What Secrets Hide in This Ancient Painting of Christ

Blood and gold converge on wooden panels where divinity meets its darkest hour. Hans Memling's The Passion unfolds like a sacred manuscript brought to life, each scene a station in humanity's most profound drama of sacrifice and redemption. Across meticulously rendered landscapes where Jerusalem's stones gleam under an unforgiving sky, Christ moves inexorably toward Golgotha, surrounded by crowds whose faces reveal the full spectrum of human emotion, cruelty and compassion, mockery and mourning, betrayal and broken-hearted love. This is no distant theological abstraction, but an intimate chronicle of suffering rendered with such exquisite detail that five centuries dissolve, and we stand as witnesses to the Memling created The Passion around 1470-71, at the threshold between the Middle Ages and the modern world. The composition does not gaze toward future innovations, but instead encapsulates the medieval conception of pictorial imagery. It displays neither mathematically accurate perspective, nor any hesitation about depicting simultaneously events that occurred at different times. The accuracy of space and time holds no significance. The sole purpose is to portray the Passion of Christ, scene by scene. The panel spans 55 by 90 centimeters. Memling starts his narrative at the upper left, where Jesus, acclaimed as the Messiah, makes his entry into Jerusalem and drives the traders and money changers from the temple. In the nocturnal section of the composition, he appears sharing the Last Supper with his disciples, and Judas is likewise shown delivering him to the high priests. Following the supper, Jesus kneels in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. The crowd arrives, and Judas marks Jesus by kissing him. Peter tries to protect his master with his sword. Subsequently, when the soldiers identify Peter, he disavows having been among the disciples, and the cock above him evokes Jesus' prediction. This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Memling portrays the central square of Jerusalem illuminated brilliantly. Jesus stands accused by the high priests before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate offers to free him, but the crowd objects. On the path to the execution site, Jesus collapses at the city gate and directs his face toward us. At the upper and right edges of the composition, we observe the crucifixion, deposition, burial, descent into hell, and resurrection. At the top right, rendered very small, Memling incorporates several manifestations of the resurrected Christ. In total, the picture displays more than 20 episodes, which in Memling's era were known to all, including those unable to read or write. For medieval humanity, the earth was a flat disk encircled by water. Beneath it lay hell, and above, beyond the visible heavens, existed the domain of God. At the center of the disk stood Jerusalem, the location where the Son of God had perished and had risen to his Father. Several world maps have endured on which the seas and continents then known were arranged around Jerusalem in the middle. They record a Christian interpretation of geography. Memling was based in the Flemish city of Bruges, and people both there and across the rest of Europe understood perfectly which roads and shipping routes led to the actual Jerusalem. After all, nearly 400 years had passed since French, German, and Italian knights had launched the first of the Crusades, with the objective of freeing the center of the world from infidel control. The Crusades had been unsuccessful. Since 1244, Jerusalem had been securely in the possession of Islam, though Muslim rulers did allow pilgrims who came in peace to visit the city. In the 15th century, according to conservative estimates, approximately 1,000 pilgrims a year undertook the journey to the Holy Land, boarding ships in Marseilles or Venice, typically in the expectation that this costly endeavor, with its many hardships, would cleanse them of sin. Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela were regarded as the most significant of all pilgrimage destinations, and assured visiting believers the most complete indulgence to erase their sins. Anyone in Europe who wished could acquire information about contemporary Jerusalem. There were descriptions that included guidance on the routes to follow, and there were woodcuts depicting famous buildings. Memling clearly took no interest in this. His Jerusalem is a collection of imaginary structures, the roofs and towers appearing more European than Middle Eastern. An interest in realistic depictions of cities was just emerging at the time, and they started to appear in the backgrounds of paintings simplified to the prominent churches and towers. Memling's buildings are so tightly packed, the roofs seem so animated with movement, the city is so distinctly bounded by its walls that it resembles an organism. At that time, it was commonly believed that a city was not simply a grouping of buildings enclosed within walls, but a living creature comparable to a protective woman. All of the buildings, though not large or magnificent, are sturdily constructed in stone. There are no cottages built against the walls, no half-timber houses presenting a fire hazard, no derelict or unfinished buildings, nor any of the filth typically found in streets. What Memling is depicting is an ideal city. It may be that his aim was to situate the final days of Jesus' life in a pure, transfigured, and fitting setting. But it is also conceivable that in painting this city, Memling was contemplating another Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem of Revelation 21, which according to John the Divine will descend from God at the end of time. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper, and the city was pure gold, and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. It is true that the city Memling rendered is not golden, nor did he otherwise adhere to John's detailed description in Revelation, but his Jerusalem nonetheless corresponds to conceptions of a city placed like a great jewel by the hand of a higher power in its landscape setting. The cities of Europe were scattered around the continent's prosperous regions, and in the 15th century, that meant that most cities were in northern Italy and in Flanders. The premier city in Flanders was Bruges, where Hans Memling worked. It was connected to the port of Slies by canal, and was favorably positioned on the trade routes of the age, from Spain to Novgorod. From the north came grain, wood, and furs. From the south, lemons, figs, and oranges, and via the Mediterranean silk, carpets, and spices. Bruges was the most famous city in the world, for the goods traded there and the merchants who lived there, wrote Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The cloak of the rider on the right indicates the widespread taste for fine fabrics at the time. This is Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, whom Memling portrays in a number of scenes. He alone of the biblical persona has fur trims on his cap and collar, which under the rules that governed apparel in the 15th century, was reserved for men of especially high rank. The man beside him, in the cape-like garment and the round red cap, may be a Pharisee. Men dressed similarly are among those shouting, Crucify him! when Pilate proposes to release Jesus. They are gesticulating wildly, arms upraised, under the unbending courtly code of the House of Burgundy, which set the standard for the upper classes in Flanders. Gestures such as these were a sign of uncouthness and undignified behavior. Bruges owed its wealth not only to its well-organized artisan sector and its advantageous location near the coast, it was also the city in which the Dukes of Burgundy resided. Their realm stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland, and they were the wealthiest rulers in Europe. In 1468, two years before Memling painted his passion, the new Duke Charles the Bold made his ceremonial entry into Bruges, confirmed the privileges of the city, and held tournaments and festivities. Three months later, there was a further occasion for celebrations when his bride entered the city. It was indeed a year of rejoicing and celebration. But the festivities had to be financed, and the cost borne by the new Duke's soldiers was even higher for the cities and taxpayers of Burgundy. The Duke was not one to be squeamish when it came to filling the coffers. He went to war in an attempt to regulate the boundaries of his patchwork realm, and in 1477 fell in battle at Nancy. The Burgundian Empire collapsed. The death of Charles also marked the end of the greatest period in the history of Bruges, not because the splendors of the ducal residence were a thing of the past, but because the guilds had become rigid and were cripplingly slow to introduce new capitalist forms of production. Moreover, the port and canal silted up. Before long, the merchants abandoned the city and the artists followed. The new metropolitan center of trade and the arts was to be Antwerp. Bruges was also of exceptional importance as a city of finance. Italy had developed techniques of banking such as bills of exchange, notes of credit, and double-entry bookkeeping, and Italian banking houses had branches in every major trading city. In Bruges, the bank's representatives mingled with the city's merchants at the home of one van der Boerse, and it was his name that came to stand for the most important of capitalist institutions, the bourse or stock exchange. The resident representative of the Medici bank was Tommaso Portinari, and he had himself and his wife portrayed as donors in the lower corners of the painting. They married in 1470 when Tommaso was 42 and his wife 14 or 15, and their marriage was probably the occasion for commissioning the painting. Memling painted the banker with a fur-trimmed collar and the young Florentine woman, dressed in Burgundian fashion, wearing a tall pointed hat with a long veil and with her hairline shaved back because a high forehead was considered a sign of beauty. The records of the Medici bank have survived, allowing Portinari's career to be traced closely. He entered the service of the bank at 17 and became manager of the Bruges branch in 1465. After buying a share of the business, he was entitled to a quarter of the profits. Following the death of Piero de' Medici in 1469, Lorenzo the Magnificent took over the bank. More interested in politics and display than finance, Lorenzo gave Portinari a free hand and no longer limited the credit granted to Duke Burgundy. This proved Portinari's undoing. He aspired to respect at court, advised Duke Charles, and loaned him large sums. He bought a house in Bruges of extravagant magnificence. After Charles the Bold died in 1477, losses to the Medici bank were enormous. Portinari's other ventures failed and Lorenzo severed his connection with him. Portinari spent the following decades collecting debts and evading creditors. When he died in 1501, his son refused the inheritance, which consisted chiefly of debts. The Portinaris are remembered through paintings they commissioned between 1470 and 1477, including portraits by Memling and the Portinari altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes. Memling's passion was later moved to Florence and given to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, founded by an ancestor of Portinari. From there, it passed into the keeping of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, then to Pope Pius V, and later to a Dominican monastery. During the Napoleonic Wars, it was concealed, later recovered, and eventually given to the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, where it has remained since 1832 and has recently been restored. How little Memling was concerned to depict a realistic Jerusalem is further demonstrated by his painted sculptures. In Jerusalem, both in Christ's time and in Memling's, the portrayal of the human image was forbidden. In Flanders, however, it was customary to place sculptures on churches and public buildings. Memling depicts what was customary in his own world, incorporating sculptures that comment upon the events. Where Jesus is accused before Pilate, Memling represents the judgment of Solomon. Above the doorway, where Peter denies Christ, are Adam and Eve after the fall, symbolizing guilt and original sin. Above the scourging scene are Cain and Lamech, illustrating the principle that those who do violence shall die violently. Memling depicts these figures nude and with physical grace, following the ideal proportions of classical Greek sculpture recently rediscovered in Florence. Their presence may reflect the donor's taste or the artist's awareness of Renaissance aesthetics. Whatever the reason, they are harmonized into the fabric of the painting. The forms and colors convey a sense that in Memling's Jerusalem, all things follow a divinely ordained course. It is this trust in God and the world that distinguishes Memling from many of his contemporaries. There is no mathematical perspective, no obsession with natural detail, and no terror of demons, as in the work of Hieronymus Bosch. Memling expresses instead a profound conviction that all things are in God's hands, a conviction embodied in the calm security of his vision of Jerusalem.