LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Plate | Page | |
| [I]. | Our Lady and Child, 1487 | Frontispiece |
| (Saint John’s Hospital, Bruges) | ||
| [II]. | Adoration of the Magi, 1479 | 14 |
| (Saint John’s Hospital, Bruges) | ||
| [III]. | Saints Christopher, Maurus, and Giles, 1484 | 24 |
| (Town Museum, Bruges) | ||
| [IV]. | Portrait of Nicholas di Forzore Spinelli, holding a medal | 34 |
| (Antwerp Museum) | ||
| [V]. | Portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhove, 1487 (companion to I.) | 40 |
| (Saint John’s Hospital, Bruges) | ||
| [VI]. | One Panel of the Shrine of Saint Ursula, 1489 | 50 |
| (Saint John’s Hospital, Bruges) | ||
| [VII]. | Portrait of an Old Lady | 60 |
| (Louvre, Paris) | ||
| [VIII]. | The Blessed Virgin and Child, with Saint George and the Donor | 70 |
| (National Gallery, London, No. 686) |
MEMLINC
I
HANS MEMLINC
ALREADY, before the advent of the House of Burgundy, Bruges had attained the height of her prosperity. From a small military outpost of civilisation, built to stay the advance of the ravaging Northmen, she had developed through four short centuries of a strenuous existence into one of the three leading cities of northern Europe. Born to battle, fighting had been her abiding lot with but scant intervals of peace, and as it had been under the rule of her long line of Flemish counts, so it continued with increased vehemence during the century of French domination that followed, the incessant warring of suzerain and vassal being further complicated and embittered by internecine strife with the rival town of Ghent. But she emerged from the ordeal with her vitality unsapped, her industrial capabilities unabated, her commercial supremacy unshaken. Her population had reached the high total of a hundred and fifty thousand; she overlorded an outport with a further thirty thousand inhabitants, a seaport, and a number of subordinate townships. The staple of wool was established at her centre, and she was the chief emporium of the cities of the Hanseatic League. Vessels from all quarters of the globe crowded her harbours, her basins, and canals, as many as one hundred and fifty being entered inwards in the twenty-four hours. Factories of merchants from seventeen kingdoms were settled there as agents, and twenty foreign consuls had palatial residences within her walls. Her industrial life was a marvel of organisation, where fifty-four incorporated associations or guilds with a membership of many thousands found constant employment.
The artistic temperament of the people had necessarily developed on the ruder lines, in the architectural embellishment of the city, the beautifying of its squares and streets, its churches and chapels, its municipal buildings and guild halls, its markets and canal embankments. “The squares,” we are told, “were adorned with fountains, its bridges with statues in bronze, the public buildings and many of the private houses with statuary and carved work, the beauty of which was heightened and brought out by polychrome and gilding; the windows were rich with storied glass, and the walls of the interiors adorned with paintings in distemper, or hung with gorgeous tapestry.” But of the highest forms of Art—of literature, of music, and of painting—there was slender token. The atmosphere in which the Flemings had pursued their destinies was little calculated to develop any other than the harder and more matter-of-fact side of their nature. True, here as elsewhere, and from the earliest period of her history the great monastic institutions which dotted the country had done much for the cultivation of Art, as the remains of wood sculpture, mural paintings, and numerous illuminated manuscripts amply testify. But no great school of painting had arisen or was even possible, so true is it that the development of the artistic instincts of the community require the contemplative repose and fostering inspiration of peace. In the truest sense of the term the Flemings were not a cultured artistic race: they had certainly a high standard of taste, but their artistic sense was appreciative rather than creative—even so, a notable advance for a nation of warriors and merchants.
