Hans Memling
Hans Memling (Memlinc) (c. 1430-1494), Flemish painter, whose art gave lustre to Bruges
in the period of its political and commercial decline. Though much has been
written respecting the rise and fall of the school which made this city famous,
it remains a moot question whether that school ever truly existed. Like Rome or
Naples, Bruges absorbed the talents which were formed and developed in humbler
centres. Jan Van Eyck first gained repute at Ghent and the Hague before he
acquired a domicile elsewhere, and Memling, we have reason to think, was a
skilled artist before he settled at Bruges. The annals of the city are silent
as to the birth and education of a painter whose name was inaccurately spelt by
different authors, and whose identity was lost under the various appellations
of Hans and Hausse, or Hemling, Memling, and Memlinc. But W. H. J. Weale
mentions a contemporary document discovered in 1889, according to which Memlinc
"drew his origin from the ecclesiastical principality of Mainz," and died at
Bruges on the nth of August 1494. He probably served his apprenticeship at
Mainz or Cologne, anc later worked under Rogier van der Weyden. He did not
come to Bruges until about 1467, and certainly not as a wounded fugitive from
the field of Nancy. The story is fiction, as is also the report that he was
sheltered and cured by the Hospitallers at Bruges, and, to show his gratitude,
refused payment for a picture he had painted. Memlinc did indeed paint for the
Hospitallers, but he painted not one but many pictures, and he did so in 1479
and 1480, being probably known to his patrons of St John by many masterpieces
even before the battle of Nancy. Memling is only connected with military
operations in a mediate and distant sense. His name appears on a list of
subscribers to the loan which was raised by Maximilian of Austria to jush
hostilities against France in the year 1480. In 1477, when le is falsely said
to have fallen, and when Charles the Bold was silled, he was under contract to
furnish an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges; and
this altarpiece, now reserved, under the name of the Seven Griefs of Mary,
in the Gallery of Turin, is one of the fine creations of his riper age, and not
inferior in any way to those of 1479 in the hospital of St John, which for
their part are hardly less interesting as illustrative of the master's power
than the Last Judgment in the cathedral of Danzig. Critical opinion has
been unanimous in assigning the altarpiece of Danzig to Memling; and by this it
affirms that Memlinc was a resident and a skilled artist at Bruges in 1473; for
there is no doubt that the Last Judgment was painted and sold to a merchant
at Bruges, who shipped it there on board of a vessel bound to the Mediterranean,
which was captured by a Danzig privateer in that very year. But, in order that
Memling's repute should be so fair as to make his pictures purchasable, as this
had been, by an agent of the Medici at Bruges, it is incumbent on us to
acknowledge that he had furnished sufficient proofs before that time of the
skill which excited the wonder of such highly cultivated patrons.
It is characteristic that the oldest allusions to pictures connected with
Memling's name are those which point to relations with the Burgundian court.
The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych
of the God of Pity by Roger van der Weyden, of which the wings containing
angels were by Master Hans. But this entry is less important as affording
testimony in favour of the preservation of Memling's work than as showing his
connexion with an older Flemish craftsman. For ages Roger van der Weyden was
acknowledged as an artist of the school of Bruges, until records of undisputed
authenticity demonstrated that he was bred at Tournai and settled at Brussels.
Nothing seems more natural than the conjunction of his name with that of
Memling as the author of an altarpiece, since, though Memling's youth remains
obscure, it is clear from the style of his manhood that he was taught in the
painting-room of Van der Weyden. Nor is it beyond the limits of probability
that it was Van der Weyden who received commissions at a distance from
Brussels, and first took his pupil to Bruges, where he afterwards dwelt. The
clearest evidence of the connexion of the two masters is that afforded by
pictures, particularly an altarpiece, which has alternately been assigned to
each of them, and which may possibly be due to, their joint labours. In this
altarpiece, which is a triptych ordered for a patron of the house of Sforza, we
find the style of Van der Weyden in the central panel of the Crucifixion, and
that of Memling in the episodes on the wings. Yet the whole piece was assigned
to the former in the Zambeccari collection at Bologna, whilst it was attributed
to the latter at the Middleton sale in London in 1872. At first, we may think,
a closer resemblance might be traced between the two artists than that
disclosed in later works of Memling, but the delicate organization of the
younger painter, perhaps also a milder appreciation of the duties of a
Christian artist, may have led Memling to realise a sweet and perfect ideal,
without losing, on that account, the feeling of his master. He certainly
exchanged the asceticism of Van der Weyden for a sentiment of less energetic
concentration. He softened his teacher's asperities and bitter hardness of
expression.
