Bruges: A Hospital, a Church and a Museum

I was in Belgium to see the new Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent so I thought I'd take a trip to Bruges to see some early Renaissance Flemish art. Bruges is easy to get to from Brussels, with frequent trains and it takes just under an hour to get there. When I came out of the station I saw steeples in the distance and decided to head for them. Crossing the road outside the station the buildings quickly became older and I was suddenly in a medieval town with narrow cobbled streets and picturesque buildings. So on I walked.

My first visit was to the Sint-Janshospitaal and its great collection of works by Hans Memling. The Sisters of St John had been working on that site since the 1100s in a hospital that they turned into a museum for Memling in the mid-1800s. The museum is in the former chapel of the hospital and it's a lovely space for displaying works of art and other objects, not the biggest gallery but there's plenty of space and great lighting. Hans Memling is one of the later Northern Renaissance artists and he actually lived and died in St John's so it's a special place.

The first works are two triptych altarpieces in glass cases so you can see the wing paintings, one is a Virgin and Child and the other is a Deposition, so we see the start and end of Christ's life.

Turn right and you enter the chapel with the grand St Ursula Altarpiece, much larger than the previous altarpieces and sited in the space it was painted for. You can walk round the altarpiece to see the wing paintings and back of the work.

The central panel is gorgeous. We see the Virgin enthroned with the Child in her lap, the Virgin turning a page in a book while the Child holds the finger of (i assume) St Ursula. St John is standing nearby in his rough clothes beside the Virgin's sumptuous throne. It's noticeable that the Virgin is wrapped in red whereas she would be cloaked in blue in an Italian painting of the same time.

Also in the chapel is the lovely diptych with the portrait of the Virgin with Maarten van Nieuwenhove and a portrait of an unknown young lady. This young man must have been rich or important to have to his portrait painted like this.

Out in the main space is the gorgeous Shrine to St Ursula, a gorgeous casket shaped like a church with large paintings at either end and three smaller paintings along each side of the body of the church. The eight paintings tell the story of the life of St Ursula in glorious colour with incredibly tiny details. Her story isn'y terribly delightful given the subject matter and her martyrdom with the 11,000 virgins who followed her. What is wonderful is the detail in the paintings, small as they may be.

Just over the road from Sint-Janshospitaal is the Church of Our Lady, a lovely church which is free to visit but you need a ticket to go behind the altar and see the true secret of the church, a lovely Michelangelo statue, the only statue of his that left Italy during his lifetime. Just before heading to Belgium I'd watched the film 'Monuments Men' and this Virgin and Child statue plays a big part in the film, with a soldier sacrificing his life trying to save it during the Second World War. Tickets to see that part of the church are bought  from the booth to the left of the entrance.

It's a beautiful, serene statue set under a black conch shell in the middle of a rather ornate altarpiece. If you've got a Michelangelo statue you don't surround it by lesser works from other sculptors. You can't get very close to the statue and it's covered in a glass plate for protection.

After the Church of Our Lady I headed to the Groeningemuseum, the main museum in Bruges. It's having some building work done in advance of a major exhibition about Van Eyck in the spring so some of the building was closed but the important rooms, for me, were still open, and these included the early Flemish works. The first room holds only one painting, the treasure by Van Eyck of the 'Madonna with Canon Joris van der Paele'.

The room is slightly darkened with the lights focused on this painting. The Canon kneels at the feet of the Madonna's throne, flanked by saints Domitian (whose church this was painted for) and George (the Canon's namesake). The Child presents his mother with a posy of flowers and cuddles a green parrot (I assume that represents something but I don't know what). The Canon has just stopped reading and taken off his glasses at the moment this scene is painted. Joris commissioned this painting from Van Eyck on his return to Bruges after a spell in Rome and here he is, immortalised forever by the master. I wonder if he had any idea his image would attract attention nearly 600 years later? 

The painting rewards close inspection and is full of astonishing details, from the Canon's spectacles and the open book in his hand to the sheen on St George's armour and his marvellous helmet. You just know that the fabric at the back of the throne and the carpet would have been in the latest fashionable designs at the time and the clothes of St Domitian would have been of the finest embroidery. It's a gorgeous painting

As you walk on through the museum you come across some marvellous works by early Flemish painters, such as the 'Triptych of the Lamentation' by the Master of the Legend of St Lucy and an altarpiece by the Master of the Legend of St Ursula. It's always a bit sad that we don't know the names of these great painters that were clearly thought highly of at the time since they got the commissions for paintings but their names weren't documented for one reason or another. There's always hope that a box of old parchment might be discovered in an attic somewhere that will include the invoice for a painting or a lost diary will turn up. 

