Rome to pay tribute to Flemish master Memling

Painter sought by Pietro Bembo, John Donne, and the Medicis

(ANSA) - Rome, August 4 - Masterful portraits, diptychs and triptychs on loan from museums around the world will comprise an upcoming exhibition of work by Flemish master Hans Memling (c. 1430-1494), opening October 10 at the Scuderie del Quirinale museum in the Italian capital. Curated by German art historian Till-Holger Borchert, chief curator of the Groeningemuseum and Arentshuis museums in Bruges, this is believed to be the first one-man show on the Flemish genius, whose portraits were much in demand among the European aristocracy of the 15th century. Memling's style influenced the work of numerous late-15th-century Italian painters, and his portraits were popular in Italy, where he was much in demand by aristocrats such as scholar and poet Pietro Bembo in Venice and the heads of the house of Medici in Florence.

Building on the work of Flemish predecessors such as Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, Memling built a reputation for himself stretching beyond Flanders and Italy to Britain, where patrons included British metaphysical poet, Sir John Donne. Among the works on loan for the show at the Scuderie is a magnificent series of portraits, such as Portrait of a Man, loaned by Queen Elizabeth from the Royal Collection, and another Portrait of a Man, from the Frick Museum in New York City. Also on view will be the the Pagagnotti Triptich - of which part is housed in the Uffizi and part in London's National Gallery - and the Moreel family triptich, from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.

Fans of the Flemish master will flock to see his sumptuous, dramatic Last Judgement: commissioned by Florentine banker Angelo Tani, it was stolen by pirates, who sold the captive painting to the city of Danzig. As legend has it, the citizens loved the masterpiece so much that it was placed in the city's cathedral. Tani fought in vain for the return of the three-part painting, with its Saint Michael weighing souls on a set of scales in the middle section while the virtuous ascend to heaven on the left part of the triptych and the damned spiral downward into hell on the right.

The Last Judgement had a long and dramatic saga of its own, for it was raided by Napoleon's troops, who took it to the Louvre, then handed over to the Soviets after World War II as part of compensation for war damages and placed in the Hermitage, but eventually returned to the National Museum in the Polish city of Gdansk. The Memling exhibition is on view through January 18.