Brugge Art

Followers of this blog know that we have a special interest in and affection for the art of the later Medieval and Renaissance North. Where we are now, in the so-called Low Countries, is where it began. Much of that art was dispersed to the invading Spanish and Hapsburg armies and courts and cities over the centuries. And indeed we have seen it all over Europe. All over. Everywhere. (Ask me about Bosch and the Prado). It was Jan van Eyck, in the early 1400s, who began mixing pigment with oil and who achieved clarity, detail, color, richness, and more that the world had never seen in painting. It was nearly a century, well after the high Renaissance was over there, before oil painting became the practice in Italy. Van Eyck's successors, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, Provost, Bosch, the Breughels, Durer, and others carried the tradition further, and much of their work is still here. That's mostly why we came to Brugge. We'll see the crowning masterpiece of the early northern era, van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, when we visit Ghent in a week.

Brugge's museums have their act together in many ways, not
least this delivery truck, itself worthy of study

Our first stop was the Hospital of St. Jan; for reasonably
healthy atheists, we seem to spend a lot of time in churches
and hospitals; oh well, this is a treasure chest, decorated
by Memling, the sufferings and martyrdom of St. Ursula
(and the 11,000 virgins who accompanied her)

Virgin and Child, by an anonymous 14th century master; not
a master of anatomy, however

Upper floor of the main hall of the hospital, with vaulting
exposed

Memling's great altarpiece of the two Johns (baptist and
evangelist), done for the Hospital

Anything concerning any of the
evangelist Johns--scholars argue there were
at least three hands behind the works
attributed to him by the early Church--
is worthy of further examination; here he is,
receiving the Revelation

Seven-headed aerial combat, just as we saw in Angers

Devotional diptych of Mother and Child and Maartin van
Nieuwenhoven, by Memling 

Up closer, with this very early mirror shot; the first, of course,
was a van Eyck, and generation before; mirror shots would 
become quite the thing in Flemish painting (and Spanish) in 
a couple more centuries...

Another Memling triptych, that of (commissioned by) Adriaan
Reins

And now we move to the Groeningmuseum; a Last Judgment
by Jan Provost

Who apparently was taking lessons from Bosch

Speaking of whom, here is a Bosch Last Judgment; just like
in the Prado, the Bosch here draws crowds, and people like
us can spend very long periods of time looking at them

Since any few square inches of these works
yield interesting insights...about what, we
are not sure...the late Medieval mind, the mind
of Hieronymus Bosch, trouble brewing in the
religious world of the time...still one cannot
help being impressed, even awed

Memling's Moreel triptych (the donor)

Rogier van der Weyden's "St. Luke Drawing
the Madonna"--we conjecture St. Luke is the
patron saint of artists (?)

And here, for the skeptical, is Lancelot
Blondeel's "St. Luke Painting the Madonna"

And perhaps this museum's most famous piece, van Eyck's
Madonna with Canon Joris van der Paele (again, the donor);
the lighting was terrible; this is a large, almost life-sized
painting; the color and detail are breath-taking