Hans Memlinc (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMLINC CHAPTER I BIOGRAPHICAL T7OR all lovers of early Netherlandish art the quaint town of Bruges is full of interest. Its attractions may not vie with those of the great and magnificent cities of Europe, but still it has a charm of its own? a charm which finds its way to the hearts of such as love picturesque beauty. Its ancient buildings, of which so many still remain, serve to bring before our imagination the Bruges of yore, in the days when traders from every land congregated within its walls to dispose of their wares; for in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this was the great market centre of the Hanse towns, the home of merchant princes. The streets bore witness to the wealth and prosperity which here abounded; the squares were adorned with fountains, the bridges with statues in bronze, the public buildings and many of the private houses with statuary and carved work, the beauty of which was heightened and brought out by gilding and polychrome; the windows were rich with storied glass, and the walls A of the interior were decorated with paintings in distemper or else hung with gorgeous tapestry. All this is now changed. Bruges no longer ranks as a place of wealth or commercial importance; its population has dwindled to one-third of what it was in the fifteenth century; several of its important public buildings have been destroyed, and only two of its merchant palaces remain, so that we can form but a faint idea of the olden splendour of the city. Moreover, a vast number of the paintings and other art treasures which it once possessed have during the past three centuries been exported by the Spaniards, destroyed by Calvinist iconoclasts or French revolutionists, and sold to picture and curiosity dealers of all nations. Vaernewyck, writing in 1574, a...