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拍品专文
We are grateful to Till-Holger Borchert for the following entry.
Hans Memling (c. 1440-1494) is considered one of the leading artists of the Northern Renaissance. Alongside Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts and Hugo van der Goes, he was one of the most influential and successful painters of the so-called Early Netherlandish School before 1500. Born in the first half of the 15th century in Klein Krotzenburg near Seligenstadt, a small German town situated on the river Main halfway between Offenbach and Aschaffenburg, he settled in Bruges, then the cultural and commercial center of the Burgundian Netherlands where courtiers, clergy and international merchant bankers promised artists lucrative commissions.
Nothing is known by way of facts about Memling prior to his arrival in this city in 1465, when he acquired citizenship and subsequently opened a workshop there. He presumably had received a first training close to home and it is likely that he then continued his apprenticeship as a painter in Cologne.1 He then moved to the Low Countries, where he seems to have worked for some years as a journeyman in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. Significantly enough Memling became a free master in Bruges just a short time after Rogier’s death in 1464 and Giorgio Vasari calls Memling his pupil in the Vite.2
While Rogier remained a major source of influence throughout Memling’s entire career, his impact on the younger painter’s technique and style was particularly strong during the beginning of Memling’s career in Bruges. His first known paintings are astonishingly similar to his former master and possibly enabled him to ‘brand’ himself as the legitimate heir of Rogier van der Weyden. And this strategy had success: influential and powerful patrons such as Jan Crabbe, abbot of the Cistercian convent of Ten Duinen, as well as the Burgundian statesman and bishop Ferry du Clugny, instantly entrusted major commissions to the young painter (fig. 1), testifying to Memling’s remarkable reputation.3
The representative of the Medici-bank in Bruges, the Florentine merchant banker Angelo Tani, ordered in 1467 a monumental triptych with Last Judgment from Memling, which was intended to be installed in the patron’s chapel of the Badia Fiesolana near Florence. The altarpiece was shipped to Italy in 1473 but the vessel was attacked by pirates and the altarpiece ended up as loot in Gdansk. This artistically ambitious triptych, for which Memling based certain features on older models by Rogier, also included among the blessed the likenesses of various members of Florentine merchants who were living in Bruges at the period; this apparently earned him a reputation as a portraitist who became particularly popular among the many foreigners in Bruges.4
Memling was among the first painters who placed the sitter in front of a landscape background which was especially attractive to Venetian and Florentine clients and subsequently exerted a lasting influence on Renaissance portraiture in Italy, including artists such as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Bellini, Raphael and Leonardo.5
In 1479, Memling completed the famous altarpiece for the Sint Janshospital of Bruges as well as two other small altarpieces, dated 1479 and 1480 respectively, which had been commissioned by members of the lay community of the hospital for purposes of private devotion.6 His works for the Bruges Hospital demonstrate that Memling, from the mid-1470s onwards, increasingly integrated elements of Jan van Eyck in his own work, mixing them with motives he had borrowed from Rogier van der Weyden.
Until his death in 1494, Memling continued to receive important assignments both from influential local families as well as from foreign clients and institutions, such as the Benedictine Monastery of Najera in Spain. Of the monumental altarpiece of the Ascension and Coronation of the Virgin that Memling and his workshop painted for the Spanish monastery, only the upper register with the depiction of God the father surrounded by Music Making and Singing Angels (Antwerp, KMSKA) survives.7
In addition to prestigious commissions of large-scale altarpieces, Memling produced smaller works for the purpose of private devotion which were in much demand by the prosperous citizens of Bruges and the foreigners residing in town, such as the merchant banker Tommaso Portinari and his wife Maria Baroncelli. Some of these devotional diptychs or triptychs which usually consisted of a full or half-length image of the Virgin and Child with portraits attached on one or both sides – were even ordered for high-ranking clients living abroad, such as the Florentine bishop Benedetto Pagnagnotti.8
Memling’s devotional paintings are among the earliest examples of a standardized production of paintings where a limited number of similar compositions and a few different gestures and motives were recombined into countless seemingly original compositions. By the sixteenth century, painters like Gerard David and Joos van Cleve produced popular devotional images without specific commissions, counting on a steady demand that would pay off.9 Memling worked already in a similar way, offering basic composition design to his clients that he and his collaborators then, by way of “made to measure”, personalized. In addition to including the clients’ portraits, this could also mean choosing decorations, backgrounds or even the color of the clothing of the Holy figures.
