_The Painters and the Pictures of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century_
From time immemorial the culture of the arts, and notably of the art of
painting, has largely entered into the lives alike of the people of
Flanders and of the kindred folk of the neighbouring provinces. Thanks
to the influence and the fostering care of the great monastic houses,
which were everywhere scattered about these lands, the races which
inhabited them had at a very early period attained no little
proficiency, not only in the science of construction, but in the art of
adorning their buildings with sculpture and pictorial representations,
and it may be justly said that the monks of Flanders--her first artists
and her first artisans--made possible that glorious page in the history
of Flemish painting which begins with the divine harmonies of Hubert van
Eyck and ends with the colossal splendour of Rubens.
The chronicles which these cloistered toilers compiled, the books which
they made beautiful with gold and colour and fantastic devices, the
frescoes which of late years have been brought to light in all parts of
the country, these things bear witness to it.
Adelard II., Abbot of St. Trond, who died in 1082, was renowned in his
day as a painter. At Liège there were frescoes in the Church of St.
Martin dating from the close of the nine hundreds, the Cathedral of St.
Lambert in the same city was similarly adorned years before the fire
which destroyed it at the end of the twelfth century, and at this epoch
the artist-monks of the Abbeys of Lobbes and of Stavelot were famous
throughout Europe.
The great Abbey of St. Bavon at Ghent as early as the eleventh century
possessed a school of artists. Some of their illuminated manuscripts
have actually come down to us, and are at present in the Ghent
university library. At the little town of Maeseyck in Holland they still
preserve an eighth-century manuscript adorned by Harlinde and Rilinde,
two of the abbesses who ruled the convent which in those days flourished
there. Among the seven hundred and thirty-four manuscripts in the
municipal library at Bruges, and in the library of the Bruges diocesan
seminary, there are some which date from the thirteenth century, a few
from the twelfth. Many of them are of rare beauty. Notably, at the city
library, a thirteenth-century missal embellished with exquisite
miniatures (No. 314), and, at the seminary, a Cistercian missal and a
Cistercian Breviary of the fourteen hundreds, and a splendid Valerius
Maximus in four volumes, with paintings which are perhaps by John van
Eyck. The greater number of these books were written and illustrated in
the famous Cistercian Abbey which once stood on the Dunes at Coxyde,
between Furnes and Ostend, or by the monks of the affiliated house,
called Ter Doest (All Saints), which Hacket founded at Lisseweghe.
Bruges in the thirteen and in the fourteen hundreds was famed for her
miniaturists and her illuminators. The _Bibliothèque royale_ at Brussels
contains a whole series of manuscripts which once formed part of the
sumptuous libraries of the last Flemish Counts--of Robert of Bethune, of
Louis of Maele, of Philip the Rash, and which one and all bear witness
to the marvellous skill and untiring patience of the men who wrote and
adorned them; these assuredly were not all monks, many of them,
doubtless, were laymen, members of that great artist-guild of St. Luke,
of which we shall have something to say later on. Some of them basked in
the smiles of princes, like John van Eyck, whom Philippe l'Asseuré
enriched and to whose son he stood godfather, and who enjoyed too the
patronage of the Regent Bedford; or Simon Marmion, who received from
Charles the Terrible a sum equal to no less than three hundred and sixty
pounds for a single book of Hours; or Jean Fouquet, the friend and
confidential adviser of Louis XI. Others there were content with the
position of sleek upper servant in the household of some lesser Mæcenas,
and others again, who longed to hold such a post, but were unable to
obtain it; men like poor Jehan Gillemer, for example, who, on the tramp
in search of a patron, was presently arrested as a spy by the agents of
Louis XI. and handed over to the tender mercies of Tristam l'Hermite, a
circumstance, notes M. Lecoy de la Marche,[43] not too deplorable, since
to it we are indebted for the details of his life which have come down
to us, and are thereby enabled to lift a corner of the veil which covers
the manners and customs of one of the most interesting corporations of
the middle ages.
A poor, weak-spirited credulous creature was this obscure miniature
painter, but for all that he seems to have had the soul of an artist and
no little skill in his calling. Sometimes, indeed, he worked for
princes, but he by no means despised the custom of their menials, was
not above mere penmanship, and did not think it beneath him to alter or
complete, even for a humble client, the unfinished work of a _confrère_.
He journeyed half over Europe to dispose of his productions, to obtain
new orders, to have his works bound in the most artistic fashion, to
seek inspiration from the best models and to perfect himself generally
in his art; and he used to collect wherever he went and from whomsoever
he came in contact--from churches, from monasteries, from the private
libraries of the nobles whose houses he frequented, from the menials
whose acquaintance he made in the servants' hall, from courtiers, from
begging friars, from the chance companions whom he drank with at inns,
sometimes, perhaps, new receipts for mixing his colours and for laying
on and burnishing gold, more often strange forms of devotion and
talismans warranted to cure every imaginable ill, from love-philtres and
charms to soothe toothache and settle disputes, to astrological formulæ
to drive away the devil, and, above all, to enable him to keep in order
'those five great hulking apprentices' at home who always would idle
away their time, and whenever he ventured to say a word to them ill-used
him.
Amongst the illuminators enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke were all
sorts and conditions of men; from polished courtiers like John van Eyck
to men doubtless of as questionable character as the obscure individual,
half artist, half perhaps fortune teller, though, for the matter of
that, he swore on the damnation of his soul he had had no dealings with
familiar spirits, whose vagabond life the rack of Tristam has revealed
to us. But whatever their social rank may have been, like the monks who
worked alongside of them, the cloister was the rock from which they were
hewn, and 'the exquisite work which some of them produced is sufficient
to alone explain the origin of Flemish panel painting.'
Thus, Monsieur Fiérens-Gevaert recently,[44] and Lübke and Wauters and
Jules Helbig, before him, though these experts tell us that sculpture
and wall painting had likewise some measure of influence, and traces of
frescoes almost as old as the buildings they once adorned have of late
years been found all over Flanders.
At Bruges, for example, we have the frescoes which Mr. Weale discovered
at Notre Dame in the Chapel of St. Victor at the entrance to the tower.
Here the lower portion of the wall was diapered in crimson and gold, and
above were depicted five angels playing on instruments of music. Mr.
Weale describes these paintings as exceedingly beautiful and in a
sufficiently good state of preservation; alas! they have been again
covered with whitewash. Others were found behind the woodwork of the
churchwarden's pew at the west end of the nave, and yet another in the
southern ambulatory near the sacristy door--a beautiful figure of St.
Louis, dating apparently from the middle of the fourteen hundreds, and
there can be no doubt whatever that, if the whitewash were carefully
removed, it would be found that the whole building is similarly adorned.
So too the Cathedral of St. Sauveur and the Church of St. Jacques, and,
just outside the city, the Churches of Notre Dame at Lisseweghe and at
Damme, in all of which there are, or rather there were mural paintings.
Indeed, those in the last church extended round the whole building.
Unfortunately they were much damaged in removing the whitewash, and they
have again been hidden from view. Other vestiges of wall painting have
been found in various parts of the city, and we know from documentary
evidence that in 1336 Jan van Jabbeke was commissioned to paint a series
of frescoes in the Justice Chamber of the old Hôtel de Ville. Even the
vaults and brick graves in the churchyards were thus adorned, though in
ruder fashion. Several discovered at Varssenaere, in the cemetery of
Notre Dame, and in the _Place St. Jean_, where an old church dedicated
to that saint once stood, have been bodily removed and are now in the
museum beneath the Belfry. They suffered very little injury in the
process and are in a marvellous state of preservation.
But this was not all; even the very stonework at Bruges, and this was no
doubt also the case in other Flemish cities, glowed with gold and
colour; sculpture, statuary, tracery, the mouldings of doors and arches
and windows were not unfrequently thus embellished; we have seen Van
Eyck and other artists engaged in illuminating the niches and the carved
figures on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville; there is an ancient picture
of the interior of Notre Dame which represents the capitals of the nave
radiant with gold and vermilion; vestiges of polychromy within and
without, on woodwork, on plaster, on iron, on stone, have been
discovered all over the city. It is no exaggeration to say that Bruges
at the opening of the fourteen hundreds, the richest, the mightiest and
the loveliest city of Northern Europe, was at this time steeped in
harmonious tints. She had already entered upon the autumn of her
existence, but, like Nature, she had arrayed herself in a vesture of
gold wrought about with divers colours, and the cunning workers who had
woven and embroidered it--the painters of frescoes and the stainers of
glass, the illuminators of vellum and the illuminators of stone--were
the precursors and fathers and founders of the most glorious school of
painting which the world has yet produced. The Van Eycks, the Memlincs,
the Van der Weydens, all the Flemish primitives, whose marvellous
pictures still fill us with admiration, lived and moved and had their
being in the beauty which these men created. The statues, the
miniatures, the mural painting of these poor craftsmen were the models
which inspired their first work, and there is reason to believe that the
insatiate thirst for colour which their predecessors had experienced
led indirectly to the famous discovery which rendered its execution
possible.
