 
 his other studies. The merit of his pictures is," he adds, 
 "attested by the artists of the time, but the author does 
 not believe that a single one has escaped from the ruin of 
 that house. One hardly knows today where it was 
 built."" We are told that it bore the following two- 
 lined inscription, a hexameter and a pentameter, writ- 
 ten, and therefore presumably added, by Musius to the 
 painting : 
 
 "Haec Desiderius, ne spernas, Pinxit Erasmus, 
 Olim in Steinaeo quando latebat Agro." 
 
 ("Despise not this picture, for Erasmus painted it 
 when formerly he was in retirement in the country near 
 Stein.") 
 
 There is much diversity of opinion as to the picture 
 and its subsequent whereabouts, but the solution of the 
 
 ^^"Konstschilders/' 1729, i, 194. See also Bredius and H. 
 de Groot:^ ''Quellenstudien" 1893, p. 121 and p. 351; also Wurz- 
 bach : "Niederldndisches Kunstler-Lexikon" i, 494. 
 
 23 Descamps: *'Vie des Peintres/' 1753, i, 22. 
 
48 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 difficulty may perhaps be found in identifying it with the 
 "Crucifixion" which was included in the sale of the Col- 
 lection (No. 86) of Jacob de Wit, at Amsterdam, on 
 March 24, 1755, was then sold for 31 florins. It 
 was there stated to be a "genuine picture by Erasmus," 
 and "perhaps that mentioned by Houbraken.'' ^* 
 
 Certainly this was not the painting which appeared 
 in the sale (No. 56) of C. Ploos van Amstel, in 1800, 
 and was bought by "Calkoen'' for 15 florins.^^ It was 
 painted "about 1 500," the catalogue tells us, and meas- 
 ured lo.o by 75.^^ We have no idea as to what has since 
 become of that picture; its disappearance justifies our 
 claim that the painting which forms the subject of our 
 monograph is his only extant work. 
 
 As we have been commenting on the only work re- 
 corded in any detail to have been executed by Erasmus 
 in the monastery of Emmaus, we may note Amiel's re- 
 
 ^* Hoet and Terwesten : ''Catalogus van schilderyen" In 's Gra- 
 venhage, 1770, p. 110. See also Duplessis: ''Ventes de tableaux/' 
 § 293. 
 
 25 Duplessis, § 2132. 
 
 2^ We have already seen that Siret endeavored to show that 
 this triptych (formerly in the d'Espinoy collection) was the same 
 as that of the Ploos van Amstel cabinet. He only went into the 
 matter superficially, and was compelled to argue, quite unreason- 
 ably, that in his day "the wings had been detached, and it is not 
 known what has become of them.'* 
 
 See Kramm: ''Holl. en Vlaam. Kunstschilders," 1858, ii, 432, 
 went more fully into the question than anyone else. It is a pity 
 that Siret should have sought to confuse the issue, apparently for 
 his own personal satisfaction. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 49 
 
 mark that he thus occupied himself "a titre de delasse- 
 ment."" 
 
 By this time the earlier stages of an approaching de- 
 cline were visible in the art of Bruges, but they were 
 marked by signs of a Renaissance Spirit at Alost, Lou- 
 vain, Antwerp, Brussels, Audenard, and elsewhere. In- 
 deed, Erasmus was moving in the very midst of a Ren- 
 aissance not merely in literature but in painting. 
 
 His was a complex personality and on April 25, 1492, 
 under exactly what circumstances we do not know, he 
 was ordained priest. Becoming known to the Bishop 
 of Cambrai, he left the monastery of Emmaus in 1493, 
 after residing there ten years. In 1496 he entered Mon- 
 taigu College, under the shadow of the monastery of Ste. 
 ^Genevieve, at Paris. At Montaigu the students had to 
 observe the fasts and the services of the church, and a 
 non-compliance with the rules was followed by punish- 
 ment. They had to sweep the floors and do all kinds of 
 servile work. The fare was very bad, meat was not 
 known, the eggs were rotten, the water bad, the wine 
 wretched, and the bread scanty. Bedroom accommoda- 
 tion was even worse, according to the accounts that have 
 come down to us, and the conditions were so unsanitary 
 that infection and disease were almost inevitable.^^ 
 
 In the XV Century, a poor scholar, anxious to make a 
 
 2^ "Brasme, un Libre Penseur du xvi.® Siecle," 1889, p. 27. 
 Faulkner : ''Erasmus, the Scholar." 
 
50 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 career and a position for himself, would naturally look 
 round for a patron who should be liberal and not over 
 exacting. In such circumstances, and at this moment 
 in his rapid development, the Marchioness de Vere, who 
 resided at the castle of Tournahens in Holland with her 
 tutor Battus, came into the life of Erasmus. He was 
 to receive an annual pension of lOO florins, but it was 
 irregularly paid. Moreover, his patron the Bishop of 
 Cambrai, whose brother was abbot of the monastery of 
 St. Bertin at St. Omer, failed in his obligations to Eras- 
 mus who then returned to Paris. He was often in finan- 
 cial straits and obliged to eke out a rather unpleasant 
 existence by taking pupils. Fortunately among them 
 was the young Lord Mount joy who settled on him a pen- 
 sion of lOO crowns, which apparently continued to be 
 paid regularly for many years to come. It was in 
 Mountjoy's train that he now visited England for the 
 first time. The story told of the first meeting of Eras- 
 mus and Sir Thomas More, even if not verified, is ben 
 trovato. The former, captivated, at the Lord May- 
 or's table in London, with More's conversational powers, 
 exclaimed: ''Aut tu es Morus, aut Nullus." Not to be 
 outdone. More retorted : "Aut tu Erasmus es, aut Dia- 
 bolus.''^^ 
 
 2^ Henri de Berghes, Bishop of Cambrai, had had the Abbey 
 of St. Omer in his eye for his younger brother Antoine. But the 
 monks elected a certain Jacques dti Val. The Bishop, however. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 Latin, of course, was then almost the vernacular of the 
 best and most cultivated people in Europe, and by this 
 time Erasmus had acquired fine power of expression in 
 that tongue. To the end of his days he contemned mod- 
 ern languages as "uncouth barbarous dialects/' In such 
 circumstances he was well acquainted with More, Colet, 
 Groginus, Linacre, and Latimer. But in January, 1500, 
 he left Oxford for Dover en route for the continent, al- 
 though he would never have done so if Colet had had his 
 way. 
 
 He traveled in France and Holland, but circumstances 
 and uncertain prospects troubled him. We may judge 
 of this from one of his letters : 
 
 "The Abbot of St. Bertin writes to me in terms which 
 show he likes me best at a distance. In the Bishop I 
 have been unlucky enough to find an anfi-Maecenas, who 
 not only will not help me but grudges me my success.'' ^° 
 
 But he still had great hopes of the Lady de Vere, and 
 persistently sought the aid of the tutor Battus, who had 
 the ear of the lady, to obtain for him all he could. He 
 wrote : 
 
 "Go yourself to the Lady. Tell her that I am in ex- 
 treme distress, that Erasmus will do more credit to her 
 
 succeeded in having that election annulled — probably on some 
 technicality — to the benefit of his brother who was thus violently 
 installed in Oct., 1493. See P. S. Allen: "Age of Erasmus;' 
 1914, p. 66. 
 
 *° Given by Froude : '%ife and Letters of Erasmus" p. 60. 
 
52 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 liberality than the theologians whom she has taken into 
 her favour. They can only preach sermons: I am 
 writing books which will live for ever. They address 
 single congregations : I shall be read by all the world. 
 Theologians there will always be in abundance : the like 
 of me comes but once in centuries. Do not be shy. Do 
 not mind telling her a lie or two in a friend's interest. 
 I shall have to abandon literature altogether, if I cannot 
 obtain means from one quarter or another to go on with 
 it properly. No one can write as he should without 
 freedom from sordid cares. How many ignorant asses 
 roll in money. I am working hard enough. I spare 
 nothing, not even my health. To please my friends, I 
 compose for one; I read for another, I correct for a 
 third ; while I compose, read, and correct for myself too. 
 I toil over Greek texts. I want books and must have 
 help to get them. Anyway I must have a few crowns 
 from you. I starve for books. Leisure I have none, 
 and I am out of health besides." 
 
 The general tone of this letter is far from pleasant, 
 not so much from its self-conceit as its importunity. Yet 
 it is to be condoned in so brilliant a scholar at odds with 
 the world and out of health.^^ It is noteworthy that, al- 
 though then unable to procure the means of prosecuting 
 
 Given in full by Froude, p. 70. 
 
