Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting
in the Low Countries
With the support of
The Courtin-Bouché Fund managed by the King Baudouin Foundation
and
The Richard Zondervan Trust
Contributions to Fifteenth-Century Painting
in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège
9
Centre for the Study of Fifteenth-Century Painting
in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège
Under the auspices of
the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
and the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten
Publications:
I. Corpus
II. Repertory
III. Contributions
Chairman: Cyriel Stroo
Vice-chairman: Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner
Members:
Founding member:
Nicole Veronee-Verhaegen
Members representing the Académie royale des Sciences, Lettres et Beaux-Arts de Belgique:
Pierre Cockshaw†, Pierre Colman, Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren,
Paul Philippot, Philippe Roberts-Jones
Members representing the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten:
Guy Delmarcel, Elisabeth Dhanens, Henri Pauwels, Cyriel Stroo, Jan Van der Stock, Hans Vlieghe
Co-opted members:
Christina Ceulemans, Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner
Scientific board:
Anne-Marie Bonenfant-Feytmans, Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, Dirk De Vos, Jacqueline Folie,
Nicole Goetghebeur, Roger Van Schoute
Scientific secretaries:
Hélène Mund
Dominique Deneffe
Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting
in the Low Countries
1
C ATA L O G U E
Dominique Deneffe, Famke Peters, Wim Fremout
Laboratory Studies
Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns
Technical Observations and Advice
Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Pascale Fraiture
Edited by
Cyriel Stroo
Brussels
2009
Working Committee
Cyriel Stroo, promotor
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, co-promotor
Christina Ceulemans
Christina Currie
Livia Depuydt-Elbaum
Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner
Hélène Mund
Hans Nieuwdorp
Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren
Jana Sanyova
Steven Saverwyns
Myriam Serck-Dewaide
Jan Van der Stock
Guido Van de Voorde
Hélène Verougstraete
Translation
Dutch to English: Lee Preedy
Contents
Preface Lorne Campbell
Glimpses of a Lost Splendour. An Introduction to Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting
Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
7
13
33
37
NOTES ON METHODOLOGY
Christina Currie
Examination of Paintings in Infrared at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage
41
Pascale Fraiture
Dendrochronological Analysis of Pre-Eyckian Paintings
47
Wim Fremout, Steven Saverwyns and Jana Sanyova
Pre-Eyckian Works in the Laboratory: Analytical Techniques and Methodology
71
CATALOGUE
1. Tower Retable with Scenes from the Infancy of Christ
(Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. no. 2)
83
2. Crucifixion with St Catherine and St Barbara (Calvary of the Tanners)
(Bruges, Cathedral of the Holy Saviour)
125
3. St Ursula Shrine
(Bruges, Memling in Sint-Jan – Hospitaalmuseum, inv. no. O.SJ149. V)
157
4. Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Kortessem Panel – Alken Predella)
(Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des
Beaux-Arts de Belgique, inv. no. 4883)
197
5
5. Entombment
(Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 1914-CF)
273
6. Triptych with Crucifixion and Saints
(Mechelen, Stedelijke Musea, Museum Schepenhuis,
OCMW Collection, inv. no. S 19)
289
7. Annunciation and Visitation (Walcourt Panels)
(Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois,
Collection Société archéologique de Namur, inv. no. 36)
311
8. St Maurice Shrine
(Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois,
Collection Société archéologique de Namur, inv. no. 150)
359
9. St Anne with the Virgin and Child
(Neerlanden, Church of St Mary Magdalene)
387
10. Reliquary of the Virgin’s Veil
(Tongeren, Basilica of the Nativity of Our Lady, inv. no. OLV-LI-225)
Bibliography
Index of Works
Photographic Acknowledgements
6
421
447
485
503
Preface
Lorne Campbell
Van Mander in 1604 called Jan van Eyck ‘a brilliant light […] so resplendent that
art-loving Italy could behold it only with complete astonishment […]’.1 In 1822
Waagen wrote of ‘that total night of the arts from which Jan van Eyck suddenly
emerged as a star of the first rank’. Waagen hoped that, by studying manuscripts,
he would be able ‘to some extent to illuminate that total night of the arts’.2 In
