Terence Morgan, The Master of Bruges
in the middle of Stealing the Mystic Lamb, by Noah Charney
unrelated but recently finished and AWESOME:
Drown, by Junot Diaz (book of lacerating short stories that make you want to curl up and die because we are an evil selfish species who do each other no good and whenever there is the teeniest little flicker of hope that maybe the world is not a terrible terrible place and kindness does exist then SQUASH flicker is gone. but wow boy can write.)
The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett (a very good antidote to the Junot Diaz book, since it is about people managing to forge connections in unlikely places and manages to be both sweet and intelligent without compromising either the sweetness or the intelligence.)
But! we are here to discuss fifteenth century Flanders and all the spicy juicy shit that was going down in the art world. This episode of Nick Hornby Will You Be Our Friend is dedicated to Alexia R., whose book recommendations turned out to be spot on...
The fluffiest of the three books is the Terence Morgan; it purports to be narrated by the Flemish painter Hans Memling, and it weaves a deliciously plausible solution to the English princes-in-the-tower mystery into the known facts (according to my brief review of the Wikipedia article about him...) of Memling's life and all the bigwigs of fifteenth century Burgundy, Flanders, and England. Love. It. I could identify only two problems with this book: 1) the back copy is SO STUPID (it makes it sound like an extraordinarily sloppy historical romance bodice ripper eeeeuuuw) and 2) at least the paperback edition doesn't include a lovely glossy insert of all of Memling's paintings that are clues along the way, a la Da Vinci Code, as to what is going on, but otherwise it is great and fun and clever and totally addictive. When I went to the internet thinking, hunh, I'm SURE someone somewhere has remedied the lack of a companion picture guide, turns out il n'existe pas wtf (at least that I could find), so here, for all your conspiracy theory scratching pleasure, is my little Reader's Companion Guide to The Master Of Bruges. (I'm not going to write about the Jonathan Sanchez book because although juicy it was a re-read, or the Noah Charney book, because I am still eating it whole and it is DELICIOUS).
1. Semi-fact! Yes, Memling probably did apprentice with the master painter Rogier van der Weyden. Can't find anything about whether vdW really was as cantankerous an old bastard as the novel makes out.
2. here's the portrait that vdW (Memling, in the book) painted of Charles, duke of Charolais: 
3. Unclear whether Memling actually did military service. I found one website which (sort of sweetly) states, "Contrary to popular belief, Memling did _not_ fight at the Battle of Nancy under Charles the Bold," as if Memling's presence at Nancy is the hot topic on Twitter & Facebook right now.
4. here's a teeny tiny pic of the lefthand side of the triptych which was commissioned by the Spanish ambassador, Francisco de Rojas (pictured). Couldn't find an image of the complete thingy, sadly:
5. Central panel of the "revolutionary" triptych commissioned by Portinari for Sint Jacobskerk:
6. Altarpiece painted for the hospital of St. John:
7. Fact! John Donne was an English diplomat in the court at Bruges for Edward VI, and he commissioned the Donne Triptych, now on display in the National Gallery in London:
7. This is the altarpiece painted for Jan Crabbe, with the image of the Virgin Mary modelled on Marie of Burgundy:
8. The printer William Caxton printed the first book ever printed in English in Bruges. I couldn't find anything on Google re: whether he and Memling ever met, but fifteenth century Bruges can't have been _that_ big a place.
9. Various paintings supposedly featuring Princess Marie as the Virgin Mary:
10. The "Last Judgement" triptych stolen by pirates of the Hanseatic League:
11. the portraits of Lorenzo Nero Palmieri & the Portinaris:
12. I couldn't find any portraits of Edward IV, Richard III, or Elizabeth Woodville by Memling (or any mention of Memling's ever having actually gone to England) but fun! I found a post (on the website of the "Richard III Society," of all places), re: the lack of historical evidence for these portraits, to which Terence Morgan had himself replied, explaining, "I took my information from “Memling’s Portraits” by Till-Holger Borchert (Ludion Press, 2005), where he suggests (pp.55-6) that both Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were painted by Memling (I added Richard in myself!)." So there.
13. the central panel of the Lubeck altarpiece:
14. and just for fun, last but not least, a link to the Wikipedia rundown on Perkin Warbeck, which I needed to, ahem, refresh my memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkin_Warbeck
OK, now back to Noah Charney and dastardly evil Nazi art thieves...