 This letter rather recalls the perfectly accurate, if apparently 
 boastful, letter of Leonardo to Lodovico il Moro as to his various 
 abilities. 
 
 / 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 53 
 
 his studies, he was prophetically sure of himself, his aims 
 and his future success. 
 
 At one time he writes to Colet: 
 
 "I struggle to devote myself to the study of sacred 
 literature. I hate everything which detains me from 
 it." 
 
 A letter addressed by him to a priest named Edmund 
 tells us that he was prepared to pass the winter of 1500- 
 1501 at the chateau of the Lord of Courtembrune, near 
 St. Omer. Another letter w^as sent by him to Dr. 
 Adriaen, subsequently Pope Adrian VI, whose theologi- 
 cal lectures he attended at Louvain. It was on the rec- 
 ommendation of Dr. Adriaen that the authorities of 
 Louvain offered him the chair of Rhetoric; but he de- 
 clined this offer, like so many others, as its acceptance 
 would have interfered with his much cherished independ- 
 ence of thought and action. 
 
 At one time he complains that want of money prevents 
 his finishing some treatises, at another he says that, if 
 he had money, he would "purchase, first Greek authors, 
 and then clothes." In March, 1501, he writes: 
 
 "I have by a lucky chance got some Greek works, 
 which I am stealthily transcribing night and day." 
 
 The study of Greek pressed itself more and more on 
 his attention. Teachers of that language were to be 
 had, but not without extra expense. They were not 
 good instructors either. So he determined to teach him- 
 
54 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 self! In July, 1501, he began to work at Euripides and 
 Isocrates. 
 
 His status in the world of both theology and scholar- 
 ship was daily improving during the summer of 1501, 
 which he spent with Antoine de Berghes, Abbot of St 
 Bertin and brother of the Bishop of Cambrai of whom 
 he have already heard. On July 30 the Abbot sent a 
 letter to Cardinal Giovanni de'Medicis, afterwards Pope 
 Leo X, to seek his favours for the Dutchman whose 
 greatness was to be the common boast of lettered Eu- 
 rope. He desired above all things to go to Rome, but, 
 quoting Plautus, he admitted that sine pennis volare 
 haud facile est. 
 
 It was also during 1 501 that, while residing at Tourn- 
 ahens, the famous Clerk Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote 
 his "Enchiridion Militis Christi," (or "the Dagger of the 
 Knight of Christ,") published two years later "Apud divi 
 Andomari'' or, as rendered by a translator, "at the town 
 of Saint Andomers, the year of Christ's birth 1501." 
 He therein urged that "it is not the prayer uttered with 
 the lips, but the ardent one of the heart, which reaches 
 the ears of God"; and that "Faith is the only gate to 
 Christ." Indeed his main object was still to inculcate 
 the practical part of Christianity, although during the 
 same year he produced his edition of Cicero's "De Offi- 
 ciis." That no copy of it is now known to exist will not 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 55 
 
 surprise us, if we attempt to form an idea of the confu- 
 sion and tumult of the time. 
 
 In 1 501 he was again at the convent of Steen, at Dor- 
 drecht, Brussels, Antwerp, and St. Omer. We cannot 
 over-estimate this short period in his career, for this is 
 the date on the triptych by our Humanist and Painter. 
 Traveling constantly about, having no fixed home, his 
 motto seems to have been: ubi bene, ibi patria. He 
 became more and more absorbed in a close study of an- 
 cient literatures. The religious habit that he wore 
 served perpetually to remind him of his vows, but he 
 appears about this moment to have begun to realize that 
 he was not possessed of deep religious feelings, nor of 
 any great interest in theology as studied in his day. He 
 may have found his habit an encumbrance, and he may 
 have barely acquiesced in church dogma without feeling 
 obliged to investigate it. He was maturing rapidly and 
 was recognizing that his temperament was that of the 
 scholar and critic. It may have been his natural love 
 of independence and quiet leisure which induced him to 
 resume his practice of the art of painting in this environ- 
 ment. Such a view, however attractive, is purely spec- 
 ulative for, as some one has well said, it is impossible 
 to "classify" Erasmus. He had almost as many sides 
 to his character, without approaching him in genius, as 
 Leonardo da Vinci. Nor was either of these remark- 
 able men greatly moved by theological discussion. 
 
56 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 In 1505 he again visited England, but he seems to 
 have been at times despondent. He found a circle of 
 learned friends in London and came to know William 
 Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Foxe, 
 Bishop of Winchester, and John Fisher, Bishop of Roch- 
 ester, who took him to Cambridge — a notable event in 
 his life. He would naturally see something of Sir 
 Thomas More, who in August of that year married his 
 first wife, but that would not be in his "right fair house 
 at Chelsea," as it was not built until 1520 and More did 
 not remove there from Crosby Place until 1523. They 
 may well have met at More Hall, Herts, otherwise Go- 
 bions or Gubbins, the residence of Sir John More and 
 near which, at North Mimms, Sir Thomas wrote his 
 "Utopia." 
 
 In 1506 Erasmus at last realized the ambition of his 
 life, to visit Italy; and there he remained three years 
 bathing his soul in the fountain of the Renaissance. He 
 traveled successively to Turin, Bologna, Florence, Ven- 
 ice, Padua, Ferrara, Siena, Rome, and Naples. Every- 
 where he feasted his eyes on rare MS. gathered from 
 the East and West in consequence of the fall of Con- 
 stantinople in 1453. The prestige of the universities of 
 Bologna and Padua was greater than that of Turin ; in- 
 deed, they were then at the height of their reputation.^* 
 
 33 In 1876 the Turinese placed a superscription on their Univer- 
 sity to record that Brasmo di Rotterdamo was laureato nella Uni- 
 versita di Torino 4 Settembre 1506. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 57 
 
 In Italy, as in other countries, his pleasure may have 
 been greatly impaired from the fact that he always re- 
 fused to learn the vernacular languages. His time was 
 so occupied in the study of ancient literatures — and he 
 was now but thirty years of age — that he probably 
 felt that he must place a limit to his study of languages 
 commonly spoken. Being at the very centre of the 
 Humanistic efforts of his time — and certainly the fore- 
 most man of his age in that respect — he would converse 
 with scholars in Latin. Nor must we forget that the 
 Bible was known, even to the learned, only in the Latin 
 version and was otherwise a sealed book owing to its 
 being absolutely forbidden to the laity. In Bologna lit- 
 erary research took up much of his time. He was there 
 deeply engaged on Greek studies with Bombasio, and it 
 was about the same time — but certainly during his stay 
 at Bologna — that he discontinued wearing his monastic 
 dress, having been released from his vows by Pope 
 Julius 11. 
 
 Leaving Bologna, where Michelangelo had by April, 
 1506, built up in a shed near San Petronio his clay 
 model for the bronze statue of Julius II, Erasmus 
 reached Florence. Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), 
 the short-lived Italian Humanist and Philosopher, had 
 been dead some years. The smoke had long passed away 
 from the funeral pyre of Savonarola (1452-1498) and 
 his fellow-martyrs. Poliziano (1454-1494), who in his 
 
58 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 later years had been Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry and 
 had devoted his muse to singing the arms and loves of 
 Giuliano de'Medici and the charms of la bella Simonetta, 
 also was dead. He had been regarded by Erasmus as a 
 master in translation. Leonardo was in Milan and still 
 delaying his return to the city of the Arno, much against 
 the wishes of the Signoria. 
 
 It might have been assumed that the singular, aesthe- 
 tic charm of Florence would have been quickly exerted 
 upon Erasmus who, like Pico della Mirandola, had by 
 now passed beyond the study of the ancient classics for 
 their own sake. For in a soil free and at last at peace, 
 in the midst of the armed camps of Italy, the great art- 
 ists from various provinces were united in work to in- 
 struct each other and carry forward the torch of en- 
 lightenment.^* We might almost have expected that this 
 was the very atmosphere in which the Humanist and 
 Painter would have sought, although a foreigner, to 
 play his part on canvas. But the great Hollander moved 
 through all these things with the merely superficial in- 
 terest of the traveler. He was in reality by now con- 
 cerned with other studies. For he writes: 
 
 "I added some Dialogues of Lucian during the few 
 days we took refuge in Florence for fear of the siege." 
 
