| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Hans Memling |
For more information on Hans Memling, visit Britannica.com.
| 5min Related Video: Hans Memling |
| Art Encyclopedia: Hans Memling |
(b Seligenstadt, 1430-40; d Bruges, 11 Aug 1494). South Netherlandish painter of German origin. Together with Dieric Bouts I and Hugo van der Goes, he was one of the most important exponents of the new artistic developments that flourished in the southern Netherlands in the 15th century in the wake of Jan van Eyck, the Master of Fl?malle and Rogier van der Weyden. Their principal innovation was to apply optic realism to devotional or mystical subjects. Although Memling lived in the turbulent period of transition from the Burgundian ruling house to that of the Habsburgs, little of this is evident in his work. His commissions were almost exclusively from rich burghers in Bruges (bankers, merchants and politicians) or churchmen and the occasional aristocrat. Often they were foreigners, especially Italians, who had political or financial connections with the town, whose central economic position was to last only a few decades longer. They had Memling paint their portraits, bust or full length, in devotional paintings or on altarpieces for their chapel in Bruges or back home. He seems not to have received official commissions (from the town council or court). An exceptional proportion of this oeuvre has survived. Besides about 20 altarpieces, often in several panels and of considerable size, there are about 15 individual paintings of the Virgin and Child, for which the side panels with figures or donor portraits are missing, another 20 paintings depicting saints or various themes from the Gospels and more than 30 portraits (some in the form of a diptych with a Virgin and Child ).
See the Abbreviations for further details.
| Biography: Hans Memling |
Hans Memling (ca. 1440-1494), a German-born painter active in Flanders, was one of the most graceful, charming, and technically brilliant of the early Netherlandish masters.
Hans Memling was born in Seligenstadt, a hamlet near Frankfurt. His early training probably took place in Cologne, though by 1465 "Jan van Memmelynghe" was recorded as a citizen of Bruges in the Lowlands. It is conjectured that, previous to entering the painters' guild at Bruges, Memling spent time as an apprentice in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels. The evidence for this association, however, is far from conclusive and does not prove a master-pupil relationship. Nothing further is known concerning the artist's early professional training.
From the first Memling displayed the highest standards of technical proficiency and pictorial sophistication in his work. The full corpus of his paintings, in fact, represents a single standard of perfection in which one can discover little stylistic change or development. His earliest known painting, for example, the Chatsworth Triptych, commissioned by the English lord Sir John Donne of Kidwelly in 1468, displays a surprising maturity of style. Blending a figure style derived from Rogier van der Weyden with compositional motifs and other details from Jan van Eyck, Memling created the prototype of the rational and balanced design upon which he so often relied throughout his long and active career.
Memling's search for rational order and compositional equilibrium, however, often obscures his truly progressive outlook and the many innovations found in his work. In such early paintings as the Scenes of the Passion he combined a bold, panoramic vista with unprecedented narrative detail. In his most famous work, the Shrine of St. Ursula, he further developed this closely observed anecdotal genre.
The Triptych of the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (1479) represents Memling's highest achievement as a painter. In this work he skillfully combined compositional stability with great pictorial variety. Sparkling colors and luminous surfaces interact with solid, plastic forms and broad spatial recessions to create one of the great masterpieces of 15th-century Netherlandish painting.
As a portraitist, Memling further revealed his originality. The Diptych of Martin van Nieuwenhove contains a unique elaboration of the interior setting, and the famous portrait Man with a Medal is the first northern figure posed entirely against a landscape background.
When he died, Memling was one of the hundred wealthiest citizens of Bruges. He was also, in the words of a contemporary, "the most accomplished and excellent painter of the whole Christian world."
Further Reading
The major books on Memling are in German. Short accounts of his life and work are in two works in English: Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (2 vols., 1953), and Margaret Dickens Whinney, Early Flemish Painting (1968). A brief monograph on Memling is Maur Guillaume-Linephty, The Shrine of St. Ursula (1939).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Hans Memling |
Bibliography
See study by K. B. McFarlane (1972).
| Wikipedia: Hans Memling |
Hans Memling (also spelled Memlinc; c. 1430 – 11 August 1494) was a German-born Early Netherlandish painter.
Contents |
Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is believed that Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455–1460). He then went to Bruges around 1465.
There is an apocryphical story that he was wounded at the Battle of Nancy, sheltered and cured by the Hospitallers at Bruges, and that to show his gratitude he refused payment for a picture he had painted for them. Memling did indeed paint for the Hospitallers, but he painted several pictures for them, in 1479 and 1480, and it is likely that he was known to his patrons of St John, prior to the Battle of Nancy.
Memling is connected with military operations only in a distant sense. His name appears on a list of subscribers to the loan which was raised by Maximilian I of Austria, to defend against hostilities towards France in 1480. In 1477, when he was incorrectly claimed to have been killed, he was under contract to create an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges. This altarpiece, under the name of the Seven Griefs of Mary, is now in the Gallery of Turin. It is one of the fine creations of his more mature period. It is not inferior in any way to those of 1479 in the hospital of St. John, which for their part are hardly less interesting as illustrative of the master's power than The Last Judgment which can be found since the 1470s in the St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk. Critical opinion has been unanimous in assigning this altarpiece to Memling. This affirms that Memling was a resident and a skilled artist at Bruges in 1473; for the Last Judgment was undoubtedly painted and sold to a merchant at Bruges, who shipped it there on board of a vessel bound to the Mediterranean, which was captured by Danzig privateer Paul Beneke in that very year. This purchase of his pictures by an agent of the Medici demonstrates that he had a considerable reputation.
