Travelogue 1200 – 8 August
Memling’s Shrine

She led 11,000 virgins. She was a British princess on pilgrimage. She was slaughtered, along with all her entourage, by the Huns in Cologne. Their bodies were buried there, in the centre of modern Cologne, and there they remained until their discovery in the twelfth century. The bones unearthed entered the relic market, and St Ursula became very popular as the patron saint of young women. (The bones were probably from a Roman graveyard.)

I love the stories of Catholic saints. They are thousands of saints, and they are the superheroes of the Middle Ages. But there is a key difference between Catholic saints and heroes of Greek or Roman or Marvel mythology: they were human, born to live or die like anyone else, but were saved, sometimes martyred, and they effected miracles only incidentally, as an consequence of their holiness.

One can follow the story of St Ursula on the fifteenth-century relic shrine left us in Bruges, a product of the famous Flemish primitive, Hans Memling. Memling was a favourite of the sisters of the Sint-Janshospitaal. A particular fan was Agnes Casembrood, who commissioned the shrine, and who is portrayed on one of the short facades praying behind the Virgin and Child. She also appears, by the way, in one of the back panels of the huge Triptych of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, which is also housed at the Sint-Janshospitaal. She kneels there and prays under the tutelage of two tall women saints, one of which ohich is Catherine.

The relic shrine is a marvellous piece of work, carved in wood to be a miniature Gothic chapel to house the hospital church’s relics and then painted by Memling and his workshop. The shrine is wooden, but is gilded, and it features all the decoration common in Gothic architecture, pinnacles, finials, gablets, crockets, tracery, and statues in niches. Along both sides, you follow the story of St Ursula in Memling’s vivid colours, travelling to Rome, meeting the pope, and then besieged by the Huns in Cologne. The scenes are crowded with figures, and yet you have no trouble picking out Ursula and the pope and following the fundamental storyline. The shrine is not even a metre tall. The art of the miniature is in full glory in this period. The detail is wonderful.

Travelogue 1199 – 4 August
Our Lady

We spent a few days in Bruges (or Brugge, in the Flemish variation). I made a point of stopping by the Church of Our Lady straight away, to visit the Renaissance treasure hidden inside. Here is one of the very few Michelangelo sculptures to leave Italy during his lifetime.

During the years he was carving the David, 1501-1504, when he was young, Michelangelo also produced this lovely Madonna and Child. It may have been intended for an altar in Tuscany, but it was purchased by a pair of Flemish brothers in the cloth business, Jan and Alexander Mouscron, and shipped home to Bruges to embellish a funerary monument for their parents.

The sculpture is recognizable as Michelangelo’s, in the Carrara stone, in the polish applied, in the shape of the Virgin’s face, in the twisting pose of the Christ child. It breaks from medieval tradition in several ways, in its asymmetry, in the independence of the child, who seems to be ready to take a step, in the contemplative expression on Mary’s face. She is not looking at her baby, but down, presumably at the worshippers in the church where the sculpture was originally intended to be installed, on an altar above the congregation.

There is something of the great man’s character in the work, something of his complex character. Note his devotion to hard work in the fine detail and the high polish. Catch the tone of his religion in the way the pyramidal composition exalts the figures, in the cool detachment of the figures as they consider the boy’s fate. Note his pride in the illusion of simplicity in the challenging pose of the Christ child. His awe-inspiring competence is as much the subject and purpose of the piece as the religious subject matter. Michelangelo’s work is a kind of testament to and embodiment of Pico della Mirandola’s "Oration on the Dignity of Man".

It was a privilege to see this work. It is housed in the Church of Our Lady, the thirteenth-century church with the tallest tower in the city, and third tallest brickwork tower in the world, a lovely structure that also houses the elaborate fifteenth-century tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold.