Memling, Hans

or Hans Memlinc

born с 1430/35, Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt am Main

died Aug. 11, 1494, Bruges

Flemish painter.

He settled in Bruges in 1465 and established a large workshop that became very successful and made him one of the city's wealthiest citizens. Though somewhat derivative of the works of contemporary Flemish painters (Jan van Eyck, Dirck Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, and particularly Rogier van der Weyden), his art has great charm and a distinctive character. Memling's religious paintings and portraits of wealthy patrons (e.g., Tommaso Portinari and His Wife, с 1468) were, and remain, enormously popular.

"Diptych with Madonna and Martin van Nieuwenhove" (left wing), oil on panel by Hans ...

By courtesy of the Memling-Museum, Brugge, Bel., photograph, © A.C.L., Brussels

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▪ Flemish painter

Introduction

Memling also spelled  Memlinc 

born c. 1430/35, Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt am Main

died August 11, 1494, Bruges

      leading Flemish (Flemish art) 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 (Early Netherlandish art) (c. 1455–60), where he probably trained in the workshop of the painter Rogier van der Weyden (Weyden, Rogier van der). 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 still others 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 (Madonna) 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) in the 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 contemporary Flemish painters. He borrowed, for example, from the compositions of Jan van Eyck (Eyck, Jan van), the famed founder of the Bruges school. The influence of Dirck Bouts (Bouts, Dirck) and Hugo van der Goes (Goes, Hugo van der) 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 large triptych (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 two nuns, 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 that of 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

Major Works

“The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” (c. 1470; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels); “Portinari Triptych” (c. 1470; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City); “Portrait of Gilles Joye” (1472; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.); “The Last Judgment” (c. 1473; Marienkirche, Gdańsk, Pol.); “Triptych: The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors” (c. 1475; National Gallery, London); “The Deposition” (c. 1475; Museo de la Capilla Real, Granada, Spain); “The Virgin and Child” (c. 1475; Museo de la Capilla Real); “The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria” (c. 1475; Louvre, Paris); “Christ Surrounded by Angel Musicians” (c. 1475; Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp); “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria” (1479; Memling-Museum, Brugge); “Adoration of the Magi” (1479; Memling-Museum); “The Descent from the Cross” (1480; Memling-Museum); “Scenes from the Life of Christ and the Virgin” (c. 1480; Alte Pinakothek, Munich); “Madonna and Child with Angels” (c. 1480–85; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); “Moreel Triptych” (1484; Groeninge Museum, Brugge); “Bathsheba” (c. 1485; Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Ger.); “Diptych with Madonna and Martin van Nieuwenhove” (1487; Memling-Museum); “St. Benedict” (1487; Uffizi, Florence); “Portrait of Benedetto Portinari” (1487; Uffizi); “The Virgin and Child” (1487; Staatsliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin); St. Ursula Shrine (1489; Memling-Museum); “Resurrection” (c. 1490; Louvre); “Passion Triptych” (Crucifixion Panel, 1491; St.-Annen-Museum, Lübeck, Ger.).

Additional Reading

Lengthy bibliographies on the artist appear in A. Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, vol. 2 (1909); and V. Denis, Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 9, col. 729–735 (1964). Among the earlier studies of Memling, see especially J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, The Early Flemish Painters (1857); L.J. Krämmerer, Memling (1899); F. Bock, Memling Studien (1900); W.H.J. Weale, Hans Memling (1901); and K. Voli, Memling (1909). For the relationships with Rogier van der Weyden, see especially G. Hulin de Loo “Hans Memling in Rogier van der Weyden's Studio,” Burlington Magazine, 52:160–177 (1928); and M.J. Friedländer, “Noch etwas über das Verhältnis Roger van der Weydens zu Memling,” Oud-Holland, 61:11–19 (1946). The standard references are L. von Baldass, Hans Memling (1942); M.J. Friedländer, Memling (1950) and his Die altniederländisch Malerei, vol. 6 (1928; Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 6, 1971); and Georges Henri Dumont, Hans Memling (1966; Eng. trans. 1967); also see the discussions of Memling's works that have appeared in the series Les Primitifs flamands, especially vol. 9, J. Bialostocki, Les Musées de Pologne (1966); and vol. 11, M. Davies, The National Gallery-London-III (1970).

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