1854, he explained his purpose more clearly:
[…] with the exception of Italy, which possesses a large number of wall paintings and
pictures on wood of the Middle Ages, the history of art as regards the other nations of
Europe at such time is solely to be traced in their miniatures. These alone furnish us
with a continuous series of specimens of the pictorial art of France, England, Germany,
the Netherlands and Spain during a number of centuries, extending to the 15th century;
the larger paintings of those ages, whether on walls, or on wood, having, with rare
exceptions, entirely perished.3
Observing the ‘closest correspondence’ between manuscript illumination and panel
painting in Tuscany in the fourteenth century and in the Low Countries between
1440 and 1500, he considered it legitimate to take miniatures, especially those
from the ‘most sumptuous’ manuscripts, as a basis for ‘correct conclusions’ on
stylistic development. He expressed an
[…] earnest desire to publish a history of the miniature painting of the Middle Ages
illustrated by faithful facsimiles from the finest and best authenticated MSS. so as
distinctly to show the development of painting in each nation from the 9th to the 15th
centuries.
Realising that the dates of the manuscripts could be ‘often precisely determined’,
he aimed to compare with the miniatures those few surviving wall paintings
and panels of uncertain dates and so to place them chronologically and geographically.4
Though Waagen never managed to publish his faithful facsimiles, later scholars
have done so; many of the illuminated manuscripts produced in France and the
Low Countries between about 1350 and about 1450 have been carefully
investigated. A few of the paintings on fabric supports, some of the murals and
many of the paintings on panel have been attentively studied. Some, however,
remain unfamiliar or unknown to most art-historians. The question of survival of
7
PREFACE
works of art has been examined and is coming to be better understood. A few
myths and misconceptions, nevertheless, persist and are perpetuated in standard
text-books.
Enormous numbers of paintings on cloth and on panel have been lost. They have
fallen victims to iconoclasm, the ravages of wars or the neglect that was the fate of
‘primitive’ pictures in later centuries. Those few paintings that still exist have
survived by chance: because they had been exported to safer regions, for example
the duchy of Burgundy; because they had been removed from public view and
relegated to store-rooms; or because they had been recycled. Some were adapted for
different patrons, while others were made into furniture. The extant paintings
constitute a random sample that may be representative. Many of the exported
pictures, like the wing panels by Broederlam, are of exceptionally high quality.
There is every reason to believe that many artists of outstanding ability, besides
Broederlam, were active in the Low Countries between about 1350 and about 1430.
It cannot be coincidental that the most highly respected artists active at the courts
of France and in the duchy of Burgundy were from the Low Countries. Jean Bondol
of Bruges became, some years before 1368, painter to Charles V of France, who paid
him almost double the salary allowed to Jean d’Orléans, also his painter. Between
1374 and 1381, Bondol designed for Charles’s brother Louis I of Anjou the great
tapestries of the Apocalypse, now preserved at Angers.5 Jacques Coene, another
painter from Bruges, settled in Paris. In 1388, John I of Aragon, having heard of
his skill in representing figures and in making likenesses, tried to persuade him to
cross the Pyrenees and enter his service.6 Coene did not go to Aragon but in 1399
went to Milan as ‘engineer’ or architect of the cathedral.7 Jacquemart de Hesdin
and Jean de Beaumetz probably came from Artois and Hainault. Jean Malouel and
his nephews the three brothers de Limbourg were from Nijmegen; while Henri
Bellechose was from Breda.8 Pol de Limbourg’s patron John, Duke of Berry, provided
him with a rich wife and a palatial house, described in 1434 as ‘one of the largest,
most spacious and most remarkable in Bourges […] suitable for lodging one of
the princes of the royal family […]’. Charles VII then granted it to the Duke of
Bourbon, who was to live there. The duke and his heirs were to have the property
in perpetuity.9
Sculptors too went from the Low Countries to the courts of France: Jean de
Liège; André Beauneveu, from Valenciennes; Jean de Cambrai; Claus Sluter, from