In a country like the Netherlands, devoid of precious marbles, there was
only one way of satisfying it--to find some artificial means of
colouring the material at hand, and in that damp, changeable climate the
pigment applied must needs be of a nature to withstand the vagaries of
weather.
The monk Theophilus, a writer often quoted in the twelfth century, gives
exact formulæ for mingling colour and oil, but the pigment thus obtained
was far from being satisfactory; a second coat could not be applied
until the first was completely dry, and the length of time which it took
in drying rendered it practically useless, at all events for the
painting of pictures.
For centuries artists all over Europe were vainly endeavouring to remedy
this defect, and it was not until the opening of the fourteen hundreds
that the problem was at last solved, but long before that period oil
paint had been successfully employed for decorative purposes. We know
that the sculptor Wuillaume du Gardin made use of it for his statues as
early as 1341, and when Hubert van Eyck first came to Bruges at the
close of the fourteenth or at the opening of the fifteenth century the
practice seems to have been generally adopted. It has long been known
that John van Eyck was an _enlumineur des statues_, and a document
recently discovered in the archives of Ghent makes it quite certain that
his elder brother Hubert followed the same calling; what more likely
then, than that the idea should have struck him of painting his pictures
with the same pigment with which he had been in the habit of decorating
stone? But whatever may have led to his great discovery, certain it is,
that the day on which he made it was the birthday of modern art.
The invention of oil painting has until recently been generally
assigned to the year 1420 or thereabouts, but if Mr. Weale is right in
his calculations, and be it borne in mind he has devoted a lifetime to
the study of the Flemish primitives, and has done more to elucidate
their history than any living man, Hubert van Eyck's great oil-painting,
the only picture which can as yet be certainly assigned to him, 'The
Adoration of the Lamb,' at Ghent, cannot have been commenced later than
1415, probably even earlier. It follows then that the new process must
have been invented prior to that date.
HUBERT VAN EYCK
Hubert van Eyck, the first and the greatest of the Flemish masters, was
born at the little market town of Maeseyck in Limbourg, somewhere about
the year 1366. He seems to have been of an old painter family, as not
only Hubert himself but his brothers John and Lambert and his sister
Marguerite all followed this calling. Of his life's story we know
little, of his early years hardly anything. An illuminator of missals
and an illuminator of statues, as well as a painter of pictures,
perhaps, as Mr. Weale has recently suggested, he made his first studies
at Maestricht or at Cologne and afterwards travelled in Spain and in
Italy. By the opening of the fifteenth century he must certainly have
been an artist of some reputation, for in 1413 John de Visch, Lord of
Axel and Capelle, bequeathed to his daughter Mary, who was later on
Abbess of Bourbourg near Gravelines, a picture which Hubert had painted.
What was its subject or what has become of it is not known.[45]
He seems to have passed his middle life at Bruges,[46] and there are
still in existence two pictures attributed with reason to him, which
must have been painted during his sojourn there. The first represents
Our Lady, St. Anne and Herman Steenken, who was Vicar of the Chartreuse
of St. Anne at Woestine near Bruges, from 1402 to 1404, and from 1406
till his death on April 23, 1428. This picture is at present in the
possession of Baron Rothschild at Paris; the second is now in the Berlin
Gallery; it depicts the same monk, but apparently some ten years older,
Our Lady and St. Barbara.
The last years of Hubert's life were spent at Ghent. In the year 1424 we
find him receiving from the aldermen of that city 6s. gr. for the
sketches of two pictures which they had commissioned him to paint for
them but were apparently never executed. Perhaps he had not leisure to
do so. About this time Hubert must have been fully occupied. He had a
triptych in hand which Robert Poortier had ordered for a chapel in
honour of St. Anthony, which he had founded in the Church of St.
Sauveur, at Ghent, and a statue of the same saint to gild and colour,
also for Robert Poortier. For years he had been at work on 'The
Adoration of the Lamb,' and we know that he had not completed it when
death struck him down on the 18th of September 1426.
These facts, if they be facts, represent all, or very nearly all, that
is known of the story of Hubert van Eyck. Perhaps we have his portrait.
Amongst the crowd of figures displayed on his marvellous triptych at
Ghent, note in the foreground of the outer left wing a citizen riding on
a white horse. Tradition tells us that this man is no other than Hubert
himself, and that the rider behind him on the brown horse is his younger
brother John.
But if we know little or next to nothing of the home life and
surroundings of Hubert van Eyck, his merits, says Lübke, as the founder
of an entirely new mode of painting are established beyond doubt. 'Not
only by reason of the improvement which he effected in the process of
mingling colour with oil, and his successful adaptation of the new
method to the painting of pictures, does he justly deserve the title of
Father of Northern art.' He was the first to bring back the cultus of
beauty, and the first to bend before Nature's shrine. He was set in the
midst of a plain full of dry bones, and by the might of his genius he
made them live, and whilst he gave largeness and depth and reality to
the conventional art of the Middle Ages he lost not one whit of its old
ideal grandeur. Utterly discarding the golden backgrounds of former
days, he bathed his creations in the glow of Nature's aureole as he saw
it in the green fields and fair woodlands of his native land, and whilst
he set on them the impress of his own epoch and his own race, he at the
same time invested his sacred figures with sublime grandeur and dignity
and a certain ineffable sweetness which is altogether peculiar to
himself. In this respect his painting has been rarely equalled and never
yet surpassed.
No vestige of Hubert's work remains in the city on the Roya, but hard by
in the old Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent is his masterpiece, 'The
Adoration of the Lamb'--a picture, indeed, not painted at Bruges, but
for all that instinct with the ethos of Bruges, which still preserves
the memory of her magnificence, still keeps alive one quivering ray of
her aureole, and is perhaps the most perfect reflection we have of the
beauty which enshrined her at the epoch when she was fairest. Nay, it is
something grander and nobler and holier than this. It is a sublime
transcription in gold and colour of the poetry of the Mass, an
inspiration incomparable and altogether unique. 'Like Dante's Divine
Comedy and Bach's Passion Music it stands, in its sphere, alone.' Make a
journey to Ghent and gaze upon this marvellous picture, and perchance
its splendour shall enlighten thy soul, and then go down into the crypt
and kneel before the tomb of the man who created it.
JOHN VAN EYCK
We know something more of the life of John van Eyck than of the life of
his master and elder brother Hubert. His junior by twenty years, like
him he was born at Maeseyck, and though his pictures have little in
common with the primitives of Maestricht or Cologne he seems to have
made his first studies in his own neighbourhood, and later on to have
accompanied Hubert to Bruges. A man of many parts and many achievements,
painter of pictures, stainer of glass, illuminator of parchments,
illuminator of stone--no uncommon circumstance at a time when every
artist was an artisan, and every craftsman an artist--he added yet to
his varied talents no little skill in diplomacy, was entrusted by his
sovereign with sundry private and delicate missions, and travelled for
him frequently and far, sometimes in order to paint pictures, sometimes
on matters of state.
Whilst still a young man John van Eyck parted company for a time with
his brother. In the autumn of 1422 he was appointed _peintre et varlet
de chambre_ to Duke John of Bavaria, the famous Jean sans Pitié,
Prince-Bishop of Liège. When that militant prelate was gathered to his
fathers some two years afterwards, Philippe l'Asseuré received his
heritage, and upon the recommendation of '_plusieurs de ses gens_' he
confirmed Van Eyck in his office and in all the customary honours and
profits appertaining thereto,' granting to him, over and above, an
annual stipend of a hundred _livres_, a sum equal in current coin to
about one hundred and sixty pounds.
