THE WONDERS OF ANTWERP.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 19 October 1914, Page 3

THE WONDERS OF ANTWERP.

ARCHITECTURE AND ART

There is ono impression T took awry from Antwerp that dominates all th^ rest) and that is the Cathedral. I could have been content to spend all my time there, with scarcely a glance at the other sights. Antwerp Cathedral is one of the architectural wonders of the world. More than the Cathedral of Cologne, this Cathedral of Antwerp conveys an almost everpowering sense of historic antiquity and religious art. Here altogether I spent some hours, while the swelling ' music of the great organ rolled through all the six aisles and the chanting choirs responded. In licmrs when the offices- were not being performed it was enough just to sifc still and feel, rather than see the rich magnificence of design and decoration—the hundred and twenty-five pillars, the lofty pointed roof, the altars of carved wood and of marble, the great high altar with the beautiful lifelike face and form of the Mother of Christ pictured above it. The solemn beauty of this interior thrills the mind like music. You can well believe it took a century all but ten years to complete.. The lives and souls of men have gone out into the making of it, into the fashioning of aisles and choir and transept, into the carving of the pulpit, into the windows of precious glass that gleam with illuminated saints and angels, most of all into the sacred pictures of Rubens. But it is not for long that there is silence. With a slow melodious reverberation the chimes sound from the belfry telling each quarter of the hour.

I cannot convey the impression left by the sound of the bells of the Belgian Cathedrals. Longfellow has expressed something of it in his "Belfry at Bruges." But there is a deeper quality than even his verses suggest, as if they recorded all the human tragedies these walls have witnessed, but denied all the human passions associated with them. Revenge, fury, panic, horror, hate, despair, have surged below their tower, and alove them all have sounded unchanged the bells telling the passing of time and life and all passion. For years after hearing them these* cathedral bells of Antwerp haunted mo.

Most of the time I was not in the cathedral I spent in the Musee dcs Beaux Arts (the Art Gallery). Antwerp is the city of Rubens. In the srteet named after him is all that remains of the house where he lived. His statue adorns the Place Verte, his tomb has given his name to the Rubens Chapel in the Church of St. Jacques. But the best part of the great painter lives still in his pictures. Some of the most precious of these are in the Cathedral, and have acquired a character of sanctity. These are kept covered by a screen or curtain, which is drawn at certain hours and on feast days. I was in Antwerp on the Feast of the Virgin's Nativity, and offices of special magnificence were being held in the Cathedral. There was a. great church procession, in which the sacred picture (the Virgin ar>cv3 the altar) was carried through the stieets. In the Place dv Mier a scaffolding was erected- and covered with rich draperies. The streets were so thronged with devout Catholics that -I had only a glimpse of the gorgeous procession, the banners of the church j the church dignities in splendid vestments, but the whole atmosphere around was permea±e.d with mediaevalism. The most famous of the Rubens' masterpieces of the Cathedral are the Descent from the -Cross,, "the Elevation of the Cross, and the Assumption of the Cross, and the Assumption of the Virgin, in which Mary appears rising on clouds to Heaven siltrounded with angels, while the disciples watch below. There are also pictures of Cornelius de Vos and M. de Vos, and a St. Francis by.Murillo. In the Museo are .many other masterpieces fay Reubens, Lucas Cranaeh., Cornelius de Vos, Remembrandt, van Dyck, Jean van Eyck, Adrian van Ostade, Wouvermaix, Quintin Matsys, Albert Durer, Holbein, Fra Angelico, and Giotto, and amongst modern painters, Wiertz. This Musee is indeed one of the world's richest store-houses of pictorial art, and it is to be hoped that its pictures are by now safely out of the city. The greatest interest attaches to the native Flemish school and its relation to the old Italian masters. It is best typified in Rubens, who is so plainly the pupil of Raphael and yet has so distinct" a national character of his own. Briefly/ the Italians were idealists, the Flemish naturally realists. Reubens' figures; are so lifelike,that it is. difficult to look unmoved upon the figures of the dead Christ, the Mother or .the, Magdalen. The Italians awake a remote and poetical emotion, but this is human agony and despair, and beautiful as the coloring is, the effect is sometimes unbearable. The Christ lying on the *i«w-covered bench of stone is a dead man. So may many a martyr have 'loo'ketl who died for his faith. The Virgin with the face from which all the 'hue of life is gone is a mother in mor•tal -agony for a murdered son. The Magdalen's eyes are swollen and red With real, human tears.—Edith Searle Grossmann, M.A., in the Auckland Star. ,