(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Memling
Hans
born c. 1430/35, Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt am Main
died August 11, 1494, Bruges
Memling also spelled Memlinc leading Flemish painter of the Bruges
school during the period of the city's political and commercial decline.
The number of his imitators and followers testified to his popularity
throughout Flanders. His last commission, which has been widely copied,
is a Crucifixion panel from the “Passion Triptych” (1491).
Memling, born in the region of the Middle Rhine, was apparently first
schooled in the art of Cologne and then travelled to the Netherlands (c.
1455–60), where he probably trained in the workshop of the painter
Rogier van der Weyden. He settled in Bruges (Brugge) in 1465; there he
established a large shop and executed numerous altarpieces and
portraits. Indeed, he was very successful in Bruges: it is known that he
owned a large stone house and by 1480 was listed among the wealthiest
citizens on the city tax accounts. Sometime between 1470 and 1480
Memling married Anna de Valkenaere (died 1487), who bore him three
children.
A number of Memling's works are signed and dated, and stillothers allow
art historians to place them easily into a chronology on the basis of
the patron depicted in them. Otherwise it is very difficult to discern
an early, middle, and late style for the artist. His compositions and
types, once established, were repeated again and again with few
indications of any formal development. His Madonnas gradually become
slenderer and more ethereal and self-conscious, and a greater use of
Italian motifs such as putti, garlands, and sculptural detail for the
settings marks the later works. His portraits, too, appear to develop
from a type with a simple neutral background to those enhanced with a
loggia or window view of a landscape, but these, too, may have been less
a stylistic development than an adaptation of his compositions to suit
the tastes of his patrons.
A good example of the difficulties of dating encountered by scholars is
the triptych of “The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors” that
Memling executed for Sir John Donne (National Gallery, London), which
until recently had been dated very early—around 1468—because it was
believed that the patron commissioned the work while visiting Bruges for
the wedding of Charles the Bold (duke of Burgundy) to Margaret of York
and that he died the following year (1469) inthe Battle of Edgecote. It
is now known that Sir John lived until 1503 and that it is probably his
daughter Anne (born 1470 or later) who is portrayed as the young girl
kneeling with her parents in the central panel, thus indicating that the
painting was commissioned about 1475.
Memling's art clearly reveals the influence of contemporaryFlemish
painters. He borrowed, for example, from the compositions of Jan van
Eyck, the famed founder of the Bruges school. The influence of Dirck
Bouts and Hugo van der Goes can also be discerned in his works—for
example, in a number of eye-catching details such as glistening mirrors,
tile floors, canopied beds, exotic hangings, and brocaded robes. Above
all, Memling's art reveals a thorough knowledge of, and dependence on,
compositions and figure types created by Rogier van der Weyden. In
Memling's largetriptych (a painting in three panels, generally hinged
together) of the “Adoration of the Magi” (Prado, Madrid), one of his
earliest works, and in the altarpiece of 1479 for Jan Floreins (Memling-Museum,
Brugge), the influence of Rogier's last masterpiece, the “Columba
Altarpiece” (1460–64; Alte Pinakothek, Munich), is especially
noticeable.Some scholars believe that Memling himself may have had a
hand in the production of this late work while still in Rogier's studio.
He also imitated Rogier's compositions in numerous representations of
the half-length Madonna with the Child, often including a pendant with
the donor's portrait (the “Madonna and Martin van Nieuwenhove”; Memling-Museum,
Brugge). Many devotional diptychs (two-panel paintings) such as this
were painted in 15th-century Flanders. They consist of a portrait of the
“donor”—or patron—in one panel, reverently gazing at the Madonna and
Child in the other. Such paintings were for the donor's personal use in
his home or travels.
Most of Memling's patrons were those associated with religious houses,
such as the Hospital of St. John in Bruges, and wealthy businessmen,
including burghers of Bruges and foreign representatives of the
Florentine Medicis and the Hanseatic League (an association of German
merchants dealing abroad). For Tommaso Portinari, a Medici agent, and
his wife, Memling painted portraits (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York City) and an unusual altarpiece that depicts more than 22 scenes
from the Passion of Christ scattered in miniature in a panoramic
landscape encompassing a view of Jerusalem (Galleria Sabauda, Turin).
Such an altarpiece, perhaps created for new devotional practices, became
very popular at the end of the 15th century. His best known work with
extensive narration is the sumptuous Shrine of St. Ursula in the
Hospital of St. John. It was commissioned by twonuns, Jacosa van
Dudzeele and Anna van den Moortele, who are portrayed at one end of the
composition kneeling before Mary. This reliquary, completed in 1489, is
in the form of a diminutive chapel with six painted panels filling the
areas along the sides where stained glass would ordinarily be placed.
The narrative, which is the story of Ursula and her 11,000 virgins and
their trip from Cologne to Rome and back, unfolds with charm and
colourful detail but with little drama or emotion. Other patrons of the
same hospital commissioned Memling to paint a large altarpiece of St.
John with the mystical marriage of St. Catherine to Christ as the
central theme (Memling-Museum, Brugge). Elaborate narratives appear
behind the patron saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist
painted on the side panels, while the central piece is an impressive
elaboration of the enthroned Madonna between angels and saints
(including Catherine) that one finds in innumerable other devotional
pieces attributed to Memling.
Because Memling's work was so strongly influenced by thatof other
painters, it often has been harshly dealt with by 20th-century critics.
Yet in his own lifetime he was acclaimed. Recording his death, the
notary of Bruges described him as “the most skillful painter in the
whole of Christendom.”
James E. Snyder