Even one of Memling’s most famous and artistically ambitious works – the fascinating diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove of 1487, with its complex spatial arrangement, was in fact based on such a standardized composition. The diptych (fig. 2) was commissioned by a young man from a politically influential Bruges family for a private oratory that assertively also visualized the sitter’s social status and – by way of including the coat of arms – his family’s ancestry.10 In this masterpiece Memling shows the Virgin and Child in an interior with a convex mirror hanging in the back left of the Virgin. The mirror – undoubtedly a tribute to Jan van Eyck’s use of illusionistic mirrors – reflects the rearview of the Virgin as well as the donor’s portrait, suggesting that both are physically sharing the same room. The portrait of Maarten van Nieuwenhove who is praying in front of an open prayerbook, however, appears on the right wing of the triptych, divided from the object of his devotion by the original frame.
Technical investigation shows that Memling originally had painted the Virgin and Child in front of a landscape and only changed the setting into an interior at the time that the donor’s portrait painted, presumably on request of his Bruges client.11 The original composition is very similar to that of the Virgin and Child that once was the center of the devotional triptych ordered by the Florentine merchant Benedetto Portinari which is dated in 1487 as well (fig. 3). In both paintings Memling painted the Infant Jesus with his legs stretched to the right on a cushion which was placed on a balustrade. The child’s pose is identical in both paintings, suggesting the use of the same cartoon. Only the gesture of Jesus’ arms differs in both versions; the Virgin too is based on the same model. In both panels, she supports the Infant by placing her left hand on his breast, while her right hands perform different gestures. Her head is shown at a slightly different angle, and she is dressed conspicuously richer in the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove.
Like his contemporaries, Memling didn’t work alone. In Bruges he headed a prolific and efficiently organized workshop where two apprentices are documented in the 1480s and several journeymen collaborated.12 It has been suggested by way of hypothesis that both Juan de Flandes and the Estonian painter Michel Sittow worked for some time with Memling in the earliest stages of their career. The use of identical models for different paintings strongly suggests that even in his most prestigious works Memling relied to a varying degree on collaborators.
In less prestigious works he made during his mature career, he likely entrusted more and more parts of the execution to assistants and only interfered in the preparatory drawing as well as the finishing touches. The problem is that the known body of work of Memling after the 1470s is so homogenous that it usually is hard to identify individual collaborators within the workshop.
In his 1994 monograph on the painter, the late Dirk De Vos convincingly suggested that some depictions of Memling’s famous Reliquary shrine of Saint Ursula in Bruges, dated by circumstantial evidence to 1489, were painted by assistants: namely the roundels depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, the 11.000 Virgins of Saint Ursula as well as music making angels that appear on the painted roof on both sides of the shrine.13 The shrine with its small-scale depictions of the legend of Saint Ursula was painted approximately at the exact same time as the monumental altarpiece for the Benedictine Abbey of the Kings of Navarra in Spain of which only the top part – God the Father with singing and music making angels – survives. In both cases, despite the remarkable difference in scale, the master relied on the assistance of collaborators.
