Category Archives: Rogier van der Weyden

Changing course on Henry the Navigator

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The image below is the frontispiece of a manuscript titled Crónica dos Feitos da Guiné written by the Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zuara.

The manuscript was commissioned by Portugal’s King Afonso V and records the recollections of his uncle Henry the Navigator and Portugal’s maritime exploration during the first half of the 15th century.

The original manuscript was completed in 1453 but a century later declared missing or lost. However, in 1839, an intact and preserved copy was rediscovered in the Royal Library of Paris. The Paris Codex includes the frontispiece shown above. It is presented as a representation of Henry the Navigator. Since its discovery the portrait has served as the basis of multiple other images depicting Henry.

That the portrait was of Henry was seemingly confirmed with the rediscovery in 1882 of the St Vincent Panels at the monastery of St Vincent de Fora in Portugal. In what is known as the Panel of the Prince is a mirror image of that shown in Zuara’s Chronicle of Guinea.

Panel of the Prince, St Vincent Panels

For almost a century Infante D. Henrique was the general consensus of researchers and historians for the identity of the figure wearing the Burgundian style chaperon and that the illustration in the Zuara chronicle was the source for the mirror image in the St Vincent Panels attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves.

But in the 1980s two researchers presented a new suggestion for the identity of the figure in the Panel of the Prince… King Edward of Portugal. This raised the question as to which of the two representations was painted first, and was the Paris Codex version added later. The frontispiece is an intact folio and part of the original manuscript. But that doesn’t exclude the possibility the illustration was painted on a reserved blank page at a later date.

So was the Paris Codex image produced after the completion of the St Vincent Panels? If so, this could place a question mark over the completion date of the St Vincent Panels and possibly the accepted attribution to Nuno Gonçalves. My understanding is the the St Vincent Panels panels were produced by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes who included his own image in the Panel of the Prince, above and to the right of the figure considered to be Prince Henry.

Henry, or his brother Edward, is moustached. There is a written record that Edward was moustached at some time in his life. Most images of Edward depict him with a full beard but his tomb effigy portrays him as clean-shaven. Henry’s effigy is also without a beard or moustache. Bearing in mind it is highly unlikely Hugo ever set eyes on Edward before the King died of the plague in September 1438, so if Van der Goes is the originator of the St Vincent Panels, where did he locate his source for the image of Edward or Prince Henry?

Petrus Christus

A clue to the source is portrayed in the panel itself. Some researchers believe the figure on the extreme left of the back row is the painter of the panels Nuno Gonçalves. It’s not. It’s the artist Petrus Christus who took over the workshop of Jan van Eyck after the Flemish master died in July 1441.

If Hugo van der Goes is the painter who produced the St Vincent Panels, then this could be the work and the artist that the German humanist Hieronymous Münzer referred to in his diary after visiting Ghent and wrote, “another great painter was driven mad and melancholy” attempting to emulate Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. Hugo wasn’t mentioned by name, but historians generally agree Münzer was referring to Van der Goes.

Hugo has mirrored several references and themes from the Ghent Altarpiece in the St Vincent Panels, so it should be no surprise to find the work of Petrus Christus is also reflected in the panels, particularly the Panel of the Prince.

There are at least five references to the works of Petrus Christus in the panel, but one in particular relates to the image of KIng Edward / Prince Henry. A pointer to this work are the unusual silver sleeves of the bald-headed man standing behind the figure believed to be St Vincent. The sleeves protect his forearms because he is portrayed in one guise as a falconer. Silver and falconer are pointers to the silver-point portrait, Man and his Falcon by Petrus Christus.

Elements of this drawing are incorporated into the Edward/Henry portrait. The face in the drawing is a younger version (but let’s discard Henry and replace him with the brothers’ father instead, King John I of Portugal, because the panel image is, in fact, a double portrait which I shall explain in a future post).

Silver-point portrait, A Man and his Falcon by Petrus Christus.

The low eyebrows and hooded eyelids can be matched, so can the thin upper lips and pronounced lower lips. But perhaps the most telling feature is the strong similarity of the ears. Hugo has adapted the firm brim of the hat to feature instead as the moustache, while Hugo adapts the falcon at the shoulder into an image of himself standing just behind the man in the chaperon representing John and his son Edward.

There are more elements in the drawing that link to other features and figures in the panel but better discussed as a separate topic in a future post.

So who is the man with the falcon in the silverpoint drawing? He bears a remarkable resemblance to the Burgundian duke Philip the Good who in 1430 married Isabella, daughter of King John I and sister of Edward. Compare the silverpoint drawing with two paintings of Philip by Rogier van der Weyden. Observe the large and similar ear, the low eyebrows and hooded eyes, the thin upper lip and full lower lip. Could the falcon dawng be a depiction of Philip the Good?

