3. Route, 31

 

Hospital of St. John.

In the centre, on a rotatory pedestal, is the Chasse of St. Ursula,
a reliquary of Gothic design, the scenes painted on which form
’s finest work (completed in 1489).
nrine of St. Ursula is a Gothic chapel in miniature, its long
divided into archings containing six episodes, its cover adorn-
medallions; one incident fills each of the gables. In the
are the coronation of the Virgin, the glory of St. Ursula, and
ur angels; on the gables, St. Ursula shelters the band of maidens under
and the Virgin in a porch is worshipped by two hospital nuns.
six desi on the long sides, one represents the fleet arriving at
,» where Ursula prepar to land with her companions. We re-
ze the shape of the old cathedral, the steeples of several chur-

and one of the city towers, most of them true to nature but not

in their proper pla in one of the distant houses Ursula sees the
vision of the Pope bidding her to visit Rome. Another scene is laid on
the qu of Bale s taken to the shore, whilst a part
of her suite s turn to disembark. A third shows the Pope sur-
rounded by court in the porch of a church awaiting St. Ursula, who
kneels on the eps leading up to the portal. In a gallery close by, the
British neophytes are baptised and confessed, or partake of the Holy
Communion. The Pope, in the fourth picture, accompanies the maidens
on their return to Bale; he sits with his cardinals in the vessel which
carries St. Ursula, whilst the suite of both still winds through the passes
leading from the Alps. On the fifth panel, the background is a camp on
the Rhine shore, where boats have landed some of their living freight,
and others approach with crowded loads; the knights and virgins are
set upon by soldiers and are nly defended by their steel-clad cham-
pions. The sixth picture is that in which St. Ursula is seen ina passive
attitude of prayer, awaiting the arrow of an executioner; the men about
her, armed in proof, or shrouded in mantles, are spectators or actors in
the massacre of the saint's companions; and the distance is filled with
tents behind which the Kélner Dom rears its solid walls’.

‘The freedom and grace with which th scenes are composed are
y due to the facility th which Memling treated groups and figures
nall proportions, but tk tell of progress in the art of distribution
and arrangement. It would be difficult to select any picture of the Flemish
schoo] in which the ‘dramatis persone’ more naturally put together
than they are in the shrine of St. Ursula, nor is there a single panel in
iquary that has not the charm of rich and well-contrasted colour.
..- A rich fund of life 1 grace is revealed in shapes of symmetrical
proportions or s] <e and attitudes of becoming elegance. Nothing
is more striking than the minuteness of the painter's toach, or the per-
fect mastery of his finish’.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle. The Early Flemish Painters. 1872.

 

Memlin

      

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On the wall opposite the entrance is the Altar- Piece of the SS.
John, a winged picture painted by Memling for the high-altar of
the church and presented in 1479 by Brother Jan Floreins, sur-
named Van der Riist, in honour of the two patron-saints of the
hospital. This work was long erroneously called the ‘Marriage of
St. Catharine’. It was restored, with only moderate success, in 1894.

‘The Virgin sits on a throne in a rich church-porch; angels hold a
crown above her; the infant on her lap bends to give a ring to the bride
kneeling in regal raiment at his fe to the left and right, the Baptist,
Evangelist, and St. Barbara stand gravely in attendance; an angel plays
on an organ; another holds a missal. Close behind St. Barbara, a monk
of the order of St. Augustin contemplates the scene; and in a landscape
watered by a river the Baptist prays to God, preaches to a crowd, wends
his way to the place of execution, and burns — a headless trunk — at
the sta elsewhere, St. John Evangelist seethes in boiling oi]. On the

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
 
 
   
   
 
  
  
    
   
   
  
   
  
    
  
    
    
  
   
  
   
    
   
   
 
   
  
 
   
  
   
 
     

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