Gerard David married probably during the year 1496. His wife, as we have seen, was Cornelia Cnoop. They had issue one daughter, who was christened Barbara, and was already married at the time of her father’s death. During forty years he held a foremost place among the painters of Bruges. He was elected a councillor of the Guild of St. Luke in 1488, and again in 1495 and in 1498. He was gathered to his fathers on the 13th of August 1523. They buried him in Notre Dame, beneath the tower, but no stone marks the place of his sepulture. When the church was repaired at the beginning of the last century it disappeared. Many of the old Notre Dame tombstones have been put to ignoble purposes, serve as doorsteps for houses in the neighbourhood, or to pave kitchens, or are stowed away in cellars and back-yards. Perhaps David’s monument is among the number. It was engraved with his arms, which are known, and those of his wife, and the memorial inscription has been preserved. Hence in all probability it would be easy of identification.
Great painter as he undoubtedly was, the fame of Gerard David hardly survived him, even in the city in which he had so long dwelt.
Van Mander, writing as early as 1604, was obliged to avow that he had no information concerning him, save only this, that Peter Pourbus, who died in 1584, considered him to be an excellent artist, and Van Mander had long inhabited Bruges.
By the close of the sixteen hundreds even those of his pictures which still adorned the city of his adoption were attributed to other painters, and for more than two hundred and fifty years his name was buried in oblivion.
Less than half a century ago Mr. Weale brought it back to men’s memory. To his diligent research the world is indebted for all that is now known of the life and labours of this great artist. From his writings in the Beffroi de Bruges, the Gazette des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere, we have culled the notes here set down on the history of Gerard David and the histories of the pictures he painted.
To return for a moment to John van Eyck. There are two other pictures at Bruges which are possibly his. The first is a small panel in the municipal gallery representing the head of Christ. Mr. Weale refuses to acknowledge this as an authentic picture, and says that the only part which is well painted is the embroidered collar of the tunic. Lübke, on the other hand, speaks of it as a genuine Van Eyck, and ascribes the date to 1440, the year of John’s death, but he adds, ‘like the head of Christ in the Berlin Museum, painted two years previously, it exhibits a certain want of expression, seeming to intimate to us the limits of John’s genius.’
M. de Copman, the curator of the Bruges Gallery, has no doubt that it is authentic, and describes it as such on the frame. One thing is certain. If this picture was indeed painted by John van Eyck it is not worthy of him.
The second picture, a finely-painted Mater Dolorosa, is in the Cathedral. From the fact that it is signed with the initials J. E. it was formerly attributed to John, but it is now generally acknowledged to be the work of some other artist.
Among the crowd of artists who in the course of the fourteen hundreds flocked to Bruges, and whose method of painting was inspired either directly or indirectly by the brothers Van Eyck, note Pieter Christus, a native of Baarle near Tilburg, who died at Bruges in 1473, the only pupil of John van Eyck whose name has come down to us; Gerhard van der Meire, Dierick Boudts, Roger van der Weyden, all of them perhaps pupils of Hubert’s; Roger’s pupil, Hans Memlinc, the greatest of all the Bruges painters after the brothers Van Eyck, and, towards the close of the century, Quentin Metsys, Albert Cornelis and Jerome Bosch.
Strangely enough, of these men only one, Albert Cornelis, was a native of Bruges, and though they all of them spent a considerable portion of their lives there, the sum of their united labours is at present represented in the city by hardly a score of pictures. Of the work of Pieter Christus nothing remains; Quentin Metsys, Hugo van der Goes and Roger van der Weyden are likewise unrepresented, though several of the masterpieces of the last two were in the Church of St. Jacques at the close of the seventeen hundreds. When they disappeared, or what has become of them, is unknown. One picture remains in Bruges which was perhaps painted by Gerhard van der Meire, four which are probably the work of Dierick Boudts; Jerome Bosch and Albert Cornelis are each represented by one picture, Gerard David, as we have seen, by three or perhaps four, and Hans Memlinc by six which are certainly his work, and by some half-dozen others which are attributed to him with more or less probability, whilst scattered about the town there are many pictures, some of them very beautiful, which were no doubt painted at Bruges during the period we are now considering, but by artists who have not as yet been identified.