Hans Memling

Born in Seligenstadt,[2] near Frankfurt in the Middle Main region, Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne and later worked in the Low Countries under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455–1460) in Brussels, Duchy of Brabant. He then worked at Bruges, County of Flanders by 1465.[2]

Last Judgement, 1466–1473. National Museum, Gdańsk

He painted for the Hospitallers in 1479 and 1480. In 1477, when he was believed dead, he was under contract to create an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges.[3] This altarpiece, Scenes of the Passion of Christ, is now in the Galleria Sabauda of Turin. The Last Judgment, which had been in Gdańsk since 1473 is now in the National Museum there. The Last Judgment was commissioned by Angelo Tani, erstwhile director of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank, for a chapel at what is now the Badia Fiesolana in Fiesole. When the triptych is closed Tani and his wife are shown kneeling in prayer. It was shipped to Fiesole on a vessel that was captured by Danzig privateer Paul Beneke in April 1473.

The oldest allusions to pictures connected to Memling point to his relations with the Burgundian court, which was held in Brussels. The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych of the God of Pity by Rogier van der Weyden, of which the wings containing angels were painted by "Master Hans".[3]

Memling's painting of John the Baptist (c. 1470) is in the Munich Alte Pinakothek. He painted the Last Judgment in Gdańsk.

Memling's portraits, in particular, were popular in Italy.[4] According to Paula Nuttall, Memling's distinctive contribution to portraiture was his use of landscape backgrounds, characterized by "a balanced counterpoint between top and bottom, foreground and background: the head offset by the neutral expanse of sky, and the neutral area of the shoulders enlivened by the landscape detail beyond".[5] Memling's portrait style influenced the work of numerous late-15th-century Italian painters,[6] and is evident in works such as Raphael's Portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni.[7] Purchasers of his paintings include Cardinal Grimani and Cardinal Bembo at Venice, and the heads of the House of Medici at Florence.[8]

Scenes from the Passion of Christ, c. 1470, Galleria Sabauda

Other paintings include the Madonna and Saints (which passed from the Duchatel collection to the Louvre), the Virgin and Child (painted for Sir John Donne and now at the National Gallery, London), and the four attributed portraits in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence (including the Portrait of Folco Portinari), the Scenes from the Passion of Christ in the Galleria Sabauda of Turin and the Advent and Triumph of Christ

Around 1492, Memling was commissioned to paint the Najera Altarpiece for the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria la Real in Najera, Rioja, Spain. The altarpiece, which was completed in Flanders, consisted of an image of God surrounded by angels playing a variety of musical instruments while atop a row of clouds before a golden background. Recent scholarship by Bart Fransen has determined that Gonzalo de Cabredo and Abbot Pablo Martinez commissioned the creation of this artwork.[9][10]

Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation (front) c. 1485
Oil on oak panel, 22 × 13 cm (each wing) Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Memling became sufficiently prosperous that his name appears on a list of the 875 richest citizens of Bruges who were obligatory subscribers to the loan raised by Maximilian I of Austria, to finance hostilities towards France in 1480.[11] Memling's name does not appear on subsequent subscription lists of this type.[12]

In his later years, he painted the Shrine of St Ursula in the museum of the hospital of Bruges, St Christopher and Saints (1484) in the academy, the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove in the hospital of Bruges, and a large Crucifixion, with scenes from the Passion, (1491) from the Lübeck Cathedral (Dom) of Lübeck, now in Lübeck's St. Annen Museum. Near the close of Memling's career, the registers of the painters' guild at Bruges give the names of two apprentices who served their time with Memling and paid dues on admission to the guild in 1480 and 1486.[8]

He died in Bruges. The trustees of his will appeared before the court of wards at Bruges on 10 December 1495, and records indicate Memling left behind several children and considerable property.[8]

• 
  Portrait of Barbara van Vlaendenbergh, c. 1470-72, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Portrait of Tommaso Portinari, c. 1470, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Portrait of Maria Portinari, c. 1470-72, Metropolitan Museum of Art
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  The Man of Sorrows in the arms of the Virgin, 1475 or 1479, National Gallery of Victoria
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  Christ Giving His Blessing, 1478, Norton Simon Museum
• 
  Allegory with a Virgin, 1479–80, Musée Jacquemart-André
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  Christ Surrounded by Musician Angels, c. 1480, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
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  Annunciation, 1480–89, Metropolitan Museum of Art
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  Hell, c. 1485, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg
• 
  Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1485-90, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
• 
  The Mourning Virgin with Saint John and the Pious Women from Galilee, c. 1485-90, São Paulo Museum of Art
• 
  Portrait of Folco Portinari, c. 1490, Uffizi

• 
  Adoration of the Magi Triptych, c. 1479-80, Museo del Prado
• 
  Seven Joys of the Virgin – a Life of the Virgin cycle on a single panel (1480). Altogether 25 scenes, not all involving the Virgin, are depicted, Alte Pinakothek[13]
• 
  Moreel Triptych, 1484, Groeningemuseum
• 
  Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, 1487, Old St. John's Hospital, Bruges

There are four works by Memling that feature an oriental carpet. They are the triptych with the Virgin and Child Enthroned (Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum), the triptych of John Donne (London National Gallery), the Virgin and Child Enthroned with a large family (Paris, Louvre), and the Portrait of a young man at prayer (Madrid Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen- Bornedmisza). They all feature an indefinitely repeated pattern that is representative of an archaic strand of ornamentation in Turkoman carpets from Anatolia or Armenia. This type of carpet is named after Memling and is known as Memling carpets. They are characterized by guls with "hooked" lines radiating from a central body.

• The Adoration of the Magi (Memling)

References

Sources

• Borchert, Till-Holger (2005). Memling's Portraits. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-09326-1.
• Batari, Ferenc (1994). The "Memling" carpets in de Vos, Dirk, editor (1994). Essays Hans Memling. Essay bundle published with the catalogue of the exhibit Hans Memling, vijf eeuwen werkelijkheid en fictie in the Groeningen Museum, Brugge August 12 - November 15, 1994.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Crowe, Joseph Archer; Konody, Paul George (1911). "Memlinc, Hans". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 104–105.

• de Vos, Dirk (1994). Hans Memling: The Complete Works. Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3649-6.

• Media related to Hans Memling at Wikimedia Commons
• Hans Memling on BALaT - Belgian Art Links and Tools (KIK-IRPA, Brussel)
• Petrus Christus: Renaissance master of Bruges
• Fifteenth- to eighteenth-century European paintings: France, Central Europe, the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain