Memling's Portraits / Les portraits de Memling

Amsterdam: Ludion, 2005. Paperback. Very Good+/None. 2005 Pictorial softcover with uncreased spine. (No DJ). Interior is clean and unmarked. Quarto. Our photos depict actual book offered for sale. Books are carefully packaged by hand and ship from our family-owned bookshop in the US. BOOK INFO: See photos for Table of Contents. Catalog of an exhibition at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Feb. 15-May 15, 2005; the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, June 7-Sept. 4, 2005; and at the Frick Collection, New York, Oct. 6-Dec. 31, 2005. Wth contributions by Maryan W. Ainsworth, Lorne Campbell and Paula Nuttall. Illustrated in vibrant color reproductions. 'Hans Memling is one of the most important Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth century. Originating from the middle Rhine region (Germany), he most probably trained in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels. In 1465 he moved to Bruges, where he studied and absorbed the art of Jan van Eyck. He succeeded in combining the achievements of Van der Weyden and Van Eyck into a synthesis which set artistic standards in Bruges well into the sixteenth century. From the start, Memling's most prominent patrons in Bruges were foreign merchants and bankers: Florentine and Venetian businessmen, but also members of the Hanse as well as Spanish wool merchants. They comissioned altarpieces and devotional pictures, which they frequently took with them when they returned home. Above all, however, Memling supplied his clients with portraits, a genre desired not only by the city's foreign residents but also by members of its own parician class and even the Burgundian court. The painter became the most favoured portraitist of late-medieval Bruges; his innovative portraits which, for the first time, include expansive landscape backgrounds, greatly influenced later Renaissance portrait painting. This is the first detailed and comprehensive study of Memling's portraits which, at the same time, aims to show the artist's leading role in the development of the genre. The contributors, all prominent specialists in the field, address a variety of issues: the painter's life and work; the development of his portrait style and the functions of his portraits; aspects of technological examination of Memling's panels; the impact of his portraits.' (-from the endflap). Includes bibliography and index. 191 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 31 cm.