 ^* Rev. W. Hudson Shaw makes the extraordinary and unten- 
 able claim that this "base-born son of a youth met with disap- 
 pointment in Italy, as the Golden Age of the Renaissance was 
 over !" See his ''Lectures on the Oxford Reformers," 1893, p. 36. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 59 
 
 Art in the city of the Medicis attracted but little the 
 spirit of the Great Humanist — for Painter he had ceased 
 to be^ — and he was anxious to press on to Venice. 
 Thence he passed to Padua. Perhaps he mistakenly con- 
 sidered that, so far as the fine arts were concerned, Italy 
 was yet only passing through a formative stage. For we 
 do not forget that, a few years before the birth of Eras- 
 mus, the art of the Van Eycks and post-Eyckian paint- 
 ers had been technically far superior to that of Italy. 
 But those days were in fact by now passed. 
 
 Success had not even yet come to him, but he perse- 
 vered whole-heartedly to realize the aim he had had 
 before him as far back as the time when he wrote the 
 importunate letter to Battus. It was the classics that 
 were to absorb his attention. While he carried forward 
 the reformation of religion, he was more taken up with 
 the reformation of learning. Much as he might hope to 
 unite the culture of Italy with some genuine traits of 
 northern piety, he disliked the restrictions of theologians 
 or, indeed, any restraint exerted from without. To his 
 eminently sound mind it was clear that all knowledge 
 really useful to man was bound up in the literature of 
 Greece and Rome, but not in each in the same degree. 
 Was not antiquity, or rather the classical spirit as un- 
 derstood in his day, at last issuing from the tomb, and 
 were not the dead languages about to live again? 
 
 Michelangelo had again arrived in Rome in the spring 
 
6o Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 of 1508, and was now engaged in his laborious and al- 
 most thankless task of decorating the vault of the Sis- 
 tine Chapel. Raphael in the summer of the same year 
 had completed his Florentine period and was at work in 
 Rome, while Leonardo da Vinci, never greatly attracted 
 by the Eternal city, was at Milan on the occasion of the 
 entry of Louis XII in July of 1509. 
 
 It was in such circumstances that Erasmus arrived in 
 Rome in the spring of 1509. The libraries of Rome 
 were thrown open wide before him. Everywhere he 
 met with kindness. In the College of Cardinals there 
 w^as the freedom and grace of intellectual pursuit exactly 
 suited to him. And he was rather exacting. He became 
 acquainted with the most eminent scholars in Rome as 
 he had already done in England, and he was held in 
 equally high regard. He was known to Giovanni de 
 Medici, soon to become Pope Leo X as predecessor of 
 Adrian VI whom he had known many years ago. He 
 was well acquainted with Tommaso Inghirami, libra- 
 rian of the Vatican, and apparently with Bembo. In 
 later years he certainly wrote to Bembo several letters, 
 notably in 1528, 1532, and 1534. As we pass in rapid 
 review the few short months he spent in Rome, the fas- 
 cination of the man grows on us. We quite understand 
 that, after having been often invited by Cardinal Do- 
 menico Grimani to call on him, he eventually went plutot 
 par convenance que par plaisir — as he tells us himself. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 6i 
 
 Naturally he carried away the pleasantest remembrances 
 of that interview. Yet he had not the courage, or the 
 leisure, to repeat that call — ''de crainte de me laisser 
 seduire/' to put his own words into French. He event- 
 ually admitted that *'en verite, je n'ai jamais ete aussi 
 mal inspire,'' 
 
 Other cardinals beside Grimani recognized the worth 
 of Erasmus, realized the value of him to Rome, and 
 made no secret of their opinions. He had merely to 
 allow himself to be persuaded to remain on, and advance- 
 ment would have been rapid. But now, as at Louvain 
 years before, his love of independence and scholastic 
 leisure directed his course. So that, when Henry VHI 
 ascended the throne, Erasmus readily accepted the sum- 
 mons to England to become the accredited representative 
 of the new learning. Did it not appear that the culture 
 of Italy, the wealth of Spain, the peaceful arts of trade 
 and exploration were all bound up, as one writer claims, 
 in the accession of this young king? Consequently, in 
 spite of earnest entreaties this intellectual giant left 
 Rome in July, 1509, for Louvain and Antwerp, and so 
 embarked once more for England. 
 
 Before very long he realized that he had been precipi- 
 tate and ill-advised. He did not find in the merry king 
 the beneficent patron he had pictured to himself. He 
 looked back wistfully on the libraries of Rome ; he might 
 have enjoyed so much there, if he had but been willing to 
 
62 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 become "a red-hatted lackey of the Holy See/' He soon 
 developed a home-sickness for the eternal city — desider- 
 ium Romae, and Alma Urbs are his own expressions. 
 As the French translator makes him say: 
 
 'Tai quitte Vltalie malgre moi et d regret. . . // 
 n' y a aucun peuple qui me plaise autant que les Italiens." 
 
 And again : 
 
 ''Mon dme est a Rome, et nulle part r aimer ais mieux 
 laisser mes osJ' 
 
 In England he amassed materials for his '^Colloquies" 
 which set forth a good picture of contemporary Eng- 
 land: 
 
 "The genius of the British nation is more distinguish- 
 ed for solidity of judgment, cool reflection and deliber- 
 ate reasonings than for laconisms, flashes of wit or flights 
 of fancy/' 
 
 Now it was that he became so friendly with Thomas 
 More, so soon to be knighted. Taken into favour by 
 Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he had met 
 on a previous visit, he was presented to the living of 
 Aldington in Kent. Whether Cardinal Wolsey viewed 
 him with a jealous eye we cannot say, but Erasmus cer- 
 tainly would not be guilty of servile adulation of either 
 Wolsey or his royal master. Wolsey actually promised 
 him a canonry of Tournai, of which see he was Bishop. 
 Although Erasmus wrote disparagingly of himself, he 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 63 
 
 admitted that his good fortune in England had been 
 greater than he deserved. But it had not been "alto- 
 gether such as he had expected, or as his friends had 
 promised him/' Possibly those promises had been in 
 great part created in his own imagination. 
 
 Exactly what happened we cannot say. But in July, 
 1 5 14, he left England for Flanders. His former patron, 
 Lord Mountjoy, had been made governor of the castle 
 of Hammes in the Pale of Calais in Picardy. The letter 
 which Erasmus wrote from Hammes in that month is 
 significant of his relations with Father Servatius, the 
 prior of the convent which Erasmus had left many years 
 previously with, we must admit, such great benefit to the 
 world and himself. The following is the letter, which 
 was not included in the collection of his letters published 
 during his life-time : 
 
 "Your letter, after following me about England, has 
 just reached my hands. I have nothing to reproach my- 
 self with. What should I gain by rejoining you ? Your 
 way of living does not edify me. My health is still weak. 
 I should be useless to you, and to myself it would be 
 death. Too well I know your climate and the character 
 of your food, to say nothing of your manners. I should 
 die of it, I know. As to my writings, good judges say 
 that I write better than any other man living. Were I 
 with you, I could do nothing at all. I left you a vigor- 
 
64 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 ous youth. I am now a grey-headed invalid. I have 
 never served king or prelate. I propose now to go to 
 Basel to print some books.'' 
 
 This was probably the correct line for him to take, as 
 the monks were formidable. He, therefore, had the wis- 
 dom to address a letter to the Prothonotary of the Apos- 
 tolic See, a letter that was to be read in conclave to Pope 
 Leo X, and the cardinals. Fortunately the reply was 
 most favourable. He had been released from his monas- 
 tic vows by Julius, and he was now free from hindrances. 
 
 In September, 15 14, he arrived at Basel, and translat- 
 ed Lucian's "SaturnaHa'' for Warham. During that 
 year Dopius, the Louvain professor, remonstrated with 
 Erasmus on his "Praise of Folly" and his "New Testa- 
 ment.'' Having once more left Basel for England he 
 wrote, early in the next year, to Cardinal Grimani, in 
 Rome, that "Froben's huge workshop is kept aglow while 
 'Jerome' is being reproduced in a most elegant text." 
 
 On April 29, 1515, he wrote from London to Leo X, 
 asking to be allowed to dedicate to him his "Jerome" : 
 
 "It will be truly fitting that the First Doctor of the 
 Christian religion should be dedicated to its highest pre- 
 late, and the best of all theologians recommended by the 
 title of the best of all the Popes." 
 
