The influence of Rogier van der Weyden determined the entire course
taken by the Flemish school until its decline with the introduction
of those Italian Renaissance tendencies which only became a vital
factor and led to the birth of a new Flemish art through the genius of
Rubens. Again, Rogier’s chief pupil, Dierick Bouts (_c._ 1410-1475),
is unrepresented at the Louvre. In the art of Hans Memlinc (_c._
1430?-1494), who was the founder of the great school of Bruges, may be
found clear traces of the influence of Rogier and of Bouts, although
we have no certain knowledge as to that master’s actual pupilage. He
may have been born at Mömlingen, near Aschaffenburg on the Main, and
apparently had already risen to fame as a painter before 1467, the
date of his great altarpiece at Dantzig. By that time he was settled
at Bruges. Mr. W. H. J. Weale’s researches have shown that the legend,
according to which Memlinc first came to Bruges as a wounded soldier
and was nursed back to health at the Hospital of St. John, is not
founded on fact. It is probable that Memlinc served his apprenticeship
under some Cologne painter, but all theories regarding his early life
must remain largely conjectural.
What is of real importance is that he introduced into the detailed
realism of his precursors a note of pious fervour and tender idealism,
which is the nearest approach in Northern art to the angelic sweetness
of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole. Not without good reason has he been called
“the Fra Angelico of the North.” Fromentin was certainly right in
saying that “Van Eyck saw with his eyes, Memlinc begins to see with
his soul.” It is this warmth of feeling that makes Memlinc the most
lovable painter of the Flemish school, for he could neither rival the
dramatic power and realistic truth of the Van Eycks, nor the firm
draughtsmanship of Van der Weyden, nor Bouts’s skill in landscape
painting. Nor did he take full advantage of the possibilities of the
oil technique, his method remaining that of the tempera painters,
although he availed himself of the new medium.
The earliest work by Memlinc in the great French national collection
is the charming little diptych, painted about 1475, and representing
on one leaf _The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine_ (No. 2027), and
on the other _The Donor, John du Celier, presented by St. John_ (No.
2027A). In the first the Virgin is seen seated in a flowering meadow in
front of a rose-covered trellis and supporting the Infant Christ, who
bends forward to place the ring on the finger of St. Catherine on the
left. Behind the saintly bride are St. Agnes and St. Cecilia; whilst
the group on the right comprises St. Barbara, with St. Margaret and
St. Lucy, all accompanied by their characteristic attributes. On the
other leaf the Donor is seen kneeling, with hands joined in prayer,
in front of St. John the Baptist, who is pointing to Our Lord. The
landscape background shows, on the left, the Apocalyptic vision of St.
John the Evangelist, and on the right, St. George fighting the Dragon.
This leaf, after passing through the collection of Mr. Herz and Mr.
Heath, was presented to the Louvre in 1895 by Mme. André, and was thus
reunited with its companion, which had been bequeathed to the Gallery
fourteen years earlier by M. E. Gatteaux. It is on the whole in an
excellent state of preservation, although some of the accessories in
the background are so thinly painted that they have almost disappeared.