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Updated: May 18, 2025
A lay sister became Grisell's guide, and just then, coming down from the Duchess's apartments, with a board with a chalk sketch in his hand, appeared a young man, whom Groot greeted as Master Hans Memling, and who had been receiving orders, and showing designs to the Duchess for the ornamentation of the convent, which in later years he so splendidly carried out. With him Lambert remained.
The difference between the two classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the other.
Sybrandt took it up, and examined it gravely; but eventually laid it down, with the remark, that he could not read. However, one of the company, by some immense fortuity, could read; and proud of so rare an accomplishment, took it, and read it out: "To Gerard Eliassoen, of Tergou. These by the hand of the trusty Hans Memling, with all speed."
There the weariness of their dolorous ascent is no more; there is the plenitude of tranquil joy, the peace of man made one with God. Angelico is the painter of the soul immersed in God, the painter of his own spirit. None but a monk could attempt such paintings. Matsys, Memling, Dierck Bouts, Roger van der Weyden were no doubt sincere and pious worthies.
He had been employed by the burgomaster of Tergou to repair the floor of an upper room in his house, and when it was almost done, Coming suddenly to fetch away his tools, curiosity had been excited by some loud words below, and he had lain down on his stomach, and heard the burgomaster talking about a letter which Cornelis and Sybrandt were minded to convey into the place of one that a certain Hans Memling was taking to Gerard; "and it seems their will was good, but their stomach was small; so to give them courage the old man showed them a drawer full of silver, and if they did the trick they should each put a hand in, and have all the silver they could hold in't.
Van Orley and Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have been of his advance upon them. We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always forward movement.
This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital of S. John at Bruges where he painted most of his masterpieces as a sick soldier after the battle of Nancy.
To break through this feeling, he threw himself again upon his wheel, but then stupefied himself completely; the device he had tried to keep himself before the Virgin at least was used up. When he wished to abstract himself and to bring up a recollection of Memling, he could not succeed, and his lip-prayers, wearying him, distressed him.
No. 906, an unknown work, is perhaps the finest: a Crucifixion, which might have borrowed its richness from the Carpaccio, we saw in the Venetian room. Memling, indeed, I never liked better than here.
The great private palaces, indeed, are almost all destroyed; but many public buildings remain, and the domestic architecture is quaint and pretty. Bruges was the mother of arts in Flanders: Jan van Eyck lived here from 1428 to 1440. Memling, probably from 1477 till 1494.
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