 Leo replied most favourably, accepting the dedication, 
 and the "Jerome" duly appeared during the following 
 spring. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 65 
 
 Erasmus was ever anxious to render a service, and in 
 1 5 1 5 he wrote to the Cardinal of St. George and Cardinal 
 Grimani, urging them to use their utmost influence on 
 behalf of John Reuchlin. Reuchlin had been among the 
 first to introduce the study of Hebrew and Greek into 
 Germany. The jealousy of Hebrew among the clergy 
 and the orthodox German church began to demand that 
 all Hebrew books except the Bible should be burnt. 
 
 Three years later, Erasmus writing to Cardinal Wol- 
 sey, recommended Reuchlin, adding: 
 
 "I never conversed with him except once at Frank- 
 fort. We are only on those terms which usually subsist 
 between men of letters." 
 
 During 15 15, by the interest of the Chancellor Syl- 
 vagius, Erasmus was made counsellor to Charles of 
 Austria, afterwards the Emperor Charles V, with 400 
 gulden a year. Partly for that reason and partly be- 
 cause he longed to be back near Froben's beloved press, 
 he took up his residence at Basel. Yet before long he 
 went to Antwerp and again visited England, his last 
 ten days — ah! rare ten days! — there being spent with 
 his friend Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. From the palace 
 at Rochester on August 31, 15 16, he wrote to Bullock, 
 stating that university studies at Cambridge had con- 
 sisted until thirty years previously in nothing but "Alex- 
 ander'' (the grammar text-book at Cambridge), the 
 "Little Logicals," the old exercises from Aristotle, and 
 
66 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 the "Qusestiones'' from Duns Scotus. The study of 
 mathematics, the new Aristotle, and a knowledge of 
 Greek had all come in within the previous few years. 
 The "three colleges'' of Erasmus, which represented for 
 him the university, were Queen's, Christ's, and St 
 John's. The rooms occupied by Erasmus, overhanging 
 the college kitchen, are in a small court on the south of 
 the Cloister Court. There Erasmus had lived four 
 years. 
 
 In 1 5 17 he again paid a brief visit to England, and 
 in the early part of that year he received a flattering 
 offer from the king of France to induce him to reside 
 in that kingdom. By this year his fame was so wide- 
 spread that his portrait was painted by Quentin Matsys.^® 
 
 During the summer of 15 18 he was ill with a cough 
 and with dysentery at Basel. Yet his industry never 
 abated. He was anxious to pay one more visit to Eng- 
 land, but went on searching libraries, consulting with 
 politicians, corresponding with many persons, adding 
 and correcting, his works passing through repeated edi- 
 tions. Now was first published the ''Colloquies" which 
 he had been composing during his leisure in the fifteen 
 years preceding. In the autumn he returned to Lou- 
 vain, but was in a bad state of health on arriving there. 
 He recounted at length to Beatus Rhenanus the incidents 
 
 «5 Tucker: ''Cambridge;' 1907, p. 170. 
 See page 81 infra. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 67 
 
 of his journey there. He had already written at St. 
 Omer an exposition of the First Psalm (''Beatus Vir 
 Qui''), which he had very appropriately dedicated to 
 Beatus Rhenanus. The wide extent of his reading and 
 his detailed research-work were extraordinary, while his 
 correspondence was enormous as well as lengthy. 
 
 On May 22, 15 19, he wrote to Melanchthon that "ev- 
 erybody finds Luther's life blameless.'' A few days 
 later a letter from him to Luther begins with the words : 
 "My dearest Brother in Christ." Yet Luther described 
 Erasmus as an Epicurean and a Lucian ! While still at 
 Louvain, he watched the gathering of the storm, and 
 wrote to Gerard of Nimegen : 
 
 "I fear what may happen to that wretch Luther. He 
 has displeased the princes and has infuriated the Pope. 
 Why could he not be advised by me and keep that tongue 
 of his quiet a Httle." 
 
 All this was to end in the Papal Bull of Excommuni- 
 cation against him on June 15, 1520. A month later he 
 was to meet Albrecht Diirer during his tour in the Neth- 
 erlands.^^ But Louvain as a residence had become in- 
 tolerable, as "the divinity and the climate alike disagreed 
 with him." At this moment Leo X died, and Erasmus's 
 old school-fellow Cardinal Adrian became the church's 
 sovereign. So Erasmus left Louvain to live at Basel 
 with his publisher Froben. 
 
 See page 81 infra. 
 
68 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 A few months later he published at Cambridge his 
 "De Conscribendis Epistolis," one of the five earliest 
 books to be printed there, in 1521.^® In the following 
 year he dedicated to Jerome Erasmus Froben an edition 
 of his "Colloquies" which in 1526 was to be censured, 
 and its reading prohibited. In 1523 he was to meet 
 Hans Holbein the Younger, who was to paint his por- 
 trait.^® He tells Cardinal Campeggio in 1523 that he 
 is living " in a house of his own provided with an open 
 fire-place, on account of his well-known horror of Ger- 
 man stoves." One of his letters reveals the decoration 
 of his bedroom with two casts of Wilibald Pirkheimer 
 and a picture of that friend by Diirer. He corresponded 
 with Pirkheimer for years. When the ecclesiastical 
 revolution broke out at Basel, under his own eyes, he 
 wrote of the iconoclasm of the Reformers to Pirkheim- 
 er in the following terms : 
 
 "Not a statue was left in the church, niche or mon- 
 astery. The paintings on the walls were white-washed 
 Everything combustible was burnt. What would not 
 burn was broken to pieces. Nothing was spared, how- 
 ever precious or beautiful." 
 
 By now advancing years and increasing bad health 
 had diminished his wandering propensities to a great 
 
 Bowes : ''Catalogue of Books printed at Cambridge, 1321- 
 1893;' p. 505. 
 
 ^® See page 82 infra. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 69 
 
 extent, but he found it advisable to leave Basel. Ob- 
 taining a safe-conduct, and an invitation from the Arch- 
 duke Ferdinand, he despatched "two waggon-loads of 
 books and furniture" to Freiburg, within the Austrian 
 frontier, and moved there himself. His new establish- 
 ment proved a costly one, and his only settled income at 
 this time may have been from Warham and Mountjoy. 
 There was confusion in Germany and the finances of the 
 Emperor Charles were in a straitened state. He might 
 even have been in difficulties, had it not been for the 
 generosity of the Augsburg banking family of Fugger. 
 At one time he writes that his pension, due from the 
 Emperor Charles V, continued to be unpaid. "If it is 
 ever paid now, it will come too late,'' he writes, "unless 
 indeed there is any use for money in the Elysian fields.'* 
 {Nisi forte in campis Elysiis opus erit pecunia). 
 
 By now had passed away his friend Aldus Manutius 
 (1450-1515) who between 1494 and 15 15 had published 
 twenty-seven editiones principes of Greek authors and 
 of Greek works of reference; nor was his enthusiasm for 
 Greek literature limited to the printing room. Thomas 
 Linacre, the English Humanist, who had been one of 
 the first to teach Greek at Oxford, had died in 1524. 
 His fellow-countryman Longolius, also in the same year, 
 had ended his days at Padua. Gone also was Martin 
 Dopius of Louvain. Erasmus's grief was great at the 
 
yo Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 loss of his old friend Joannes Froben in 1527, and he 
 claimed that in consequence thereof "all the apostles of 
 science ought to wear mourning." In 1529 passed 
 away also Baldassare Castiglione whose '7/ Cortegiano'* 
 had been published the previous year from the press 
 of Aldus. 
 
 By February 7, 1527, must have been finished by Hans 
 Holbein the Younger the sketch, now at Basel, for the 
 "More Family group.'' In this connection it is not sur- 
 prising to find Erasmus writing on September 6, 1529, 
 to More: 
 
 "Oh! that it were once more granted me in life to 
 see such dear friends face to face whom I contemplate 
 with the utmost joy imaginable in the picture which 
 Holbein has brought me." 
 
 This "picture" is, of course, the drawing at Basel, 
 the parent work from which in time was derived the 
 very large painting on canvas (loi ins. by 141 ins.) in 
 the collection of Lord St. Oswald at Nostell.'*^ 
 
 On September 7 was written by Erasmus to Mar- 
 garet Roper, More's eldest and favorite daughter, the 
 delightful letter : 
 
 "I can scarcely express in words, Margaret Roper, 
 thou ornament of thine England {''Decus Britanniae'') 
 what hearty delight I experienced when the painter Hol- 
 
 See pp. 80-98 of that catalogue compiled by the present writ- 
 er in 1915. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 71 
 
 bein presented to my view your whole family in such a 
 successful delineation that I could scarcely have seen you 
 better, had I been myself near you. Constantly do I de- 
 sire that once more, before my goal is reached, it may be 
 granted me to see this dear family circle, to whom I owe 
 the best part of my outward prosperity, and of my fame, 
 whatever they may be, and would owe them rather than 
 to any other mortal. A fair portion of this wish has now 
 been fulfilled by the gifted hand of the painter." 
 
