'Now the trouble of our monk painter (pictoris conversi) may be regarded from two points of view. Let us say, in the first place, that it was natural—a peculiar form of mania; for there are various kinds of madness produced by various causes—improper food, strong drink, worry, grief, fear, too great an application to books, and, in fine, a natural predisposition to the same. So far as concerns emotions, I know for a certain fact that Brother Hugo was greatly troubled as to how he should finish his pictures, for he had so many orders that it was currently said it would take him full nine years to execute them; and also he very often studied a certain Flemish book. As to wine, I fear he indulged too freely, doubtless on account of his friends. These things may gradually have produced the malady with which he was afflicted. But, on the other hand, it may have been brought about by the kind providence of God, who desires that no man should perish, but that all should be brought to repentance.
'Now Brother Hugo, on account of his art, had been greatly exalted in our order, and, of a truth, he had become more famous than if he had remained in the world, and, because he was a man like the rest of us, perchance his heart was puffed up on account of the honours bestowed on him, and the divers visits and the homage which he had received; and that God, in order to save his soul, sent him this humiliating infirmity, by which, of a truth, he was greatly abased. He himself, understanding this when he had recovered his senses, humbled himself exceedingly: of his own free will he left our table and meekly took his meals with the other lay brethren.'
How long a time Hugo lived after he had recovered his reason his biographer does not say, nor does he tell us any of the details of his death or of his burial. After again enlarging on his skill in painting, and after some further notes on the origin of madness and a long theological disquisition, he simply says, 'Sepultus est in nostro atrio, sub divo.' He was buried in our cloister, in the open air.
Though Brother Hugo had been in his lifetime so famous a painter, he was soon forgotten, and Van Mander, who wrote at the beginning of the sixteen hundreds, could not even say when or where he died.
Of his grave, which was probably removed or broken when the Church of Rouge-Cloître was rebuilt during the first half of the fifteen hundreds, no relic remains but the text of a doubtful epitaph—
Pictor Hugo van der Goes
humatus hic quiescit
Dolet ars, cum similem
sibi modo nescit.
Of all the works of Hugo van der Goes there is only one whose authenticity has as yet been established—