When Memling, after almost thirty years of prolific work, passed away in 1494, the production of his Bruges workshop didn’t come to a sudden halt. In such instances it was usually artists’ widows who continued the business. But Memling’s wife had already died by 1487, and the city had appointed guardians for the couple’s children who were to ensure that the descendants would participate in inheriting their mother’s belongings, among them the otherwise unknown painter Lodewijk Boel who may have at an earlier stage been a collaborator of Memling and enjoyed the master’s trust and who later bought Memling’s house.14 There were additional guardians appointed when Memling died. Boel or another assistant of Memling continued to run the workshop where the panels that had been left unfinished by Memling were now completed by former collaborators. It is likely that what was considered a major asset of any Renaissance workshop – Memling’s pattern and model drawings, the cartons and tracings – were then divided and continued to be used for some time.15
The operations that Memling’s collaborators were able to set up for themselves were in all likelihood functioning on a smaller scale. However there are a few paintings that must have been produced by collaborators or assistants after Memling had passed away. Among them is the small triptych of the Calvary in Budapest that Sacha Zdanov has tentatively linked to other panels from the time around 1500 and attributed to the Master of the Santa Barbara Lamentation (after an eponymous panel in California);16 another example – clearly a fragment of a larger altarpiece – is a Nativity which has recently been acquired by the Phoebus-Foundation (fig. 4). Both works have in common that their preparatory underdrawing shares some significant features with extant work by Hans Memling, and therefore might – at least in part – have been designed by the Master himself. But the painted surfaces of both works are executed in a very different way, softer in the case of the Budapest triptych and harder with more contrast in the case of the Phoebus-Nativity.17
The Virgin and Child with Music Making angel, formerly in the collection of Barons de Béthune and according to family tradition in the possession of this noble family from Flanders since the 16th century, is yet the work of a third follower of Memling who likely spent time in the workshop and gained access to the master’s models. The Virgin and Child are clearly modelled after the left wing of the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, but the setting has been altered. The anonymous painter added three simply dressed angels that play various instruments. The instruments can also be seen on the extant fragments from Memling’s Najera-Altarpiece, now in Antwerp (fig. 5).18 The Virgin and Child as well as the interior setting follow Memling’s masterpiece very closely, whereas the music making angels are related to the depictions on the Shrine of Saint Ursula and the Virgin and Child with Music Making angels by another follower of Memling, now in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Notre-Dame University in South Bend Indiana, which has partly been heavily enhanced during a 20th century restoration by the Antwerp restorer Josef Van der Veken, who knew the Béthune-Virgin well.19
The present painting was first exhibited in the exhibition Les Primitifs Flamands in Bruges in 1902 with an attribution to Memling or his workshop in George Hulin de Loo’s Catalogue Critique.20 Max J. Friedländer believed the painting to be by a follower of Memling who copied the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove.21 The painting was once more exhibited in Bruges in 1939 as a partial copy after the Bruges’ diptych.22
The assessment offered in 1939 and before by Friedländer is understandable from the knowledge available at the time. Compared to the painted surface of the Bruges’ diptych, the Virgin and Child with Music Making Angels from the Béthune collection is much harder in character and the paint is much more coarsely applied. Part of this impression, no doubt, derives from the fact that the painting has been restored by the Antwerp restorer Josef Van der Veken who went very far in repainting damaged parts in order to achieve a harmonious picture.23 With our understanding of the painting technique of the Memling Workshop and the creative process of the artist, a more positive attitude – similar to that of Georges Hulin de Loo – seems in order.24 The panel is of primordial importance in establishing the aftermath of Memling’s production in Bruges in the late 15th and early 16th century. Because of its proximity to one of the masterpieces of Memling, it sheds light on the production process in both the master’s workshop and among his followers.
The underdrawing resembles the graphic vocabulary of preparatory drawings of the Memling workshop very closely. Whereas Memling himself often adapted his compositions in the underdrawing stage in several steps and in a seemingly spontaneous manner, his underdrawing often seems extremely loose sketchy.25 The loose lines give the impression of spontaneous creativity but conceal the fact that workshop members needed to understand the master’s intention, the preparatory drawings must have been very precise to provide the necessary guidance. In the present panel, such alterations are all but absent in the underdrawing, which is precise and controlled. The painter stayed true to Memling’s original design which he painted to the best of his abilities.
It is not clear, if the decision of including the music-making angels and altering the stained-glass images on the panel – they now show Saints Jerome, Christopher, Martin and Andrew – was made by the anonymous collaborator as part of negotiating the commission, which most certainly would have included at least one donor wing with his patron. It is also possible that the entire composition was originally derived from Memling and thus represents just another versions of the Van Nieuwenhove-Portinari prototypes. The dendrochronological dating suggests the year 1483 as the earliest possible date of execution.26 However, such early dating assumes a minimum drying time of two years which might actually have been much longer. From the stylistic point of view – that is to say the manner of applying the brush, the use of underdrawing, the colors and the surface quality – it is unlikely that the painting was made during Memling’s lifetime. The workshop certainly remained active for a few years after the Master’s death in 1494. A more likely scenario should assume that the painting was painted by a collaborators in the Memling workshop between c. 1495 and 1500.
Till-Holger Borchert
Endnotes:
1. See B.G. Lane, Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth Century Bruges, London and Turnhout, 2009, pp. 43-62.
