Memling (or Memlinc), Hans (c. 1430–1494)

Flemish painter. He was probably a pupil of van der Weyden, but his style is calmer and softer. He painted religious subjects and also portraits, including Tommaso Portinari and His Wife (about 1480; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

His works, which were highly regarded in Renaissance Italy, where they influenced PPerugino and others, include: The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (Hospital of St John, Bruges); the Donne Triptych (National Gallery, London), which includes both a self-portrait and a portrait of the English donor, Sir John Donne; Bathsheba (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), a life-sized nude; and such fine portraits as that of Guillaume Moreel and his wife (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels).

Memling was born in Seligenstadt near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, but settled in Bruges about 1466, and was town painter there (1475–87). He had a prosperous career, producing religious paintings of great beauty and portraits of dignified reticence, anticipating those of Hans Holbein the Younger. His landscape backgrounds have a charm and delicacy that was particularly appreciated by Italian artists of his day. Though he adopted elements of style from van Eyck, Dirck Bouts, and above all van der Weyden, he showed little development in his work, except in his later years when he introduced some Italian decorative motives.