After a short sojourn at Bruges the young painter journeyed to Lille,
probably to execute some work there for his new master, for during his
entire stay in that city, nearly three years, Philippe paid his house
rent. In the summer of 1428 he set out on _certains lointains voyages
secrez_ which the Duke had commanded him to make, _en certains lieux
dont il ne voulut autre déclaration être faite_. Probably Spain was the
place of his destination, and the object of his journey to find Philippe
a wife. If so, his sojourn there must have been of short duration, for
before the end of the year we find him in Portugal busy painting 'a most
life-like portrait of the Infanta' Isabella, who shortly afterwards
became Philippe's affianced bride. By 1433 he was again at Bruges, and
in the course of the year he purchased a house in the _rue de la Main
d'Or_, which he henceforth made his headquarters. Often from home,
sometimes at Hesdin, sometimes at Lille to visit his friend and patron
and to obtain from him instructions as to work which he wished him to
execute, once at least, in 1435, _en certains voyages lointains et
étranges marches_, no doubt anent matters of state, here it was that he
seems to have painted most of his pictures which have come down to us,
and there are a whole series of signed and dated panels for each year
from 1432 to 1440, save only 1435, the year of his secret journey. He
must have been residing in this house when he illuminated the statues,
six of them, of the Hôtel de Ville, and received for his labour, as the
town archives bear witness, 33 _livres_ 12 _escalins de gros_, a sum
representing in purchasing value to-day from fifty to sixty pounds.
Here he entertained the burgomaster and aldermen of Bruges, who, on July
17, 1432, repaired in a body to his studio to inspect a picture which he
had just completed, and which no doubt they had commissioned, perhaps a
Madonna and Child at present at Ince Bloundel Hall, near Liverpool, for
this picture, one of the few that are dated, bears the following
inscription: _Complendum anno Domini 1432, als ich kan_.
It will be interesting to note that upon this occasion John's two
apprentices made merry, for the city fathers presented them with five
_escalins_ by way of _gratification_. Here was born his only child, or
at all events the only child of whom there is any record; we know that
Duke Philippe was the godfather, and it may well be that he was present
at the christening feast.
Here too he painted for the Guild of St. Luke that portrait of his pale,
sad-faced, patient wife, which at present hangs in the Academy at
Bruges. Though she looks considerably older, the quaintly-worded legend
on the frame informs us that at this time she was only thirty-three
years of age--_Conjunx meus Johannes me complevit anno 1439º 17º Junii,
etas mea triginta annorum, als ich kan_; and lastly, here, not much more
than twelve months afterwards, on July 9, 1440, the great painter died.
They laid him to rest in the cloister of St. Donatian's, and it would
seem that his obsequies were celebrated with some circumstance, for the
city archives inform us that three bells were tolled:--Donatian, Leonard
and Bernard.
It is still the custom at Bruges to toll several bells at solemn
funerals. They are rung one after the other at intervals of perhaps half
a minute, beginning with the highest bell, and ending with the
_bourdon_. The effect produced is very solemn and very striking and
somewhat uncanny.
Some two years after John's death his bones were translated to the
Baptistry Chapel in the interior of St Donatian's.
His widow continued to hold, and no doubt to inhabit the house in the
_rue de la Main d'Or_ until 1443. On June 4, in that year, she paid the
ground rent for the last time.
In all that concerns _technique_ John was the equal, perhaps the
superior of his great brother. His _mise en scène_ is perfect. He
arranged his figures in symmetrical groups, clad them in glorious
apparel, and set them in the midst of fair courts, or stately shrines,
rich in sculpture and polished marble and costly hangings. He delighted
in the _clair-obscur_, in the lustre of gold, in the shimmer of silk, in
the scintillation of gems. In the wealth and variety of his palette and
in the richness and depth and harmony of his mellow colouring he is
unsurpassed. In spite of his realism and his love of detail his pictures
are full of poetry, and if, as Mr. Weale says, he only saw with his
eyes, he has somehow or other managed to make us see the souls of the
figures he painted, but they lack the seriousness, the grandeur, the
simple dignity of Hubert's sublime creations.
All this is exemplified in a marked degree in the St. Donatian's
altar-piece in the academy at Bruges. The scene is laid in the apse of
an old Byzantine church, glowing with gold and colour--perhaps St.
Donatian's. The columns are of shining porphyry--red, purple, green; the
pavement is of encaustic tiles of the colour of amber, the brown walls
are of stone, in the background beyond the choir pale green light
streams through arched windows set with little circular panes of bottle
glass. Our Lady with her Divine Child on her knee forms the central
figure of the picture. She is seated beneath a canopy on a sculptured
throne, her outer garment is silken and of the colour called Indian
red, her kirtle is dark blue, a mediæval carpet is spread beneath her
feet. On her right hand stands St. Donatian, a noble figure, but with a
face too stern for a saint's. In one hand he holds his pastoral cross
and in the other his traditional wheel with five lighted tapers. He is
attired in a cope of indigo and gold brocade lined with crimson silk and
edged with sable. On the left kneels the donor, George van der Pale,
Canon of St. Donatian's--thick-necked, asthmatic, kindly, obese, a
devout old Flemish gentleman. In one fat trembling hand he holds his
half-open Breviary, in the other his reading glass; he is robed in a
white surplice, his spectacle-case hangs at his side. The portrait is
full of detail, very life-like and evidently unflattered. Behind him
stands a youth in polished mail, who naïvely raises his helmet as, with
his left hand on the canon's shoulder, he presents him to Our Lady--his
patron, St. George; a very loyal, large-hearted, human, joyous saint,
who, one feels quite sure, will regard with a lenient eye the
shortcomings of his clients and do his best to help them, but for all
that he seems to have the air of being not quite at ease, not quite sure
perhaps whether the poor old canon is worthy of an introduction. May be
this strangely fascinating figure is also a portrait.
As for the scheme of colour, it is simply glorious. Gold gleams
everywhere. We see it in the blue brocade of the canopy and in the blue
brocade of St. Donatian's cope; there are threads of it in the
intricately-embroidered borders of Our Lady's robe; it glisters round
her neck and on her fingers and in her hair. St. George's armour is all
golden, and on the other side of the picture there stands St. Donatian
arrayed in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours; even
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GEORGE VAN DER PALE
_From the St. Donatian's Altar-piece of John van Eyck, in the Municipal
Gallery, Bruges_]
the sculptured capitals of the columns are gilded, and wherever there is
gold there are precious stones. Diamonds and carbuncles and pearls
glisten in St. George's breastplate and in St. Donatian's crosier and in
the orphreys of his cope, his gleaming mitre is all sewn with amethysts
and pearls; there are pearls, too, round Our Lady's mantle and on her
breast and in her yellow hair, and all this splendour is so delicately
manipulated and so minutely and carefully portrayed that it bears
looking at through a magnifying glass, and it is arranged with such
exquisite taste, and the figures which it adorns are so calm, and about
the whole scene there is an atmosphere of such profound peace, that the
picture is in no way tawdry or garish or vulgar.
This is the largest panel which John van Eyck is known to have painted;
the figures are about half life size. It was placed originally over the
high altar in St. Donatian's, and we know from an inscription on the
frame that it was completed in 1436.
At that time Bruges was straining every nerve to free herself from the
tyranny of Philippe l'Asseuré. John, indeed, was on the winning side,
but the battle had not yet been fought out to the bitter end, and in
1436 it was as likely as not that his patron would be worsted, and yet
he went on quietly painting, and the calm saints of the St. Donatian's
picture bear no trace of the storm amid which they were created.
GERARD DAVID
Half a century later, when Bruges was once more in the throes of
rebellion, and the burghers, for the moment triumphant, had the weakling
who would have enslaved them under lock and key and were exacting the
uttermost farthing from the instigators and instruments of his crimes, a
painter less famous than John van Eyck, but for all that well skilled in
his art, and one whose hand, in spite of the turmoil around him, had not
lost its cunning, was at work on two panels which now hang in the
gallery at Bruges hard by Van Eyck's picture. Similar in colour, hardly
less delicate in design, adorned like it with jewels and gold, these
pictures form the very antithesis to the calm altar-piece of St.
Donatian's. It is instinct with serene splendour, they are quick with
gruesome motion; it is the portrayal of God's mercy, they depict man's
vengeance. Van Eyck was inspired by the spirit of love, David by the
frenzy of delirium.
It was but a passing phase. As in the days of the French Terror men who
before had been peaceful citizens, carried away by the fury around them,
committed all kinds of excesses, and when the blizzard had passed
stepped quietly back into the old humdrum groove of former days as if
nothing had happened, so David, under similar circumstances, defiled his
brush by painting one loathsome picture, and presently, when the storm
had spent itself, clothed and in his right mind, again resumed his old
themes and his old methods: busied himself in adorning altars with fair
virgins and sweet-faced angels, and by making breviaries beautiful with
the legends of the saints.
From the little that is recorded of him he seems to have been a devout
and charitable man, and the placid scenes he delighted to paint indicate
that he was naturally of a humane and gentle disposition.