There are paintings by a host of great painters including Hans Memling and Gerard David and by a certain Heironomous Bosch. There are two altarpieces by Bosch, a 'Last Judgement' and a 'Triptych of Job'. The 'Last Judgement' is, as you'd expect, full of the strange images Bosch is known for as well as the panoramic view with tiny figures doing odd things. 

One of the highlights of the museum that wasn't on show when I visited is the portrait of Margaret Van Eyck by her husband, Jan, since it's currently on loan to the great Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent. She will return in March to star in the Groeningemuseum's own celebration of Van Eyck. I know that because she told me so when I went into the museum. 

So there you are, three great places to visit when you go to Bruge and there'll be so much more when the Groeningemuseum fully re-opens. There's a lot of art to see in Bruges and a lot of streets to wander round and marvel at the wonderful architecture around you. I hope to return one day.  

Four Northern Renaissance Paintings at the Prado, Madrid

The Museo del Prado in Madrid has a great collection of paintings from the Northern Renaissance, the countries around Holland, Belgium and Germany in the 1400s and 1500s. That's not too surprising in a way since Spain used to rule over some of those countries so it's only to be expected that some of the glorious art works found their way into Spanish collections. It has room after room on the ground floor full of these paintings, so very different to the Italian Renaissance paintings in rooms nearby. I've chosen four paintings that I particularly like, starting off with Jan Gossaert's 'Christ Blessing, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist' from 1510-1520.

The thing that always grabs my attention is the delicacy of the figure of Christ in the middle, the serenity and stillness. Is he blessing the Virgin? If so, why? And why is John pointing at Christ? It's an odd composition, especially with the angel popping through the round opening above Christ's head. Maybe it was painted to go above the doorway into a private chapel of something like that, so you receive your blessing for going into the chapel? I really don't know, but it's not a painting I find I can just glance at and walk past, once glanced at I need to look properly.

An earlier painting is 'The Descent from the Cross' by Rogier van der Weyden, painted before 1443. We see Christ being held by Joseph of Arimathia and Nicodemus, Saint John aiding the fainting Virgin and, I think, Mary Magdalene being distraught on the far side of Christ (in Italian paintings of the time her hair would be loose). The figures are almost life-sized and that makes the painting even more dominating. The Virgin's figure reflects that of her son as he hangs limply before he reaches the ground. What would you think if you saw this hanging in a church surrounded by flickering candles reflecting the gold background and the rich colours, the sight of your lord who gave his life to save yours? It must have been a powerful image back then.  

Heironomous Bosch, known simply as El Bosco in Spain, is a great favourite at the Prado and has a room to himself that houses some of his greatest paintings, including 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'.

The painting is constantly surrounded by viewers several deep so you've got to be patient in order to see it properly and up close. It's a triptych of three scenes showing paradise, earth and hell, all with so much weirdness you can only wonder what sort of magic mushrooms El Bosco ate. It's odd since it's this painting that people crowd around leaving his other works easy to see up close - this is his 'big hit' that people know but you can learn a lot about him from the other paintings as well.

The Prado held a major exhibition of El Bosco's work three years ago that was sold out and opening hours had to be extended due to popular demand. I was lucky enough to get tickets and enjoyed the exhibition but it was too crowded to be able to view the works in comfort. I enjoyed seeing his paintings much more now that they're hanging together in a single room without the crowds.

A final painting I want to show you is this self-portrait by Albrecht Durer from 1498. Here he is, a young man, assured and confident, dressed richly like an aristocrat and with his life ahead of him. It shows his Italian influences with the three-quarter pose and the landscape through the window.

It's also a bit of a show-off painting using himself as the poster-boy for his workshop. If you look under the window there's some text inscribed on the wall. This says, "1498, I painted this after my image, I was twenty six, Albrecht Durer". So, the show off was only 26 when he painted this astonishing self-portrait. He had an interesting and largely rewarding life ahead of him and he left behind a great body of work. Surely we're due a Durer exhibition sometime soon?

I first came across this self-portrait when I was 16 at school (along with the van der Weyden 'Descent' painting) and was disappointed on my first visit to the Prado three years ago when it was out on loan so I didn't see it. I've seen it since though.