If so, then the kneeling woman in the Panel of the Prince could be said to be Isabella with her mother Philippa standing over her, and her father John, brother Edward and husband Philip all represented in the figure wearing the chaperon. This intimate connection could suggest that the painting may have been originally commissioned by Isabella herself. She died in December 1471. Petrus Christus died sometime in 1475 or 1476. Hugo van der Goes closed his workshop around 1477 and joined the Roode Klooster as a lay brother where he continued painting until his death, thought to be around 1482.

The date attribution for the silver point drawing is 1450. It’s kept at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt.

Panel of the Relic… more connections

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Over the years art historians have speculated on the identity of the 60 figures in the St Vincent Panels, without ever able to agree on a definitive line-up. Their efforts, it seems, have always focused on linking the 58 males and two women to Portuguese society, perhaps led by the fact the panels were discovered in the 1880s – in the monastery of Saint Vicente de Fora, in Lisbon.

So for some figures multiple names have been posited for their identity. In a sense this mixed bag of identities held an answer historians were searching for, but had yet to consider since they were focused on producing a single identity for each figure. The fact is that each figure usually has more that one identity, depending on a particular theme the artist embedded. While the painting is officially attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves, my preference is the Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes who is featured on the back row of the Panel of the Prince. It may be that the work and the commission was shared between the two men, similar to the Ghent Altarpiece attributed to the brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck.

The Ghent Altarpiece is perhaps the principal source of inspiration for the St Vincent Panels, and especially for the concept of using multiple identities. In the Just Judges panel Jan van Eyck has applied four identities to each of the ten riders. This was the challenge for Hugo van der Goes, to create a similar work embedded with multiple identities. To truly get to grips with the St Vincent Panels one has to understand the embedded themes and iconography Jan introduced in the Ghent Altarpiece. Without this knowledge or understanding it is not possible to grasp and comprehend all that Van der Goes presented in the St Vincent Panels.

Another painter, Barthélemy van Eyck, had knowledge of Jan’s disguised iconography in the Ghent Altarpiece and incorporated parts in the January folio he produced for Les Très Riche Heures when the manuscript was later in the possession of René d’Anjou. It’s also likely, Lambert van Eyck, a brother to Jan and Hubert, had knowledge of the cryptic narratives in the Ghent Altarpiece.

In the Panel of the Relic, Hugo van der Goes depicted the likeness of the three Van Eyck brothers. Barthélemy is also referenced but not seen and is a second ‘hidden’ identity given to Jan van Eyck. Jan also appears as John the Baptist, his name saint and the name of the church the Ghent Altarpiece was originally commissioned for until it was later renamed as St Bavo after it was rebuilt in the 16th century. St Bavo is the patron saint of Ghent.

Hugo van der Goes sourced a painting by Rogier van der Weyden for the image of Jan Van Eyck. The painting, now fragmented, portrayed Jan as Joseph the husband of the Virgin Mary, The section, which is housed at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon shows part of a church tower with a vacant aedicula to house a statue of some kind. The platform and canopy are there but the statue is missing. It’s very likely this motif partly inspired Van der Goes to portray Jan standing in front of an empty wooden box, which most observers presume is a coffin.

The wooden box acts as a visible link between the two Van Eyck brothers, so does it have other levels of meaning associated with the two figures? It’s constructed from a number of panels. Could it point to the wood panels that Jan and Hubert painted on to create the Ghent Altarpiece, perhaps a particular unfinished panel started by Hubert before his death in 1426? The Ghent Altarpiece is also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.

Observe Van Eyck’s red hat, shaped as a resting lamb, and a pointer to Jan’s self-portrait titled Man in a Red Turban, painted a year after the Ghent Altarpiece was unveiled. Hugo would have understood that the turban’s intricate folds also depicted the ‘Lamb of God’.

The Ghent Altarpiece was commissioned by the prosperous Flemish merchant and nobleman Joos Vijd, for his funeral bay chapel in the Ghent church of St John the Baptist. When completed in 1432 the painting was placed above the St Bavo altar in what became known as the Vidj Chapel.

St Bavo is the patron saint of Ghent. He came to faith late in life ‘after leading a worldly and dissipated life’ as a knight for nearly fifty years. His conversion came following his wife’s death and after listening to the preaching of St Amand. For a while he attached himself to a Benedictine monastery in Ghent but eventually moved out and lived a more secluded life out of a hollow tree in the forest of Malemedum, surviving only on herbs and spring water. The hollow tree, a natural harbour for shelter and rest, and a bay within the forest, has partly inspired Hugo’s empty wooden box. The mention of forest connects to the figure alongside of St Hubert whose conversion took place while hunting in a forest. However, the principle connection to the empty coffin or the hollow tree, is a pun to reference All Hallows’ Evening (Halloween, also known as All Saints’ Eve) followed by All Hallows Day – the Christian feast of All Saints; hence the many references made to Christian saints in the Panel of the Relic. The reference also serves to link to the phrase “communion of saints” (sanctorum communionem) declared in the Apostles’ Creed, which in turn connects to an earlier mention of the medieval poem: William’s Vision of Piers the Plowman.