We know that in 1508 he joined the brotherhood of Our Lady of the Dry
Tree, a famous religious guild affiliated to the Franciscan order. The
following year he presented to the Carmelite nuns of Bruges one of his
most exquisite pictures, an altar-piece representing Our Lady
surrounded by virgin saints, at present in the gallery at Rouen; and
later on, when the same nuns were in straitened circumstances, he
advanced them a very considerable sum free of interest, only stipulating
that the money should be returned when he asked for it. This he did
during his last illness, several years afterwards, and it is pleasing to
find that the nuns at once complied with his request. But to return to
the days of his aberration. Shortly after the execution of Peter
Lanchals and other members of the magistracy of Bruges, who like him had
been accused of corruption and of conspiring with Maximilian to deprive
the town of its liberty, the new magistrates whom the people had chosen
to fill their place commissioned Gerard David to paint for the Court of
Justice in the Hôtel de Ville two pictures which should remind the
judges that if they should at any time fail in their duty punishment
would assuredly follow.
Gerard was a native of Oudewater in Holland, who some four years
previously had taken up his abode in Bruges. On the 14th of January 1484
he was enrolled among the members of the Guild of St. Luke. He was
probably an ardent patriot, at all events was in touch with the popular
leaders, for we know from documentary evidence that they employed him to
paint the iron gratings which were placed before the windows of Jean de
Gros's mansion when Maximilian was imprisoned there, and, as we have
seen, it was he whom they commissioned to paint the panels for the Town
Hall.
The theme selected for his pictures is a horrible one--the conviction
and the flaying alive of Sisamnes, an Egyptian judge who had been
accused of receiving bribes. The story is first told by Herodotus, but
David had probably culled it from the pages of Valerius Maximus, and
there can be no doubt that the subject was suggested to him by the
tragedy which had just taken place beneath the shadow of the Belfry. He
has represented himself in the first panel calmly surveying the arrest
of Sisamnes, and it may well be that he actually witnessed the execution
of Lanchals, perhaps expressly with a view to these paintings. In each
case the scene is laid at Bruges, the figures, the faces, the attitudes,
the costumes, are all essentially Flemish, and it is in the highest
degree probable that he introduced other portraits besides his own.
Mark the expression of Sisamnes in the flaying scene. See how his
features twitch, how he clenches his hands and his teeth, and draws back
his lips in agony. Did Peter Lanchals look like that when he was being
racked in the infernal machine which he himself had invented?
There are only seven other pictures which can at present be certainly
attributed to Gerard David. They are all of a sacred character, and four
of them were painted for churches in Bruges. Of these the most beautiful
is the triptych presented to the Carmelite nuns in 1509, and which
adorned the high altar of their chapel until the community was
suppressed by Joseph II. in 1783. Two years later, when their property
was sold at Brussels, David's picture was purchased by a dealer named
Berthels for fifty-one florins. He sold it to a French collector,
Monsieur Miliotti, in whose possession it remained until his estate was
confiscated by the Revolutionary government some years later. Presently
it was hung in the Municipal Gallery at Rouen, where it still remains.
This is the most decorative, and perhaps the most charming of David's
pictures. The subject is Our Lady surrounded by angels and virgin
saints. The grouping is sufficiently symmetrical and altogether
excellent, the scheme of colour is rich and harmonious, and though the
sacred figures almost entirely cover the panel, owing to the lack of
detail in the background, a mass of deep, sombre green, almost black,
they appear in no way crowded. The faces are for the most part somewhat
heavy, and decidedly Flemish, but there is an air of calm repose about
them which is very restful, and the fair-haired, white-robed angels
which stand on each side of Our Lady's throne are of another type. David
must have drawn them from peasant models. This picture is all the more
interesting from the fact that the artist has introduced his own
portrait, and also that of his wife Cornelia,[47] the daughter of a
Bruges goldsmith, one Jacob Cnoop, a native of Middelburg in Holland.
Unless David flattered his wife, she must have been a woman of
singularly prepossessing appearance, with bright eyes and an intelligent
face. She stands with her hands clasped in prayer, the last figure but
one on the left-hand side of Our Lady, beyond her stands St. Lucy, a
child saint who suffered martyrdom at fourteen. She is here represented
as a woman of forty, gorgeously arrayed in two shades of crimson, fat
and not fair. David himself balances his wife on the opposite side of
the picture. A sufficiently artistic face this, but upon the whole not a
pleasing one. His eyes are too prominent, his lips are too thick, and he
has a weak, receding chin.
Gerard David painted two pictures for the Church of St. Donatian:--an
altar-piece representing the mystic marriage of St. Catherine, and two
panels which formed the shutters of a triptych. These, together with
the wings of several other triptychs, were sold by the Cathedral Chapter
in 1787 at the request of the sacristan, a lazy, clumsy fellow who,
objecting to the trouble of opening and closing them, averred that he
invariably broke the altar candles in doing so. One of David's shutters
has disappeared, the other, after passing through several hands, was
purchased in 1859, for five hundred and twenty-five guineas, by Mr.
Benoni White, who, at his death in 1878, bequeathed it to the National
Gallery.
Here we have a portrait of the donor Bernardin Salviati, Canon of St.
Donatian's and the son of a wealthy Florentine merchant who had married
a Flemish lady and settled at Bruges. The kneeling canon is attired in a
surplice of fine linen and is accompanied by three saints--St. Donatian
resplendent in black brocade glistering with jewels and gold, St. Martin
in a crimson velvet cope, with richly-embroidered orphreys, and his
patron, the Franciscan saint, Bernardin, in the rough grey frock of the
poor man of Assisi. The heads are very fine, full of expression and more
Italian than Flemish in type, but the figures are not gracefully posed;
there is too much landscape, and the picture is hardly decorative enough
for an altar-piece.
The St. Donatian's 'Marriage of St. Catherine' is also at present in the
National Gallery. It seems to have been taken to Paris when the old
cathedral was destroyed. It eventually became the property of M. de
Beurnoville; when his collection was sold in 1881, the late Mrs Lyne
Stephens purchased it for 54,100 frs. (£2164), and it was bequeathed by
her to the nation.
This panel is far superior to the Salviati picture. The colouring is
very rich and mellow, the composition is perfect, the faces are
admirably painted and, though somewhat heavy and Flemish in character,
are on the whole pleasing; the background, with its vine-clad walls and
lovely garden of roses, and lilies, and trees beyond, and picturesque
buildings, is altogether beautiful and in no way obtrusive. The whole
picture is admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was designed.
The only one of David's sacred pictures which remains in Bruges is the
triptych known as 'The Baptism of Christ.'
The history of this picture is a strange one. It was painted early in
the fifteen hundreds for John des Trompes, who at that time was city
treasurer, probably for his private oratory; later on, in 1520, it was
presented by his heirs to the Guild of Advocates, and placed over the
altar of their chantry in the crypt of St. Basil in the Bourg. A coat of
black distemper inscribed with the Ten Commandments saved it from the
fury of the Calvinists in 1579. Carried off by the French in 1794, it
remained in Paris until 1815, when it was at last sent back to Bruges
and placed in the City Gallery, where it still remains. It hangs
alongside of David's other pictures, is in striking contrast to them,
and as a work of art their inferior. The grouping is not happy. Two of
the three principal figures in the central panel are decidedly weak, and
those in the distance are for the most part stumpy and graceless. On the
other hand, the figure of the kneeling angel who holds our Lord's
garments is singularly beautiful. His sweet, placid face might have been
drawn by Memlinc and his glorious vesture by John van Eyck. The
landscape setting is the most interesting portion of this panel, and in
all probability it is not David's work. Mr. Weale thinks that Joachim
Patenier may have painted it, and Jules Helbig is of the same opinion.
'Nothing,' says Mr. Weale, 'can well be finer than this portion of the
picture; the trees, vigorously painted and finished with wonderful
minuteness, have evidently been studied individually from nature....
Between their trunks we get glimpses of real distant landscape. The
herbage, lilies, mallows, violets, and other flowers in the immediate
front have never been more admirably reproduced by the art of the
painter.... The transparency of the water, the reflection of surrounding
objects and the shadows on its surface are faithfully rendered. The
bedding of the rocks too is imitated with perfect truth. The colouring
of all this portion is so remarkably bright and lovely that the faults
of the composition are not at first noticed.'
All this is no exaggeration. Bearing in mind the age in which it was
produced, this piece of landscape painting is in truth a marvellous
achievement. Considered in itself it is worthy of the highest
admiration. But instead of being a mere accessory, as was the case in
the pictures of the Van Eycks, of Memlinc, of Van der Weyden, of all the
earlier masters, the landscape here forms, so to speak, the dominant
note of the picture. The beauty of these fair fields and woods and
mountains is the first thing which attracts the spectator's attention.
The sacred figures are overwhelmed and belittled and cast into the shade
by the splendour of their setting, and, after all, the sacred figures
should form the principal feature of a picture like this, intended for
an altar-piece. On the whole we cannot help regretting that Gerard David
called in the aid of Joachim Patenier. The left wing shows the donor and
his little son Philip, and his patron, St. John the Evangelist; the
right, the donor's first wife, her four daughters and her patroness, St.
Elizabeth of Hungary. Each of these panels has a landscape background,
no less beautiful and no less obtrusive than the landscape in the
central panel. The triptych when
[Illustration: GERARD DAVID'S 'BAPTISM OF CHRIST'
_Municipal Gallery, Bruges_]
shut displays five figures--Our Lady seated beneath a canopy, with the
Divine Infant on her knee, and facing them the donor's second wife, her
little daughter and her patroness, St. Mary Magdalene. Here there is an
architectural background of open arcades, with a view beyond, perhaps of
Bruges.
This is perhaps the least satisfactory of the nine pictures which, to
quote the words of Mr. Weale, 'can at present with certainty be assigned
to Gerard David.'
In the Museum of the Holy Blood there is a triptych representing the
Deposition, which, according to documents preserved in the confraternity
archives, was painted by David in 1520. The authenticity of this picture
is, however, contested, and it is certainly far inferior to any of his
known paintings.
Gerard David married probably during the year 1496. His wife, as we have
seen, was Cornelia Cnoop. They had issue one daughter, who was
christened Barbara, and was already married at the time of her father's
death. During forty years he held a foremost place among the painters of
Bruges. He was elected a councillor of the Guild of St. Luke in 1488,
and again in 1495 and in 1498. He was gathered to his fathers on the
13th of August 1523. They buried him in Notre Dame, beneath the tower,
but no stone marks the place of his sepulture. When the church was
repaired at the beginning of the last century it disappeared. Many of
the old Notre Dame tombstones have been put to ignoble purposes, serve
as doorsteps for houses in the neighbourhood, or to pave kitchens, or
are stowed away in cellars and back-yards. Perhaps David's monument is
among the number. It was engraved with his arms, which are known, and
those of his wife, and the memorial inscription has been preserved.
Hence in all probability it would be easy of identification.
Great painter as he undoubtedly was, the fame of Gerard David hardly
survived him, even in the city in which he had so long dwelt.
Van Mander, writing as early as 1604, was obliged to avow that he had no
information concerning him, save only this, that Peter Pourbus, who died
in 1584, considered him to be an excellent artist, and Van Mander had
long inhabited Bruges.
By the close of the sixteen hundreds even those of his pictures which
still adorned the city of his adoption were attributed to other
painters, and for more than two hundred and fifty years his name was
buried in oblivion.
Less than half a century ago Mr. Weale brought it back to men's memory.
To his diligent research the world is indebted for all that is now known
of the life and labours of this great artist. From his writings in the
_Beffroi de Bruges_, the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, and elsewhere, we
have culled the notes here set down on the history of Gerard David and
the histories of the pictures he painted.
To return for a moment to John van Eyck. There are two other pictures at
Bruges which are possibly his. The first is a small panel in the
municipal gallery representing the head of Christ. Mr. Weale refuses to
acknowledge this as an authentic picture, and says that the only part
which is well painted is the embroidered collar of the tunic. Lübke, on
the other hand, speaks of it as a genuine Van Eyck, and ascribes the
date to 1440, the year of John's death, but he adds, 'like the head of
Christ in the Berlin Museum, painted two years previously, it exhibits a
certain want of expression, seeming to intimate to us the limits of
John's genius.'
M. de Copman, the curator of the Bruges Gallery, has no doubt that it is
authentic, and describes it as such on the frame. One thing is certain.
If this picture was indeed painted by John van Eyck it is not worthy of
him.
The second picture, a finely-painted Mater Dolorosa, is in the
Cathedral. From the fact that it is signed with the initials _J. E._ it
was formerly attributed to John, but it is now generally acknowledged to
be the work of some other artist.
Among the crowd of artists who in the course of the fourteen hundreds
flocked to Bruges, and whose method of painting was inspired either
directly or indirectly by the brothers Van Eyck, note Pieter Christus, a
native of Baarle near Tilburg, who died at Bruges in 1473, the only
pupil of John van Eyck whose name has come down to us; Gerhard van der
Meire, Dierick Boudts, Roger van der Weyden, all of them perhaps pupils
of Hubert's; Roger's pupil, Hans Memlinc, the greatest of all the Bruges
painters after the brothers Van Eyck, and, towards the close of the
century, Quentin Metsys, Albert Cornelis and Jerome Bosch.
Strangely enough, of these men only one, Albert Cornelis, was a native
of Bruges, and though they all of them spent a considerable portion of
their lives there, the sum of their united labours is at present
represented in the city by hardly a score of pictures. Of the work of
Pieter Christus nothing remains; Quentin Metsys, Hugo van der Goes and
Roger van der Weyden are likewise unrepresented, though several of the
masterpieces of the last two were in the Church of St. Jacques at the
close of the seventeen hundreds. When they disappeared, or what has
become of them, is unknown. One picture remains in Bruges which was
perhaps painted by Gerhard van der Meire, four which are probably the
work of Dierick Boudts; Jerome Bosch and Albert Cornelis are each
represented by one picture, Gerard David, as we have seen, by three or
perhaps four, and Hans Memlinc by six which are certainly his work, and
by some half-dozen others which are attributed to him with more or less
probability, whilst scattered about the town there are many pictures,
some of them very beautiful, which were no doubt painted at Bruges
during the period we are now considering, but by artists who have not as
yet been identified.
Of the lives and surroundings of these great masters little has come
down to us. All that is certainly known concerning most of them is the
place of their birth and death, and the date of those events--even these
meagre details are in the case of some of them lacking--and that of the
multitude of pictures of the Flemish school of this period scattered
throughout the churches and galleries of Europe, not a few can be
positively traced to one or other of the Bruges masters.
ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN.
Roger van der Weyden, the greatest of the immediate disciples of John
van Eyck, was born at Tournai early in the fourteen hundreds. In 1436 he
was appointed painter to the city of Brussels, and it was probably
during this time that he adorned with gold and colour the statuary of
the tomb of Jeanne of Brabant, which Philippe l'Asseuré erected in the
Carmelite Church there. In 1450 he made a pilgrimage to Rome for the
great jubilee which was celebrated during that year. We know something
of the details of this journey. _En route_ he sojourned at Ferrara, at
Milan and at Florence, and in all of these towns he received the most
cordial welcome, not only from his brother artists, but from the ruling
princes. At Ferrara he must have worked for Lionel d'Este, for on his
return to Brussels we find him receiving from that prince the sum of
twenty golden ducats in part payment for _certe depicture_ executed in
his palace at Ferrara. At Milan he painted for Francesco Sforza a
Calvary, with the portraits of Francesco himself, his wife, Blanche
Visconti, and their young son, Galéas. This splendid picture is now in
the _Musée des Beaux Arts_ at Brussels. At Florence he was employed by
Cosmo de' Medici. The fruit of his labours in that city is at present in
the Stadel Museum at Frankfort--a glorious triptych which represents the
Madonna and Child, with St. Peter and St. John the Baptist, patrons of
the city, on the right, and on the left the mighty Cosmo himself and one
of his brothers, perhaps Lorenzo, in the guise of the patrons of the
Medici family--Saints Cosmas and Damian. He does not seem to have
practised his art in Rome. Perhaps his stay there was a short one, and
that his time was fully occupied by sight-seeing and devotion. That he
fully appreciated the art treasures of the Eternal City there can be no
doubt, and we know that he was enraptured with the Lateran pictures of
Gentile da Fabriano, whom he pronounced to be the first painter in
Italy.
During the later part of his life Roger seems to have resided at Bruges,
and here perhaps he painted the Middelburg triptych now in the Berlin
Gallery, and the missing triptych which formerly adorned the Church of
St. Jacques. This picture excited the admiration of Albert Dürer when he
visited Bruges in 1521. Its theme was the life of St. John the Baptist.
The same subject is portrayed in a painting attributed to Roger, at
present in the Berlin Gallery. Have we here the Bruges picture?
