What I did on my winter holiday, part III
Days in Bruges
Waking up in Bruges, we find that a cold breakfast is laid out for us as self-serve, in the kitchenette on the same floor as our room: cereal, rolls, bread for toasting, cold cuts, cheese, yoghurt, orange juice, tea and coffee. It's a far more complete 'Continental breakfast' than I'm used to, and it's delightful.
The decor is very spare and lean: muted colours, clean lines, simple geometric patterns, a bit like upscale IKEA. In fact, it's almost exactly the same colour and style scheme as the 'brasserie' we ate at the night before, down to the very plain white china pattern and the pale green serviettes.
Perhaps after living with the detailed medieval and florid baroque exteriors, going with crisp and spotless 'Scandinavian' interiors provides a rest for the eyes and the brain.
The B&B owner, Lut, offers to drop our bags at the B&B of a friend (Lut can't offer us 2 nights); friend proves to be outside the centre of the tourist area, but is still walking distance, and is considerably cheaper. Hurrah for well-connected professional hosts.
We head out around 10-ish to see the archeological museum. The main museums in Bruges have joint 3-day tickets for 15 Euro: a great deal. The archeo museum turns out to be very kid-oriented, taking you through the history of the site: from Bronze Age to post-medieval, the region's history is driven by natural access to the sea - for some periods, there is no direct seaside access inland, and evidence of occupation disappears for a century or so. And when the port and the canals begin to silt up in the late middle ages, Bruges' importance wanes as merchants and shippers move elsewhere.
Some splendid moments in the museum are provided by the video of Bronze Age reenactors making axes: one by knapping a flint axehead, one by casting a bronze one, and then sharpening them respectively.
The museum cleverly associates period and modern artifacts by mixing them: putting modern pitchers, cups, plates next to period examples (often in similar styles) and putting period shoes and purses in modern shoeboxes in the display. The displays also provide a lot of information without text - you're handed a laminated guide to the museum in the language of your choice, but a lot is conveyed well with visual association instead.
In addition to trading, medieval Bruges was driven by three industries, all fitted within the old city: dyeing, tanning and clay (bricks, tiles and pottery). I dread to think how the city smelled on warm days, with all these stinky, messy water-intensive industries all in close proximity.
An excellent display of madder, dyers weed(?) and woad connected the dye plants directly to the Belgian flag (red, yellow, blue) - very effective.
On to the next museum: Memling in Sint. Jan, which refers to the 16th/17th c artist, Memling, working for St Jaanshospital. The museum is housed in the original hospital building - built to house sick pilgrims, travellers and poor - though the main focus of the care was spiritual, making sure you were prepared to meet your maker while you were, uh, travelling to hopefully meet your maker, so to speak. Lepers and other contagious folk and pregnant women need not apply!
The beds and bedding were endowments by rich patrons in perpetuity (bit like having an academic chair or a hospital ward named after you). Patrons names and images would hang by the bed, and occupants were encouraged to pray for their benefactors. The hospital was active until the 19th century, and the Benedictine nuns working there wore the traditional gown and veil (very 15th c. prosperous modest burgher look) until Vatican II in 1966. The Benedictines still live next door in the Beginhof.
One fabulous display was of the restored medieval coffer of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. Anything pre-Eyck (ie. pre-1400) is fairly rare here: Bruges was constantly rebuilt and refurbished, including artworks.
This coffer had been repainted several times, and recently was restored to its original red and vermilion colours - working down through 12 layers of paint to the original bottom four layers! A very splendid example of a delicate and thorough restoration.
Afternoon museum: Groeningmuseum, which is The Big One in Bruges, and houses the 'Dutch Primitives'- Van Eyck and his late 14th to late 15th c. contemporaries. (One Van Eyck that is in London is 'Marriage of Arnolfini', of a dour couple in a wealthy-looking bedroom, and the woman looks very pregnant).
Most of the paintings are religious topics, and they're incredibly richly detailed and brilliantly coloured, working in the newfangled oil paints (instead of egg tempera), with powerful 3D effects. For worshippers, they must have been incredibly lifelike, almost ready to jump off the walls and run around the churches with them.
(One that is in London is Van Eyck's marriage of Arnolfini, of a couple in a wealthy-looking bedroom, and the woman looks very pregnant).
Unfortunately, big sections of the exhibits are closed: the museum is suffering from an infestation of woodworm, which is a pretty serious matter when so much of your art is painted on wood panels! so the earliest pieces that we were looking forward to were offlimits. Sigh.
Since photos are firmly verboten, we took sketches instead of whatever took our fancy: belt fittings, jewelry, rosaries (for xrian ), necklines, headdresses. It felt very grown-up and mature to be sketching in a gallery! I'd love to do a full-on 15th c European gown like some of the ones I saw - presumeably after I perfect all the other clothing styles that interest me - it could be very lush and rich!
Our last stop that day was to the 'American coffee shop', run by an expat American who is trying to introduce a 'coffee shop' to Bruges. She's clearly starved for intelligent conversation, and was happy to tell us her life story in about half an hour as she packed up.
Dinner that evening: frites and carbonnade (Flemish beef stew) from the chippie in Van Eyck square.