There are other links. Understood as a niche or a nook, the box leads to a prevalent theme in the Panel of the Relic, that of books, and one of the most obvious being the holy book held by Jean Jouffroy. At the time of the painting Hugo van der Goes was a lay brother in a religious community known as the Brethren of the Common Life based at the Red Cloister priory near Brussels that housed an impressive collection of books as well as a workshop for book production.

The pious way of life adopted by the brothers of the community was also known as Devotio Moderna (the Modern Devotion). An early follower was Thomas á Kempis who wrote the popular book on Christian meditation, The Imitation of Christ. One of the famous quotes attributed to Thomas is used by Hugo to link the wooden box with books: “I have sought everywhere for peace, but found it not, except in nooks and in books.” Hugo repeated the quote in a later painting known as the Dormition of the Virgin, depicting Kempes gripping the headboard of the Virgin’s bed and decorated with the carved shape of an open book.

Another written source Hugo called on so as to link Jan and his brother Hubert to a specific feature of the Ghent Altarpiece was Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (Natural History). The Roman author’s ‘encyclopedia’ provides an account of a contest between two Greek artists, Apelles and Protogenes. Apelles was attached to the court of the Macedonian king Philip II, and later served his son Alexander the Great. His rival Protogenes resided in Rhodes.

• More on this in my next post

Plowmen, poems and puns

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In a previous post I revealed how Hugo van der Goes embedded a reference in the Panel of the Relic to a medieval poem titled William’s Vision of Piers the Plowman. This was to mimic the references Jan van Eyck made to Geoffrey Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales in the Ghent Altarpiece. Another ‘tale’ that was given a place in the Just Judges panel of the altarpiece was the Plowman’s Tale, said to have been sourced from Pierce the Plowman’s Crede. Van der Goes also included references to these two poems in the Panel of the Relic.

Barthélemy van Eyck picked up on Jan’s references and depicted the conversation between the Pelican and the Griffin in the January folio of Les Très Riche Heures. Hugo went further back in time for his source to a similar debate found in the poem, The Owl and the Nightingale.

It’s not difficult to recognise Hugo’s owl in the Panel of the Relic. It’s the figure portrayed as Jean Jouffroy, except that in this scenario the figure is given a fourth identity, William of Paris, a Dominican priest and theologian, and confessor to the French king Philip IV. He was made Inquisitor of France in 1303 and began a campaign against the Templars in 1307.

The other three identities Hugo has applied to the figure in black is Jean Jouffroy, René of Anjou and Pierre Cauchon.

Detail from Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments

The link to William of Paris comes via the group of three Van Eyck brother alongside Jouffroy. The four men are also grouped in one of the scenes from the triptych painted by Rogier van der Weyden, known as the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1445-1450), now displayed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. 

William of Paris completed writing the Dialogus de Septem Sacramentis (Dialogue of the Seven Sacraments) in 1314, the same year the Templar knight Geoffroi de Charney was executed, burnt at the stake on a small strip of land in the River Seine.

The nightingale can be discovered in the central panel of the surplice worn by man in the red collar, already identified as symbolic of the Templar flag, the Beauceant. The panel also represents the island in the Seine, known as both Jews Island and Templars Island.

As stated in an earlier post Hugo van der Goes was an accomplished heraldic artist. ‘Engrailed’ around the top of the centre panel in the surplice is a series of of border arcs forming outward points. ‘Knight’ coupled with ‘engrail(ed)’ puns as ‘nightingale’! 

Not without coincidence is the engrailed feature and the eyes of the man in black placed on the same level, although the debate makes clear the owl and the nightingale did not see ‘eye to eye’.

Panel of the Relic… more links

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The above detail depicting John the Baptist is from the left wing of the Donne Triptych painted by Hans Membling and housed at the National Gallery in London. Model for the Baptist figure is Rogier van der Weyden. In the background is another Flemish painter, Dieric Bouts.

This pairing is repeated in the Panel of the Knights, the fifth section of the St Vincent Panels as shown here. Hugo van der Goes has featured several artists and made references to their paintings in the St Vincent Panels, usually placing them on the back row.

However, Hans Membling is given a more prominent position. He is one of the identities applied to the kneeling figure in the Panel of the Relic and is shown well advanced in age compared with the some of the other paintings in which he appears as a young man, sometimes in the role of the youngest apostle John the Evangelist.

Membling portrays himself as John in the right wing of the Donne Triptych, holding the poisoned chalice he was invited to drink from by a pagan priest. Hugo has also made a connection to the chalice and the skull fragment held by the ageing Henry Beaufort whose likeness is based on the painting of the Cardinal by Jan van Eyck.

Here Hugo has attempted to morph the two men into one likeness, just as Van Eyck did with himself and the figure of Philip the Good in the Arnolfini Portrait, and so we have another indication for Hugo attempting to emulate the work of Van Eyck.

But there is more to this connection. Beaufort had amassed a great fortune in his life-time and was considered to be one of the wealthiest men in England, so rich that kings and emperors came to him for loans to finance their military and war efforts.

