Chapter CCXVI: Bruges, 1849

This is a most stunning place, immeasurably the best we have come to. There is a quantity of first-rate architecture, and very little or no Rubens.

But by far the best of all are the miraculous works of Memling and Van Eyck. The former is here in a strength that quite stunned us--and perhaps proves himself to have been a greater man even than the latter. In fact, he was certainly so intellectually, and quite equal in mechanical power. His greatest production is a large triptych in the Hospital of St. John, representing in its three compartments: firstly, the "Decollation of St. John Baptist"; secondly, the "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine to the Infant Saviour"; and thirdly, the "Vision of St. John Evangelist in Patmos." I shall not attempt any description; I assure you that the perfection of character and even drawing, the astounding finish, the glory of colour, and, above all, the pure religious sentiment and ecstatic poetry of these works is not to be conceived or described. Even in seeing them the mind is at first bewildered by such godlike completeness; and only after some while has elapsed can at all analyse the causes of its awe and admiration; and then finds these feelings so much increased by analysis that the last impression left is mainly one of utter shame at its own inferiority.

Van Eyck's picture at the Gallery may give you some idea of the style adopted by Memling in these great pictures; but the effect of light and colour is much less poetical in Van Eyck's; partly owing to _his_ being a more sober subject and an interior, but partly also, I believe, to the intrinsic superiority of Memling's intellect. In the background of the first compartment there is a landscape more perfect in the abstract lofty feeling of nature than anything I have ever seen. The visions of the third compartment are wonderfully mystic and poetical.

_Rossetti._