thither for the especial purpose of securing an accurate background
for the first, fifth, and sixth panels of the Shrine of Saint Ursula,
and not have cared to obtain as faithful settings for the incidents of
the second and fourth panels ascribed to Basel, or for that of the
third panel located at Rome, will scarcely stand the test of
criticism. A study of these panels evidences an intimate acquaintance
with the architectural beauties of Cöln, a knowledge obviously
acquired at first hand during a period of his life devoted to Art.
The master under whom he worked was in all probability the Suabian,
Stephen Löthener, of Mersburg, near Constance, who had settled in Cöln
before 1442, and died there in 1452. It is presumable that Memlinc may
not have completed his studies at the time of that painter’s death. In
the circumstances one can but conjecture as to where he completed the
necessary training before attaining to the rank of a master-painter.
Vasari and Guicciardini both assert that Memlinc was at some time or
other a pupil of Roger De la Pasture (Van der Weyden), and, as this
master returned from Italy in 1450, he may have come across Memlinc at
Cöln and engaged him as an assistant. It is, however, quite possible
that Memlinc stayed on at Cöln until Löthener’s death in 1452 and then
went to Brussels, doubtless passing by Louvain and possibly working
for a time under Dirk Bouts. Certain it is, judging from the many
points of similarity in their work, that Memlinc came under Roger’s
influence for a space sufficiently long to leave a strong impress of
that master’s methods on his art. Memlinc’s contemporary, Rumwold De
Doppere, has left it on record that he was “then considered to be the
most skilful and excellent painter in the whole of Christendom”; and
if Memlinc had left nothing to perpetuate his fame but such gems as
the Shrine of Saint Ursula, at Bruges, the “Passion of Our Lord,” in
the Royal Museum at Turin, that remarkable altarpiece, “Christ the
Light of the World,” in the Royal Gallery at Munich, or even, as
Fromentin suggests, only those two figures of Saint Barbara and Saint
Katherine in the large altarpiece at Bruges, he would need nothing of
the reflected glory of his alleged master to enhance his renown.
Always assuming Memlinc to have stood in this relation to De la
Pasture, Sir Martin Conway came to a happy conclusion when he wrote
that Roger’s greatest glory is that he produced such a pupil--“that
Memlinc the artist was Roger’s greatest work.”
[Illustration: PLATE III.--SAINTS CHRISTOPHER, MAURUS, AND
GILES.
This, the central panel of an altarpiece, painted in 1484 for
William Moreel, Burgomaster of Bruges, is now in the Town
Gallery at Bruges.]
III
EARLIEST WORKS
The first painting to bespeak his industry is now supposed to have
been the famous triptych of the Last Judgment in the Church of Saint
Mary at Danzig, commenced after 1465 and finished in 1472 or early in
1473.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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