According to the art historian Til-Holger Borchert, so successful was Hans Membling during his painting career and at making investments (he owned several houses) that he was listed among the richest citizens in Bruge, and so an obligatory subscriber to the loan raised by Maximillian I of Austria to finance hostilities towards France in 1480.

Was Hugo van der Goes making a judgement on the success of Membling, or was the reference to the descent into Hell featured in the red-robed figure (as explained in a previous post) a pointer to one of Memling’s most famous and dramatic paintings, The Last Judgment triptych, now housed at the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland?

Close inspection of the St John figure and the poisoned chalice shows a fold in the red gown shaped to represent a demonic figure with its nose pointing to the rim of the cup.

A similar motif with a sharp nose can be seen “attacking” the skull fragment in the Panel of the Relic.

The chalice and the skull fragment connect to another narrative disguised in the St Vincent Panels, but more on this at another time.

Hugo also combines two elements from Membling’s two triptychs into one of his own – the towers which appear in the left wing of The Last Judgment and the right wing of The Donne Tryptich – to form the wooden upright box in the Panel of the Relic.

Finally, the inspiration for the coupling of Rogier van der Weyden and Dieric Bouts in the Panel of the Knights can also be found in The Last Supper painting by Dieric Bouts painted in the 1460’s and probably around the same time as Membling produced The Last Judgment.

The two portraits shown in the serving hatch of The Last Supper painting are Dieric Bouts and Hans Membling. Another ‘servant’ depicted in the painting is Rogier van der Weyden who died during the time Bouts was painting The Last Supper, and so another possible reason for Van der Goes to link Bouts and Van der Weyden in the St Vincent Panels. Bouts died in 1475.

More revelations on the Panel of the Relic in a future post.

Four Knights and a Marriage

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In my previous post I pointed out the connection in the Panel of the Friars to the Three Kings who travelled to Bethlehem with gifts for the new-born Saviour. The Magi motif is repeated in different ways in all of the six sections of the St Vincent Panels. It is why each panel is structured with groups of three figures in the forefront.

However, there appears to be an exception to this format in the Panel of the Knights where four knights are shown, and not three. The knights represent four sons of King John l of Portugal. Kneeling at the front is Henry (the Navigator). Behind him is Peter, Duke of Coimbra. Next in line is John, Constable of Portugal, backed by the ‘Holy Prince’ Ferdinand wearing the steel helmet.

I’ve mentioned in past posts that the St Vincent Panels is an altarpiece inspired by the Ghent Altarpiece produced by the Van Eyck brothers, Jan and Hubert, and probably the work of Hugo van der Goes and not the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves it is currently attributed to.

The Panel of the Knights is a section inspired by another famous painting by Jan van Eyck – The Arnolfini Portrait, now displayed in London’s National Gallery. It is from this painting that Van der Goes makes the connection to the Three Kings, or Magi.

The Arnolfini Portrait is no only linked with an Italian merchant named Giovanni Arnolfini who had business connections in Flanders – but it also relates to Portugal and the House of Aviz. Philip the Good, duke of Burgndy is depicted alongside his third wife, Isabella, daughter of King John l of Portugal and sister to the four brotherly knights.

The Arnolfini Portrait is noted for its large mirror, centrally placed. It shows a mysterious reflection. The backs of the man and woman are clearly identifiable, but the other figures – there are three – are not. Some people speculate that the figure in red may represent Jan van Eyck painting the portrait.

Certainly, other artists of the time understood the composition of the reflection in the mirror, notably Rogier van der Weyden, but some 80 years later Joos van Cleeve revealed the mystery in his panel painting of The Annunciation which also depicted a scene of the Three Wise Men behind the open door of a tabernacle. So Van Eyck’s three figures represent in this sense the Magi arriving to pay homage to the infant-king and Philip and Isabella arere portrayed as a type of Joseph and Mary.

Van Eyck’s tabernacle is housed behind the mirror. It probably contained the miraculous ‘bleeding Host of Dijon’ given to the couple as a gift by Pope Eugenious IV, and therefore considered the Real Presence of Christ by the Catholic Church.

In another sense, Isabella was about to or had recently given birth to her third son, Charles Martin, later nicknamed The Bold, and so the Wise Men or Three Kings had come to pay homage to the new-born heir.

The Panel of the Knights is primarily intended to depict the reflection seen in Van Eyck’s mirror. The first three knights represent the Magi who followed the Star of Bethlehem. The bearded fourth knight, the Holy Prince Ferdinand, is depicted as an image of Christ, his steel cap representing the tomb in which he was laid to rest. Its highlight is matched to the beam of light above the head of one of the kings in Van Eyck’s mirror reflection. The red hat and jacket worn by John can also picked up in the refelection, as can the blue and black colours in the sleeve of Henry’s undercoat.

That the wise men were guided by a star is echoed in the celestial symbols attached to the garments of the knights. The most notable is the quadrant for measuring angles worn on Henry the Navigator’s elbow.