The exact date of Roger's death is known--June 18, 1464; we also know
the name of his wife, Elizabeth Goffart, and that he was the father of
four children, Corneille, Margaret, Peter and John, of whom Peter
followed his father's calling. He seems, like his master John van Eyck,
to have been a man of many parts; we have already seen him colouring
statues, he was also an illuminator of manuscripts. A miniature of
exceptional beauty, attributed with reason to him, is in the possession
of M. Gielen of Maeseyck (see _Rev. de l'Art Chrétien_, 1889, p. 380). A
reproduction of it is published in the _Annales de l'Académie
d'archéologie de Belgique_, vol. xxiv. Perhaps, too, he was a wood
engraver. Waagen is of opinion (_see_ Sotheby's _Principia
Typographica_) that the woodcuts of the _Biblia Pauperum_ were designed
by him.
Roger van der Weyden was, in his way, even more of a realist than John
van Eyck, and he possessed all John's love of elaborate detail; but
whereas the latter was pleased with serene immobility Roger delighted in
tragic action, and his tall, wan, emaciated figures are often convulsed
with weeping. He could, however, depict tranquillity when he liked, and
his portraits are as calm and collected as any of Van Eyck's. His heads
are invariably finely painted and full of expression, but they are
almost always ascetic looking, and very often sad. Take for example the
portrait of Bladelin in the Middelburg picture. He seems, indeed, to
have been unable to appreciate the beauty of health and gladness, and to
corpulence he had a rooted objection. If that fat, flabby-faced old
canon, George van der Pale, had commissioned Roger to paint his
portrait, he would somehow or other have managed, without losing the
likeness, to make him look fragile and refined.
Of the Flemish painters of the fourteen hundreds M. Fiérens-Gevaert
remarks: '_La morbidesse que Bruges dissimule si richement, se prolonge
dans leur art. Ils créent des figures minces, élancées, splendidement
vêtues._' The assertion is too sweeping, but it is certainly true in the
case of Roger van der Weyden.
DIERICK BOUDTS.
Of Roger's contemporary Dierick Boudts we know little save that he was
born at Harlem, towards the close of the thirteen hundreds, that he
passed a portion of his life in Bruges, and that in 1462 he settled at
Louvain, where he continued to reside until his death in 1475.
Two of his most famous works are still in the Church of St. Peter in
that city--an altar panel representing the martyrdom of St. Erasmus, and
the central panel of a polyptych, of which the subject is the Last
Supper. This picture has been broken up, and the side shutters are now
in the Berlin Gallery. There is a contemporary copy of the entire
painting, perhaps a replica by Dierick himself, in the seminary at
Bruges. The Church of St. Jacques in the same city contains another of
his works, or rather a work attributed, probably correctly, to him, a
retable in three compartments, wherein is depicted the legend of St.
Lucy. The soft, mellow colouring of this picture is perfect, and all the
details, the rich brocades and velvets, the embroidery and precious
stones, the flowers and fruit in the foreground, are quite admirable,
but the figures are stiff and ill-proportioned. In the background is a
view of the city of Bruges with the Belfry as it appeared before the
lantern was added, and the Church of Notre Dame. This picture is dated
1480.[48]
There is a triptych in Bruges Cathedral, in the first chapel on the
northern side of the chevet, which is attributed to Memlinc. The
painting on the left shutter is quite in his style and is in all
probability his work. Here are shown portraits of the donors, Hippolytus
de Berthoz and Elizabeth van Keverwick, his affianced bride. This panel
has been much spoiled by restoration, and the removal of the _glacis_
has chilled the tone of the colouring. The other panels are evidently
the work of another painter, and there is little doubt that that painter
was Dierick Boudts. The ill-proportioned figures, the finely-drawn
heads, and the rich, mellow colouring are all his. The scene depicted on
the central panel is the martyrdom of St. Hippolytus, who is being torn
to pieces by four horses; in the further panel he confesses himself a
Christian and is condemned to death.
There is a fourth picture in Bruges, which perhaps may have been painted
by Dierick Boudts. It is in the Chapel of the Soeurs Noires in the
_Place Memlinc_, and represents eight episodes in the legend of St.
Ursula. It probably dates from an earlier period than the famous shrine
of St. Ursula in the Hospital of St. John, and it is not unlikely that
we have here the prototype of that marvellous production.
The picture attributed to Gerhard van der Meire hangs in the southern
aisle of the Cathedral. Therein are depicted three Passion scenes--the
Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion and the Deposition. The treatment
is coarse and realistic in the extreme. The picture is not a pleasing
one. Alike in colour, in sentiment, in design it is far inferior to any
of Gerhard's authentic works.
In the Municipal Gallery there is an 'Adoration of the Magi' (No. 28),
which formerly belonged to the monks of the great Cistercian Abbey of
Our Lady on the Dunes at Coxyde. Much spoiled by restoration, somewhat
quaint and naïve in design, it is still a beautiful picture. There is no
extrinsic evidence to show who painted it, but the style is the style of
Jerome Bosch.
In the Church of St. Jacques, about half-way up the southern aisle,
hangs the picture of Albert Cornelis--the central panel of a triptych on
which is portrayed the Coronation of Our Lady in the presence of the
nine choirs of angels. This is in every respect a most remarkable and a
most interesting picture. Painted in 1520, at a time when the artists of
Bruges had already begun to adopt the methods of the Renaissance, it is
instinct with the spirit which animated the old illuminators of the
beginning of the previous century. Of a delicate, miniature-like style,
beautiful alike in sentiment, in design, in colour and in execution, it
is the only known work of the master-hand that produced it.
HANS MEMLINC.
Hans Memlinc, the greatest painter in Christendom, as a writer of his
own day calls him, seems to have been born somewhere about the year
1430. He was in all probability a native of Mayence, or of some locality
within the electorate. M. Wauters, in his _Sept Études pour servir à
l'histoire de Hans Memlinc_, published at Brussels in 1893, inclines to
Memlingen, a village about forty miles from the city. M. Jules Helbig
suggests Aschaffenburg, near which place flows a stream called the
Mumling.
Be this as it may, the Jesuit Father Henri Dursart's discovery in 1889
of Romboudt de Doppere's journal (1491 to 1498) at least puts an end to
the dispute as to Memlinc's nationality. There can no longer be any
doubt that the great Bruges painter was, at all events, of German
extraction, and the same document informs us that he died at Bruges on
August 11, 1494, and that he was buried in the Church of St.
Gilles--_Die. XI. Augusti (1494), Brugis obiit Joannes Memmelinc, quem
prædicabant peritissimum fuisse et excellentissimum pictorem totius tunc
orbis Christiani oriundus erat Magunciaco, sepultus Brugis ad Ægidii_.
A note at the beginning of his journal informs us that Doppere was a
priest, a notary of Bruges and registrar to the Chapter of St. Donatian,
and he himself tells us that in 1491 he had been attached to the Church
of St. Donatian for over forty-six years--_Ego Romboldus de Doppere,
presbyter, versatus sum hic in ecclesia S. Donatiani ultra annos XLVI._
... We find him acting as notary from 1483 to 1491, and in that capacity
he witnessed, on October 21, 1489, the translation of the relics of St.
Ursula to Memlinc's new shrine. Doppere was then personally acquainted
with Memlinc, perhaps his friend. In the later years of his life he
seems to have been a canon of Notre Dame. He died, according to Meyer,
in 1501, and was buried in the church he had so long served.
As long ago as 1861 Mr. Weale proved by documentary evidence, published
for the first time in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, that Memlinc had
obtained the freedom of the city of Bruges in 1478, that two years later
he was in the enjoyment of a considerable fortune, a portion of which
was invested in house property, and that the dwelling which he himself
inhabited was in the _rue St. George_ on a site now occupied by the
garden of the house No. 20, that his wife's Christian name was Anne,
that she bore him three children, John, Corneile and Nicolas, and that
she died in 1487. This is all that is at present certainly known
concerning the story of Hans Memlinc.
According to a legend long current in the city, Memlinc was a poor
soldier who, having escaped with his life from the battlefield of Nancy
(January 4, 1477), somehow or other succeeded in making his way to
Bruges, sought shelter in the Hospital of St. John, and was there healed
of his wounds. Having no money wherewith to requite the brethren for the
kindness they had shown him, he painted them a picture, or rather a
whole series of pictures--the famous Shrine of St. Ursula.
There is no documentary evidence in support of this story. The first
writer to mention it is the Abbé Jean Baptiste Descamps in his _Vie des
peintres Flamands_, which appeared in 1733, some two hundred and forty
years after Memlinc's death, and since Mr. Weale's discoveries in 1861
it has been generally and perhaps too lightly regarded as devoid of all
foundation.
The documents which have of late years been brought to light do not,
however, touch the main outlines of the hospital story, though they
certainly prove that some of the incidents could not have taken place as
the Abbé Descamps relates them.
