The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

Gerard was a native of Oudewater in Holland, who some four years previously had taken up his abode in Bruges. On the 14th of January 1484 he was enrolled among the members of the Guild of St. Luke. He was probably an ardent patriot, at all events was in touch with the popular leaders, for we know from documentary evidence that they employed him to paint the iron gratings which were placed before the windows of Jean de Gros’s mansion when Maximilian was imprisoned there, and, as we have seen, it was he whom they commissioned to paint the panels for the Town Hall.

The theme selected for his pictures is a horrible one—the conviction and the flaying alive of Sisamnes, an Egyptian judge who had been accused of receiving bribes. The story is first told by Herodotus, but David had probably culled it from the pages of Valerius Maximus, and there can be no doubt that the subject was suggested to him by the tragedy which had just taken place beneath the shadow of the Belfry. He has represented himself in the first panel calmly surveying the arrest of Sisamnes, and it may well be that he actually witnessed the execution of Lanchals, perhaps expressly with a view to these paintings. In each case the scene is laid at Bruges, the figures, the faces, the attitudes, the costumes, are all essentially Flemish, and it is in the highest degree probable that he introduced other portraits besides his own.

Mark the expression of Sisamnes in the flaying scene. See how his features twitch, how he clenches his hands and his teeth, and draws back his lips in agony. Did Peter Lanchals look like that when he was being racked in the infernal machine which he himself had invented?

There are only seven other pictures which can at present be certainly attributed to Gerard David. They are all of a sacred character, and four of them were painted for churches in Bruges. Of these the most beautiful is the triptych presented to the Carmelite nuns in 1509, and which adorned the high altar of their chapel until the community was suppressed by Joseph II. in 1783. Two years later, when their property was sold at Brussels, David’s picture was purchased by a dealer named Berthels for fifty-one florins. He sold it to a French collector, Monsieur Miliotti, in whose possession it remained until his estate was confiscated by the Revolutionary government some years later. Presently it was hung in the Municipal Gallery at Rouen, where it still remains. This is the most decorative, and perhaps the most charming of David’s pictures. The subject is Our Lady surrounded by angels and virgin saints. The grouping is sufficiently symmetrical and altogether excellent, the scheme of colour is rich and harmonious, and though the sacred figures almost entirely cover the panel, owing to the lack of detail in the background, a mass of deep, sombre green, almost black, they appear in no way crowded. The faces are for the most part somewhat heavy, and decidedly Flemish, but there is an air of calm repose about them which is very restful, and the fair-haired, white-robed angels which stand on each side of Our Lady’s throne are of another type. David must have drawn them from peasant models. This picture is all the more interesting from the fact that the artist has introduced his own portrait, and also that of his wife Cornelia,[47] the daughter of a Bruges goldsmith, one Jacob Cnoop, a native of Middelburg in Holland. Unless David flattered his wife, she must have been a woman of singularly prepossessing appearance, with bright eyes and an intelligent face. She stands with her hands clasped in prayer, the last figure but one on the left-hand side of Our Lady, beyond her stands St. Lucy, a child saint who suffered martyrdom at fourteen. She is here represented as a woman of forty, gorgeously arrayed in two shades of crimson, fat and not fair. David himself balances his wife on the opposite side of the picture. A sufficiently artistic face this, but upon the whole not a pleasing one. His eyes are too prominent, his lips are too thick, and he has a weak, receding chin.

Gerard David painted two pictures for the Church of St. Donatian:—an altar-piece representing the mystic marriage of St. Catherine, and two panels which formed the shutters of a triptych. These, together with the wings of several other triptychs, were sold by the Cathedral Chapter in 1787 at the request of the sacristan, a lazy, clumsy fellow who, objecting to the trouble of opening and closing them, averred that he invariably broke the altar candles in doing so. One of David’s shutters has disappeared, the other, after passing through several hands, was purchased in 1859, for five hundred and twenty-five guineas, by Mr. Benoni White, who, at his death in 1878, bequeathed it to the National Gallery.

Here we have a portrait of the donor Bernardin Salviati, Canon of St. Donatian’s and the son of a wealthy Florentine merchant who had married a Flemish lady and settled at Bruges. The kneeling canon is attired in a surplice of fine linen and is accompanied by three saints—St. Donatian resplendent in black brocade glistering with jewels and gold, St. Martin in a crimson velvet cope, with richly-embroidered orphreys, and his patron, the Franciscan saint, Bernardin, in the rough grey frock of the poor man of Assisi. The heads are very fine, full of expression and more Italian than Flemish in type, but the figures are not gracefully posed; there is too much landscape, and the picture is hardly decorative enough for an altar-piece.

The St. Donatian’s ‘Marriage of St. Catherine’ is also at present in the National Gallery. It seems to have been taken to Paris when the old cathedral was destroyed. It eventually became the property of M. de Beurnoville; when his collection was sold in 1881, the late Mrs Lyne Stephens purchased it for 54,100 frs. (£2164), and it was bequeathed by her to the nation.

This panel is far superior to the Salviati picture. The colouring is very rich and mellow, the composition is perfect, the faces are admirably painted and, though somewhat heavy and Flemish in character, are on the whole pleasing; the background, with its vine-clad walls and lovely garden of roses, and lilies, and trees beyond, and picturesque buildings, is altogether beautiful and in no way obtrusive. The whole picture is admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was designed.

The only one of David’s sacred pictures which remains in Bruges is the triptych known as ‘The Baptism of Christ.’

The history of this picture is a strange one. It was painted early in the fifteen hundreds for John des Trompes, who at that time was city treasurer, probably for his private oratory; later on, in 1520, it was presented by his heirs to the Guild of Advocates, and placed over the altar of their chantry in the crypt of St. Basil in the Bourg. A coat of black distemper inscribed with the Ten Commandments saved it from the fury of the Calvinists in 1579. Carried off by the French in 1794, it remained in Paris until 1815, when it was at last sent back to Bruges and placed in the City Gallery, where it still remains. It hangs alongside of David’s other pictures, is in striking contrast to them, and as a work of art their inferior. The grouping is not happy. Two of the three principal figures in the central panel are decidedly weak, and those in the distance are for the most part stumpy and graceless. On the other hand, the figure of the kneeling angel who holds our Lord’s garments is singularly beautiful. His sweet, placid face might have been drawn by Memlinc and his glorious vesture by John van Eyck. The landscape setting is the most interesting portion of this panel, and in all probability it is not David’s work. Mr. Weale thinks that Joachim Patenier may have painted it, and Jules Helbig is of the same opinion. ‘Nothing,’ says Mr. Weale, ‘can well be finer than this portion of the picture; the trees, vigorously painted and finished with wonderful minuteness, have evidently been studied individually from nature.... Between their trunks we get glimpses of real distant landscape. The herbage, lilies, mallows, violets, and other flowers in the immediate front have never been more admirably reproduced by the art of the painter.... The transparency of the water, the reflection of surrounding objects and the shadows on its surface are faithfully rendered. The bedding of the rocks too is imitated with perfect truth. The colouring of all this portion is so remarkably bright and lovely that the faults of the composition are not at first noticed.’