This brief presentation is simply to reveal the connection to The Arnolfini Portrait. There is much, much more to ‘break open’ but at another time.

Meanwhile, there is a detailed analysis of the Arnolfini Portrait at my other website arnolfinimystery.com

End of the line – for a reason

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The St Vincent panels attributed to Nuno Gonçalves, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

The two end frames of the St Vincent Panels – the Friars Panel (left) and the Relic Panel (right) are similar in composition. Their “end of the line” positioning is a pointer by the artist, be it Nuno Gonçalves or Hugo van der Goes, to another painting known as the Merode Altarpiece and attributed to Robert Campin. Art historians generally agree that its two end panels were painted at a later date, and possibly by a young Rogier van der Weyden.

The Merode Altarpiece, Robert Campin, The Met Cloisters, New York City

In the two St Vincent Panels the bearded friar represents Robert Campin, while the pilgrim or hermit figure is portrayed as Jan van Eyck, aka Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, (a carpenter’s saw hangs from his belt), as explained in a previous post.

In the Merode Altarpiece the so-called ‘messenger’ in the left panel, standing beside the garden door has never been identified, but I would suggest that he represents Robert Campin, the same bearded ‘messenger’ patting the wooden plank in the Friars Panel.

The other end panel in the Merode Altarpiece sees a busy St Joseph in his workshop drilling or ‘tapping’ holes into a plank of wood – a pointer to the holes seen in the plank alongside the beared friar (Campin).

Another Campin connection seen in the Relic Panel is the figure dressed in black supporting the holy book. He is the French prelate Jean Jouffroy. The likeness is based on a portrait by Robert Campin titled Portrait of a Stout Man, now housed at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

• More on this in my next post which will identify the two men placed on the back row of the Relic Panel.

Hugo’s hat-tip to Jan van Eyck

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In my previous post I pointed out that Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘Joseph’ portrait was adapted from Jan van Eyck’s self-portrait – Man in a Red Turban.

Another Netherlandish artist went a step further and amalgamated features from both portraits to create his own version of Jan van Eyck and feature him as a pilgrim in the St Vincent Panels. Although the panels are currently attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves, they also reveal iconographic evidence that Hugo van der Goes had a major role in the work.

In his portrait of Van Eyck as a pilgrim seen in the Panel of the Relic, Hugo has mirrored Van der Weyden’s ‘Joseph’. The hats are similar, so are the facial features. The muzzle of the ‘Lamb of God’ feature is outlined in the pilgrim’s hat.

A subtle ‘God the Father’ feature is applied to Jan’s temple, to mirror the Christ image which is seen on the temple of the man wearing the red turban. Just below the ‘Father’ feature is the suggestion of ‘Christ Crucified’, another detail which appears on the red turban in Jan’s self-portrait.

Hugo has also echoed the vacant aedicula in Rogier’s painting by placing an empty coffin behind Jan the pilgrim.

A man under Mary’s mantle

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That the red turban worn by Jan van Eyck in his self portrait depicts the symbolic ‘Lamb of God’ is confirmed by two other 15th century painters – Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes, albeit in a less flamboyant way.

A surviving fragment of a lost painting by Van der Weyden, known as the Virgin and Child with Saints, is a portrait generally assumed to represent Joseph the husband of Mary. The portrait is housed at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. The likeness of Joseph is modeled on the ageing Jan van Eyck, confirmed by references Van der Weyden makes to the Man in a Red Turban Portrait. The date of the St Joseph portrait is put at 1435-38, shortly after Van Eyck completed his own portrait and dated it, October 21, 1433.

St Joseph’s hat is not the winding chaperon as depicted in the Van Eyck self-portrait. Instead, its double tier is based on the style of the cap Van Eyck has added to the Crucifixion figure (see previous post).

Joseph’s blue mantle represents the curved segment of the Virgin Mary outlined in the self-portrait. Enclosed in the mantle are two other features that Jan depicted in the red turban: the Lamb of God and the Resurrection. However, the latter makes no reference to the rooster, symbolic of the Resurrection. Instead, Van der Weyden has taken another biblical pointer to the same event, the large fish or whale that swallowed the prophet Jonah for three days.

Rising from the tail end of the large fish is the shape of the ‘Lamb of God’ with its muzzle nestling in Joseph’s neck and its long ears merging into the form of the ‘whale’.

Van der Weyden has also repeated Van Eyck’s bloodshot eyes, the dark mark on his left temple, and his stubbled chin.

Note also the vacant aedicula on the building behind Joseph. The pedestal and canopy are there – but no statue – perhaps awaiting one of St Joseph in the guise of Jan van Eyck, a permanent roost assigned for guardians who keep watch and annunciate.

• My next post will explain how both these paintings connect to the work of another Netherlandish painter, Hugo van der Goes, and the St Vincent Panels housed at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, Portugal.

