Beautiful Europe - Belgium | Page 9

XI. of France, in the pages of
"Quentin Durward"), and of his daughter, Mary, the wife of the
Emperor Maximilian, of Austria, who was killed by being thrown from
her horse whilst hunting in 1482. 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