 How delightful and true to life must be the description 
 which Erasmus gives us in his letter to Von Hutten of 
 Sir Thomas More : 
 
 "He is of middle height, well-shaped, complexion pale, 
 without a trace of colour in it save when the skin flushes 
 . . . eyes grey with dark spots — an eye supposed 
 in England to indicate genius, and to be never found 
 except in remarkable men. The expression is pleasant 
 and cordial, easily passing into a smile, for he has the 
 quickest sense of the ridiculous of any man I ever 
 met. . . He is wise with the wise, and jests with 
 fools — with women especially, and his wife among 
 them. . . The wife that he chose was a very young 
 lady, well connected but wholly uneducated, who had 
 been brought up in the country with her parents. Thus 
 was he able to shape her character after his own pat- 
 tern. He taught her books, he taught her music, and 
 formed her into a companion for his life. Unhappily 
 
72 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 she was taken from him by death before her time. She 
 bore him several children. . . A few months after 
 he had buried her he married a widow to take care of 
 them. This lady, he often said humorously, was nec 
 bella nec puella; but she was a good manager, and he 
 lives as pleasantly with her as if she had been the love- 
 liest of maidens. He rules her with jokes and caresses 
 better than most husbands do with sternness and author- 
 ity, and though she has a sharp tongue, and is a thrifty 
 house-keeper he has made her learn harp, cithern, and 
 guitar, and practise before him every day. 
 
 "He controls his family with the same easy hand ; no 
 tragedies, no quarrels. If a dispute begins it is prompt- 
 ly settled. He has never made an enemy or become an 
 enemy. His whole house breathes happiness, and no 
 one enters it who is not the better for the visit." 
 
 In 1529 was addressed to William, Duke of Cleves, a 
 treatise ''the argument of Erasmus of Rotterdam'' en- 
 titled *'De Pueris statim ac Liberaliter Instituendis Lib- 
 ellus." It is of special interest for our study of the 
 great Dutchman as both Humanist and Painter, as he 
 in it deals exhaustively with the Beginnings of Syste- 
 matic Instruction, and dwells on the Importance of 
 Teaching Art to Children. ''Well-born is something, 
 but instruction is more," he says in one place. He writes : 
 
 "Drawing is attractive to boys, in that every child is 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 delighted to express in this way what he has seen : at a 
 later stage it will be found helpful to add manual dex- 
 terity in painting, modelling and architecture: we need 
 not fear the reproach of the rigid humourist, for we can- 
 not forget that Our Lord was not only the son of a crafts- 
 man, but was one himself/' 
 
 In his "De Ratione Studii" or the "Right Method of 
 Instruction," of 151 1, he had urged the importance of 
 Mathematics and Nature Study, and he is fully alive to 
 the importance of "information" as part of the equip- 
 ment of life. He contends that "Pictures, charts, maps, 
 even real objects, as in Gardens, are of great help in 
 lessons."*^ We have an illustration in the picture of 
 the fight between the elephant and the dragojin, "the 
 large Indian variety described in De Pueris." Again, 
 in discoursing on "The Pleasurable methods which must 
 be devised in the First Stages of Teaching," he claims 
 that it will be an advantage if "to good narrative power 
 the teacher or parent can add the help of pictorial illus- 
 tration. . . A picture is shown, containing an ele- 
 phant, in combat with a dragoon. At once the class 
 shows curiosity." Erasmus also uses the words,*^ ''pic- 
 tura" and ''pingo'' in the "Colloquies." 
 
 Pirkheimer had died, and in 1532 Warham, Chan- 
 
 *^W. H. Woodward: "Erasmus;' 1904, p. 139. 
 *2 Woodward, p. 143. 
 
74 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 cellor of the University of Oxford and Archbishop, was 
 buried in Canterbury Cathedral. On the death of Clem- 
 ent VII two years later, and the succession of Paul III, 
 Erasmus had the satisfaction of knowing of the eleva- 
 tion of his friends Bembo and Sadoleti, the apostolic 
 secretaries of Leo X, to the Sacred College of Cardinals. 
 He had mentioned them in complimentary terms in his 
 "Ciceronianus'' in 1528. 
 
 The autumn of 1535, when Mountjoy died, saw the re- 
 turn to Basel of this intellectual giant whose strength 
 may almost be said to have surpassed nature's law. He 
 made his will on February 12 of the following year. 
 It was sealed with his ring given to him in 1509. The 
 seal, with the head of the God Terminus — a youth's 
 head with long hair — was inscribed with his own motto 
 ''Concedo NuUi.''*^ There is no mention in the will 
 of any pictures or other works of art. This is perhaps 
 remarkable in a man who had himself painted on panel, 
 at least up to the age of twenty-five, and had several 
 times been portrayed — as we shall see (page 82) — 
 by two of the best contemporary painters of central Eu- 
 rope." 
 
 The end of a strenuous Hfe came on July 12, 1536; he 
 
 *^ As he elsewhere explained, the motto was intended to assert 
 not his own individual superiority, but that in Terminus we meet 
 Death the great enemy whom none can resist. 
 
 Neither Diirer nor Holbein was indisputably of German 
 descent and birth. These facts are too little known. 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 75 
 
 passed away without priestly assistance, calling only on 
 the mercy of Christ. He died worth 7,000 ducats, and 
 his will was confirmed by the Emperor and the Pope. 
 
 Thus came the end of "the greatest luminary of his 
 age, the greatest scholar of any age, mourned by all lov- 
 ers of wit and learning, honoured and esteemed by every 
 sovereign in Europe and by the head of this church; 
 hated and feared only by the ignorant who were wholly 
 incapable of appreciating his worth.'' He died, believ- 
 ing that his labours had been in vain. But the most 
 facetious man and the greatest critic of his age had been 
 building more surely than he suspected. 
 
 Perhaps no scholar the world has ever known is so 
 certain of immortality as Erasmus. There was no 
 flavour of nationality in his genius : his greatness is the 
 common boast of lettered Europe. His opinions and the 
 fruits of his research spread like wildfire throughout Eu- 
 rope. Some of his works were translated into Italian, 
 French, Spanish, German, and English. The printers 
 could hardly keep pace with the demand. The "Prince 
 of Folly" and the "Colloquies" were to be found in every 
 palace, every school, every monastery. One bookseller 
 in Paris, on announcing that the "Colloquies" was pro- 
 hibited, sold more than 24,000 copies of one impression. 
 It was not only his admirers and his critics who bought 
 so widely. For his enemies acquired copies to discover 
 his errors. Their animosity may be assessed by their 
 
76 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 ingenious perversions in the spelling of his name. As 
 one critic has pointed out, for them Errasmus stood for 
 his errors, Erasmus suggested that he ploughed up old 
 truths and revered traditions, Erasmus held him up to 
 ridicule as an ass by his writings. It is even established 
 that he was dubbed Behemoth and Anti-Christ. 
 
 Although in the main well disposed towards the Refor- 
 mation, he was sceptical of ecclesiastical authority. Yet 
 in the religion of Christ he was loyal, enthusiastic, and 
 devout. He did not actually flout theology, but never 
 evinced any deep interest in it. It has even been con- 
 tended that there was a tincture of rationalism about his 
 theology. A profound scholar, a voluminous writer, a 
 thinker with a wide outlook: he was in the eyes of his 
 critics an indelible blur on the picture of a religious re- 
 vival. But to him Humanism could not be unchristian 
 because Christ was the perfect man; nor to him could 
 theology be really narrow, as it was "the science of the 
 things of God.'' 
 
 The fascination of the great scholar increases as the 
 years rush by. It has been claimed that Plato "wrote 
 with a diamond upon marble.'' But have not the words 
 of the great Dutchman annihilated centuries of intellec- 
 tual darkness ? He, doubtless, would have agreed with 
 Guarino that "without knowledge of Greek, Latin schol- 
 arship itself is, in any real sense, impossible." 
 
 We do not, of course, overlook the claims of Petrarch 
 
Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 77 
 
 ( 1304-1374), the first modern man and a father of Eras- 
 mus. Petrarch took minor orders and traveled exten- 
 sively. Although his Latin had not the polish of Eras- 
 mus, he formulated the aesthetics of his age, and his 
 zeal for the accumulation of learning exerted a powerful 
 influence on the Renaissance. It has been urged that 
 perhaps only two other literary men were ever as pop- 
 ular as Petrarch — Erasmus and Voltaire. 
 Quelle vie, Mon Dieu, que celle-la\ 
 
V 
 
 PORTRAITS OF ERASMUS 
 
V 
 
 PORTRAITS OF ERASMUS 
 
 If Erasmus as Humanist and as Painter has hitherto 
 occupied our attention, our interest may none the less 
 be directed to the portraits of him which fortunately 
 preserve to us his appearance in life. So far as we 
 know, none is earlier than that painted in 15 17 by Quen- 
 tin Matsys who, on the companion panel, rendered the 
 features of Petrus Aegidius. Indeed, Erasmus himself 
 writes : 
 
 "Petrus Aegidius et ego pingimur eadem tabula ; eam 
 tibi dono brevi mittemus." 
 
 This "Aegidius'' by Matsys is now in the collection of 
 lyOrd Radnor at Lf ngford. o 
 
 Having visited Venice in 1494- 1495, again in 
 1 505-1 507, Albrecht Diirer in July, 1520, made his mem- 
 orable journey to the Netherlands and remained there 
 exactly a year. We know much of his movements there 
 from the diary he kept, and we know that he met Eras- 
 mus. He writes: "I have taken Erasmus of Rotter- 
 dam's portrait once more;" and "Oh! Erasmus of Rot- 
 terdam, where wilt thou stay? Dost thou see how the 
 unjust tyranny of worldly power and the might of dark- 
 
82 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 ness prevail/' Probably he drew him twice in 1521, 
 and engraved his head from memory in 1526. But no 
 portrait in oil by him is known today. 
 
 In 1 523 the Dutch scholar was to meet Hans Holbein 
 the Younger, who had a greater sympathy than the 
 Nuremberg painter, and was a finer type of humanist. 
 It is due to the veracity of Holbein's art that we can 
 judge of the illustrious Dutchman's appearance in life. 
 Holbein is in fact the peculiar immortalizer of Eras- 
 mus. The two portraits that he painted in 1523 came 
 to England. In a letter to Wilibald Pirkheimer on 
 June 3, 1524, Erasmus says: *'Only recently I have 
 sent two portraits of me to England painted by a not 
 unskillful artist. He has also taken a portrait of me 
 to France." One of these was sent as a present from 
 Erasmus to Warham, as we know from the letter of 
 September 4, 1524, to the Archbishop. Today one of 
 these, the smaller panel, hangs in the long gallery of the 
 Louvre, (Plate VI) having passed at one time into the 
 collection of Charles I who parted with it by exchange. 
 The original study of the Louvre portrait, in oil on pa- 
 per, is at Basel. The other portrait of 1523 is in the 
 collection of Lord Radnor at Longford, near Salisbury. 
 Perhaps no inscription on a picture was ever more ap- 
 propriate and striking than that on the latter. It reads : 
 '^Hrakaeioi Ponoi Erasmi Rotero. . " The la- 
 
82 
 
 Eras:.: Humanist and Painter 
 
 ness prevai >bably he drew him twice in 1521, 
 
 and ead from memory in 1526. But no 
 
 iiim is known today. 
 J liie Dutch scholar was to meet Hans Holbein 
 ,.iit lounger, who had a greater sympathy than the 
 Nuremberg painter, and was a finer type of humanist. 
 It is due to the veracity of Holbein's art that we can 
 judge of the illustrious Dutchman's nn^f ^r-nre in lift- 
 Holbein is in fact the peculiar inii; 
 mus. The two portraits that he paint', 
 to England. In a letter to Wilibald Pirkheimer on 
 June 3, 1524, Erasmus says: "Only recently I have 
 senf^?^{?S^po'^i^¥fe'^S^i^i^%;^fe^^^ a not 
 
 unskillful artist. He has also taken a portrait of me 
 to France.'' One of these was sent as a present from 
 Erasmus to Warham, as we know from the letter of 
 September 4, 1524, to the Archbishop. Today one of 
 these, the smaller panel, hangs in the long gallery of the 
 Louvre, (Plate VI) having passed at one time in^^^ the 
 collection of Charles I who parted with it hv - 
 The original study of the Louvre portr a pa- 
 
 per, is at Basel. The other portra 23 is in the 
 
 collection of Lord Radnor at Longford, near Salisbury. 
 Perhaps no inscription on a picture was ever more ap- 
 propriate and striking than that on the latter. It reads : 
 "Hrakaeioi Ponoi Erasmi Rotero. . The la- 
 
Portraits of Erasmus 83 
 
 hours of the scholar had indeed been Herculean by that 
 date. 
 
 If we allude briefly to the small portrait from Grey- 
 stoke, now in the collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan at Glen 
 '^ove, Long Island, painted by "Haunce Holbein," the 
 work at Parma, and the small roundel at Basel, it must 
 not be forgotten that countless versions and deriva- 
 tives of a later date perpetuate the fame of the scholar. 
 One of the most noteworthy of these is that at Windsor 
 Castle painted by Georg Pencz in 1537, the year after 
 Erasmus's death.*^ 
 
 We need not spend much time on the French drawing, 
 circa 15 10, at Chantilly which is inscribed "Herasmes." 
 M. Moreau-Nelaton has claimed that it preserves to us 
 the features we have studied so often. But the argu- 
 ment seems unconvincing.*® That spelling is no more 
 fanciful than Herasmus, Gerasmus and Hierasmus, all 
 of which might perhaps be met with. 
 
 We need not concern ourselves with the Umbrian 
 School silver point drawing of a "Man," holding a book 
 in his hands, in the Albertina collection, Vienna.*^ It 
 
 A. B. Chamberlain: ''Holbein," i, 162-173. 
 
 Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1907, vol. xxxvii, p. 483. 
 
 In the Albertina ''Album," vi, 662, as a *'Monk with a Book." 
 This is clearly the "Monk standing" which was in the sale cata- 
 logue of Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, 1800, no. 45, and was de- 
 scribed as by Erasmus ! This error has been duly copied by all 
 authors and lexicographers ever since. Most recently it figured 
 as such in Thieme-Becker's Lexikon, 
 
84 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 was formerly wrongly catalogued as by a Netherlander. 
 As the word "Erasmus'' is inscribed upon it, some have 
 even been unwise enough to see in it the features of 
 Erasmus of Rotterdam! 
 
 The catalogue of the sale of the Hope Heirlooms at 
 Christie's July 20, 1917 (no. 32) included a "Portrait 
 of Erasmus" by (or attributed to) L. Cranach. 
 
 A portrait of Erasmus by an Unknown Painter, (13 
 ins. X 10 ins.), is in the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam. 
 It was No. 396 in the 1883 Catalogue. 
 
 Mrs. du Buisson lent a portrait of him, by Cranach, to 
 the New Gallery 1890, No. 85. 
 
 We need not pursue the matter further.*^ 
 
 Homo fuit atque humanus Erasmus, 
 
 *® Other material is contained in Zeitschrift f, Bild. Kunst, 
 1898, vol. X, pp. 44-56. 
 
 Comments on this triptych have already appeared in the Bulle- 
 tin of the City Art Museum, of St. Louis, September, 1917; and 
 in Art in St. Louis, October, 1917. An article on it is published 
 in Art in America for December. 
 
VI 
 
 NO OTHER PICTURE BY ERASMUS KNOWN 
 
VI 
 
 NO OTHER PICTURE BY ERASMUS KNOWN 
 
 In our excursions into the by-paths of art-history, we 
 occasionally ascertain after the expenditure of much la- 
 bour that some artist of a past century has come to be 
 known by, or at least identified with, but a single work. 
 In a few cases some such writer as the Anonimo Morel- 
 liano, Vasari, Houbraken, Walpole, or Waagen happens 
 to be our authority. It may be that such sole work by 
 a painter, his aira^ Xeyo[KivoVy belongs to a public gallery, 
 as in the case of the signed portrait of a "Man" by Aless- 
 andro Oliverio at Dublin. Another such "once found'' 
 picture is the fully signed "Ceres'* by Michele Pannonio 
 at Buda Pesth. 
 