2. For a survey on Memling’s origins and career, see D. De Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works, London, 1994, pp. 15-58; T.-H. Borchert, ‘Memling: An Introductory Sketch,’ Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a reunited altarpiece, exhibition catalogue, John Marciari ed., London, 2016, pp. 45-61.
3. See N. Geirnaert, ‘Johannes Crabbe, Abbot of Ten Duinen 1457-1488,’ Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a reunited altarpiece, exhibition catalogue, John Marciari ed., London, 2016, pp. 63-72; and M. W. Ainsworth’s entry on Memling’s Annunciation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437490 (accessed 10 April 2024).
4. P. Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting: 1400-1500, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 53-75; see also B.G. Lane, op. cit., 2009, pp. 221-248.
5. T.-H. Borchert ed., Memling and the Art of Portraiture, London, 2005.
6. A. Koopstra, Hans Memling in Bruges, Veurne, 2024, passim.
7. L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, Turnhout, 2021.
8. F. Veratelli, ‘I tratti del potere: I client italiani di Hans Memling,’ Memling: Rinascimento fiammingo, T.-H. Borchert ed., Milan, 2014, pp. 53-65.
9. See M.W. Ainsworth, Gerard David: Purity of Vision and in Age of Transition, New York, 1998, pp. 257-312; J. C. Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages: Studies in Society and Visual Culture, University Park, 1998, pp. 132-160.
10. See T.-H. Borchert, op. cit. 2005, pp. 173-174; Lane, op. cit., 2009, pp. 65-68, 267.
11. J.O. Hand, C. Metzger and R. Spronk, Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 178-185, 292-293.
12. In 1480 he took a certain Hannekin Verhanneman as an apprentice, followed by Passchier van der Meersch in 1483/4.
13. See D. De Vos, op. cit., 1994, pp. 296-303.
14. See D. De Vos, op. cit., 1994, 410-411, see also A. Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge: Bronnen voor de Schilderkunst te Brugge tot de Dood van Gerard David, I, Brussels, 1989, pp. 53-54.
15. See J.C. Wilson, op. cit., 1998, pp. 155-160.
16. D. Martens, S. Zdanov and A. López Redondo, ‘Nouvelles recherches sur le maître Brugeois de la légende de Saint Goedelieve: ses relastions avec Hans Memling et avec l’Espagne,’ Revue Belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art / Belgisch tijdschrift voor oudheidkunde en kunstgeschiedenis, XCI, 2022, pp. 5-59, here pp. 18-24.
17. T.-H. Borchert, ‘Memling’s Workhop,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 166-190, esp. 185-190.
18. In his earliest known works, such as the Virgin and Child in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas or the Last Judgment Triptych in Gdansk, Memling depicts music-making angels, and the motive remains popular in his oeuvre. His angels usually play flute, organs, lutes or other string instruments, see K. Moens, ‘Music and Musical Instruments in Memling’s God the Father with singing and Music-Making Angels,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 226-242.
19. Published by Friedländer in 1937 as Memling in his supplement to Die Altniederländische Malerei, which was published by Slijthof in Leiden (suppl. 227); see J.-L. Pypaert, ‘Early Netherlandish Painting XV? Joseph van der Veken,’ Autour de la ‘Madeleine Renders’: Un aspect de l’histoire des collections, de la restauration et de le contrefaçon dans la première Moitié du Xxe Siécle, D. Vanwijnsberghe ed., Brussels, 2008, p. 264, cat. 233.
20. G. Hulin de Loo, Catalogue Critique, Ghent, 1902, p. 19, no. 83.
21. M. J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, VI, Berlin, 1928, p, 118, no. 14a.
22. Exposition Memling: Catalogue, Bruges, 1939, pp. 68-69, no. 23 (as copy).
23. See J.-L. Pypaert, op. cit., 2008, p. 246, no. 162.
24. See also the similar conclusion who use the term ‘Disciple of Memling’: D. Martens and C. Van Hauwermeiren, ‘Autour de Hans Memling: La Madone de Béthune et la Madone Van Nieuwenhove,’ Koregos: Revue et Encyclopédie Multimédia des Arts, LV, 2013.
25. A very useful analysis of Memling’s underdrawing is M.W. Ainsworth, ‘Memling’s preliminary working stages: The Najera panels in context,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 142-164.
26. Dendrochronological analysis by Prof. Dr. Peter Klein, dated 3 December 2002.
Hans Memling (c. 1440-1494) is considered one of the leading artists of the Northern Renaissance. Alongside Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts and Hugo van der Goes, he was one of the most influential and successful painters of the so-called Early Netherlandish School before 1500. Born in the first half of the 15th century in Klein Krotzenburg near Seligenstadt, a small German town situated on the river Main halfway between Offenbach and Aschaffenburg, he settled in Bruges, then the cultural and commercial center of the Burgundian Netherlands where courtiers, clergy and international merchant bankers promised artists lucrative commissions.
Nothing is known by way of facts about Memling prior to his arrival in this city in 1465, when he acquired citizenship and subsequently opened a workshop there. He presumably had received a first training close to home and it is likely that he then continued his apprenticeship as a painter in Cologne.1 He then moved to the Low Countries, where he seems to have worked for some years as a journeyman in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. Significantly enough Memling became a free master in Bruges just a short time after Rogier’s death in 1464 and Giorgio Vasari calls Memling his pupil in the Vite.2
While Rogier remained a major source of influence throughout Memling’s entire career, his impact on the younger painter’s technique and style was particularly strong during the beginning of Memling’s career in Bruges. His first known paintings are astonishingly similar to his former master and possibly enabled him to ‘brand’ himself as the legitimate heir of Rogier van der Weyden. And this strategy had success: influential and powerful patrons such as Jan Crabbe, abbot of the Cistercian convent of Ten Duinen, as well as the Burgundian statesman and bishop Ferry du Clugny, instantly entrusted major commissions to the young painter (fig. 1), testifying to Memling’s remarkable reputation.3
The representative of the Medici-bank in Bruges, the Florentine merchant banker Angelo Tani, ordered in 1467 a monumental triptych with Last Judgment from Memling, which was intended to be installed in the patron’s chapel of the Badia Fiesolana near Florence. The altarpiece was shipped to Italy in 1473 but the vessel was attacked by pirates and the altarpiece ended up as loot in Gdansk. This artistically ambitious triptych, for which Memling based certain features on older models by Rogier, also included among the blessed the likenesses of various members of Florentine merchants who were living in Bruges at the period; this apparently earned him a reputation as a portraitist who became particularly popular among the many foreigners in Bruges.4
Memling was among the first painters who placed the sitter in front of a landscape background which was especially attractive to Venetian and Florentine clients and subsequently exerted a lasting influence on Renaissance portraiture in Italy, including artists such as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Bellini, Raphael and Leonardo.5
In 1479, Memling completed the famous altarpiece for the Sint Janshospital of Bruges as well as two other small altarpieces, dated 1479 and 1480 respectively, which had been commissioned by members of the lay community of the hospital for purposes of private devotion.6 His works for the Bruges Hospital demonstrate that Memling, from the mid-1470s onwards, increasingly integrated elements of Jan van Eyck in his own work, mixing them with motives he had borrowed from Rogier van der Weyden.
Until his death in 1494, Memling continued to receive important assignments both from influential local families as well as from foreign clients and institutions, such as the Benedictine Monastery of Najera in Spain. Of the monumental altarpiece of the Ascension and Coronation of the Virgin that Memling and his workshop painted for the Spanish monastery, only the upper register with the depiction of God the father surrounded by Music Making and Singing Angels (Antwerp, KMSKA) survives.7
In addition to prestigious commissions of large-scale altarpieces, Memling produced smaller works for the purpose of private devotion which were in much demand by the prosperous citizens of Bruges and the foreigners residing in town, such as the merchant banker Tommaso Portinari and his wife Maria Baroncelli. Some of these devotional diptychs or triptychs which usually consisted of a full or half-length image of the Virgin and Child with portraits attached on one or both sides – were even ordered for high-ranking clients living abroad, such as the Florentine bishop Benedetto Pagnagnotti.8
Memling’s devotional paintings are among the earliest examples of a standardized production of paintings where a limited number of similar compositions and a few different gestures and motives were recombined into countless seemingly original compositions. By the sixteenth century, painters like Gerard David and Joos van Cleve produced popular devotional images without specific commissions, counting on a steady demand that would pay off.9 Memling worked already in a similar way, offering basic composition design to his clients that he and his collaborators then, by way of “made to measure”, personalized. In addition to including the clients’ portraits, this could also mean choosing decorations, backgrounds or even the color of the clothing of the Holy figures.
