Portrait of an Old Woman
Ainsworth, Maryan W., and Keith Christiansen, eds. From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.
Bauman, Guy. “Early Flemish Portraits, 1425–1525.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 43 (Spring 1986): 34.
Bode, Wilhelm von, and Max J. Friedländer. Die Gemalde Sammlung des Herrn Carl von Hollitscher in Berlin. Berlin: Misenbach Riffarth, 1912, no. 14, 32.
Borchert, Till-Holger. “Memling – Life and Work.” In Memling’s Portraits, 11–47. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Borchert, Till-Holger. “Portrait of an Old Woman.” In Memling’s Portraits, 159. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Bowron, Edgar Peters, and Mary G. Morton. Masterworks of European Painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Princeton: Princeton University Press in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2000.
Bachstitz Gallery. Bulletin of the Bachstitz Gallery 12, no. 8 (September 1924).
Campbell, Lorne. “Memling and the Netherlandish Portrait Tradition.” In Memling’s Portraits, 49–67. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
De Vos, Dirk. Hans Memling: The Complete Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, 230–31.
Friedländer, Max J. Early Netherlandish Painting 6A–6B: Hans Memling and Gerard David. New York: Praeger, 1971 (1928), no. 93.
Klein, Peter. “Dendochronological analyses of panels of Hans Memling and his contemporaries.” In Memling Studies: Proceedings of the International Colloquium (Bruges, 10–12 November 1994), 287–95. Leuven: Peeters, 1997.
Lane, Barbara G. Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth-Century Bruges. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, 296–97, no. 51b.
Marzio, Peter C. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: A Permanent Legacy. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1989, 17, 112–13.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Catalogue of the Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1945, no. 27.
Nuttall, Paula. “Memling and the European Renaissance Portrait.” In Memling’s Portraits, 69–91. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
Schrader, Jack L. “A Remarriage of Memling Portraits.” Unpublished report in object file, 1970.
ProvenancePrivate collection, Paris, 1910; Carl von Hollitscher, Berlin, 1914; Stefan von Auspitz, Vienna, by 1924–1931; seized by Austrian government, 1931; sold to David George von Beuningen, 1931; [Bachstitz Galleries, The Hague, by 1932]; Percy Selden Straus, New York, 1934-1944; given to MFAH, 1944.Hans Memling was the leading painter in Bruges in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Memling was successful in his own time and was highly regarded in the centuries after his death through the early years of the twentieth century. When Percy Straus purchased Portrait of an Old Woman in 1934, Memling’s reputation was beginning to fade. Scholars including Friedländer judged his works as competent, but lacking the genius of the greatest of the previous generation of Flemish painters, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. By the middle of the century, Erwin Panofsky had awarded Memling the dubious distinction of “major minor master.”1 More recently, scholars have again recognized Hans Memling’s singular skill in rendering the psychological power of facial expression, a skill particularly evident in his many portraits such as that of the elderly woman in the Straus collection.
No record of Hans Memling survives before his purchase of citizenship in Bruges on January 30, 1465. The document records Memling as coming from “Zaleghen Stat,” or Seligenstadt, in Germany. He is thought to have spent time, perhaps training, in Cologne, on the basis of the highly detailed and accurate view of the city in the background of his Reliquary of St. Ursula.2 Memling is generally thought to have spent time in Brussels, possibly training with Rogier van der Weyden, before his arrival in Bruges.3 Bruges in the fifteenth century was a thriving mercantile city and a center of banking, with a large population of wealthy foreigners. Many of these foreigners—especially the Italians—came to Memling for their portrait, as did wealthy locals. Memling was recorded as a member of the religious confraternity Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-ter Sneeuw (Our Lady of the Snow) in 1473–74 and again in 1475–76, suggesting he was a respected member of the community.4 He was counted among Bruges’s wealthiest ten percent of citizens in 1480 and probably ran a large workshop.5 When his wife died in 1487, they had three sons and Memling owned three houses in Bruges.6
Memling produced large altarpieces for religious confraternities as well as smaller devotional works. His greatest influence may have been in portraiture, in which he deftly combined the idealism of Rogier van der Weyden and the tactile realism of Jan van Eyck with his own feeling for the emotive impact of an intent gaze.7 Memling painted sitters against plain backgrounds as well as closely observed landscape backgrounds. He painted many devotional diptychs; a portrait combined with a painting of the Virgin and Child was a particularly popular format.8 He also painted a large number of stand-alone portraits in which the sitter’s hands rest delicately on a painted parapet, evidence of Memling’s interest in the relationship between the sitter and the frame.9 The sitter in the Straus portrait originally held such a pose before the hands were later painted over.10
The Straus panel has suffered much damage in addition to this later repainting. It has been cut on all four sides, giving the space a much tighter appearance than it would originally have had. Nearly all of the surface glazes have been lost, diminishing the delicate modeling with light for which Memling’s portraits are known. The once-blue background is now brownish-black. Memling frequently painted his sitters against landscape backgrounds; the solid color seen here may have been a measure of economy.11
The Straus panel is likely a companion to the Portrait of an Old Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 24.1). The association was first suggested by Jack Schrader in 1970.12 If the dimensions of the Straus panel were extended to match those of the New York portrait, the relationship of the figures to their surrounding space would be quite close. The original pose of the woman, with folded hands, would also mirror the pose of the man in the New York painting. Although it has been suggested that the Straus and New York panels were cut from a double portrait, technical examination has revealed this to be impossible.13 The attribution of the man’s portrait has been disputed over the years, but Bode and Friedländer published the Straus panel as a Memling in 1912.14 The date of both panels has also been debated, having been placed as early as 1465 to as late as 1480–90.15 Dendochronological analysis of the Straus panel reveals that the tree from which the wood came could not have been felled before 1470, with 1476 a likely felling date.16 Allowing a number of years for the wood to be cured and the panel prepared suggests a date no earlier than the 1480s.