 Such rarities may be revealed by their chance appear- 
 ance at an auction sale, when few have the time to check 
 any oversight by the compiler of the catalogue. Or 
 they may appear at a loan exhibition, and in that case all 
 uncertainties as to signatures and questionable attri- 
 butions are by the day that it closes cleared up by the 
 exacting critic, although he may not publish his conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 In some cases, where signatures or records are not to 
 
88 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 be found, it is possible to group together a large number 
 of works and maintain that they are by one hand, even 
 though the name of the artist be unknown. This ex- 
 plains the origin of such fictitious, but helpful names as 
 Amico di Sandro, Alunno de Domenico, Compagno di 
 Pesellino, the Master of the Drum, etc. In time some 
 penetrating student may suspect that the works of such 
 "Companion,'' "Friend,'' or "Pupil" might with advan- 
 tage be subdivided into early or late achievements that 
 exhibit slightly different styles or degrees of excellence 
 — or the opposite. Or the "Companion" may be a dual 
 personality. In this way the investigation into the iden- 
 tity of the unknown one is advanced a stage or two. In 
 time a Hulin de Loo proves that the Netherlandish 
 primitive painter "Maitre de Flemalle" is none other than 
 Robert Campin. Some one may similarly dispel a few 
 of the doubts regarding Piero di Lorenzo Pratese in the 
 Pesellino group. 
 
 In rather different circumstances we know that can- 
 vases exist from the hand of some ascertainable, but not 
 very important painter, records of whose paintings exist 
 although none bears his signature. Such is the case of 
 the "St. Jerome" by Cabezalero, long in the Stafford 
 House Gallery. However, the signature and the date 
 were not generally detected until its purchase by Mr. 
 Herbert Cook for the Gallery of Sir Frederick Cook at 
 Richmond-in-Thames. 
 
His Only Known Painting 
 
 89 
 
 Instances of other "sole works" will occur to the read- 
 er to show that evolution is still going on in the art- 
 world. But the mists of the dark ages of criticism are 
 clearing away. Thus we no longer believe that there 
 were two painters of the name of Nicholas Maes, nor 
 that there ever were three Veneto-Veronese painters- 
 artists of the name of Bonifazio. Such matters form 
 the very alphabet of present day connoisseurship. 
 
 But what is to happen when paintings of an unusual 
 character remain long hidden from view ? There is, of 
 course, the danger that their traditional ascription and 
 their pedigree alike will pass into oblivion. No other 
 work by the same hand being forthcoming, all trace of 
 identity may for many years be lost. But if records and 
 detailed descriptions are preserved even in an obscure 
 publication, there is always the chance that identification 
 of the canvas so documente may once more be estab- 
 lished. Nor will there be any gainsaying the evidence, 
 if an obviously genuine although rare signature comes 
 to light at the same time. The task of the research 
 worker is onerous and thankless, but a peculiar charm 
 at times attends the drudgery of his labours which on 
 occasion culminate in complete success. 
 
VII 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 In our description of this triptych we have ventured to 
 suggest that the architectural background of the dexter, 
 or left, wing (page 24) may well have been derived with 
 some degree of accuracy from an actual building. In 
 support of what may appear to some to be an arbitrary 
 view we may urge the extraordinary frequency with 
 which we throughout our work have returned to the 
 city of St. Onier as one of the centres of Erasmus's man- 
 ifold activities. It thus occurred to the present writer 
 to look at photographs of the well known altar-piece 
 painted by Simon Marmion to set forth the "Legend of 
 St. Bertin." That many-paneled picture, moreover, re- 
 mained intact at St. Omer from 1459 to 1783. The 
 scattered portions of it are now at Berlin, The Hague, 
 and the National Gallery, London.*^ Any one who will 
 compare the gateway and distant tower in the present 
 triptych with the building seen in the fifth section of the 
 interior of the left wing by Marmion (now at Berlin) 
 
 *® See Deshaisnes : ''Recherches stir le Retahle de S. Berlin 
 et sur S. Marmion f and Klemm: ''Der Berlin — allar aus St. 
 Omer." The artist worked at Amiens 1449-54, and at Tournai 
 in 1468. He died in 1489. 
 
Concluding Remarks 
 
 91 
 
 will see striking similarities. The scene in the Berlin 
 picture is that in which St. Bertin, Momelin, and Eber- 
 tramne kneel before Adrowald. 
 
 It will be advisable to recite briefly the circumstances 
 under which St. Bertin found himself in the neighbor- 
 hood of St. Omer in A.D. 640. St. Bertin was sailing 
 his ship "one day" when it suddenly ran aground. In- 
 stantly recognizing that his inability to make further 
 headway was due to the will of God, he forthwith de- 
 clared his intention there to found an Abbey. (Haec 
 requies mea in saeculum saeculi. ) Thus Adrowald gave 
 St. Bertin the marshy land where the ship had so sud- 
 denly stopped, together with the adjoining land of Si thin 
 near the River Aa. 
 
 Any of those who are satisfied that the buildings in 
 portions of these pictures by Erasmus and Marmion are 
 identical may be interested to turn to Guicciardini's 
 "Descrittione di Tutti i Paesi Bassi," published in 1588, 
 which contains (p. 361) a delightful old-world plan of 
 the city of St. Omer with its buildings and churches, its 
 extra-mural gibbets and windmills. Perhaps the spec- 
 ulative may be disposed to see resemblances between 
 the castellated buildings abutting from the main plan of 
 the city towards the north ( ?), on the one hand, and the 
 architectural setting employed in the naturalistic details 
 of Simon Marmion's picture, as well as so much of it as 
 
92 
 
 Erasmus: Humanist and Painter 
 
 Erasmus availed himself of nearly half a century later, 
 on the other. 
 
 Again the frequent reference to St. Omer prompts the 
 view that Erasmus may even have had a definite com- 
 mission from Francois de Melun, the 31st provost (1499- 
 1521) of the Abbey of St. Bertin at St. Omer to paint 
 this very picture. As we have seen (page 34), Frangois 
 de Melun was an ancestor of the Comte d'Espinoy at 
 whose sale in 1850 it was sold. It is not impossible that 
 our triptych remained in the possession of the Abbey 
 down to the time of the Revolution, and that it then 
 passed to a descendant of Provost Melun. In any event 
 tradition in the family, to which it recently belonged in 
 France, narrates that it was in the Netherlands, until in 
 the time of Napoleon I, it was removed from Antwerp. 
 
 But, it will be urged, is there any possibility of decid- 
 ing this hypothesis by documentary evidence? We 
 know that Alard Tassart, who was born at St. Omer and 
 took orders in the Abbey of St. Bertin in 1495, compiled 
 the "Appendice du Cartulaire de St. Bertin,'' and that 
 by August 15, 1 5 12, he had ''finished it a long time.'' 
 He died there on Good Friday, April 11, 1532. 
 
 By 1770 the Abbey of St. Omer, which had been in ex- 
 istence over 1 1 00 years, had accumulated countless doc- 
 uments bearing on its history. But until that date au- 
 thorities had jealously guarded their treasures from out- 
 side view. The project was then entertained of pub^ 
 
Concluding Remarks 
 
 93 
 
 lishing many of them. This resulted in the transcrip- 
 tion of the most important records by the archivist Dom 
 Ch. de Witte (1746-1807). He published his "Grand 
 Cartulaire de TAbbaye de St. Bertin." At the Revolu- 
 tion practically the whole of the priceless archives of St. 
 Bertin's disappeared, or were destroyed. De Witte was 
 able to save his transcript, which he treated as his own 
 property.^** Subsequently it passed to the Municipal 
 Library of St. Omer, where it presumably was at least 
 until 1914. We can only regret that present circum- 
 stances prevent our putting our rather plausible view to 
 a practical test in France. It is not impossible that we 
 might thus adduce documentary evidence of some kind. 
 
 It must, of course, be remembered that the Abbey of 
 St. Bertin is in ruins, the sole relic of this once famous 
 religious house being the church which was begun in 
 1326 and finished in 1520. 
 
 We have here, therefore, examined the various issues 
 connected with the only signed work, now known to 
 exist, by the Dutch Humanist-Painter who did more 
 than any other man to develop the modern spirit of en- 
 quiry and investigation. For his study was the inter- 
 course of Mind with the Infinite, of Man with God. 
 
 In conclusion we may quote the words of Colet : ''Oh ! 
 Erasmus, of books and knowledge there is no end." 
 
 Vinogradoff : ''Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History,'* 
 vol. iv, 1914. 
 
