The prosperity of Bruges was declining very fast while David was painting the last of his religious pictures and the merchants were steadily leaving the city for Antwerp, which was now rising into importance. The artists, whose prosperity depended upon the wealth of the burghers were also drifting to the new commercial metropolis on the Scheldt and the famous school of Bruges was near its end by the middle of the sixteenth century. The last artists who worked at Bruges were of minor interest. Adriaen Ysenbrant, Albert Cornelis and Jean Prévost belong to this period, and their most important works are still preserved in the city where they were executed. “The Virgin of the Seven Sorrows,” in the church of Notre Dame, is attributed to the first, a triptych in the church of St. Jacques to the second, while the museum has several pictures by Prévost, including an interesting “Last Judgment,” and another striking representation of the same subject by Pieter Pourbus, of which there is a copy in the Palais du Franc. The masterpieces by Jean Van Eyck in this museum have already been mentioned, and the small but exceedingly rich collection also includes a fine production entitled “The Death of the Virgin,” which is now generally attributed to Hugo Van der Goes—one of the comparatively few works by that master that have come down to us. There are also several other works by P. Pourbus, and a powerful allegorical picture by Jean Prévost representing Avarice and Death. There is undoubtedly no collection of paintings in the world of which the average value is so great as that of the little group in the hospital of St. Jean, and the one in the Bruges museum—while it has quite a few of minor interest and value—would also bring a very high average if subjected to the bidding of the world’s millionaire art lovers.
An Illumination by Gheerhardt David of Bruges, 1498; St. Barbara
Bruges possesses another museum of great interest which dates from the days of the last Dukes of Burgundy. This is the Gruuthuise mansion, of which the oldest wing was built in 1420, and much of the finer portion about 1470 by Louis, or Lodewyk, Van der Gruuthuise, who here entertained Charles the Bold and his pretty daughter—becoming one of the latter’s chief advisers on the death of her father and one of the two Flemish noblemen who witnessed her marriage. The stately old palace is therefore rich with historic associations. As we entered its broad courtyard, however, we were most unfavourably impressed by its rough-paved surface with the grass growing thick between the stones. Surely this must have looked very different in the days when knights and fair ladies swarmed here like bees, and the city, which has so carefully restored everything else, would do well to at least park this otherwise very pretty little enclosure. The interior is both pleasing and disappointing. The edifice itself is superb as a survival of a nobleman’s palace of the fifteenth century, and as an example of Flemish interior architecture. The grand stone staircase, the massive fireplaces, also in white stone, and one or two of the rooms in their entirety give a fine impression of the splendour of the establishment maintained by the great Lord of Gruuthuise in the days when he counted King Edward IV of England and Richard Crookback among his guests, and was engaged in collecting the marvellous library now in Paris. Everywhere, over the fireplaces, and in various stone carvings, one reads the proud motto of the powerful builders of this palace, Plus est en nous.
When the palace was in course of restoration some years ago the workmen uncovered a secret chamber behind the great stone fireplace in the kitchen, concealed within the masonry of the huge chimney, and within it the skeleton of a man. A secret staircase was also discovered here which led to two underground passages branching off in opposite directions. Strangely enough neither of them has ever been explored, but one is supposed to lead to the vaults beneath the adjoining church of Notre Dame, and the other to some point outside the city walls. Some have conjectured that it leads to the Château of Maele, some four miles distant, but probably it went to the manor of the Lords of Gruuthuise at Oostcamp. Within this mansion a modern Sir Walter Scott could easily conjure forth a new series of Waverley novels treating of the stirring days when Bruges was virtually the capital of Flanders and Flanders was the brightest jewel in the Burgundian crown.
All this is most fascinating, and, as far as it goes, helps us to reconstruct in fancy the great days of the past. The disappointing feature about the palace is the museum itself, which, although interesting and valuable, utterly spoils many of the fine rooms by converting them into mere exhibition places. In a measure the authorities have followed the admirable plan of the owners of the Hotel Merghelynck at Ypres, and the immense kitchen, for example, contains only kitchen utensils of the Middle Ages—a most complete and interesting collection. The same is also true of the large dining-room on the same floor, but as one proceeds farther the atmosphere of antiquity becomes lost and it is all nothing but museum. The palace contains a splendid collection of old lace, the gift of the Baroness Liedts, but it seemed to us that it would have been much better to have housed this and the various collections of antiquities in some less famous and historic structure and endeavoured to restore all of these rooms to approximately their condition when Charles the Bold stalked through them.
The period of Philip the Good and his terrible son was the one in which mediæval Bruges took on substantially its present form. In addition to the Gruuthuise Palace scores of important edifices, public and private, were built or rebuilt at this time, while hundreds of smaller houses were constructed—of which many remain in existence to-day. The greatest and most famous edifice dating in large part from this epoch is the cathedral of St. Sauveur whose grim, castle-like tower dominates the entire city. The lowest part of the tower dates from 1116-1127—as already related in the chapter on Bruges under Charles the Good—when the church was rebuilt after a fire that destroyed the primitive structure erected on the site a century or more earlier. Between 1250 and 1346, or for almost a century, the men of Bruges were slowly piling up a noble church in the early Gothic style, but another fire in 1358 necessitated rebuilding the nave and transept—a task which occupied the next ten or fifteen years. In 1480 work was begun upon the five chapels of the choir and nine years later the Pope, Innocent VIII, granted a special Bull of Indulgence in favour of benefactors of this work, which appears to have been delayed for lack of funds. Work of various kinds was continued until the middle of the sixteenth century, but, in the main, the great church was nearly as we see it now by the year 1511. The upper part of the tower is comparatively modern, dating from 1846, and the spire from 1871. While it has been criticised by some as ungainly and cumbrous, the effect of this tower, from whatever angle it may be viewed, is very pleasing. The high lights and shadows on a sunny morning, or late in the afternoon, make it far more beautiful than its sister of Notre Dame, while against the grey cloud masses of a typical Flemish sky its huge tawny mass stands out sharp and clear, the embodiment of majesty and strength.
The interior of the church is very large, measuring three hundred and thirty-one feet by one hundred and twenty-five feet, with an extreme width of one hundred and seventy-four feet across the transepts. Its polychrome decorations and stained glass windows are modern. In another place the wealth of art treasures in this church would merit a chapter, but in Bruges they are so overshadowed by the many masterpieces to be seen elsewhere that we felt somewhat satiated after such a feast and spent very little time looking at the pictures here. The most famous one is a “Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus,” by Dierick Bouts, which is interesting because so few examples of this primitive master are in existence. It is a triptych, the central panel showing the saint about to be torn to pieces by wild horses, on the left an incident in the life of the saint, and on the right the donors. The last picture has been attributed by many critics to Hugo Van der Goes, and for many years the entire picture was thought to be the work of Memling. Bouts delighted in unpleasant subjects, which he depicted with great realism.
“THE LAST SUPPER.”—THIERRY BOUTS.