Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, Hans Memling and the Merchants. London: Reaktion Books, 2025, 269 pp., 65 b/w and color ill.

When I first encountered Hans Memling’s triptych of the Last Judgment today housed in the National Art Museum of the Polish city of Gdańsk (Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku), created in 1468, but stolen by pirates in 1473 while on its way to Pisa and transported to that Baltic port where it was installed in the chapel of the Confraternity of St. George in the Church of Our Lady, I knew that Memling was one of my most favorite fifteenth-century artists. A big color poster with that painting continues to decorate the door to my office. Memling’s contemporaries also held him in high regard and almost overwhelmed him with commissions. His fame dimmed, however, as was typical of most medieval art and literature since the early sixteenth century, and only when Friedrich Schlegel rediscovered him very early around 1800, did he reemerge as one of the greatest forerunners of Albrecht Dürer. Memling originated from Seligenstadt southeast of Frankfurt a. M., but he lived his entire professional life in Bruges, Flanders, where he met the decisive clientele, financially powerful and sufficiently motivated by their religion and desire of self-representation to commission Memling to produce his artworks, including altarpieces and portraits.