Hugo van der Goes

Hugo van der Goes was probably a native of Ghent, and if, as Van Mander says, he was a pupil of John van Eyck, who died in 1441, he must have been born somewhere about the year 1420. Be this as it may, his work bears witness that he was more deeply impressed by the great Bruges master than any other of the Flemish primitives. He was certainly at Ghent in 1465, and henceforth this town was his home until 1476, when, following the example of his brother, the only one of his kinsmen of whom we have any knowledge, he became a monk of Rouge-Cloître, near Brussels.

Why this sudden flight from the world? Grief, suggests Alphonse Wauters,[40] at the loss of a wife. It is a mere conjecture; we do not even know for certain that Hugo was ever married. Van Mander tells how, when he was still a vry gheselle—that is, a bachelor—hence, notes Wauters, it follows that he presently ceased to be such—he painted on a wall, over a chimney-piece in her father's house at Ghent, the portrait of the woman he loved, in the guise of Abigail coming forth to meet David.

'N'y a-t-il pas là un doux souvenir d'un triomphe remporté par l'amour et couronné par l'hymen? L'allégorie me semble évident.' Thus Wauters; and he continues: 'Après avoir aimé avec ardeur et avoir obtenu la main de sa maîtresse, il aura été frappé au cœur par la mort de sa compagne et se sera réfugié dans la solitude pour y vivre de souvenirs et de regrets.' The story as it stands is a pretty one, but one cannot help remembering that David's Abigail was a rich and perhaps an elderly widow, and that immediately after his marriage with her he took a second wife. Moreover, the assumption that Hugo married the lady whose portrait he painted is a wholly gratuitous one; Van Mander does not even as much as hint that such was the case.

But if we have no certain information as to the motives which inspired the great Ghent painter to don the cowl, we have an authentic and detailed account of his life in the cloister, and of the terrible misfortune which there embittered his last days. It was written by a monk of Rouge-Cloître who knew Hugo well, and the manuscript was discovered some fifty years ago by Alphonse Wauters himself. It is a very curious document; and note, the writer makes no mention of Hugo ever having been a married man. And if this had been so, from the nature of his narrative he would have been almost certain to have said something about it.

'In the year of Our Lord 1482 died Brother Hugo, a lay brother professed in this monastery. He was so famous a painter that on this side the mountains, in those days, his like was not to be found. He, and I who write these things, were novices together. At the time of his clothing and during his novitiate, Father Thomas, our prior, allowed him many mundane consolations of a nature to incline him rather to the pomps of this world than to the way of humility and penance; and this was by no means pleasing to some, who said that novices should not be exalted, but, on the contrary, put down. And because he was so excellent a painter, great folk were wont to visit him, and even the most illustrious Archduke Maximilian himself; for they ardently desired to behold his pictures, and Father Thomas allowed him to receive them in the Guest Chamber, and to feast with them there. Some five or six years after his profession it so happened that Brother Hugo made a journey to Cologne along with his brother, Brother Nicholas, an oblate here, and Brother Peter, canon-regular of Trone, then residing in the Jéricho [41] at Brussels, and several others. One night, on the way home, as I learned at the time from Brother Nicholas, our Brother Hugo was seized by a strange mental derangement, which caused him to cry out continually that he was damned and condemned to eternal perdition; and he would fain have laid violent hands on himself, and would certainly have done so had he not been, but with difficulty, restrained by the aid of some who were standing by. And thus the last stage of that journey was not a cheerful one. 'Albeit, having obtained assistance, they presently reached Brussels, and forthwith summoned Father Thomas, who, when he had seen Brother Hugo and had heard all that had taken place, suspected that his malady was similar to that which vexed King Saul, and, calling to mind how that monarch had been soothed by David's harping, he caused not a little music to be played in the presence of our brother, and strove also to divert him by various spectacular performances; but in vain: he kept on crying out that he was a son of perdition, and in this sorry plight they brought him to Rouge Cloître. The kindness and attention with which the choir brethren watched over him by night and by day, anticipating all his wants and always striving to console him, these things God will never forget. But false reports were spread abroad, and by great folk too, that such was not the case.

'As to the nature of the malady with which Brother Hugo was afflicted, opinion was divided. Some said he was mad, others that he was possessed (he had symptoms of each of these troubles), but throughout his illness he never attempted to injure anyone but himself; and this is not the wont of lunatics nor of men possessed by devils, and therefore what it was, I believe, God only knows.

'Now the trouble of our monk painter (pictoris conversi) may be regarded from two points of view. Let us say, in the first place, that it was natural—a peculiar form of mania; for there are various kinds of madness produced by various causes—improper food, strong drink, worry, grief, fear, too great an application to books, and, in fine, a natural predisposition to the same. So far as concerns emotions, I know for a certain fact that Brother Hugo was greatly troubled as to how he should finish his pictures, for he had so many orders that it was currently said it would take him full nine years to execute them; and also he very often studied a certain Flemish book. As to wine, I fear he indulged too freely, doubtless on account of his friends. These things may gradually have produced the malady with which he was afflicted. But, on the other hand, it may have been brought about by the kind providence of God, who desires that no man should perish, but that all should be brought to repentance.

'Now Brother Hugo, on account of his art, had been greatly exalted in our order, and, of a truth, he had become more famous than if he had remained in the world, and, because he was a man like the rest of us, perchance his heart was puffed up on account of the honours bestowed on him, and the divers visits and the homage which he had received; and that God, in order to save his soul, sent him this humiliating infirmity, by which, of a truth, he was greatly abased. He himself, understanding this when he had recovered his senses, humbled himself exceedingly: of his own free will he left our table and meekly took his meals with the other lay brethren.'

How long a time Hugo lived after he had recovered his reason his biographer does not say, nor does he tell us any of the details of his death or of his burial. After again enlarging on his skill in painting, and after some further notes on the origin of madness and a long theological disquisition, he simply says, 'Sepultus est in nostro atrio, sub divo.' He was buried in our cloister, in the open air.

Though Brother Hugo had been in his lifetime so famous a painter, he was soon forgotten, and Van Mander, who wrote at the beginning of the sixteen hundreds, could not even say when or where he died.

Of his grave, which was probably removed or broken when the Church of Rouge-Cloître was rebuilt during the first half of the fifteen hundreds, no relic remains but the text of a doubtful epitaph—

Pictor Hugo van der Goes
humatus hic quiescit
Dolet ars, cum similem
sibi modo nescit.

Of all the works of Hugo van der Goes there is only one whose authenticity has as yet been established—

THE WINGS OF THE SAINT ANNE TRIPTYCH BY QUENTIN METSYS, IN THE BRUSSELS GALLERY.
Shut.

[ Click to view larger image.]

a beautiful triptych which he painted before 1476 for Thomas Portinari, the agent of the Medici family in Bruges, and which Thomas afterwards presented to the Hospital of Santa-Maria-Nuova, at Florence, where it still remains. Amongst the pictures attributed to him with more or less probability, note in the Municipal Gallery of Bruges La Mort de la Sainte Vierge, which, in the opinion of Mr. Weale, is undoubtedly genuine; and in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Brussels the Sainte Famille (No. 36), which may or may not be his.