Haarlem. In 1404, Charles VI admitted Jean de Cambrai to his Order of the BroomCod.10 Netherlandish painters also went further south, for example to Catalonia,
where several Brabantine painters settled: maestre Enrich de Brusselles (1372);11
Joan and Nicolau de Bruseles (1379);12 Joan or Enequi de Bruxelles (1388-90);13
another(?) Nicholaus de Bruxelles (1393);14 another (?) Joan de Bruxelles (1402);15
Gerardus de Bruna, from Diest (1402).16
The fact that artists from the Low Countries were sought after and honoured
throughout western Europe seems a fair indication that the towns of the Netherlands
were centres where excellent and innovative artists were trained. The resident
Netherlanders who taught the brilliant pupils must themselves have been
outstanding artists who fostered progressive traditions. In the period around 1400,
8
PREFACE
Paris was without dispute the leading artistic centre of Europe; but its pre-eminence
was due in large part to immigrant artists from the Low Countries.
The legend that Jan van Eyck invented oil-painting has at last been dismissed,
since it is clearly established that painters in northern Europe had been working in
oils for centuries before Jan’s time.17 He must have benefited greatly from the
experience of many, many generations of oil-painters. Recent research has revealed
how he and his contemporaries used manganese-containing glass as a drier.18 No
doubt their predecessors had also experimented with driers, with different kinds of
oil, with heat-bodied and partially heat-bodied oils and perhaps with volatile
diluents. Spirits of turpentine and oil of spike of lavender were available by the
mid-fourteenth century.19 Even if they did not serve as thinners, they could have
been employed very efficaciously in cleaning brushes and other equipment.
One question which needs further investigation is the use of egg-tempera by
some fourteenth-century northern artists. The ‘Wilton Diptych’, for example, is
painted in egg-tempera.20 Admiration for Sienese painting, especially after works
by Simone Martini became available in Avignon and Dijon, may have encouraged
experimentation with egg. Some fifteenth-century Netherlandish painters, including an artist of the Flémalle group, Rogier van der Weyden and Dirk Bouts,
worked in oils over underpaintings in egg tempera, which had the advantage of
drying very quickly. Jan van Eyck, however, seems not to have used egg.21
Constantly refining ideas on the uses of media, scholars continue to check and
revise earlier hypotheses and to link results gained from increasingly sophisticated
methods of technical analysis with statements made in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury manuals on the art of painting.22
The present study focuses on a small but immensely significant group of paintings,
the sole survivors among the thousands that must have been produced in the Low
Countries before the 1420s. Their connections with the illuminated manuscripts of
those regions are re-examined. The book makes available a wealth of information
on these pictures so that they will be more readily and correctly understood by arthistorians across the world. It elucidates Waagen’s ‘total night of the arts’ from
which Jan van Eyck emerged and, though nothing can diminish his sublime
radiance, it will make his achievement more comprehensible. It should also show
why his work looks dramatically different from that of his forebears. It was not that
Jan was a better, more accurate draughtsman than his predecessors: Malouel and
Bellechose, for example, were both wonderfully able, refined and correct
draughtsmen. It has been claimed that Jan used optical devices to achieve the
extraordinary verisimilitude of his pictures;23 but it was his ability to record
changing tones, rather than his superb draughtsmanship, that made his paintings
seem so very different from those of his antecedents. They tended to modulate tonal
changes with false gentleness; while Jan, greatly extending the ranges of tones and
colours used, had no inhibition about placing, when needful, the darkest dark next
to the lightest light. His capacity to record the effects of light is of course one of his
distinguishing qualities and may have been made possible by his unsurpassed
mastery of the oil technique. His contemporaries, even the Master of Flémalle and
9
PREFACE
Rogier van der Weyden, pursued similar ends by differing means but could not
equal his achievement in conveying effects of light and shadow.