Battles and beards

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This Portrait of a Carthusian Monk was painted by Petrus Christus in 1446 and is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

It was this painting, along with another work by Petrus, that was the inspiration for the bearded Carthusian figure in the Panel of the Friars, the first of six frames that make up the St Vincent Panels.

The long-bearded monk is holding an upright plank of wood – upright as in the sense of righteous (a righteous or just judge). This contrasts to the first figure on the back row, Pontius Pilate, who sentenced Jesus Christ to death by crucifixion after telling the Jews he could find no fault in the man.

It’s not just the beard and white robe that Gonçlaves adopted from the Carthusian painting. The orange, fiery background is echoed in the fiery cross on the monk’s black hat, while the box edge that runs top and right of the frame is represented by the box standing behind Jan van Eyck in the Panel of the Relic.

The plank of wood as representative of the Cross is forefront in another painting by Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, and forms the counter on which various items are displayed. This, too, was incorporated by Nuno Gonçalves into the Panel of the Friars.

A Goldsmith in his Shop, by Petrus Christus. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Researcher Clemente Baeta has identified eleven holes in the plank featured in the Panel of the Friars. The eleven holes match the number of round items grouped on the shop counter, excluding the red ribbon and the mirror. In the Petrus painting they represent the positions of the English forces when it laid seige to Orleans in 1428. The seige was relieved the following year when French forces led by Joan of Arc attacked and overpowered the English positions.

Gonçalves has linked this to reference the siege and conquest of Ceuta by Portugal in 1415 and its successful defence when Moroccan forces counter-attacked in 1419.

Notice also how the right hand of both St Eligius and the monk rest on the panel of wood.

There is another detail in the St Vincent Panels that links to a third painting by Petrus Christus. More about this in a future post.

The St Vincent Panels attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves.

Several Flemish painters are shown in the St Vincent Panels. The long-bearded monk is meant to represent Roger Campin. Hugo van der Goes shows up in the Panel of the Prince, as does Petrus Christus (see below). Jan van Eyck is the pilgrim featured in the Panel of the Relic, while Dieric Bouts, Rogier van der Weyden and Jaques Daret line up in the Panel of the Knights.

Left: Petrus Christus as portrayed in the St Vincent Panels and (right), probably twenty years earlier, as St Eligius in A Goldsmith in his Shop.

Another Lisbon portrait of Van Eyck

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Here’s another Flemish artist to add to the three I pointed out last month who appear in the painting known as the St Vincent Panels, produced by the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves.

Jan van Eyck appears in the section referred to as the Relic Panel. Gonçalves has intentionally ‘mirrored’ the ‘Joseph’ profile which formed part of an altarpiece painted by Rogier van der Weyden that depicted the Virgin and Child with saints.

Three sections of Rogier’s altarpiece are known to survive: the portraits of Joseph (Jan Van Eyck) and a female saint (St Catherine?) are housed at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, while a third piece, The Magdalen Reading, is kept at the National Gallery, London. The Magdalen figure is a portrait of Jan van Eyck’s daughter Livina.

Below are two examples of Van Eyck’s profile painted by Van der Weyden. Left, the profile which Gonçalves has mirrored and, right, a similar profile from Van der Weyden’s Saint Columba Altarpiece (Alte Pinakothek).

• More on this and the Flemish connection to the St Vincent Panels in a future post.

Fathers and Sons… part 2

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Continued from the previous post…

A father and sons… detail from the Panel of the Prince section of the St Vincent Panels.

This trio of men featured in the St Vincent Panels are related. The older man is possibly the father of Hugo van der Goes, and also of the half-hidden figure behind him, Hugo’s half-brother Nicholas. Hugo is placed at his father’s left shoulder, almost cheek-to-cheek, and looking straight at the viewer – a sign of recognition. Did Hugo, or even the father contribute in some way to this section of the painting, or was the artist Nuno Gonçalves perhaps paying tribute to the men for some personal reason?

So what other evidence is there that points to Hugo and his father among the group of men in the Panel of the Prince? There are two extant paintings attributed to Hugo van der Goes and housed in New York’s Met Museum that provide the answer: Portrait of an Old Man can be matched to Hugo’s father, while Portrait of a Man, possibly a self-portrait of Hugo, or even his half-brother Nicholas, and probably cut down to size from a larger scene, has a particular feature – the praying hands – that Gonçalves has repeated for the hands of the father. Is this a statement by Gonçalves to say that both Hugo and his father had a hand in the painting of this panel?

Potrait of an Old Man, and Portrait of a Man, attributed to Hugo van der Goes, Met Museum.

What is a more likely scenario is that the old man isn’t actually the paternal father of Hugo and Nicholas, but can be considered instead as a pastoral or spiritual father, guiding the two men during their formation and time as lay brothers in the monastic community of the Roode Klooster which Hugo joined around 1477. Could he be Father Thomas Vessem, Prior of the Roode Klooster during Hugo’s time there as a lay brother?

