Memling: magic in the mediocre

For in the metaphysical sense, if not the technical, Hans Memling was a primitive. And this is seen in his depiction of the mystery plays, which began as simple little tableaux performed in church and intended to beguile and inform an illiterate congregation, expositions which were repeated and embellished year after year, in church after church. What began children dressed as angels proclaiming that heaven’s king is born transformed itself with the addition of Mary and Joseph, the Christ Child, midwives, cows, sheeps, horses for the Magi and an opulent entourage  in which the Magi assumed the trappings and demeanor of royalty,the whole ballooning into garish Hollywood proportions from the hand of DeMille.

Memling. Seven Joys of mary. For this panorama of the Nativity, Mwmling may have found his model in medieval stagecraft and in the pomp of the Burgundian court. The setting is Jerusalem...

Memling. Seven Joys of Mary. For this panorama of the Nativity, Memling may have found his model in medieval stagecraft and in the pomp of the Burgundian court. The setting is Jerusalem…

…the golden idols tumbling from their pedestals at Jesus’ approach; the wheat that springs up overnight. And inevitably, to please the crowd, the Massacre of the Innocents- a scene also included by Memling.

When the spectacle reached these proportions, the drama could no longer be contained within a church, and the mystery plays moved outdoors. Now processions could be added, giving the local nobility a chance to take part, and leaving the spectators to run along through the streets, heckling or applauding as they pleased. In Bruges, by Hans Memling’s time, these festivities were probably not very different from any other public display- for example the ostentatious parades held on the occasion of Charles The Bold’s wedding to the English princess in 1468. Memling certainly was there, and the cavalcade, banners, and rich costumes in The Seven Joys of Mary are perhaps a reflection of that swaggering royal ceremony.

---The old title was and is The Seven Joys of Mary. These "Joys" do not coincide with the Five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary The seven joys are usually listed as: The Annunciation, The Nativity of Jesus, The Adoration of the Magi, The Resurrection of Christ, The Ascension of Christ to Heaven, The Pentecost or Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Mary, and The Coronation of the Virgin in Heaven. There are variants. It was a common theme in medieval devotional painting and literature The events depicted in Memling`s work all have a Marian joyful theme: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Visit of the Three Wise Men, the escape from the Massacre of the Innocents (and presumably The Flight into Egypt), the Resurrection of Jesus with the appearances of Christ after the Resurrection, Pentecost, the Death and Assumption of Mary Others have interpreted Memling`s work as The Advent and Triumph of Christ, the story of the Salvation through the Incarnation and the Resurrection. But if that was the case one wonders where are, for example,the depictions of the Baptism of Christ, the Institution of the Eucharist, the Passion and the Crucifixion, Another title given to the work is The Panorama of the Epiphany. Again that seems to restrict the themes in the painting and undermine or deny the role of Mary in the work. The Munich Gallery still refers to Memling`s picture as "The Seven Joys of Mary". To deny that the thread to all the images depicted is Mary is to perhaps ignore the obvious. THe use of the old title is reinforced by the fact that the work was commissioned for the Tanner's Guild Chapel in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges The donor, Pieter Bultync, is depicted in the painting on the left with his sons, and his wife Katharina van Riebeke is on the right. One does wonder why some people have denied or continue to deny the obvious theme of the painting ---Read More:http://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.ca/2011/12/seven-joys-of-mary.html

—The old title was and is The Seven Joys of Mary. These “Joys” do not coincide with the Five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary
The seven joys are usually listed as: The Annunciation, The Nativity of Jesus, The Adoration of the Magi, The Resurrection of Christ, The Ascension of Christ to Heaven, The Pentecost or Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Mary, and The Coronation of the Virgin in Heaven. There are variants. It was a common theme in medieval devotional painting and literature
The events depicted in Memling`s work all have a Marian joyful theme: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Visit of the Three Wise Men, the escape from the Massacre of the Innocents (and presumably The Flight into Egypt), the Resurrection of Jesus with the appearances of Christ after the Resurrection, Pentecost, the Death and Assumption of Mary
Others have interpreted Memling`s work as The Advent and Triumph of Christ, the story of the Salvation through the Incarnation and the Resurrection. But if that was the case one wonders where are, for example,the depictions of the Baptism of Christ, the Institution of the Eucharist, the Passion and the Crucifixion,
Another title given to the work is The Panorama of the Epiphany. Again that seems to restrict the themes in the painting and undermine or deny the role of Mary in the work.
The Munich Gallery still refers to Memling`s picture as “The Seven Joys of Mary”. To deny that the thread to all the images depicted is Mary is to perhaps ignore the obvious.
THe use of the old title is reinforced by the fact that the work was commissioned for the Tanner’s Guild Chapel in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges
The donor, Pieter Bultync, is depicted in the painting on the left with his sons, and his wife Katharina van Riebeke is on the right.
One does wonder why some people have denied or continue to deny the obvious theme of the painting
—Read More:http://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.ca/2011/12/seven-joys-of-mary.html

ADDENDUM:


(see link at end)…Memling is one of the first painters to bring his subjects outdoors, setting them before sunny skies and placid verdant landscapes, occasionally framed by columns of colored marble. And while his Madonnas and saints have a cookie-cutter bland anonymity to them, Memling’s portraits are all sharply defined yet memorably mundane….

…During his career he and his workshop produced dozens of private devotional pictures and several large altarpieces — thanks to his exceptional productivity, there are more pictures by Memling than any other 15th-century Flemish painter. When I saw the giant Memling retrospective in Bruges in 1994, I realized that this was not without its consequences. Faced with so many blandly pretty Madonnas and stiffly drawn and rather empty altarpieces, one saw that here was a painter who, like his Italian contemporary Pietro Perugino, relied on a successful formula for most of his career. Although it’s heretical to think so, I found that only rarely did Memling create a vibrant, haunting work of art…Read More:http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/jeromack/jeromack12-6-05.asp

---Hans Memling (German-born Flemish painter, 1435-1494) The Seven Joys of Mary 1480 Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is speculated that Memling may have served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and may have later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455-1460).---Read More:

—Hans Memling (German-born Flemish painter, 1435-1494) The Seven Joys of Mary 1480
Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is speculated that Memling may have served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and may have later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455-1460).—Read More:

Related Posts

This entry was posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>