It is interesting that two of Jan’s favoured Biblical passages, used in three of his
paintings, described the Virgin in terms of light:
For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared
with the light, she is found before it.24
For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of
God.25
Waagen may not have been conscious that he was echoing these passages when he
described Jan van Eyck as ‘a star of the first rank’ emerging from ‘that total night
of the arts’. His hopes of illuminating ‘that total night’ are at last fulfilled, 185
years after he first expressed them, in this ambitiously conceived and brilliantly
accomplished publication.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
10
Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck,
Haarlem, 1604, fol. 199.
‘[…] uns jene gänzliche Kunstnacht, aus der
J. v. Eyck plötzlich als ein Stern erster
Größe heraustritt, einigermaßen zu erhellen
[…]’: Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Ueber
Hubert und Johann van Eyck, Breslau, 1822:
67-68.
Gustav Friedrich Waagen, ‘On the
Importance of Manuscripts with Miniatures
in the History of Art’, Philobiblon Society,
Bibliographical and Historical Miscellanies, I,
London, 1854: 5-6.
Ibid: 6-11.
Charles Sterling, La peinture médiévale à Paris
1300-1500, I, Paris, 1987: 187-202.
‘[…] sapia ben formar e propriament divisar
figures de persones, e resemblar fisonomies
de cares’: see José M.a Madurell Marimón,
‘El pintor Lluís Borrassà. Su vida, su
tiempo, sus seguidores y sus obras. III.
Addenda al Apéndice documental’, Anales y
Boletín de los Museos de Arte de Barcelona, 10,
1952: 89.
Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of
Jean de Berry, The Boucicaut Master, London,
1968: 60-62, 141.
Sophie Jugie, ‘Biographies des artistes
principaux’, L’art à la cour de Bourgogne.
Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans
Peur (1364-1419) (exhib. cat. Dijon, Musée
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland, The
Cleveland Museum of Art), Dijon, 2004:
353-355.
Jean-Louis-Alphonse Huillard-Bréholles,
‘Paul natif d’Allemaigne peintre du duc de
Berry, grand oncle de Charles VI’, Archives
de l’art français, 6, 1852: 216-218; an extract
is in Millard Meiss, French Painting in the
Time of Jean de Berry, The Limbourgs and Their
Contemporaries, 2 vols., New York, 1974: 81.
Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière,
Histoire de Berry […], Paris, 1689: 1042.
Antoni Rubio y Lluch, Documents per
l’Historia de la Cultura Catalana Mig-eval,
2 vols., Barcelona, 1908-1921, II: 163-164
Joseph Gudiol, La pintura mig-eval Catalana,
II, Els Trescentistes, segona part, Barcelona,
1929: 150.
José M.a Madurell Marimón, ‘El pintor Lluís
Borrassà. Su vida, su tiempo, sus seguidores
y sus obras, I. Texto. Apéndice documental.
Indices’, Anales y Boletín de los Museos de Arte
de Barcelona, 7, 1949: 104.
Madurell Marimón, cited in n. 6, pp. 150151.
Gudiol, cited in note 12, p. 150
Madurell Marimón, cited in note 6,
p. 330. The property of a Meester Geerts
Brunen, den beeltmakere, is cited in a Diest
document of 1438 (Eugène Frankignoulle,
‘Notes pour server à l’histoire de l’art en
PREFACE
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
Brabant’, Annales de la Société royale
d’archéologie de Bruxelles, 39, 1935: 126,
no. 461).
Jo Kirby in Lorne Campbell, Susan Foister
and Ashok Roy, eds., Early Northern
European Painting (National Gallery Technical
Bulletin, 18), 1997: 40.
Marika Spring, ‘Pigments in SixteenthCentury Paintings of the German School:
New Perspectives from Cataloguing the
Paintings in the National Gallery in
London’, to be published in the proceedings
of the Grünewald colloquium, Colmar,
January 2006.