Perhaps, as Mr. Weale suggests, Memlinc learned the first elements of
his art at Cologne. There is a tradition that he was at one time the
pupil of Van der Weyden. May be he first conceived his love of that
delicate, miniature-like style which he afterwards brought to such
perfection from 'Master Simon Marmion of Valenciennes, who,' Louis de la
Fontaine tells us, 'had such skill in the noble science of painting that
he surpassed not only all the other artists resident in the said town,
but likewise those of all the neighbouring cities,' that 'prince of
illuminators,' whom Jean Lemain, the poet-secretary of Marguerite of
Austria, in his _Couronne Margaritique_ enumerates among the most famous
painters of his day.
'Et Marmion, prince d'enlumineure
Dont le nom croit comme paste en levain
Par les effets de son noble tournure.'
We know that a young Brussels painter, whose Christian name was Hans,
was sojourning at Valenciennes from 1454 to 1458,[49] and this same Hans
seems later on to have returned to Brussels and entered the service of
Roger van der Weyden.
Of course Hans was a sufficiently ordinary name in Germany, but it was
not a common one in the Netherlands, and there is another circumstance
which makes it probable that the Hans in question was Hans Memlinc.
No picture of Marmion has come down to us which can be identified as
certainly his, but there are several which may be his handiwork. Amongst
them four panels on which is depicted the life of St. Bertin. They once
formed the wings of the sculptured retable of silver gilt, adorned with
enamel and precious stones, which for more than three hundred years
glistered behind the high altar in the Abbey Church of St. Bertin at St.
Omer, the last resting-place of so many of the early Counts of Flanders.
Exquisite alike in colour and design, in days when Gothic art was least
esteemed these marvellous paintings excited universal admiration, and
Rubens himself is said to have been so enamoured of their beauty that he
offered to cover them with _Louis d'or_ if only the monks would consent
to sell.
Presently came the evil days of the French Revolution. The old church
was pillaged and razed to the ground, and the triptych disappeared.
Fortunately the shutters were saved. Somehow or other they came into the
hands of a baker of St. Omer, who later on sold them to an art collector
in the neighbourhood. In 1823 they were put up for sale at the Hôtel
Bullion in Paris and purchased for 7500 francs (£300) by Monsieur
Nieuwenhuys for William I., King of the Netherlands. Only the larger
shutters, however, were placed in the King's collection. The smaller
ones were re-sold to M. Beaucousin, and when he died in 1861 they were
purchased along with his other pictures for the National Gallery.
In days gone by these exquisite pictures were unhesitatingly attributed
to Memlinc. There was an unbroken tradition at St. Bertin's that he had
painted them. 'Never,' says M. de Laplane in his _Abbés de St. Bertin_
(1844), 'had there existed a doubt at the abbey as to their authorship.'
The Abbé Descamps, who visited St. Omer in 1769, was quite sure that
they were Memlinc's, and for over a hundred years historians, artists
and archæologists alike were unanimous in adjudging them his. Even as
recently as 1881 the well-known Dutch art critic Victor de Stuers
expressed the same opinion.
It was probably the Comte de Laborde who first expressed doubt as to
their authorship. Writing in 1851 of the larger panels he says, 'To whom
must we attribute these two delicious pages--to Memlinc in a peculiar
phase of his talent, painting in a different and in some respects a
less precise style than he painted at Bruges? or have we here the work
of a disciple or, may be, of a rival? If so the artist who produced them
must be reckoned among the most eminent.... I shall have no peace until
I have discovered the date, the price, and the author of these
pictures.[50]
Crowe and Cavalcaselle are no less undecided:--if Memlinc painted the
shutters in question, he must have been aided by his pupils. Others
shared their uncertainty, others again unhesitatingly averred that the
triptych could not be Memlinc's.
The Comte de Laborde was never able, perhaps he had never time, to solve
the riddle he had propounded, but of late years a no less capable and
patient investigator has, at least in part, succeeded in doing so.
Mgr. Dehaisnes, like the author of _Les Ducs de Bourgogne_, was unable
to affirm that the paintings on the St. Bertin's triptych were the
handiwork of Memlinc. If now and again an angel for example resembled
his angels, there were other figures reminiscent of the style of Dierick
Boudts or of Roger van der Weyden. The scheme of colour too recalled
rather the rich, mellow, sunny tints of the 'Adoration of the Lamb' than
the clearer tones of the shrine of St. Ursula, and in point of vigour
and precision the unknown artist fell short of the great masters of the
Bruges school and especially of the greatest of them all.
The long and careful investigation which Mgr. Dehaisnes undertook
resulted in the identification of the donor of the precious triptych,
viz., William Fillustre, Bishop of Toul, who ruled the Abbey of St.
Bertin from 1450 to 1473; in the discovery of the price he paid for it,
1828 _livres_ 26 _sous_, a sum equivalent in current coin to at least
£1400, not including the value of the gold, silver and precious stones,
all of which were furnished by the abbey treasury; and in the discovery
of the approximate date of its completion, between 1455 and 1459,
probably in the June of the latter year. And although Mgr. Dehaisnes has
not been able to establish the identity of the author of the pictures,
he has shown that it is in the highest degree probable than Simon
Marmion painted them.
If what Mgr. Dehaisnes modestly calls his '_conjectures vraisemblables_'
should prove to be correct, and if Memlinc was indeed Marmion's pupil,
it may well be that he aided his master in painting the marvellous
shutters, and in that case the St. Bertin's tradition that he was their
author may perhaps be thus accounted for.
The pictures which Memlinc executed at Bruges represent the work of his
middle life and of his declining years. In former days they were
sufficiently numerous, but now there are only six or at most seven of
his authentic pictures within the limits of the city, and they are all
of them save one, at present in the old chapter house of the Hospital of
St. John. Of these the first in order of date is the great triptych
which formerly adorned the high altar of the hospital chapel, and was
painted in 1479. The subject of the central panel is the 'Mystic
Marriage of St. Catherine.' Here Our Lady is seated in a cloister, on a
rich throne backed with cloth of gold; above her head two hovering
angels hold a crown. On her knee is the Divine Infant who, leaning
forward, places a ring on St. Catherine's finger. Behind His mystic
bride stands an angel playing on an instrument of music, and beyond St.
John the Baptist with his lamb beside him. On the other side of Our Lady
a kneeling angel holds a book of which she appears to be turning one of
the leaves; hard-by is St. Barbara reading, and in the background St.
John the Divine. Beyond the cloister in the background is a fair
landscape in which are depicted scenes from the life of the Baptist and
from the life of the beloved disciple. The principal theme of the
left-hand panel is the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, that of the
panel on the right the vision at Patmos of the other St. John.
Painted, most probably at the suggestion of John Floreins, who at that
time was hospital treasurer, by an artist bearing the same Christian
name, for a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the
Divine, at the cost of devout men and women who divided their time
between labour and prayer, this triptych is in the first place the
glorification of the precursor and the beloved disciple, and in the
second of St. Catherine and St. Barbara, who typify respectively in
mediæval art the contemplative and the active life.
In this picture we have the portrait of John Memlinc over and over
again, for it was his wont, at least so it is said, to make himself his
own model when he painted St. John the Baptist. Here too John Floreins
appears twice. Once in the habit of his order--a small black-robed
figure in the left-hand corner of the central panel, and again in the
background of the same panel, between a marble column and Our Lady's
throne. This time he is represented in his secular capacity as public
gauger of wine, near a huge crane in the _rue Flamande_, with the old
Church of St. John, long since demolished, in the distance.
Such are the main outlines of the hospital triptych, the largest of
Memlinc's uncontested works, and the most beautiful in colour, at all
events of his pictures in Bruges.
Its prototype is in England--perhaps it was painted there--and is at
present in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Executed for Sir
John Donne, who
[Illustration: MEMLINC'S 'ADORATION OF THE MAGI'
_In St. John's Hospital at Bruges_]
was slain at the Battle of Edgecote near Banbury on July 26, 1469, this
picture must be among the earliest, perhaps indeed it is the most
ancient of Memlinc's uncontested works. Most of the figures herein
portrayed are identical, or almost identical, with the figures in the
Bruges triptych. Not only are they manifestly the same individuals, but
their faces have the same expression and they are dressed in the same
costumes. The colouring of this triptych is less rich than the colouring
of the hospital picture, and perhaps the execution is less sure, but the
grouping is more simple and more symmetrical, and there is an atmosphere
of repose about it which one does not find to the same extent in the
Bruges picture. The attention of the spectator is not distracted by a
multiplicity of scenes in the background. Here there are no fluttering
angels above Our Lady's head, and the calm, dignified figure of the
Evangelist on the left-hand shutter is decoratively far more effective
than the ecstatic Evangelist in the corresponding wing of the Bruges
triptych.
