CHAPTER XXIII
The Architects and Architecture of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century
FROM the commencement of the fourteen hundreds until the dawn of the struggle with Maximilian, which ended in the final catastrophe of 1490, the city of Bruges was growing almost daily more picturesque and more beautiful. Most of her public and private buildings date from this period, and those of them which were erected earlier were now enlarged and adorned with sculpture and painting. We have seen poor Louis of Maele laying the foundation stone of the Hôtel de Ville at the close of the previous century, but it was certainly not completed until the opening years of the fourteen hundreds. The documents are still in existence which prove a fact not generally known that at this time no less an artist than John van Eyck was gilding and colouring the façade. The stately octagonal lantern, the crowning glory of the Belfry, was erected some sixty years later, in 1482, when the signing of the Treaty of Arras had re-kindled hope; the same year the chevet of the Cathedral was commenced and the Church of St. Jacques completed, whilst the southern aisle of Notre Dame and the beautiful Paradise porch at the foot of the tower date from the middle of the century. About this time too the present aisles and transepts and choir were added to the Church of St. Gilles, the Jerusalem Church was finished, the Church of
the Beguins and the Hospital Church of St. John rebuilt, and a host of convent chapels and chantries and shrines were springing up all over the city.
In 1477 the beautiful building in the Place des Biscayens, which is now the Municipal Library, was erected for a Custom House; the architectural gem which adjoins it, the guild-hall of the porters, dates from seven years earlier, and all over the town the great city companies—there were no less than forty-seven of them—were building for themselves chapels and courts, a few of which exist to the present day, notably the Shoemakers’ Hall in the rue des Pierres and in the same street the hall of the great guild of masons; the beautiful shrine which the painters erected in the rue d’Argent (it is now the Chapel of the Josephite nuns) and dedicated to their patron St. Luke; and the Smiths’ Chapel in the rue des Maréchaux, in front of which every year, on the feast of St. Eligius, the horses of Bruges were blessed. Strangely enough the building in question now serves as a stable. The foreign merchants, too, were vying with one another in the erection of sumptuous palaces, where the traders of each nationality dwelt together in almost monastic seclusion.