The Last Judgment.

This is the oldest painting ascribed to Hans Memlinc, one of the most prominent members of the "Flemish Primitives", who lived and worked in Bruges, where he painted "The Last Judgment" between 1467 and 1473.

A family in Florence, through an Italian trade agent residing in Bruges, ordered the painting. During the transport to Italy, Polish pirates captured the ship carrying it, and their captain offered "The Last Judgment" as a trophy to the cathedral of Gdansk. It is now in the "Muzeum Pomorskie" of Gdansk.

That an Italian family ordered a painting in Bruges from Memlinc illustrates on the one hand the fame of Memlinc, on the other hand the importance of Bruges as international trade center. The theme is inspired by the "Book of Revelation" (also known as "The Apocalypse") which prophesizes that at the end of times all the dead will be resurrected and judged according to what they have done. On the bottom part one can see the angel of justice "weighing" the resurrected on a scale. If heavy enough they are put on his (or perhaps her) right and will join Christ in heaven, if too light they end up on his/her left and will go to hell. On the top part Christ, surrounded by a picked committee of righteous, is supervising the process. In sharp contrast to the naked bodies of those being judged, Christ and his company are richly dressed, perhaps an indirect advertisement for Bruges' cloth industry.

In the 17^th century some scholars came, after painstaking analysis, to the conclusion that the Apocalypse would occur in 2000. Several clever corrections have been proposed, but the validity, merit or value of them, and of the original analysis, can certainly be disputed. However, there is no doubt that in 1999, it will be the last time in this millennium that abstracts submitted for an International Symposium on Gastrointestinal Motility will be judged. Although the consequences will not be as terrible as how Hans Memlinc saw "The Last Judgment", the easiest way to reach Bruges' Heaven will be to write a good abstract.