MEANWHILE the contest in which the burghers of Bruges had become involved through the disputes between the States of Flanders and Maximilian over the guardianship of his son, was precipitating the decay of the town which the relentless forces of Nature had long since decreed. As early as 1410 the navigation of the great haven of the Zwijn had become impeded, and so rapidly had the silting up advanced that before the close of the century no vessel of any considerable draught was able to enter the port of Damme. Entirely engrossed in the safeguarding of the remnant of their privileges, no serious effort was made to combat the mischief, and in the end Bruges found herself absolutely cut off from the sea. On the other hand, in the enjoyment of peace and the greater security it engendered, Antwerp was slowly asserting herself and gradually attracting to her quays the merchant princes from the littoral of the Zwijn; and as commerce imperceptibly gravitated towards the city by the Scheldt the foreign consuls one by one forsook the doomed emporium of the Hanseatic League. Memlinc, pursuing the even tenor of his life, continued to produce with unabated ardour and undiminished skill, and with this period—the last fourteen years of his life—is associated the most celebrated of all his works, the marvellous Shrine of Saint Ursula, the gem of the priceless collection preserved to this day in the old chapter-room of Saint John’s Hospital. When this masterpiece was first undertaken we are not in a position to say, but it was completed in 1489, and on the 21st day of October in that year the relics for whose safe keeping it had been designed were deposited within it. But to the eighties belong other memorable productions. In 1484 was finished the interior of the altarpiece for the Moreel chantry in the Church of Saint James, now housed in the Town Gallery at Bruges; in 1487 was painted the portrait of a man preserved in the Gallery of the Offices at Florence, and also was completed the wonderful diptych for Martin van Nieuwenhove, whose portrait we reproduce as the finest example of Memlinc’s work in that particular department of art; and in 1490 the finishing touches were put to the picture in the Louvre of the Madonna and Child, to whom saintly patrons are presenting the family of James Floreins, a younger brother of the donor of the triptych picturing the Adoration of the Magi which, as we have seen, was completed in 1479.

But work, which always spelt happiness to Memlinc, meant something more to him in this decade of his career. Death in 1487 robbed him of his wife. One pictures to oneself the bereaved artist seeking solace from the grief of his widowed home in intensified application to his art. The refining discipline of sorrow was exercising its softening influence on a nature of whose religious fervour and deep piety his life-work is an abiding testimony. Absorbed in the production of the Shrine of Saint Ursula, does not the instinct of human sympathy suggest to us the artist spending himself in this inimitable work for a monument of his love worthy of the memory of the helpmate who had devoted her life to enhance the happiness of his own, herein seeking and finding surcease of the sorrow that now overshadowed his life, the burden of work balancing the burden of grief? And what a monument! So familiar is the legend and the unique interpretation of it he has left us, one feels it would be a work of supererogation to dwell on the story. But the treatment, viewed by the light of Memlinc’s bereavement, discloses fresh beauties in every panel. Critics have dwelt on the unreality of the death scenes in this shrine. Memlinc, as we have had sufficient occasion to observe, shrank from the painful expounding of evil. But for him death had no terrors: it was but the passing over to the ineffable reward of a well-spent life, and this innate feeling he conveys to us in the placid acceptance of death by Saint Ursula and her virgin band as but a stepping across the threshold to everlasting bliss. These critics, on the contrary, look for the betrayal of fear and anguish, for the manifestation of human suffering: but, like the martyrs of the early Church, we find these victims of the ruthless Huns not alone meeting their death in a spirit of resignation, but welcoming it with abounding peace and a joyful self-surrender, strong in the hope and faith of the hereafter: as the artist himself was wistfully looking forward to the day and the hour that would reunite him there to the one he had loved best on earth.

Turning to the other works of this period which we have mentioned, the Moreel altarpiece arrests our attention. Apart from the particular friendship which linked him with William Vrelant and the brothers Floreins, few men were more likely to attract him than the donor of this painting. The great-grandson of a Savoyard, Morelli, who had settled in Bruges in 1336, William Moreel, a member of the Corporation of Grocers, after filling various civic offices, was elected burgomaster of Bruges in 1478, and again in the troublous days of 1483. His standing is sufficiently attested by the record that in 1491 only ten of his fellow-citizens were taxed at a higher rate. Able and strong-willed, a capable financier and ardent politician, he was ever foremost in defending the rights and liberties of his country, and to such purpose that Maximilian, who had imprisoned him in 1481, refused when he made his peace with the States of Flanders, on 28th June 1485, to include him in the general amnesty. He retired to Nieuport, but returned to Bruges in 1488 and was chosen as treasurer of the town, and in July 1489 was presented by the magistrates with the sum of £100 in recognition of services rendered. Reference has been made to the independent portraits of Moreel, his wife, and one of his daughters. In the triptych under notice the whole family are gathered together, the father and his five sons, his wife Barbara van Vlaenderberch and their eleven daughters. The donor’s head is probably a copy of the Brussels panel, assuming that at the time it was painted, Moreel was still in prison; while that of his wife, more careworn and aged, bears testimony to the anxiety occasioned her by her husband’s confinement. This painting, too, will afford the critics who love to find fault with the Flemish school for its alleged inability to do justice to the winsomeness of child life an opportunity of reconsidering their judgment by the light of the Infant Jesus whom Saint Christopher is bearing across the ferry, and once more we are met in every portion of the picture with brilliant exemplifications of the artist’s special aptitude for interpreting the beauties of Nature.

Scarcely less attractive, and in some respects even more interesting, is the celebrated diptych associated with the name of Martin van Nieuwenhove. Here we have a departure from Memlinc’s usual practice, which was to present the Blessed Virgin and Child in an open portico, the artist picturing them in a room amply lighted by windows, the upper portions of which are adorned with pictures in stained glass, while the lower halves, mostly thrown open, reveal inimitable scenes of country life; moreover, a convex mirror at the back of Our Lady reflects the depicted scene of the interior. The donor belonged to a noble family long settled in Bruges, evidently a man of great promise, for after being elected a member of the Town Council in 1492, he was chosen burgomaster in 1497 at the early age of thirty-three. Unfortunately he passed away in the prime of life a short three years later. The painting dates from 1487, and the portrait is Memlinc’s masterpiece in that branch of art.

PLATE VII.—AN OLD LADY.

This fine portrait, with its companion, was formerly in the Meazza collection at Milan, dispersed in 1884. It was exhibited at Bruges in 1902 (No. 71), since when it has been purchased by the Louvre, where it is now to be seen. The companion portrait is in the Berlin Museum.