Beautiful Europe - Belgium | Page 9

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,