Hans Memling, Man with a Roman coin by Natasja Tollenaar

About "Hans Memling, Man with a Roman coin"

by Natasja Tollenaar

About the artwork

A middle-aged man looks at us with a somewhat dreamy expression. He is holding a Roman coin with the image of Emperor Nero. Below in the center you can see two laurel leaves that presumably continued on the original frame that has disappeared. A vista leads your gaze to a horseman in an idyllic landscape with a palm tree and swans in a pond.

Hans Memling is one of the first artists to use landscape as a background for a portrait. Who this man is, we cannot say for sure. One thinks of the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1433 - 1519) who owned an important collection of paintings and ancient coins. Van Ertborn bought the painting in 1826 at the auction of Baron Vivant Denon, the man who coordinated Napoleon's art shipments. Nicholas Rockox also owned this bronze sestertius of Emperor Nero in his collection of coins. Presumably, Memling learned the painter's trade from Rogier Van der Weyden. In any case, he was enrolled in the Bruges Guild of St. Luke in 1476 and gave portrait painting a new twist.

Hans Memling or Jan van Menninghen (Seligenstadt, c. 1430-40 - Bruges, Aug. 11, 1494) was a painter from the Electorate of Mainz. He is generally considered one of the prominent figures of Old Netherlandish painting, better known as the Flemish Primitives.

The use of perspective and the constant repetition of the ideal of beauty of certain figures, notable with the Madonna figure, takes clear shape in his numerous portraits. His attention to depicting heraldry and placing characters in a landscape, which he was new to, stand out in this regard.