FROM the consideration of these three works executed in the sixties we pass on to a decade of more notable achievement. The public rejoicings which had inaugurated the new reign were already dimmed to recollection in the disquieting civil and national complications that ensued, culminating in the disastrous battle of Nancy on 5th January 1477, in which the ducal troops were put to rout and Charles himself lost his life. He was succeeded by his only daughter, Mary, who on 19th August of the same year by her marriage to Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederick IV., brought Flanders under the rule of the House of Austria, and thus involved the Flemish burghers in that lamentable struggle which, after many alternations of fortune, was one of the chief causes that led to the downfall of Bruges. Memlinc, as a newcomer without rooted interests or strong political bent, wholly wrapt in his art, naturally steered clear of political entanglements, though ready enough on occasion to take his share of the public burden which the fortune of war imposed, as witness his contribution to the loan raised to cover the expenses of the military operations against France. But his placid disposition shrank from the heat and ferment of public life, though his sympathies no doubt were all with the burghers and guildmen with whom he associated, among whom he found the most liberal supporters of his art to the exclusion of court patronage, and from whose womankind he selected a helpmate. Memlinc married later in life than was the custom of his day, when it was usual for craftsmen to take unto themselves a wife at the expiration of their journeymanship, after they had established their competence, paid the indispensable guild fees, and taken the no less essential vows to bear themselves honestly and to labour their work as in the sight of God; for it was only at some date between 1470 and 1480, when already a man of middle age, that he led Anne, daughter of Louis De Valkenaere, to the altar. It is impossible to determine the year, but on the 10th of December 1495 we find the guardians of the three children of the marriage acting on their behalf in the local courts in the winding-up of their father’s estate, which at any rate proves that the eldest at that time must have been still a minor, or under the age of five-and-twenty. Apart from his wife’s dowry, of which we have no knowledge, Memlinc’s circumstances were then already much above the ordinary, for in 1480 out of the 247 wealthiest citizens only 140 were taxed at higher rates, and it is on record that in the same year he purchased a large stone house and two smaller adjacent ones on the east side of the main street that leads from the Flemish Bridge to the ramparts, in a quarter of the town much affected by artists, and within the Parish of Saint Giles, beneath the spreading trees of whose peaceful God’s acre he was to find an abiding resting-place some fourteen years later, by the side of his old friend the miniaturist William Vrelant, who predeceased him by some thirteen years, to be joined there in after years by many another eminent artist, such as John PrÉvost, Lancelot Blondeel, Peter Pourbus, and Antony Claeissens.

That he was a busy man the record of works that have come down to us from this decade alone amply testifies. The “Saint John the Baptist,” in the Royal Gallery at Munich (1470); the exquisite little diptych “The Blessed Virgin and Child,” in the Louvre, painted (c. 1475) for John Du Celier, a member of the Guild of Merchant Grocers, whose father was a member of the Council of Flanders; the panel in the National Gallery, which we reproduce; the magnificent altarpiece in the Royal Museum at Turin painted for William Vrelant (1478); the famous triptych executed for the high altar of the church attached to the Hospital of Saint John at Bruges (1479); and the triptych “The Adoration of the Magi” presented to the Hospital by Brother John Floreins (1479), all belong to this period: while with the year 1480 are associated the portraits of William Moreel and his wife, in the Royal Gallery at Brussels; that of one of their daughters as the Sibyl Sambetha, in Saint John’s Hospital; the marvellous composition in the Royal Gallery at Munich, “Christ the Light of the World,” painted to the order of Peter Bultinc, a wealthy citizen of Bruges and a member of the Guild of Tanners; and the triptych “The Dead Christ mourned by His Mother,” in Saint John’s Hospital—let alone the numerous other works attributed to him but not authenticated or which have been lost. The bare record, however, conveys but a feeble idea of the immensity of the labour this output involved.

