BRUGES--AND MEMLING

Returning from our boat ride, we visited the main local art museum, the Groeninger, and spent a pleasant couple of hours with some interesting, not-quite-masterpiece historical paintings, mostly from the Flanders area.  It’s one of those museums that are small enough to enjoy in a short time, without feeling short-changed, a celebration of mostly “minor,” often anonymous art that speaks well of the skill and dedication with which we humans are driven to create.  Mostly religious themes, of course, along with the commissioned portraits of rich burghers and aristocrats, but that’s how one made one’s living as an artist in the world before art for art’s sake.  I tend to think that the subject may have mattered less to artists than the process of creation, the painting, not unlike today.  But then again, perhaps they were in fact driven by religious fervor.  When you think of a Bosch, for example, there was clearly something that formed the artist’s vision, other than the need to satisfy conventional tastes--a passion for the dark side.

Emerging from the museum, we found a bureau de change to stock up on fast-disappearing euros, and returned to the center of town in search of a light lunch.  Shared a croque-monsieur and a Haagen Daaz at a small restaurant off the main square...

...  watching the tourist crowds in the rain...

... then stopped at a neighboring bookshop to buy a Herald Trib.  We’re still hooked on news from America, I’m afraid, even though it reaches us a day late.  We have been following the commentary on the political scene at various sites online, and I check in on the New York Times now and then.  Enough to satisfy the jones…

We had read in our guide book about the Memling museum, housed in an ancient building that was, until fairly recently, a hospital run by a dedicated order of sisters.  A good part of the floor and wall space is occupied by documentation of early medical practice--pretty scary stuff. We have a good deal to be grateful for, in our twenty-first century, particularly cleanliness and understanding of disease and its origins--even though much, still, remains to be learned.  We're way ahead of where we were in the Middle Ages, or even the subsequent centuries until our own time.

But that's no reason to visit the Memling Museum.  The reason to visit is an amazing collection of a small handful of paintings by that 15th century master, set in a side chapel adjacent to the main space of the museum.  They include the magnificent altarpiece triptych of St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist (some iPhone details below...)

... and a few small portraits...

... all exquisitely painted.  The chairs placed in front of the great triptych made me long for a "One Hour/One Painting" session in this chapel.  The painting would be an inexhaustible feast.  What struck me, aside from the relation of scale to detail, was that some of those details--see above--seem almost to foreshadow the surrealism of, say, a de Chirico... It's a breathtaking collection of paintings, both large and small.  

We wandered the back streets of Bruges for a while, getting thoroughly lost again and finding help, finally, from a map we discovered on the wall of one of the buildings of the famous College de Bruges that dot the town.  Back at our hotel, we rested up for a while before heading out to dinner.  I made a conscious decision, on our way through the hotel lobby, not to take one of the umbrellas they offer for the use of guests.  It looked, I thought, to be clearing up.  Big mistake.  A block away we were caught in a deluge and were rapidly soaked to the skin.  In no condition to go to a restaurant, we returned to the hotel, changed out of our wet clothes, and brought them down to the dryer in the basement.  We are fortunate to have such conveniences.  

Then out, finally, for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant and back to rest up for the morning's departure on the train to Ghent.