The Story of Bruges

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

In this dainty casket we have a striking example of the imperfections and excellencies of the age which produced it. It stands in the centre of the chapter house and is in the form of a Gothic chapel. Bristling with heavy and superfluous ornament, with even the flat surface of the roof painted so as to simulate relief, the pictorial representations which adorn it are exquisite alike in design, in colour and in execution. Each side is divided into three round-headed arcades of equal dimensions; within them Memlinc has painted the pictures which tell the story of St. Ursula as it was current in his day. These six panels contain the arrival of the saint and her companions at Cologne, their arrival at Basle and then at Rome, their homeward journey, in which they are accompanied by the Pope and his cardinals, their return to Cologne, and their martyrdom in the camp of the Huns. Of the six scenes the third is the most beautiful, both in colour and composition. At the gable ends of the shrine are two other pictures. One of them represents Our Lady with her Divine Son in her arms, and two of the hospital sisters kneeling at her feet; the other St. Ursula sheltering beneath her mantle ten of her companions. The high-pitched roof is adorned on each side with a large medallion set between two smaller ones; these contain angels playing on instruments of music, and Ursula receiving the crown of martyrdom, and the same saint surrounded by her companions in heaven. All these pictures are executed in a delicate, miniature-like style, and with great care and finish.

There is one other picture in the hospital museum attributed to Memlinc—a triptych of which the subject of the central panel is the Deposition. It is perhaps the rough design of a picture which was never carried out.

There is also a triptych by Memlinc in the Municipal Gallery. It once adorned the chantry of the Moreel family in the Church of St. Jacques, and was the gift of William Moreel, the father of Marie Moreel, whose portrait we have already seen in St. John’s Hospital. This picture was painted in 1484 in honour of St. Christopher.

In the central panel the gigantic form of the saint is seen wading through a river with the infant Jesus on his shoulders, and leaning on the trunk of a young tree which he uses as a staff. He cannot understand how it is that so small a burthen should weigh so heavily, and, wondering, turns his head to behold the child, who, with a smile on his face, lifts one hand to bless him, whilst with the other he steadies himself by grasping a white linen bandage which is wound round the saint’s head. On his right stands the Benedictine saint, Maurus, in his monk’s habit. One of Moreel’s daughters was a Benedictine nun, and it was doubtless on this account that Memlinc introduced his portrait. On the other side St. Gilles caressing the doe whose life he saved by receiving an arrow, which a huntsman had aimed at her, in his own arm. The figure of the saint is very fine, his face is the most beautiful in the whole composition. The reason why he is here introduced is not apparent. The left wing shows the donor with his five sons and his patron, St. William; the right, his wife, her patroness, St. Barbara, and their eleven daughters. The figures of St. George and St. John the Baptist are painted in grisaille on the outer side of the shutters. These last are probably not Memlinc’s work. Mr. Weale thinks that they may have been added in 1504 by order of John and George Moreel, two of the sons of the donor.

This picture is one of the most beautiful of Memlinc’s later works. Unfortunately it has suffered much from the ravages of time and restorers. The lower portion of the face of one of the donor’s sons has been clumsily repainted, and the removal of the glacis has chilled, and to a certain extent spoiled, the harmony of the scheme of colour.

We have said that Hans Memlinc was the greatest of all the Flemish masters of the fourteenth century save only the brothers Van Eyck. Mr. Weale places him on a higher pinnacle. In his estimation Hubert alone surpassed him. John van Eyck, he says, saw with his eyes, Memlinc beheld with his soul, and he adds—we are quoting from memory—that Memlinc was the most poetical and the most musical of all the Bruges painters. If this be so we can only say that John was more apt to portray what he saw than Hans what he imagined, that if Memlinc idealised the Flemish type he at the same time denaturalised it, that if his figures are more refined they are also less human.

That Memlinc was inspired by the true spirit of poetry no one can deny, but his imagination sometimes runs away with him and his verses are not wholly devoid of false quantities. In other words, by reason of the multitude of scenes which he not unfrequently introduces in single panels, his pictures sometimes lack the beauty and the dignity of simplicity; and though he at first composed in symmetrical groups, after the manner of his predecessors, in his later work he sacrifices too much to his love of the picturesque.

Hans Memlinc was a man of lofty ideals, and his creations are sometimes sublime, but not always.

John van Eyck was cast in a different mould. He was content to portray Nature as he saw her.

Give me beautiful models, we can imagine him saying, and I will paint you beautiful pictures. Give me ill-favoured models, and your pictures shall be beautiful still. Yet do I scorn to flatter; I will be true to life. If I must needs paint Flemings, my portraits shall be the portraits of Flemings. I will neither make a fat man thin nor a coarse woman refined. I will portray every blemish and every wrinkle, but I will place my figures to the best advantage. Their surroundings shall be magnificent; I will set them in the midst of fair courts and lovely temples; I will array them in the most becoming garments; I will bathe them in an aureole of glorious tones. Your eye shall be enchanted by the symmetry of my grouping and the graceful flow of my drapery; I will shower jewels with a lavish hand, and I will harmonize everything with my magic gold. Thus will I compel you to fall down and adore the splendour of the True.