The panel in the National Gallery, which may be ascribed to 1475, arrests our attention for the moment. It presents to us the Blessed Virgin and Child in attitudes closely corresponding to those in the earlier Donne triptych, but both are more pleasing figures in respect of pose, the attitude of the Madonna in particular being less constrained and the expression happier and more natural. The figure of the angel too has gained in gracefulness. The donor under the patronage of Saint George appeals to one as a living personality. Of these two figures a lady critic complains that they are “characteristic examples of Memlinc’s inability to depict a really manly man”; and she endeavours to give greater point to this criticism by contrasting the painter’s methods with those of John van Eyck, wholly of course to the disadvantage of the former. In the present case the identity of the donor remains a mystery: he may not have been the really manly man the idealist would require, and also he may have been the man of reverent and sweet disposition revealed to us in this portrait. It is for the softening and idealisation of the face from the reality, however, that fault is commonly found with Memlinc as a portrait-painter. But, after all, what is this idealisation of the subject but the highest aim and truest concept of art? It is no difficult matter for the competent painter to produce a counterpart of the outward flesh with all its peculiarities, even to the last wrinkle and the least significant blemish, and be awarded the palm for “stern realism”; but to conceive the inner soul of the man, to seize and fix that conception on panel or canvas, surely that is the higher art? It is true that in the men whom Memlinc portrayed there is a marked similarity of expression, arising obviously from the fact that they are usually pictured in an attitude of devotion, and that in the frame of mind this attitude imposed they suffered some loss of workaday individuality. But surely it is not to Memlinc’s discredit that his clients were of the devotional order? Nor is the criticism of the Saint George as mild and effeminate any more to the point; for when the appeal is from Memlinc to Van Eyck one is forcibly reminded of the votive picture of the Virgin and Child by that master in the Town Gallery at Bruges, in which we have the donor under the patronage of a Saint George whom for sheer inanity of expression and utter awkwardness of demeanour it would be hard to beat. And yet in neither instance, we may safely assume, was the figure the type the artist would have created for the valiant knight of the legend. Apart from this, a careful study of Memlinc’s many works will reveal to the most exacting a sufficiency of evidence that his art was equal to any demands that might have been made of it; of his preference for the milder and more religious type of man, however, there can be no doubt.

It were idle to speculate as to the length of time Memlinc devoted to the production of his pictures, seeing the meagreness of the data afforded us for the purpose. His peculiar technique, however, which avoided the accentuation of light and shade, and thereby simplified the scheme of colouring, lent itself to rapid execution. Even so, paintings like the altarpiece in the Royal Museum at Turin and that in the Royal Gallery at Munich must have made heavy calls on his time through a number of years. As examples of the powers and wealth of resource of the artist these masterpieces stand almost alone. The architectural setting of the former, a wholly imaginary Jerusalem, is so contrived as to assist in the most natural manner the precession of the Gospel story from the triumphal entry into the Holy City to the Resurrection and the manifestation of Christ to Mary Magdalene. As without conscious effort the eye is guided along the line of route followed by the Redeemer, one treads in imagination in the Divine footsteps through the hosannahing multitude in the extreme background on the right, and turning to the left arrives at the Temple steps in time to witness the casting out of the buyers and sellers; descending thence and bearing gradually towards the right a turn of the street leads one to the scene of the Last Supper, which Judas has already left to confer with the priests under a neighbouring portico as to the betrayal of his Master; and eventually one arrives at the Garden of Olives, to be confronted in rapid succession with the Agony and the picture of the sleeping disciples, the rush of armed men, Judas’ traitorous kiss and Peter in the act of striking at Malchus. Following the multitude for some little distance one reaches the heart of the city, where the successive incidents of the Passion are grouped each under a separate portico showing on to a spacious courtyard in the very centre of the panel—Christ before Pilate and his expostulating wife, the Flagellation, the Crowning with thorns and mocking of Our Lord, Christ before Herod and the Ecce Homo, with the preparations for the Crucifixion going on the while in the open courtyard. These completed, the mournful procession passes under a palace gateway into the forefront of the picture, bears to the left and issues through the city gate, where the Mother of Christ, the beloved disciple, and the holy women have gathered together, into the open country, where at the foot of the hilly way that skirts the city walls Simon of Cyrene comes forward to relieve the fallen Saviour in the burden of the Cross; presently the procession is lost to view at a bend of the road only to reappear on the slopes of Calvary, which is triplicated here for the purpose of re-enacting the three scenes associated with it—of the Nailing to the Cross, of the Death of Our Lord, and of the Descent from the Cross. Lower down on the left we assist at the Entombment and at the Deliverance of the Just from Limbo, and further away we witness the Resurrection and, in the far background, the manifestation of Our Lord to Mary Magdalene. Viewed as a whole it is a marvel of composition enhanced by a brilliancy of colouring, and every scene in it a delicately finished miniature. Apart from the architectural setting, the three Calvaries, and the duplication of the Holy Sepulchre imposed by the necessity of representing both the Entombment and the Resurrection, the most captious can discover nothing to abate the enthusiastic admiration which this altarpiece excites, or one’s wonder at the masterful manner in which Memlinc has succeeded in developing the story of the Passion in some twenty scenes necessitating the introduction of considerably over two hundred figures, apart from the animal and bird life that supplements them, within the narrow compass of a panel only fifty-five centimetres high by ninety centimetres in breadth! The extreme corners of the foreground are filled in with exquisite portraits of the donors, the miniaturist William Vrelant and his wife, for whom one feels that Memlinc has tried to excel himself in this masterwork.