There are dozens of other Northern paintings on display in the ground floor galleries but these are the four I wanted to share. 

Heironomous Bosch: 'El Bosco' at the Museo del Prado

It's the 500th anniversary of Heironomous Bosch so how do you celebrate it? If you're the Prado in Madrid, you put on an exhibition using your own Bosch paintings as the centrepiece and there we have the 'Garden of Earthly Delights' by El Bosco. It's been phenomenally successful, posters all over Madrid, tickets hard to come by and I only saw the exhibition in it's last few days thanks to an extension to the original closing date due to demand. How could I be in Madrid and not see it?

That in itself should've sent a signal - what does it mean if it's that popular? It probably means that it's going to be crowded, perhaps, that it'll be difficult to see some of the paintings and that, possibly, it won't feel terribly comfortable. Yes, that was exactly right.

Timed entry helped, of course, but the crowds inside the exhibition were ridiculous in front of the 'star' paintings that everyone wanted to see (and much less busy in front of others). At times they were six deep in front of the biggies that meant waiting ages to get close enough to stand a chance of seeing any detail. I do think the audio-guides were part of the problem, with people hanging around, not necessarily looking at the paintings, listening to the commentary. Double the size of the crowd and this is something like I found it. It also gives you an idea of the size of the painting.

Think about Bosch and I suspect that most of us conjure up images of tiny, often naked, figures scrambling round a nightmarish landscape like in his 'Garden of Earthly Delights'. Paintings like this often show the perfection of Eden, the temptations of Earth and the pain and horror of hell since we, inevitably, take the wrong path and end up suffering for our sins. It's always worth looking at the detail in Bosch paintings, even the detail of a story we all know so well, such as the adoration of the magi when the foreign kings pay homage to the newborn Christ.

In Bosch's version of the story we see the kings in the three ages of man (young, middle aged and old) in their grand clothes and we have a Virgin and baby out in the open beside the stable. But who are the characters leering from the inside of the barn or crawling on its roof? If you look even closer you can see people dancing in the fields in the distance. What's this all about? It's not in the traditional story of the way the scene is usually painted. That's where Bosch brings his artist's eye and his story-telling to the fore. It's all there for a reason and it's our job to work it out.

Similarly in his 'Ecco Homo' we have a crowd shouting for Christ's punishment while Christ cowers on the ledge as he's pushed forward. Wouldn't you if you had a crowd baying for your blood? And again, look at the detail, look at the cityscape in the distance. Look at the hats and clothes, fantastical but some are remarkably similar to what people wore when this was painted. Are we still baying for blood or are we grateful for the Christ's sacrifice for our sins? Look at those faces and expressions and I suspect it's the former. Bosch is always telling a story that would've been obvious and powerful when these paintings were first unveiled but which we now need to try to piece together.

A painting I was pleased to see was 'Christ Mocked' which is normally in the National Gallery but is on loan to the exhibition. I'm familiar with this painting, with Christ gazing peacefully out at the viewer while he suffers the mockery of the crowd and is about to be crowned with thorns. Christ's face is rather ethereal compared to the more earthly faces around him.

One of the reasons that I like this painting is that there are only five characters in it as opposed to the untold numbers in many of Bosch's other works. It's small and intimate and implies that you are present and watching what's happening. Will you stand up for your Lord or pass on by? That's an age-old question and is current with the present day attacks on immigrants and others and the need for right-thinking people to support their fellow human beings. There is always someone that the majority needs to protect and cherish because they enrich us all. Bosch tells us that through his works.

A painting I wasn't familiar with was another triptych, 'From Paradise to Hell', with multiple scenes. The left panel shows Eve being created from Adam's ribs, meeting the snake and apple and then being expelled from Eden. The central panel shows the multiple ways that mankind can sin and, obviously, we're at all of them! The inevitable result is condemnation to a fiery hell. Just when you think there's ambiguity in Bosch he goes all literal on us again!

This was a great exhibition despite it's uncomfortable popularity. So many Bosch paintings of all sorts brought together in tribute to his great artistry and story-telling at a time when the majority of people couldn't read letters but could read a painting.  I'm so pleased I managed to get into the exhibition and I hope something like it is put on in London one day. The exhibition has now closed but it'll linger in the memory.

Hieronomous Bosch will now always be El Bosco to me.