The relationship between the two men shown in the Panel of the Prince is undoubtedly a close one, and the portrait of him painted by Hugo is not the only time he was portrayed by the artist. The same man features in Hugo’s Death of the Virgin, as shown below left. He also appears in the Justice Panels attributed to Dieric Bouts: Justice of Emperor Otto lll – Beheading of the Innocent Count and Ordeal by Fire. One was completed, and the second started by Bouts before he died in 1475. Van der Goes is said to have completed some of Bouts’ unfinished paintings. Was this one of them, and which artist included the ‘father’ figure associated with Hugo, shown below right alongside the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden as part of the beheading panel?

The praying ‘father’ figure from Death of the Virgin, and the ‘father’ alongside Rogier van der Weyden.

And not by coincidence, a portrait of Van der Weyden (left) is also included in the St Vincent Panels, alongside Dieric Bouts (below).

Rogier van der Weyden and Dieric Bouts, Panel of the Knights of the St Vincent Panels.

And this brings the circle back to Hugo van der Goes who also placed the portrait of Dieric Bouts at the edge of the frame in the Monforte Altarpiece, but not alongside Van der Weyden, preferring to subsitute him with the Italian artist Sando Botticelli. And why should he do this? Because Botticelli included the figure of Hugo alongside himself in his own version of the Adoration of the Magi now housed in the Uffizi, Florence.

Hugo van der Goes stands in front of Sandro Botticelli, Adoration of the Magi, Uffizi Galleries.

• More on this and Hugo’s Death of the Virgin in my next post.

Christ’s burial cloths

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Turin’s Cathedral will be making the image of its Holy Shroud available through televison and social media channels on Holy Saturday (April 9).

The announcement by Vatican News reminded me of Jan van Eyck’s special interest in the Shroud and also the face cloth, known as the Sudarium, left in the cave after Jesus rose from the dead.

A sudarium is a sweat cloth but was also used as a cloth to seal an annointing with oil, especially when administering the last rites.

The Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden showed this in his famous Seven Sacraments painting. The dying man depicted is Jan van Eyck, and van der Weyden has compared Jan’s suffering in death to the that of the crucified Christ – as being on the cross.

But there is another reason why Van der Weyden has shown Van Eyck’s head covered in a sweat cloth. It’s a pointer to a painting produced by Jan early in his career for the illuminated manuscript now known as the Turin-Milan Hours. Several of the miniatures are dated to around 1420 and attributed to an artist referred to as “Hand G”, believed by art historians to be Jan van Eyck.

The particular minature that relates not only to the Sudarium but also to Christ’s cross, therefore matching the connection made by Van der Weyden, is titled the Finding of the True Cross. It depicts the story of Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovering the wood of Christ’s cross during a pilgrimage she made to the Holy Land in the 4th century.

Three workmen are shown uncovering the buried relic, one of whom is Jan van Eyck who is wearing a sweat cloth.

As to the man on his right, could it be Jan’s brother Hubert van Eyck?

Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man (Léal Souvenir), “an exceptional loan”

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According to The Guardian newspaper, “the National Gallery in London is to make an exceptional loan of a painting by Jan van Eyck to a one-off exhibition celebrating the 15th-century Flemish master. Portrait of a Man (Léal Souvenir), one of the earliest dated works by the painter, will be among the star exhibits in Van Eyck – an Optical Revolution, which will open at the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) in Ghent, Belgium, in February.”

The newspaper added that “theories abound as to who the sitter was” for Van Eyck’s Léal Souvenir. The “sitter” is also portrayed sat on a horse in the Knights of Christ panel of the Ghent Altarpiece. He is Pierre de Bauffremont (c1400 – 1472), Count of Charney and Lord of Montfort. He was Sénéchal of Burgundy and a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece founded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Pierre was also married to Marie de Bourgogne, a legitimised daughter of the Duke. It was his third marriage.

Incidently, what is often referred to in the painting as a parapet, isn’t. It represents an inscribed foundation stone. The painting is also linked to two other works by Van Eyck, the Arnolfini Portrait and Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban. He also features in Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments Altarpiece.

Pierre de Bauffremont, as a Knight of Christ and the sitter in Van Eyck’s Léal Souvenir

A communion of artists and saints

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This is the central panel of a triptych known as the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament. The work was commissioned in 1464 by the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament for St Peter’s church in Leuven, where it is still displayed, and completed in 1468.

There are four other paintings attached in pairs either side of the centre panel, all related to the Last Supper and its Institution of the Eucharist narrative.

The Flemish Primitives website provides a comprehensive biography about the artist Dieric Bouts and a visual description of the Altarpiece of the Last Supper painting, as well as access to view the painting in a large format.

It is possible to identify the apostles around the table with the iconography clues embedded by Dierec Bouts, but less obvious are some of the second identities Bouts has also included. They are mainly artists, his contemporaries. But Bouts picks out one artist in particular, Rogier van Weyden, the figure standing on the right side of the frame who historians generally describe as one of the servants on hand.