I 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbey of St. Bertin at St. Omer, 
 
 36 92 93 
 Adrian Vl, Pope, 53, 60, 67 
 Aegidius, Petrus, 81 
 Albertina, Vienna, 83 
 Aldington, Kent, 62 
 Aldus Manutius, 69 
 Amico di Sandro, 88 
 Amsterdam, Rijks Museum, 16 
 Antwerp Gallery, 19 
 
 Bachhofen-Burckhardt, 15 
 
 Basel, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 74, 82, 83 
 
 Battus, 51, 59 
 
 Bembo, 60, 74 
 
 Berghes Antoine de, 54 
 
 Berghes, Henri de, 50 
 
 Berlin, 16, 90 
 
 Bertrand, 36 
 
 Bologna, 56, 57 
 
 Bombasio, 57 
 
 Bonifazio de' Pitati, 89 
 
 Bouts, Dirk, 19 
 
 Bruges Cathedral, 17 
 
 Buda Pesth, 87 
 
 Cabezalero, 88 
 
 Cambrai, Bishop of, 49, 50, 51, 54 
 Cambridge, 56, 65, 66, 68 
 Campeggio, Cardinal, 68 
 Castiglione, Baldassare, 70 
 Chantilly, 83 
 Charles I, 82 
 Charles V, 65, 69 
 Chartres, Cathedral, 25 
 Chelsea, 56 
 
 Clement VII. Pope, 74 
 
 Cleves, William. Duke of, 72 
 
 Colet, 51, 53, 94 
 
 "Concedo Nulli," 74 
 
 Cook, Mr. Herbert. 88 
 
 Cook, Sir Frederick, 88 
 
 Cornelisz, van Amsterdam, Jakob, 
 
 15, 16 
 Courtembrune, 31, 53 
 Cranach, Lucas, 84 
 
 David, Gherard, 27, 35 
 Delft, 46 
 
 "De Pueris," 72, 73 
 D'Espinoi family, 34 
 D'Espinoy, Comte, 32, 33, 34, 48 
 Deventer, 45 
 
 De Vere, Marchioness, 50 
 De Wit, Jacob, 48 
 Dopius, Martin, 64, 69 
 Dublin, 87 
 
 Durer, Albrecht, 17, 18, 67, 74, 81, 
 82 
 
 Dusseldorf, 15, 17 
 
 Emmaus, 46, 47, 48, 49 
 Engelbrechts, Cornelis, 15 
 England, 50, 56, 61, 62, 63, 71, 72,82 
 
 Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 56, 65 
 Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, 56 
 Frangois de Melun, 35, 92 
 Froben, 44, 67, 70 
 Fugger, 69 
 
 Geertgen tot Sint Jans, 15 
 Gerhard de Praet, 41 
 Giuliano de' Medici, 58 
 God Terminus, 74 
 Gouda, 41, 44, 46 
 Greystoke, 83 
 
 Grimani, Cardinal, 60, 61, 64, 65 
 Grocinus, 51 
 Guarino, 76 
 
 Hague, The, 45, 90 
 
 Hammes, Castle of, 63 
 
 Hegius, Alexander, 45 
 
 Holbein the Younger, Hans, 68, 70, 
 
 74, 82 
 Hope Heirlooms, 84 
 Houbraken, 27, 48 
 Inghirami, Tommaso, 60 
 
 Jean de Bourgogne, 35 
 Journal des Beaux Arts, 36 
 Julius II, Pope, 57 
 
98 
 
 Index 
 
 K1.E1NBERGER, 37 
 Koln Gallery, 19 
 
 Latimer, 51 
 
 Leo X, Pope, 50, 60, 64, 67, 74 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 52, 55, 58, 60 
 Linacre, Thomas, 51, 69 
 Liverpool Art Gallery, 17 
 Lodovico II Moro, 52 
 Longolius, 69 
 Louis XII, 60 
 
 Louvain, 31, 49, 53, 61, 64, 67, 69 
 Louvre, 44, 82 
 Luther, 67 
 
 Mantegna, Andrea, 27 
 Margaret, mother of Erasmus, 41 
 Marmion, Simon, 90, 91 
 Matsys, Quentin, 17, 18, 66, 81 
 Mathematics, 73 
 Melanchthon, 43, 67 
 Melun. 92 
 Memlinc, Hans, 27 
 Michelangelo, 57, 59 
 Mommelin, 36 
 Montaigu College, 49 
 More family, 70 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 50, 51, 56, 62, 
 71, 72 
 
 Morgan, Mr. J. P., 83 
 Mountjoy, Lord, 50, 63, 69, 74 
 Musius, Prior Cornelius, 33, 46, 47 
 
 Napoleon I, 33, 92 
 
 National Gallery, London, 17, 35, 
 
 42, 90 
 Nature Study, 73 
 
 OuvERio Alessandro, 87 
 Oxford, 69 
 
 Pannonio, MichelE, 87 
 Pencz, Georg, 83 
 Petrarch, 77 
 
 Pico della Mirandola, 57 
 Pictures, Erasmus on, 73 
 Pierre de Melun, 34 
 Pirkheimer. Wilibald, 68, 73, 82 
 Ploos van Amstel, 37, 48, 83 
 Poliziano, 57 
 Portugal, King of, 31 
 
 Radnor, Lord, 81, 82 
 Raphael, 60 . / 
 
 Ready Charles, 41 ^' 
 ReucfiHn, John, 43, 65 ^ 
 Rhenanus, Beatus, 66 
 Rome, 60, 61, 62 
 Roper, Margaret, 70 
 Rotterdam, 42, 43, 54 
 
 St. Bertin, Abbey of, at St. Omer, 
 
 24, 34, 36, 50, 51, 54 
 St. Bertin, Legend of, 90, 91 
 St. Eleutherius, 26 
 St. Omer, City of, 31, 55, 67, 90, 91, 
 
 92, 93 
 
 St. Oswald, Lord, 19, 70 
 St. Piatus, 24, 25 
 St. Vincentius, 26 
 Savonarola, 57 
 Scotus, Duns, 66 
 Servatius, Father, 63 
 Shaw, Rev. W. Hudson, 58 
 Siret, 36 
 
 Steen, near Gouda, 31, 46, 55 
 
 TherouannE, 35 
 Thieme-Becker, 43, 83 
 Tournahens, 31, 50 
 Tournai, 19, 25, 62 
 Turin, 56 
 
 Uffizi GaixEry, 19 
 Utrecht, 44 
 
 Van Amstel, Ploos, 37, 48, 83 
 
 Van Bleijswyck, 46 
 
 Van Eyck, Margaret, 42 
 
 Van Eycks, The, 42, 44, 59 
 
 Van Leyden, Lucas, 15, 17 
 
 Van der Meire, 17 
 
 Van Ouwater, Albert, 15 
 
 Venice, 83 
 
 Vienna, 83 
 
 Viti, Timoteo, 17 
 
 Voltaire, 77 
 
 Von Hutten, 71 
 
 Warham, Archbishop, 56, 62, 64, 
 
 69, 73, 82 
 Weale, W H James, 42 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 62, 65 
 
One hundred copies 
 privately printed 
 for 
 
 Bdzmrd A. Faust 
 April, igi8 
 
7 DeceniTjer 1918 
 
 My Dear Mr HolDerts 
 
 I hsv3 read with interest your article in The Times 
 of Octolier 24th on the picture hy Srasnus now in 
 St Louis and I am sincerely glad for the criticism, 
 as I printed the hook by Mr Brockwell snd should 
 like to have made several suggestions at the time 
 though I realized they were then ciuite out of my 
 province. As it was I wrote a column for The 
 
 St Louis Star (of v/hich I am literary editor) and 
 I agree v/ith you that the author of the 'oook, while 
 evidently a close student of Dutch and i'lenish art, 
 is nevertheless rather lame as a bihliOj.rerher. 
 
 If you con conveniently do so I should lizs v.n ex- 
 pression from you as to v/hat you think of ' 
 from the mechanical standpoint. 
 
 I believe I am correct in the surmise thst you writs 
 the weekly ITotes on Sales for the Times. I know 
 of nothing that I enjoy more thoroughly "nd I may add 
 in passing that your books have been to re a great joy 
 and" pleasure. 7/hen opportunity agcin ^i^esents I 
 hope" to get to London On such an occasion I should 
 
 deem it a great honor to meet you persontlly 
 
 Faithfully 
 
 Mr William r{oberts 
 18 Kings Avenue 
 Chatham Park 
 London 3 W 
 EITGLMD