Hans Memling. Alfred Michiels

      The portrait of a young man, which first adorned M. Aders’ collection, and then that of the poet Rogers, and which is now found in the National Gallery in London, for many centuries passes as Memling’s effigy. A critic from the Outer Rhine having hazarded this guess, everyone else repeated it by faith alone. It is an admirable work. We see a half-dressed figure in a relatively poor unfurnished room; his head is lost in the shadow that enters the room at an angle through the window pane, which is outlined behind him. He is still young and has badly-combed blond hair. He does not squint, unlike the engraving published by Passavant, but looks straight in front of him, with the expression of a man who is dreaming; his hands are humbly posed one on top of the other. The features of the stranger also have a plebian form, which designates him as a son of the people, as one born in the gloomy streets where the lower classes congregate. His large, regular brow, his pensive air, suit a man of talent, but his nose is a vulgar design, his cheekbones are prominent, and his large mouth with dull lips, a bony jaw and an unrefined chin compose an ensemble that classes his figure amongst inferior stock. His outfit corresponds to these indications also. This alleged Memling wears simple dress of fairly common material and the colour of wine sediment; a hat of the same fabric covers his head, while his straight and poorly-fixed hair seems without oil or fragrance.

      There is, however, a charm that surrounds him. What is he thinking about in these evening shadows? Is he looking at the pale, sad landscape with the nuances of autumn, that the viewer discovers through the window? He seems to see nothing, not even the empty room where he is seated; one could say that his imagination is travelling further away, lost in his own thoughts. The man who gave him this dreamy expression so perfectly was, without the slightest doubt, a poet from the same era as the artist. And it deserves an equal account of the delicacy of its inspiration. The brush is fine, clean, and yet rich: the colour only has sweet and soft tones. A natural light envelops the objects. The great masters from Holland did not draw anything more exquisite, even two centuries later.

      Does this painting truly show us Memling’s portrait? The extract given by historian Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) about the figure depicted is interesting: “This young man,” he says, “seems a little sickly and wears an outfit from St John’s Hospital in Bruges. His hair is chestnut brown, the hat and outfit a dull purple; the sleeve on the right arm is split. On the right, in the upper corner, one sees the number 1462. This must be the portrait of Memling himself, and he must have been at St John’s hospital.” The work is certainly painted in Memling’s style and is worthy of him. If one admits “that it represents himself, his injured arm and the vintage will indicate the era when he was staying at the hospice. One knows that two paintings by his hand, owned by the former establishment, date from 1479, that is to say, that they were executed seventeen years later.”[10]

      What free assumptions, what errors and contradictions in so few lines!

      Firstly, the mysterious young man is not wearing hospital garb, but the outfit and the cone-shaped hat truncated in the style of Philip the Good; his robe is even of a beautiful material and an elegant colour.

      Hans Memling, Tommaso di Folco Portinari (1428–1501), estimated date 1470. Oil on wood, 44.1 × 33.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

      Rogier Van der Weyden, Philippe de Croy, Seigneur de Sempy. Oil on panel, 49 × 30 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.

      Hans Memling, Two Donors (fragments of an altarpiece with the Virgin and Child), c. 1475–1480. Oil on wood, 44.7 × 32.4 cm; 44.5 × 32 cm. Muzeul National Brukenthal, Sibiu.

      If there is a slit in the right sleeve, a button closes it: this was another custom of the time, as we will soon prove. The position of the figure hides the opening on the other sleeve. One could have hardly cut the right sleeve to care for a wound.

      Even though Memling worked in the hospice in 1479, as Passavant clumsily recalls, he would not have been wearing a patient’s gown in 1462; one cannot believe that he suffered from an injury for seventeen years and lived so long on public charity.

      Finally, the young man has a calm air about him, but does not seem at all sick.

      This portrait, then, must not represent Memling and must not be at Saint John’s hospital, as affirmed by the former director of the Frankfurt Museum.[11] It cannot show us Memling’s image, for the excellent reason that it is Pieter Van der Weyden that we are seeing. Passavant himself published an engraving, as we have already had the occasion to mention. Let us compare the characteristics of Rogier Van der Weyden, engraved by Jerome Cock,[12] with the engraving of the German historian, and we will note that there are striking similarities in the two heads. It is the same forehead, large and regular, the same eyebrows, the same rather timid eyes, the same facial structure, the same voluminous nose squared at the tip, the same rosy cheeks, the same sharp jaw, and the same shape of the mouth and the chin.[13] The resemblance is so strong that we could believe that we were seeing Rogier himself in his youth. The father had painted his own image in 1462, following Morelli, on a small board, where he is shown just to the bottom of his chest. Is it not probable that he painted in the same year the bust of his son on a board of the same size?[14] The stranger seems to be around twenty-five years old; Pieter Van der Weyden, born in 1437, was just this age in 1462. The father, like the son, wears

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