Hans’ Hats
Tony Zaza
Hans Memling (Jan van Mimnelinghe) is a marvel of deception, the master of transparent social critique. The Frick brings 30 of his works to life in an intimate, quiet viewing space, its cellar level where a good Netherlandish Dutchman would have spent his nights with a good mug of grog.
There you will notice the modest scale of his paintings. Covering less than 25 years (1470-1494), created mostly in Bruges, his portraits of the affluent and influential, the young and the aging, are all perfectly rendered without the slightest sense of a brushstroke. Closer observation of the simple, elegant portraits reveal patterns of his cookie-cutter approach. Each head is set against a landscape of low resolution, backdrops painted to have the look of an artificial space like the cutout backdrops of carnival photo studios. The eyes, the eyes are generic, idiomatic expressions, identical in each sitter except for some minor changes in the tint of the iris and the curvature of the brow.
"Hans" is a bastardized version of the old Germanic slang for "hands." Note how Hans renders the hands: for any artist, hands are one of the most difficult features to draw. Try it. Perspective fails, scale eludes reality, foreshortening seldom gets it right. Memling’s hands are marvels of desire, they are prayerful, they are in a grip, or they are poised in awkward reckless abandon.
His "sitters," an international "clan" of affluent merchants, well endowed sons and daughters of Italian origins, prelates of stature, agents of pure vanity from the diplomatic corps, all converging upon the fashion-conscious mercantile and international banking center, Bruges, also known for its fabric manufacturing.
So we come to the essentials, Memling’s hats. With such an affluent community at-large, seeking attention and social stature, one can easily see how expedient it would have been to send a clear message of one’s social position via haberdashery. One’s station in life is iconographied by the hat. There is the clerical cap and all its mutations based upon ecclesiastical hierarchy; there are the veils of chastity, nobility or piety. The merchant’s beret predominates, as these men of commerce were not only Memling’s chief patrons, but were held in high esteem in a region that valued conspicuous capitalism.
The 30 or so images, oil on wood, which have the feel of "official" passport photos, identify a class of people with uncanny similarities of nobility, posture and facial expression. Aloof, removed, dignified, these personages could constitute one family, almond-shaped eyes, and Roman noses, mostly thin, pursed lips, clean-shaven and blemish-free.
Back in the lovely ordered world of the Dutch trader, men in hats ruled. And in the grand indifference of his subjects’ gazes, Memling demonstrates how important each hat is in expressing some semblance of personality. His elegant, pristine, fashionable models would be quite comfortable on the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair.
