Triptyque de la Résurrection : L'Ascension du Christ

c. 1430s

Born

c. 1455 – 1460

Brussels, Rogier van der Weyden’s workshop

Around 1455–1460 Memling works in the Low Countries under Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels; other accounts put his move to the Netherlands around 1459. Vasari mentions the apprenticeship, but no documents survive; the 1524 inventory of Margaret of Austria records a triptych by Rogier whose wings with angels were painted by “Master Hans”.

1465

Citizenship of Bruges and the Guild of St Luke

Memling moves to Bruges, receives citizenship and becomes a member of the Guild of St Luke; the register of citizens lists him as “Jan van Mimmelinghe, born in Seligenstadt”. He lives on Sint-Jorisstraat in the painters’ quarter and becomes one of the city’s leading artists, master of a large workshop.

1466–1494 · Virkested

Bruges

1473

“The Last Judgment” is captured by a Danzig privateer

The triptych, commissioned for a chapel at Fiesole by Angelo Tani, former director of the Bruges branch of the Medici bank, is shipped to Italy by sea; in April 1473 the vessel is captured by the Danzig privateer Paul Beneke. Neither the Medici bank’s protests nor a bull of Pope Sixtus IV win the painting back, and it stays in Danzig, now Gdańsk.

11. august 1494

Died