Even one of Memling’s most famous and artistically ambitious works – the fascinating diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove of 1487, with its complex spatial arrangement, was in fact based on such a standardized composition. The diptych (fig. 2) was commissioned by a young man from a politically influential Bruges family for a private oratory that assertively also visualized the sitter’s social status and – by way of including the coat of arms – his family’s ancestry.10 In this masterpiece Memling shows the Virgin and Child in an interior with a convex mirror hanging in the back left of the Virgin. The mirror – undoubtedly a tribute to Jan van Eyck’s use of illusionistic mirrors – reflects the rearview of the Virgin as well as the donor’s portrait, suggesting that both are physically sharing the same room. The portrait of Maarten van Nieuwenhove who is praying in front of an open prayerbook, however, appears on the right wing of the triptych, divided from the object of his devotion by the original frame.
Technical investigation shows that Memling originally had painted the Virgin and Child in front of a landscape and only changed the setting into an interior at the time that the donor’s portrait painted, presumably on request of his Bruges client.11 The original composition is very similar to that of the Virgin and Child that once was the center of the devotional triptych ordered by the Florentine merchant Benedetto Portinari which is dated in 1487 as well (fig. 3). In both paintings Memling painted the Infant Jesus with his legs stretched to the right on a cushion which was placed on a balustrade. The child’s pose is identical in both paintings, suggesting the use of the same cartoon. Only the gesture of Jesus’ arms differs in both versions; the Virgin too is based on the same model. In both panels, she supports the Infant by placing her left hand on his breast, while her right hands perform different gestures. Her head is shown at a slightly different angle, and she is dressed conspicuously richer in the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove.
Like his contemporaries, Memling didn’t work alone. In Bruges he headed a prolific and efficiently organized workshop where two apprentices are documented in the 1480s and several journeymen collaborated.12 It has been suggested by way of hypothesis that both Juan de Flandes and the Estonian painter Michel Sittow worked for some time with Memling in the earliest stages of their career. The use of identical models for different paintings strongly suggests that even in his most prestigious works Memling relied to a varying degree on collaborators.
In less prestigious works he made during his mature career, he likely entrusted more and more parts of the execution to assistants and only interfered in the preparatory drawing as well as the finishing touches. The problem is that the known body of work of Memling after the 1470s is so homogenous that it usually is hard to identify individual collaborators within the workshop.
In his 1994 monograph on the painter, the late Dirk De Vos convincingly suggested that some depictions of Memling’s famous Reliquary shrine of Saint Ursula in Bruges, dated by circumstantial evidence to 1489, were painted by assistants: namely the roundels depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, the 11.000 Virgins of Saint Ursula as well as music making angels that appear on the painted roof on both sides of the shrine.13 The shrine with its small-scale depictions of the legend of Saint Ursula was painted approximately at the exact same time as the monumental altarpiece for the Benedictine Abbey of the Kings of Navarra in Spain of which only the top part – God the Father with singing and music making angels – survives. In both cases, despite the remarkable difference in scale, the master relied on the assistance of collaborators.