Historians are also uncertain about the identities of the two men framed on the back wall, peering through a serving hatch. Generally thought to portray “members of the confraternity responsible for commissioning the altarpiece” they are, in fact, two artists: Dieric Bouts (left) and Hans Memling (right). The German painter is said to have spent time working in Van der Weyden’s Brussels workshop, while Bouts was also influenced by Rogier who died in 1464, just three months after Bouts had agreed the contract to produce the altarpiece.

Another artist said to have greatly influenced Bouts was Jan van Eyck. He is the figure in red, seated in front of Van der Weyden and portrayed as St James the Lesser, a pointer to the quatrain on the Ghent Altarpiece in which Jan acknowledges his brother Hubert as the greater artist.

Variations of Hans Memling: As Jan van Winckele, as a servant, St John and St Michael

But what about Hans Memling’s contribution to the altarpiece, if any? Memling was probably the youngest among the group of featured artists and so it would not be unreasonable to focus on the youngest of the disciples, John, sat on the left of Jesus. There is a resemblance to the Memling portrait in the serving hatch but a more convincing connection are components from The Last Judgment triptych painted by Memling between 1467 and 1471. The faces of the two St Michael figures (Membling?) resemble St John, probably because the writing of the Book of Revelation is attributed to the Evangelist, while Memling’s group of artists as heavenly apostles is seemingly inspired by the group of artists as apostles in the Bouts painting.

A section from Memling’s Last Judgment showing Jesus and his apostles in heaven.
National Museum, Gdansk, Poland

The Memling portrait in the serving hatch is adapted from an earlier portrait by Bouts painted in 1462 and located in the National Gallery, London. The sitter is questionably said to be Jan van Winckele. The gallery’s description explains that it is “the earliest surviving dated Netherlandish portrait to include a view through a window, although such views were included in Netherlandish paintings with religious subjects.”

Dieric Bouts alongside Hans Memling, and the National Gallery’s ‘Jan van Winckele?’

By linking the two paintings in this way, and then portraying Memling alongside his own portrait, but looking in the opposite direction, was Bouts suggesting that both men had been working on producing triptychs at the same time that shared a similar narrative – the apostles as artists – but viewed from different perspectives, apostles on earth and apostles in heaven? Bouts as the ‘master’ and Memling as the ‘disciple’ he favoured?

As to the other standing figure beside the serving hatch, he is not an artist but a patron. The clue to his identity is that Bouts has placed him standing behind the apostle Peter who represents the foundation of the Church. He shares the same name as the apostle – a second Peter, so to speak. He is Peter II, a member of the influential Adornes family of merchants from Bruges. He is represented as a deacon attending to Jesus in his role as priest, the Last Supper being the first Mass.

There is a particular reason why Bouts has depicted Peter II Adornes and Rogier van der Weyden as standing figures. Both men died in 1464, the year the painting was commissioned. Not only is Bouts suggesting that they were upright and respected figures in society, but their standing is symbolic of being raised up and resurrected. A communion of saints.

Lamentation restoration project

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The Mauritshuis Museum in the Haag has embarked on a public restoration of Weyden’s another piece The Lamentation of Christ (c.1460-1464). It is being restored in a temporary specially-built studio in the exhibition space so that all visitors have a chance to learn all about the scientific and art historical research into the work. More deatils at Daily Art Magazine.

RVDW• Rogier van der Weyden, Lamentation of Christ, 1460-1464, Mauritshuis, The Hague.

Reading into the Magdalen Reading

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The Magdalen Reading is described by Wikipedia as “one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th-century oil on panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The panel, originally oak, was completed some time between 1435 and 1438 and has been in the National Gallery, London since 1860.”

One of the surviving fragments is a portrait generally assumed to be Joseph the husband of the Virgin Mary. The Joseph portrait is housed at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, along with the third fragment thought to be Catherine of Alexandria. The original altarpiece is associated with a drawing known as Virgin and Child with Saints in Stockholm’s National Museum of Fine Arts.

More at MAGDALEN READING

Magdalen

Three Flemish primitives

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The painting below is attributed to the workshop of Roger van der Weyden and located at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts Belgium. Its title is King David Receives the Water of Bethlehem. Measuring 50cm x 32.7cm, the painting is dated between 1451 and 1475. It appears to be a section of a larger work but I don’t have access to any information to confirm this.

Three painters are featured in the foreground: Roger Campin, Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck.

More details on this at Water of Bethlehem

Water of Bethlehem

Outward signs

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So why did Rogier van der Weyden make reference to Jan van Eyck in all of the seven sacraments of the famous altarpiece he painted just a few years after Jan’s death?

Augustine of Hippo defined a Sacrament as an outward sign of inward grace instituted by Christ. Was Jan perceived to be grace-filled – not only “one so excellent in his art and science” as once described by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, but also in faith and life as a Christian?

There can be no doubt that Van der Weyden was an adherent of Van Eyck. The Seven Sacraments Altarpiece is not the only painting by Rogier to depict Jan in the frame. There are at least three other works.

More on the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece and the presence of Van Eyck at this link.