IOHANNES: Flemish paintings at the Saint John’s Hospital in Bruges
The IOHANNES project studies the unique collection of paintings that have been on display for centuries in their original setting at Saint John’s Hospital in Bruges. The five-year research, funded by BELSPO, focuses on the role of art in medieval healthcare and religious experience. The results will be published in the prestigious series Corpus of Flemish Primitives.
This project is funded by BELSPO's FED-tWIN programme
IOHANNES. Flemish paintings at the Saint John’s Hospital in Bruges. Art in its Original Setting. Creating, Viewing and Using Images in Fifteenth-Century Southern Low Countries
IOHANNES is a joint initiative of KIK-IRPA and UCLouvain/GEMCA (Group for Early Modern Cultural Analysis) and in partnership with Musea Brugge. Over the course of five years, IOHANNES will explore the Flemish paintings in the collection of Saint John’s Hospital, including masterpieces by Hans Memling. The project, named after the hospital (Johannes, John), is funded by the Belgian Federal Science Policy (BELSPO) within the framework of the FED-tWIN programme.
Flemish Primitives in a hospital?
Founded in the 12th century, the Saint John’s hospital in Bruges is one of the oldest of its kind in Europe. In its 900-year history, the hospital has always been home to precious art objects. These include one of the largest collections of paintings by the Bruges master Hans Memling (Seligenstadt, c. 1430-40 – Bruges, 1494). Some of these paintings were explicitly commissioned from Memling by the brothers and sisters of the hospital. After hundreds of years, they are still in situ – in the place for which they were created. This makes the project a special case study for early Netherlandish paintings in their original setting.
(Photo: © Visit Bruges, Jan Darthet)
Art, Piety and Health Care
The medieval hospital of St. John’s was a social and a religious institution. Unlike modern hospitals, it took not only care of the patient’s body, but also of the Christian soul. Paintings and other devotional objects therefore played a specific role in the hospital’s everyday life and formed together a relational environment of artistic and religious experience.
(Photo: © Museum Sint-Janshospitaal, Musea Brugge)
IOHANNES – Project goals
The investigation will concentrate on two key aspects:
- the material display of the paintings
- enhancing our comprehension of their specific role in the hospital, linking religious services and prayers to artistic objects
The data gathered regarding materiality, iconography, function, and usage will enable us to reconstruct the 15th-century visual landscape of the Saint John’s hospital and its contemporary experience as close as possible.
(Photo: © Museum Sint-Janshospitaal, Musea Brugge)
Corpus of the Flemish Primitives
The project results will be published in a volume of the series Corpus of the Flemish Primitives, which offers scientific analysis of paintings by Flemish masters between 1400-1500 in public collections, this time dedicated to the museum collection of the Saint John’s hospital.
Would you like more info on this project?
Contact our experts at the Centre for the Study of Flemish Primitives.
Melis Avkiran
Bart Fransen
Dominique Deneffe
European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – ECHOES
The European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science (ECHOES) project aims to establish the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), a shared platform to provide heritage professionals and researchers with access to data, scientific resources, training, and advanced digital tools tailored to suit their needs.