When Memling, after almost thirty years of prolific work, passed away in 1494, the production of his Bruges workshop didn’t come to a sudden halt. In such instances it was usually artists’ widows who continued the business. But Memling’s wife had already died by 1487, and the city had appointed guardians for the couple’s children who were to ensure that the descendants would participate in inheriting their mother’s belongings, among them the otherwise unknown painter Lodewijk Boel who may have at an earlier stage been a collaborator of Memling and enjoyed the master’s trust and who later bought Memling’s house.14 There were additional guardians appointed when Memling died. Boel or another assistant of Memling continued to run the workshop where the panels that had been left unfinished by Memling were now completed by former collaborators. It is likely that what was considered a major asset of any Renaissance workshop – Memling’s pattern and model drawings, the cartons and tracings – were then divided and continued to be used for some time.15
The operations that Memling’s collaborators were able to set up for themselves were in all likelihood functioning on a smaller scale. However there are a few paintings that must have been produced by collaborators or assistants after Memling had passed away. Among them is the small triptych of the Calvary in Budapest that Sacha Zdanov has tentatively linked to other panels from the time around 1500 and attributed to the Master of the Santa Barbara Lamentation (after an eponymous panel in California);16 another example – clearly a fragment of a larger altarpiece – is a Nativity which has recently been acquired by the Phoebus-Foundation (fig. 4). Both works have in common that their preparatory underdrawing shares some significant features with extant work by Hans Memling, and therefore might – at least in part – have been designed by the Master himself. But the painted surfaces of both works are executed in a very different way, softer in the case of the Budapest triptych and harder with more contrast in the case of the Phoebus-Nativity.17
The Virgin and Child with Music Making angel, formerly in the collection of Barons de Béthune and according to family tradition in the possession of this noble family from Flanders since the 16th century, is yet the work of a third follower of Memling who likely spent time in the workshop and gained access to the master’s models. The Virgin and Child are clearly modelled after the left wing of the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, but the setting has been altered. The anonymous painter added three simply dressed angels that play various instruments. The instruments can also be seen on the extant fragments from Memling’s Najera-Altarpiece, now in Antwerp (fig. 5).18 The Virgin and Child as well as the interior setting follow Memling’s masterpiece very closely, whereas the music making angels are related to the depictions on the Shrine of Saint Ursula and the Virgin and Child with Music Making angels by another follower of Memling, now in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Notre-Dame University in South Bend Indiana, which has partly been heavily enhanced during a 20th century restoration by the Antwerp restorer Josef Van der Veken, who knew the Béthune-Virgin well.19
The present painting was first exhibited in the exhibition Les Primitifs Flamands in Bruges in 1902 with an attribution to Memling or his workshop in George Hulin de Loo’s Catalogue Critique.20 Max J. Friedländer believed the painting to be by a follower of Memling who copied the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove.21 The painting was once more exhibited in Bruges in 1939 as a partial copy after the Bruges’ diptych.22
The assessment offered in 1939 and before by Friedländer is understandable from the knowledge available at the time. Compared to the painted surface of the Bruges’ diptych, the Virgin and Child with Music Making Angels from the Béthune collection is much harder in character and the paint is much more coarsely applied. Part of this impression, no doubt, derives from the fact that the painting has been restored by the Antwerp restorer Josef Van der Veken who went very far in repainting damaged parts in order to achieve a harmonious picture.23 With our understanding of the painting technique of the Memling Workshop and the creative process of the artist, a more positive attitude – similar to that of Georges Hulin de Loo – seems in order.24 The panel is of primordial importance in establishing the aftermath of Memling’s production in Bruges in the late 15th and early 16th century. Because of its proximity to one of the masterpieces of Memling, it sheds light on the production process in both the master’s workshop and among his followers.
The underdrawing resembles the graphic vocabulary of preparatory drawings of the Memling workshop very closely. Whereas Memling himself often adapted his compositions in the underdrawing stage in several steps and in a seemingly spontaneous manner, his underdrawing often seems extremely loose sketchy.25 The loose lines give the impression of spontaneous creativity but conceal the fact that workshop members needed to understand the master’s intention, the preparatory drawings must have been very precise to provide the necessary guidance. In the present panel, such alterations are all but absent in the underdrawing, which is precise and controlled. The painter stayed true to Memling’s original design which he painted to the best of his abilities.
It is not clear, if the decision of including the music-making angels and altering the stained-glass images on the panel – they now show Saints Jerome, Christopher, Martin and Andrew – was made by the anonymous collaborator as part of negotiating the commission, which most certainly would have included at least one donor wing with his patron. It is also possible that the entire composition was originally derived from Memling and thus represents just another versions of the Van Nieuwenhove-Portinari prototypes. The dendrochronological dating suggests the year 1483 as the earliest possible date of execution.26 However, such early dating assumes a minimum drying time of two years which might actually have been much longer. From the stylistic point of view – that is to say the manner of applying the brush, the use of underdrawing, the colors and the surface quality – it is unlikely that the painting was made during Memling’s lifetime. The workshop certainly remained active for a few years after the Master’s death in 1494. A more likely scenario should assume that the painting was painted by a collaborators in the Memling workshop between c. 1495 and 1500.
Till-Holger Borchert
Endnotes:
1. See B.G. Lane, Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth Century Bruges, London and Turnhout, 2009, pp. 43-62.
2. For a survey on Memling’s origins and career, see D. De Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works, London, 1994, pp. 15-58; T.-H. Borchert, ‘Memling: An Introductory Sketch,’ Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a reunited altarpiece, exhibition catalogue, John Marciari ed., London, 2016, pp. 45-61.