.jpg)
It is characteristic that the oldest allusions to pictures connected with Memling's name are those which point to relations with the Burgundian court. The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych of the God of Pity by Roger van der Weyden, of which the wings containing angels were by "Master Hans". But this entry is less important as affording testimony in favour of the preservation of Memling's work than as showing his connection with an older Flemish craftsman. For ages Roger van der Weyden was acknowledged as an artist of the school of Bruges, until records of undisputed authenticity demonstrated that he was bred at Tournai and settled at Brussels. Nothing seems more natural than the conjunction of his name with that of Memling as the author of an altarpiece, since, though Memling's youth remains obscure, it is clear from the style of his manhood that he was taught in the painting-room of Van der Weyden. Nor is it beyond the limits of probability that it was Van der Weyden who received commissions at a distance from Brussels, and first took his pupil to Bruges, where he afterwards dwelt.
The clearest evidence of the connection of the two masters is that afforded by pictures, particularly an altarpiece, which has alternately been assigned to each of them, and which may possibly be due to their joint labours. In this altarpiece, which is a triptych ordered for a patron of the house of Sforza, we find the style of Van der Weyden in the central panel of the Crucifixion, and that of Memling in the episodes on the wings. Yet the whole piece was assigned to the former in the Zambeccari collection at Bologna, whilst it was attributed to the latter at the Middleton sale in London in 1872.
His painting of the Baptist in the gallery of Munich, done circa 1470, is the oldest form in which Memling's style is displayed. It is scarcely surpassed by the Last Judgment in Danzig. The latter work shows that Memling preserved the tradition of sacred art used earlier by Rogier van der Weyden in the Last Judgment of Beaune. Memling is seen to have purged his master's manner of excessive stringency, and add to his other qualities a velvet softness of pigment, a delicate transparence of colours, and yielding grace of slender forms. Picture-fanciers of Italy were certainly familiar with the beauties of Memling's compositions, as shown in the preference given to them by such purchasers as Cardinal Grimani and Cardinal Bembo at Venice, and the heads of the house of Medici at Florence.
Memling's reputation was not confined to Italy or Flanders. The Madonna and Saints which passed out of the Duchatel collection into the gallery of the Louvre, the Virgin and Child painted for Sir John Donne and now at the National Gallery, London, and other noble specimens in English and Continental private houses, show that his work was as widely known and appreciated in the 16th century.
It was perhaps not their sole attraction that they gave the most tender and delicate possible impersonations of the Mother of Christ that could suit the taste of that age in any European country. But the portraits of the donors, with which they were mostly combined, were more characteristic, and probably more remarkable as likenesses, than any that Memling's contemporaries could produce. Nor is it unreasonable to think that his success as a portrait painter, which is manifested in isolated busts as well as in altarpieces, was of a kind to react with effect on the Venetian school, which undoubtedly was affected by the partiality of Antonello da Messina for trans-Alpine types studied in Flanders in Memling's time. The portraits of Sir John Donne and his wife and children in the National Gallery, London altarpiece are also remarkable as models of drawing and finish than as refined presentations of persons of distinction; nor is any difference in this respect to be found in the splendid groups of father, mother, and children which fill the noble altarpiece of the Louvre. As single portraits, the busts of Burgomaster Moreel and his wife in the museum of Brussels, and their daughter the Sibyl Zambetha (according to the added description) in the hospital at Bruges, are the finest and most interesting of specimens. The Seven Griefs of Mary in the gallery of Turin, to which we may add the Seven Joys of Mary in the Pinakothek of Munich, are illustrations of the habit which clung to the art of Flanders of representing a cycle of subjects on the different planes of a single picture, where a wide expanse of ground is covered with incidents from the Passion in the form common to the action of sacred plays.
The masterpiece of Memling's later years, a shrine containing relics of St Ursula in the museum of the hospital of Bruges, is fairly supposed to have been ordered and finished in 1480. The delicacy of finish in its miniature figures, the variety of its landscapes and costume, the marvellous patience with which its details are given, are all matters of enjoyment to the spectator. There is later work of the master in the St Christopher and Saints of 1484 in the academy, or the Newenhoven Madonna in the hospital of Bruges, or a large Crucifixion, with scenes from the Passion, of 1491 from the Lübeck Cathedral (Dom) of Lübeck, now in Lübeck's St. Annen Museum. But as we near the close of Memling's career we observe that his practice has become larger than he can compass alone; and, as usual in such cases, the labour of a workshop is substituted for his own. 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. These subordinates remained obscure.
The trustees of his will appeared before the court of wards at Bruges on December 10, 1495, and we gather from records of that date and place that Memling left behind several children and considerable property.
Passion Altarpiece/Polyptych (1491) in Lübeck
These are some of the earlier works by Memling:[1]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hans Memling |
"Hans Memling". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Hans_Memling.This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
 | Canopy (art) |
| Gerard David (art) |
| Frei Carlos (art) |
 | Who is Hans Heysen? Read answer... |
| Who is Han Solo? Read answer... |
| Who is Hans Javier? Read answer... |
 | Who are the Han Chinese? |
| Who were the Han rulers? |
| Who is Hans Kohn? |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hans Memling". Read more |
Mentioned in