In the oldest form in which Memling's style is displayed, or rather in that
example which represents the Baptist in the gallery of Munich, we are supposed
to contemplate an effort of the year 1470. The finish of this piece is
scarcely surpassed, though the subject is more important, by that of the Last Judgment of Danzig
But the latter is more interesting than the former, because it tells how
Memling, long after Roger's death and his own settlement at Bruges, preserved
the traditions of sacred art which had been applied in the first part of the
century by Rogier van der Weyden to the Last Judgment of Beaune. All that
Memling did was to purge his master’s manner of excessive stringency, and add
to his other qualities a velvet softness of pigment, a delicate transparence of
colours, and yielding grace of slender forms. That such a beautiful work as the
Last Judgment of Danzig should have been bought for the Italian market is
not surprising when we recollect that picture-fanciers in that country were
familiar with the beauties of Memling’s compositions, as shown in the
preference given to them by such purchasers as Cardinal Grimari and Cardinal
Bembo at Venice, and the heads of the house of Medici at Florence. But
Memling’s reputation was not confined to Italy or Flanders. The Madonna and Saints which passed out of the Duchatel collection into the gallery of the
Louvre, the Virgin and Child painted for Sir John Donne and now at Chatsworth,
and other noble specimens in English and Continental private houses, show that
his work was as widely known and appreciated as it could be in the state of
civilization of the 16th century. It was perhaps not their sole attraction that
they gave the most tender and delicate possible impersonations of the Mother of Christ that could suit the taste of that age in any European country. But
the portraits of the donors, with which they were mostly combined, were more
characteristic, and probably more remarkable as likenesses, than any that
Memling s contemporaries could produce. Nor is it unreasonable to think that
his success as a portrait painter, which is manifested in isolated busts as
well as in altarpieces, was of a kind to react with effect on the Venetian
school, which undoubtedly was affected by the partiality of Antonello da
Messina for trans-Alpine types studied in Flanders in Memling's time. The
portraits of Sir John Donne and his wife and children in the Chatsworth
altarpiece are not less remarkable as models of drawing and finish than as
refined presentations of persons of distinction; nor is any difference in this
respect to be found in the splendid groups of father, mother, and children
which fill the noble altarpiece of the Louvre. As single portraits, the busts
of Burgomaster Moreel and his wife in the museum of Brussels, and their
daughter the Sibyl Zambetha (according to the added description) in the
hospital at Bruges, are the finest and most interesting of specimens. The
Seven Griefs of Mary in the gallery of Turin, to which we may add the Seven Joys of Mary in the Pinakothek of Munich, are illustrations of the habit which clung to the art of Flanders of representing a cycle of subjects on the different planes of a single picture, where a wide expanse of ground is covered with incidents from the Passion in the form common to the action of sacred plays.
The masterpiece of Memling’s later years, a shrine containing relics of St
Ursula in the museum of the hospital of Bruges, is fairly supposed to have been
ordered and finished in 1480. The delicacy of finish in its miniature figures,
the variety of its landscapes and costume, the marvellous patience with which
its details are given, are all matters of enjoythent to the spectator. There is
later work of the master in the St Christopher and Saints of 1484 in the
academy, or the Newenhoven Madonna in the hospital of Bruges, or a large
Crucifixion, with scenes from the Passion, of 1491 in the cathedral of Lübeck.
But as we near the close of Memling's career we observe that his practice has
become larger than he can compass alone; and, as usual in such cases, the
labour of disciples is substituted for his own. The registers of the painters'
corporation at Bruges give the names of two apprentices who served their time
with Memling and paid dues on admission to the gild in 1480 and 1486. These
subordinates remained obscure.
The trustees of his will appeared before the court of wards at Bruges on the
10th of December 1495, and we gather from records of that date and place that
Memling left behind several children and a considerable property.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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