Memling's Descent from the Cross sounds deeper music than
Rubens--which is operatic in comparison. The Virgin type of Van Eyck
is less insipid than the Italian; there is no pagan dissonance, as in
the conception of Botticelli. Faith blazed more fiercely in the
breasts of these Primitive artists. They felt Christ's Passion and the
sorrow of the Holy Mother more poignantly than did the Italians of the
golden renaissance. We have always held a brief for the Art for Art
theory. The artist must think first of his material and its technical
manipulation; but after that, if his pulse beat to spiritual rhythms
then his work may attain the heights. It is not painting that is the
lost art, but faith. Men like the Van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden,
Memling, and Gerard David were princes of their craft and saw their
religion with eyes undimmed by doubt.

James Weak has destroyed the legend that Hans Memling painted his St.
Ursula for the benefit of St. Jean's Hospital as a recompense for
treatment while sick there. He was a burgher living comfortably at
Bruges. The museum is a short distance from the hospital. Its Van Eyck
(Jan), La Vierge et l'Enfant--known as the Donator because of the
portrait of George van der Paele--is its chief treasure, though there
is the portrait of Jan's wife; Gerard David's Judgment of King
Cambyses, and the savage execution companion picture; Memling's
triptych, St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child, and David's
masterpiece, The Baptism of Christ. Holbein never painted a head with
greater verisimilitude than Van Eyck's rendering of the Donator. What
an eye! What handling, missing not a wrinkle, a fold of the aged skin,
the veins in the senile temples, or the thin soft hair above the ears!
What synthesis! There are no niggling details, breadth is not lost in
this multitude of closely observed and recorded facts. The large eyes
gaze devoutly at the vision of the Child, and if neither Virgin nor
Son is comely there is character delineated. The accessories must fill
the latter-day painter avid of surface loveliness with consuming envy.

But it is time for sleep. The Brugeois cocks have crowed, the sun is
setting, and eyelids are lowering. Lucky you are if your dreams evoke
the brilliant colours, the magical shapes of the Primitives of Bruges
the Beautiful.

THE MOREAU MUSEUM

Out of the beaten track of sight-seers, and not noticed with
particular favour by the guide-books, the museum founded