MEMLING (MEMLINC), HANS. - Flemish painter, b. in the region of Mainz, probably at Mömlingen, ca. 1433, d. at Bruges on 11 Aug. 1494. He worked at Bruges for the Hospital of St. John, for the guilds and also for the Italian agents of the Medici (ca. 1470-1472): a Last Judgment for Angelo Tani, now in the church of St. Mary at Danzig, and the portraits of Tommaso Portinari and his wife, today in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
His earliest works: Madonna and Child among Angels, Saints and Donors (collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth), of 1468; The Virgin with a Donor (Liechtenstein collection at Vaduz), of 1472, reveal him as an already formed artist, with a vision of his own, expressive of the interior life, calm and contemplative. From '75 to '90 M. worked especially for the Hospital of St. John and for the municipal magistrates of Bruges: the Moreel family, the Nieuwenhove family. Mention should be made of the Moreel Portraits (1478, Museum of Brussels), the Portrait of Maria Moreel called the Sibyl Sambeth (Hospital of St. John at Bruges), the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, and the Adoration of the Magi (1479, Hospital of St. John), the Seven Joys of the Virgin (1480, Pinacoteca of Munich), to arrive at what is regarded as his masterpiece, the altarpiece with St. Christopher, St. Maurus and St. Giles (Municipal Museum of Bruges), completed in 1484 for G. Moreel. And then also the diptych with the Virgin and the donor Martin Van Nieuwenhove (1487, Hospital of St. John), the Diptych with the Floreyns family at the feet of the Virgin (1489, Paris, Louvre), and his most celebrated work, the Reliquary of St. Ursula (1489, Hospital of St. John at Bruges), a fascinating narrative told with a miniaturist's technique; works that make M. an artist very close to Italian contemporaries such as Giovanni Bellini and Perugino. Moreover, Italian influences are certainly present in his portraits, where he, starting precisely from Rogier van der Weyden (see the Portinari Portraits), generally makes the figure stand out, slightly in three-quarter view, against the background of a landscape (Portrait of a Man in the Kaiser Friedrich of Berlin, companion piece to the Portrait of a Woman in the Louvre; Portrait of a Man in the Museum of Brussels; Portrait of an Italian in the Museum of Antwerp). Lacking evidence of the influence of Antonello, it has been thought that for these portraits the painter may have known the sculpted busts of the Italian Quattrocento. From the repertory of Italian art also derive the motifs of garlands and putti that appear in some of his late Madonnas (Florence, Uffizi; Vienna, Museum).
He had many pupils and the influence of his work is felt not only on those anonymous artists contemporary with him, called the "Master of the Legend of St. Ursula" and the "Master of the Legend of St. Lucy," but on the great Gérard David, who at Bruges was truly his successor. - See pl. XL.
Bibliography10 works
Gilberto Ronci