The reconstruction and the rescuing from oblivion of the artistic
personality of Gerard David, begun by Mr. Weale and completed by
Freiherr von Bodenhausen, is one of the triumphs of the modern
scientific method of criticism. The Louvre is fortunate in possessing
two important examples from the brush of this master, who, born
at Ouwater in Holland about 1460, was in his early studies influenced
by Albert van Ouwater, but, after settling at Bruges in 1483, came
under the spell of Van Eyck, Bouts, and above all of Memlinc, whom he
succeeded as leader of the Bruges school. On his death in 1523, the
supremacy of that school came to an end, and passed on to the city of
Antwerp, which by that time had also superseded Bruges as a commercial
centre. Gerard David was not Memlinc’s equal as regards intimate charm,
but in his work is to be found a summing-up of all the achievement of
the Flemish Quattrocento—“the last concentrated expression of the aims
of all the great masters of that fertile age.”
[Illustration:
PLATE XVII.—HANS MEMLINC
(1430?-1494)