Scarcely less surprising as a composition is the story in bright luminous colours told in the Munich altarpiece, a work of considerably larger dimensions (80 by 180 centimetres), commonly described as “The Seven Joys of Mary,” but for which the more appropriate title has been suggested of “Christ the Light of the World.” It is the story of the manifestation of Our Lord to the Gentile world in the persons of the Wise Men from the East, closely correspondent, as was Memlinc’s wont, to the Gospel narrative and Christian tradition, except perhaps in this one respect, that the artist’s innate love of moving water has suggested to him the original conceit of depicting the departing Magi as setting sail for their distant homes across the boundless waters. This portion of the background and the greater wealth of surrounding landscape greatly relieves the architectural setting, which is not so overpowering as in the Turin altarpiece. The composition too, as becomes the subject, is teeming with the joy of life in varying aspects. Here we have the gay cavalcade with streaming banners galloping along the road to Bethlehem, there the shepherds peacefully tending their flocks on the grassy slope, their watch beguiled by the strains of a bagpipe; here the scene at the Manger, all love and devotion, and the running stream nigh by at which the horses are being watered the while the Magi are making their act of adoration, there the kings with their retinues triumphantly riding away over the rocky heights; anon we have the sequence of miracles that attended the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt—the wheat that grew and ripened in a day, the date-palm bending to offer its fruit to the Virgin Mother resting beneath its shade while the unsaddled ass grazes as it lists and Joseph fetches water from a neighbouring spring; elsewhere the risen Christ appearing to the fishing apostles, and far beyond across the waters in the background the setting of the sun in all its glory. Every scene that lends itself to the treatment has its beauty enhanced by the beauties of Nature. The one sorrowful incident in the whole story, the Massacre of the Innocents, is a mere suggestion of this cruel episode. Memlinc’s nature shrank from the interpretation of evil, and in this particular instance has admirably succeeded in commemorating the incident of the massacre without involving it in any of its horror. A pleasing innovation may also be noticed in the treatment of his portraits of donors, Peter Bultinc and his son being introduced as devout spectators of the scene presented in the stable at Bethlehem, which they humbly contemplate through an opening in the wall. “The more one examines this picture, the greater one’s astonishment at the amount of work which Memlinc has lavished on it, at the exquisite beauty of the various scenes, the marvellous ingenuity displayed in separating them one from another, and the skill with which they balance and are brought into one harmonious whole.”

The Turin altarpiece was completed not later than 1478, in which year William Vrelant gave it to the Guild of Saint Luke and Saint John (Stationers); the Munich one at any rate some time before Easter 1480, at which date the donor presented it to the Guild of Tanners. But already then Memlinc had undertaken the triptych in the Hospital of Saint John painted to the order of its spiritual master, Brother John Floreins, acknowledged to be technically the most perfect work he completed before the end of 1480; and also the larger triptych for the high altar of the Hospital church.