Hidden secrets: In-depth research into Memling
Project content
With no fewer than nine works in our collection, seven of which are on the Flemish Masterpieces List, Musea Brugge holds the second-largest Memling collection in the world. To unlock the secrets of this leading Flemish Primitives master, we will be conducting in-depth research into the works in the coming years using new technologies, and making them accessible to the public through innovative digital applications. On this page, you can follow the research; we will also post regular updates on its progress.
In early 2023, it was announced that Musea Brugge can invest €1.2 million – comprising Flemish subsidies and our own funds – into large-scale, prestigious research into the works of Hans Memling. What exactly will happen? What does the research involve, and what results will it yield?
Technical research
Macrophotography and infrared reflectography
On 24 April 2023, the first phase of the research project began. Over the course of four months, seven works by Hans Memling from our collection at Museum St John’s Hospital underwent in-depth examination, one by one. A specialized team from the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK) travelled to Bruges with the latest equipment and technologies to record the artworks.
Between 18 January and 28 February 2024, the research team continued in Gallery 6 of the Groeningemuseum, where they imaged the remaining two works from the Bruges Memling collection.
KIK produced macro images with a high-resolution digital camera under various illuminations (visible light, raking light, infrared and ultraviolet fluorescence). They also made infrared-reflectography recordings with a dedicated camera.
Is there more than one kind of light? Not exactly. Electromagnetic radiation is all around us. The part we can see with the naked eye is called light – more precisely, ‘visible light’. There is also radiation we cannot see, but which we can feel as heat. That is infrared. Finally, there is ultraviolet radiation, likewise invisible to humans (though visible to some animals). Thanks to remarkable technological advances, we can now capture these invisible wavelengths with a special camera and convert them into images we can interpret – and that is exactly what we have done with Memling’s works in recent months.
These new technical images allow us to study the different layers of a painting: infrared reveals the underdrawing, while ultraviolet tells us, among other things, about the varnish layer and past restorations. In this way, we gain information about the condition of the work, the artist’s methods and any later alterations. The images form a basis for further in-depth research.
The technical images of the nine Memlings were then processed, a task that took several months. Why did it take so long? The paintings were photographed in small tiles, sometimes only 7.5 x 10 cm. All those images must be stitched together. That is a time-consuming process that also produces extremely large files (sometimes up to 80GB for a single image). But the result is more than worth it: razor-sharp, ultra-high-resolution imagery.
Digitization project
To open up the technical research on the Memling collection to a broad public, we launched three digitization projects: an interactive, audio-visual experience in the attic of the Saint John’s Hospital Museum, a city walk and geocache that lead visitors to places where the artist lived and worked in 15th-century Bruges – ideal for anyone wishing to explore Bruges and Memling in a different way – and a website where we present the paintings and the research, allowing visitors to view the works and their remarkable details in extremely high resolution. We will also share the findings of the academic research there in depth.
