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1430/40-1494 • Netherlandish • Painter • Northern Renaissance
"Hans Memling was the most accomplished and excellent painter in the entire Christian world." - Written at Memling's death by the notary of Saint Donation in Bruges
Memling arrived in Bruges in 1464, after van der WEYDEN'S death. Fifteenth- century Bruges (then Burgundian, today Belgian) did not look so very different from the cityscape that has been preserved to this day. We find it in the background of several 15thcentury paintings where it seems to embody an ideal town in which sacred and secular, church and state, existed in harmony and prosperity reigned. However, as the historian Johan Huizinga wrote, "It is a general phenomenon that the idea which works of art give us of an epoch is far more serene and happy than that which we glean in reading its chronicles, documents, or even literature." In fact, Bruges, although a center of trade and manufacture, was in economic and political crisis that led to its ceding its place to Antwerp by the beginning of the 16th century. Memling was an assimilator rather than an inventor of styles, but his bright, restrained narratives are beautifully set in idyllic panoramas, as though he were able to change contemporary reality, as Huizinga suggests, by manipulating the landscape. Scenes from the Life of the Virgin and Christ (1480) contains no fewer than 25 biographical moments in the lives of Mary and Jesus. The setting is outside of Jerusalem, and while the tidy little city in the background may be an imaginary Jerusalem, the topographical details of hills and rock outcrops, as well as the pleasant harbor in the distance, make it possible to associate it as much with Bruges as with the Holy Land. For the Hospital of Saint John in Bruges, in addition to two ALTARPIECES and other works, Memling created the Shrine of Saint Ursula (1489), a RELIQUARY in the form of a small church. Narrative scenes from the saint's life are painted between gilded wooden arches on the exterior. Some of the story takes place in Cologne, another city that Memling was familiar with, judging from the accuracy of the cityscape that he depicted .
