Yesterday I figured we’d hit the Hans Memling exhibit at St. John’s Hospital on the way to the train station. So after lunch on the main square we set our Google Maps in the direction of the Janshospitaal Museum and after missing the understated entrance about four times, I realized that we only had a half-hour before the museum closed. But it was enough to soak in Memling’s late 15th century paintings.
His work has a lot of similarities to van Eyck’s. The poised, passionless, religious figures in voluminous colorful robes, the background gardens and attention to detail. A contemporary of van Eyck’s, Memling was older, a Northern European master that certainly influenced van Eyck. The difference is that Memling’s figures seem flatter, as if his experimentation with the new mixtures of oil paint needed to be furthered by van Eyck.
One of his masterpieces is The Shrine of St. Ursula, a chapel-shaped container made to hold relics of St. Ursula.
Again, like the virtual reality tour of van Eyck creating the Ghent Altarpiece, the Memling museum had an immersive exhibit in the attic called “Closer to Memling Experience.” The interactive audiovisual installation edited together Memling paintings on a large screen so that they blended into each other. The progression really did bring me into Memling’s medieval world. Figures in the paintings laughed at their own jokes, winked, and flipped open the lids to tankards of beer while in the background waste water was dumped from windows and dogs bared their teeth. It was quite amusing, but the main impression I was left with was the balance of rich color.