3. See N. Geirnaert, ‘Johannes Crabbe, Abbot of Ten Duinen 1457-1488,’ Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a reunited altarpiece, exhibition catalogue, John Marciari ed., London, 2016, pp. 63-72; and M. W. Ainsworth’s entry on Memling’s Annunciation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437490 (accessed 10 April 2024).
4. P. Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting: 1400-1500, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 53-75; see also B.G. Lane, op. cit., 2009, pp. 221-248.
5. T.-H. Borchert ed., Memling and the Art of Portraiture, London, 2005.
6. A. Koopstra, Hans Memling in Bruges, Veurne, 2024, passim.
7. L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, Turnhout, 2021.
8. F. Veratelli, ‘I tratti del potere: I client italiani di Hans Memling,’ Memling: Rinascimento fiammingo, T.-H. Borchert ed., Milan, 2014, pp. 53-65.
9. See M.W. Ainsworth, Gerard David: Purity of Vision and in Age of Transition, New York, 1998, pp. 257-312; J. C. Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages: Studies in Society and Visual Culture, University Park, 1998, pp. 132-160.
10. See T.-H. Borchert, op. cit. 2005, pp. 173-174; Lane, op. cit., 2009, pp. 65-68, 267.
11. J.O. Hand, C. Metzger and R. Spronk, Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 178-185, 292-293.
12. In 1480 he took a certain Hannekin Verhanneman as an apprentice, followed by Passchier van der Meersch in 1483/4.
13. See D. De Vos, op. cit., 1994, pp. 296-303.
14. See D. De Vos, op. cit., 1994, 410-411, see also A. Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge: Bronnen voor de Schilderkunst te Brugge tot de Dood van Gerard David, I, Brussels, 1989, pp. 53-54.
15. See J.C. Wilson, op. cit., 1998, pp. 155-160.
16. D. Martens, S. Zdanov and A. López Redondo, ‘Nouvelles recherches sur le maître Brugeois de la légende de Saint Goedelieve: ses relastions avec Hans Memling et avec l’Espagne,’ Revue Belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art / Belgisch tijdschrift voor oudheidkunde en kunstgeschiedenis, XCI, 2022, pp. 5-59, here pp. 18-24.
17. T.-H. Borchert, ‘Memling’s Workhop,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 166-190, esp. 185-190.
18. In his earliest known works, such as the Virgin and Child in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas or the Last Judgment Triptych in Gdansk, Memling depicts music-making angels, and the motive remains popular in his oeuvre. His angels usually play flute, organs, lutes or other string instruments, see K. Moens, ‘Music and Musical Instruments in Memling’s God the Father with singing and Music-Making Angels,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 226-242.
19. Published by Friedländer in 1937 as Memling in his supplement to Die Altniederländische Malerei, which was published by Slijthof in Leiden (suppl. 227); see J.-L. Pypaert, ‘Early Netherlandish Painting XV? Joseph van der Veken,’ Autour de la ‘Madeleine Renders’: Un aspect de l’histoire des collections, de la restauration et de le contrefaçon dans la première Moitié du Xxe Siécle, D. Vanwijnsberghe ed., Brussels, 2008, p. 264, cat. 233.
20. G. Hulin de Loo, Catalogue Critique, Ghent, 1902, p. 19, no. 83.
21. M. J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, VI, Berlin, 1928, p, 118, no. 14a.
22. Exposition Memling: Catalogue, Bruges, 1939, pp. 68-69, no. 23 (as copy).
23. See J.-L. Pypaert, op. cit., 2008, p. 246, no. 162.
24. See also the similar conclusion who use the term ‘Disciple of Memling’: D. Martens and C. Van Hauwermeiren, ‘Autour de Hans Memling: La Madone de Béthune et la Madone Van Nieuwenhove,’ Koregos: Revue et Encyclopédie Multimédia des Arts, LV, 2013.
25. A very useful analysis of Memling’s underdrawing is M.W. Ainsworth, ‘Memling’s preliminary working stages: The Najera panels in context,’ Harmony in Bright Color: Memling’s ‘God the Father with Singing and Music-Making Angels’ restored, L. Klaassen and D. Lampe ed., Turnhout, 2021, pp. 142-164.
26. Dendrochronological analysis by Prof. Dr. Peter Klein, dated 3 December 2002.