In the same year that Memlinc painted the 'Mystic Marriage of St.
Catherine,' he painted also the picture which hangs opposite to it. This
work is likewise a triptych, but of much smaller dimensions than the
first. It probably adorned the private oratory of John Floreins, as an
inscription in Flemish on the frame informs us that it was painted for
him: _Dit werk dede maken Broeder Jan Floreins alias vander Rüst Broeder
Proffes vanden hospitale van Sint Jans in Brygghe anno 1479 opus Johanis
Memlinc_.
If there is any truth in the Abbé Descamps's legend it was probably this
picture, and not the shrine of St. Ursula, that Memlinc painted as a
thank-offering to John Floreins, who, if he was not superior of the
hospital when Memlinc is said to have been a patient there, certainly
occupied a responsible position and was doubtless able to dispense
favours. To the right of the central panel there is the figure of a man
wearing a yellow cap, a form of headgear used until recently by
convalescents in the hospital. Tradition says that we have here the
portrait of Memlinc, and if Memlinc, indeed, portrayed his own features
when he painted St. John the Baptist, tradition speaks the truth. These
heads bear a striking resemblance to the head of the man in the
nightcap.
The central panel represents the Adoration of the Magi, that on the
right the Nativity, and the other panel the Presentation.
The triptych when closed shows two figures, St. John the Baptist--this,
according to Jacques van Oost is the veritable portrait of the
painter--and St. Veronica. On the frame are representations of the Fall
and the Expulsion from Paradise painted in _grisaille_. These are also
undoubtedly Memlinc's handiwork. '_Ici_,' notes Canon Duclos, '_nous
avons tout un poème: celui de la chute, de la rédemption et des
manifestations du Rédempteur_.' The picture is certainly a glorious one,
alike in design and in execution, and the scheme of colour is
magnificent. It is esteemed by some to be Memlinc's masterpiece, and it
is without doubt the best of his Bruges pictures.
The third picture is a portrait of exquisite delicacy and finish,
representing Marie, the second daughter of Willem Moreel, a master
grocer of considerable wealth and standing in the city, and one of
Memlinc's chief patrons. An inscription on the frame, which in Mr.
Weale's opinion is certainly authentic, informs us that this picture was
painted in 1480. The same year another Bruges tradesman, Master Tanner
Peter Bultencke, commissioned Memlinc to paint a triptych for Notre Dame
with scenes from the life of
[Illustration: ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
_From Memlinc's 'Adoration of the Magi' in St. John's Hospital,
Bruges_]
[Illustration: ST. VERONICA
_From Memlinc's 'Adoration of the Magi' in St. John's Hospital,
Bruges_]
Christ. Alas! it has long since left the city and is now in the gallery
at Munich.
The fourth picture is a beautiful diptych painted in 1487 for Martin van
Nieuwenhove, and presented by him to the Hospice of St. Julian, a
half-secular, half-religious house of entertainment for poor pilgrims,
of which he was one of the two patrons appointed by the town. The left
panel shows Our Lady with her Divine Infant, to whom she is offering a
golden apple; the right has a portrait of the donor with his hands
clasped in prayer, and an open breviary before him. This is one of
Memlinc's finest portraits.
The date of the paintings on the shrine of St. Ursula is not certainly
known, but since the relic for which it was constructed was placed in
the new shrine on October 24, 1489, it is probable that they were
completed before that date.
In this dainty casket we have a striking example of the imperfections
and excellencies of the age which produced it. It stands in the centre
of the chapter house and is in the form of a Gothic chapel. Bristling
with heavy and superfluous ornament, with even the flat surface of the
roof painted so as to simulate relief, the pictorial representations
which adorn it are exquisite alike in design, in colour and in
execution. Each side is divided into three round-headed arcades of equal
dimensions; within them Memlinc has painted the pictures which tell the
story of St. Ursula as it was current in his day. These six panels
contain the arrival of the saint and her companions at Cologne, their
arrival at Basle and then at Rome, their homeward journey, in which they
are accompanied by the Pope and his cardinals, their return to Cologne,
and their martyrdom in the camp of the Huns. Of the six scenes the third
is the most beautiful, both in colour and composition. At the gable ends
of the shrine are two other pictures. One of them represents Our Lady
with her Divine Son in her arms, and two of the hospital sisters
kneeling at her feet; the other St. Ursula sheltering beneath her mantle
ten of her companions. The high-pitched roof is adorned on each side
with a large medallion set between two smaller ones; these contain
angels playing on instruments of music, and Ursula receiving the crown
of martyrdom, and the same saint surrounded by her companions in heaven.
All these pictures are executed in a delicate, miniature-like style, and
with great care and finish.
There is one other picture in the hospital museum attributed to
Memlinc--a triptych of which the subject of the central panel is the
Deposition. It is perhaps the rough design of a picture which was never
carried out.
There is also a triptych by Memlinc in the Municipal Gallery. It once
adorned the chantry of the Moreel family in the Church of St. Jacques,
and was the gift of William Moreel, the father of Marie Moreel, whose
portrait we have already seen in St. John's Hospital. This picture was
painted in 1484 in honour of St. Christopher.
In the central panel the gigantic form of the saint is seen wading
through a river with the infant Jesus on his shoulders, and leaning on
the trunk of a young tree which he uses as a staff. He cannot understand
how it is that so small a burthen should weigh so heavily, and,
wondering, turns his head to behold the child, who, with a smile on his
face, lifts one hand to bless him, whilst with the other he steadies
himself by grasping a white linen bandage which is wound round the
saint's head. On his right stands the Benedictine saint, Maurus, in his
monk's habit. One of Moreel's daughters was a Benedictine nun, and it
was doubtless on this account that Memlinc introduced his portrait. On
the other side St. Gilles caressing the doe whose life he saved by
receiving an arrow, which a huntsman had aimed at her, in his own arm.
The figure of the saint is very fine, his face is the most beautiful in
the whole composition. The reason why he is here introduced is not
apparent. The left wing shows the donor with his five sons and his
patron, St. William; the right, his wife, her patroness, St. Barbara,
and their eleven daughters. The figures of St. George and St. John the
Baptist are painted in grisaille on the outer side of the shutters.
These last are probably not Memlinc's work. Mr. Weale thinks that they
may have been added in 1504 by order of John and George Moreel, two of
the sons of the donor.
This picture is one of the most beautiful of Memlinc's later works.
Unfortunately it has suffered much from the ravages of time and
restorers. The lower portion of the face of one of the donor's sons has
been clumsily repainted, and the removal of the _glacis_ has chilled,
and to a certain extent spoiled, the harmony of the scheme of colour.
We have said that Hans Memlinc was the greatest of all the Flemish
masters of the fourteenth century save only the brothers Van Eyck. Mr.
Weale places him on a higher pinnacle. In his estimation Hubert alone
surpassed him. John van Eyck, he says, saw with his eyes, Memlinc beheld
with his soul, and he adds--we are quoting from memory--that Memlinc was
the most poetical and the most musical of all the Bruges painters. If
this be so we can only say that John was more apt to portray what he saw
than Hans what he imagined, that if Memlinc idealised the Flemish type
he at the same time denaturalised it, that if his figures are more
refined they are also less human.
That Memlinc was inspired by the true spirit of poetry no one can deny,
but his imagination sometimes runs away with him and his verses are not
wholly devoid of false quantities. In other words, by reason of the
multitude of scenes which he not unfrequently introduces in single
panels, his pictures sometimes lack the beauty and the dignity of
simplicity; and though he at first composed in symmetrical groups, after
the manner of his predecessors, in his later work he sacrifices too much
to his love of the picturesque.
Hans Memlinc was a man of lofty ideals, and his creations are sometimes
sublime, but not always.
John van Eyck was cast in a different mould. He was content to portray
Nature as he saw her.
Give me beautiful models, we can imagine him saying, and I will paint
you beautiful pictures. Give me ill-favoured models, and your pictures
shall be beautiful still. Yet do I scorn to flatter; I will be true to
life. If I must needs paint Flemings, my portraits shall be the
portraits of Flemings. I will neither make a fat man thin nor a coarse
woman refined. I will portray every blemish and every wrinkle, but I
will place my figures to the best advantage. Their surroundings shall be
magnificent; I will set them in the midst of fair courts and lovely
temples; I will array them in the most becoming garments; I will bathe
them in an aureole of glorious tones. Your eye shall be enchanted by the
symmetry of my grouping and the graceful flow of my drapery; I will
shower jewels with a lavish hand, and I will harmonize everything with
my magic gold. Thus will I compel you to fall down and adore the
splendour of the True.