The identity of the sitter is unknown. The fur collar of her cloak indicates she is a woman of some means. The gently arched eyebrows, downcast eyes, and firm, but tranquil set of the mouth suggest patient forbearance. Portraits such as these functioned to commemorate their sitters for posterity, but they do so without the obvious declarations of social status that jewelry, family crests, and an elaborate landscape background would have provided. The Straus panel and its companion seem rather to celebrate a long life well lived, Memling having captured both the dignity and fatigue of his aged sitters.
—Michelle Packer
Notes
1. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 347.
2. Hans Memling, Reliquary of St. Ursula, 1489, gilded and painted wood, 36 x 16 1/3 x 39 in. (91.5 x 41.5 x 99 cm), Sint-Janshospitaal, Memlingmuseum, inv. no. O.SJ176.1 lane 2009, 43–61.
3. Memling’s period of study with Rogier van der Weyden is undocumented, but Van der Weyden’s influence on Memling is so great that scholars generally accept that Memling must have passed through Rogier’s workshop, perhaps staying until Rogier’s death in June 1464. Memling’s success can only be inferred from surviving documents pertaining to his life. Barbara G. Lane, Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth-Century Bruges (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); and Till-Holger Borchert, “Portrait of an Old Woman,” in Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 159, give differing interpretations of these documents.
4. Till-Holger Borchert, “Memling – Life and Work,” in Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 18.
5. Two apprentices are documented: Annekin Verhanneman in 1480 and Passcier van der Mersch in 1483. It has been argued that Martin Schongauer, Michael Sittow, the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece, and Albrecht Dürer may all have spent time in Memling’s workshop, although none can be documented as assistants to the master. See Barbara G. Lane, Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth-Century Bruges (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 98–111, for a summary of these arguments.
6. Lane, Hans Memling, 11.
7. Paula Nuttall, “Memling and the European Renaissance Portrait,” in Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 74.
8. For example, Hans Memling, Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, 1487, oil on panel, 13 1/4 x 17 5/8 in. (33.5 x 44.7 cm), each panel, Sint-Janshospitaal, Memlingmuseum, Bruges.
9. Lorne Campbell, “Memling and the Netherlandish Portrait Tradition,” in Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 59.
10. A cleaning and removal of later retouching in 1998 revealed a hint of the hands beneath the fur collar; see Edgar Peters Bowron and Mary Morton, Masterworks of European Painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2000), 19n6.
11. This is suggested by Lorne Campbell, “Memling and the Netherlandish Portrait Tradition,” in Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 57.
12. Jack L. Schrader, “A Remarriage of Memling Portraits” (unpublished report in object file, 1970).
13. Dirk de Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 230, considered the two portraits to have come from a single double portrait, but the New York portrait has only been trimmed on three sides. The original painted edge, or barbe, on the right side of the portrait remains intact, and thus could not have been at the center of a double portrait; see Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds., From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), 168. It is possible that the two panels were once joined as a diptych, but neither portrait’s original frame survives to confirm this.
14. For a discussion of Portrait of an Old Man, see Ainsworth and Christiansen, From Van Eyck, 168–69.
15. Guy Bauman, “Early Flemish Portraits, 1425–1525,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 43 (Spring 1986): 34, dated the work to 1465–70 on the basis of its similarities to Rogier van der Weyden’s portraits. Dirk de Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994) dated it to 1480–90, with which Sprinson de Jesus concurred in Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds., From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998). Beyond the terminus post quem of 1470, the date cannot be further specified without new archival discoveries.
16. Peter Klein, “Dendochronological analyses of panels of Hans Memling and his contemporaries,” in Memling Studies: Proceedings of the International Colloquium (Bruges, 10–12 November 1994) (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 289.
Comparative Images
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