These Two
Tombs Are Of Capital Interest To Those Who Are Students Of Belgian
History, For Charles The Bold Was
The last male of the House of
Burgundy, and it was by the marriage of his daughter that the
Netherlands
Passed to the House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately
fell under the flail of religious persecution during the rule of
her grandson, Spanish Philip. Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St.
Catherine, is the famous old Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick
walls of which rise sleepily from the dull waters of the canal,
just as Queens' College, or St. John's, at Cambridge, rise from
the sluggish Cam. Here is preserved the rich shrine, or chasse,
"resembling a large Noah's ark," of St. Ursula, the sides of which
are painted with scenes from the virgin's life by Hans Memling,
who, though born in the neighbourhood of Mayence, and thus really
by birth a German, lived for nearly a quarter of a century or more
of his life in Bruges, and is emphatically connected, like his
master Roger van der Weyden and the brothers Van Eyck, with the
charming early Flemish school. There is a story that he was
wounded under Charles le Temeraire on the stricken field of Nancy,
and painted these gemlike pictures in return for the care and
nursing that he received in the Hospital of St. Jean, but "this
story," says Professor Anton Springer, "may be placed in the same
category as those of Durer's malevolent spouse, and of the
licentiousness of the later Dutch painters." These scenes from the
life of St. Ursula are hardly less delightfully quaint than the
somewhat similar series that was painted by Carpaccio for the
scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now preserved in the
Accademia. Early Flemish painting, in fact, in addition to its own
peculiar charm of microscopic delicacy of finish, is hardly
inferior, in contrast with the later strong realism and occasional
coarseness of Rubens or Rembrandt, to the tender poetic dreaminess
of the primitive Italians. Certainly these pictures, though
finished to the minutest and most delicate detail, are lacking in
realism actually to a degree that borders on a delicious
absurdity. St. Ursula and her maidens - whether really eleven
thousand or eleven - in the final scene of martyrdom await the
stroke of death with the stoical placidity of a regiment of dolls.
"All the faces are essentially Flemish, and some of the virgins
display to great advantage the pretty national feature of the
slight curl in one or in both lips." A little farther along the
same street is the city Picture Gallery, with a small but
admirable collection, one of the gems of which is a splendid St.
Christopher, with kneeling donors, with their patron saints on
either side, that was also painted by Memling in 1484, and ranks
as one of his best efforts. Notice also the portrait of the Canon
Van de Paelen, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436, and representing
an old churchman with a typically heavy Flemish face; and the
rather unpleasant picture by Gerard David of the unjust judge
Sisamnes being flayed alive by order of King Cambyses. By a
turning to the right out of the Rue St. Catherine, you come to the
placid Minne Water, or Lac d'Amour, not far from the shores of
which is one of those curious beguinages that are characteristic
of Flanders, and consist of a number of separate little houses,
grouped in community, each of which is inhabited by a beguine, or
less strict kind of nun. In the house of the Lady Superior is
preserved the small, but very splendid, memorial brass of a former
inmate, who died at about the middle of the fifteenth century.
Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you
will not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of
antiquity, or to stumble at every street corner on some new and
charming combination of old houses, with their characteristic
crow-stepped, or corbie, gables. New houses, I suppose, there must
really be by scores; but these, being built with inherent good
taste (whether unconscious or conscious I do not know) in the
traditional style of local building, and with brick that from the
first is mellow in tint and harmonizes with its setting,
assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and left, and
fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness.
Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm;
but the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two
market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place
du Bourg. In the former are the brick Halles, with their famous
belfry towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian
disregard for proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower
piled on tower, till one is almost afraid lest the final octagon
should be going to topple over! In the Place du Bourg is a less
aspiring group, consisting of the Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du
Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, and the Palais de
Justice - all very Flemish in character, and all, in combination,
elaborately picturesque. In the Chapel of the Holy Blood is
preserved the crystal cylinder that is said to enshrine certain
drops of the blood of Our Saviour that were brought from the Holy
Land in 1149 by Theodoric, Count of Flanders, and installed in the
Romanesque chapel that he built for their reception, and the crypt
of which remains, though the upper chapel has long since been
rebuilt, in the fifteenth century. At certain stated times the
relic is exhibited to a crowd of devotees, who file slowly past to
kiss it. Some congealed blood of Our Lord is also said to be
preserved, after remarkable vicissitudes of loss and recovery, in
the Norman Abbey of Fecamp; and mediaeval Gloucestershire once
boasted as big a treasure, which brought great concourse and
popularity to the Cistercian house of Hayles.
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