Kirby, cited in note 17, p. 42.
Dillian Gordon, et al., Making & Meaning,
The Wilton Diptych (exhib. cat., London,
National Gallery), London 1993: 80.
Lorne Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues,
The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools,
London, 1998: 30, 46, 52, 56, 60, 73, 94,
411, 428, 440.
22. Catherine Higgitt, Marika Spring and
David Saunders, ‘Pigment-medium
Interactions in Oil Paint Films containing
Read Lead or Lead-tin Yellow’, National
Gallery Technical Bulletin, 24, 2003: 75-95,
especially p. 87, correcting misleading
results from media analyses.
23. David Hockney, Secret Knowledge:
Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the
Old Masters, London, 2001; revised edn,
London, 2006; see also the review by David
Bomford, Burlington Magazine, 144, 2002:
173-174.
24. Wisdom of Solomon VII: 29.
25. Ibid., VII: 26. The three paintings are:
the panel of the Virgin from the Ghent
Altarpiece; the Virgin and Child with Saints
and Canon van der Paele (Bruges); and the
small triptych of the Virgin and Child with
Saints and a Donor (Dresden).
11
Glimpses of a Lost Splendour
An Introduction to Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting
Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
The new artistic concepts of the Van Eycks, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden
and their followers brought about a revolution in pictorial representation in the
Southern Netherlands and subsequently in the whole of Europe. With its exceptional precision in the representation of visible reality their art surpassed everything
that had previously been achieved. The perfecting of the oil painting technique
allowed almost infinite variation in its use. The result was an extraordinary diversity
of optical qualities. Their paintings reflect the complexity of man’s ways of seeing.
It seems as if they sought to duplicate our visual perception of the world. This mirroring of reality was a highly significant factor in the appreciation of their work.
At the start of this research we believed that indications of this mastery must
already be detectable in the work of their predecessors. We hoped that the experimental phase that preceded the Ars nova of the Flemish Primitives could be reconstructed to a certain extent. We were convinced that the creative development
that led to this sophisticated imagery must be traceable in the art of around 1400.
The results thus far are promising – partial, of course, in this phase of the research,
but still of a nature to significantly amend the traditional image of painting in
this period.
In his Early Netherlandish Painting, published in 1953, Erwin Panofsky devotes
a measure of attention to panel painting in the Low Countries around 1400.1 In
addition to the work of Melchior Broederlam he mentions ten panels, three in the
Northern and seven in the Southern Netherlands. Apart from the dominating art of
Broederlam, which he considers superior in every respect, he distinguishes two
different but related trends: the style of the northern and eastern areas of the Netherlands and that of the south and west. The link between the two consists, according
to Panofsky, of a prevailing ‘domestic naturalism’ for which the Scenes from the Life
of the Virgin in Brussels (see cat. no. 4) could be the paradigm.
With a few characteristic features and on the basis of a handful of works Panofsky
defines a number of ‘regional schools’ in the Netherlands. Apart from one or two
paintings he considers highly sophisticated, among them Broederlam’s wings for the
Crucifixion Altarpiece (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), the Norfolk Triptych (Rotterdam,
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) (fig. 1) and the Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych
(Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh and Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum),
he assesses the painting in these regions rather as exemplifying an ‘average or even
sub-average production’.2
13
INTRODUCTION
It is now realized that Panofsky’s picture of early Netherlandish painting was far
from complete. It requires addition, nuance, and improvement. ‘Naturalism’ can no
longer be regarded as the dominating, let alone the exclusive hallmark of art in the
Low Countries around 1400.3 The division into ‘schools’ that are defined on the basis
of scarcely more than a single work is untenable. Such objects as have survived can be
regarded at most as the fortuitous survivors of just so many workshops or individual
artists. With a single exception they are all isolated workss. The notion of ‘school’
itself sheds a far from adequate light on the (artistic) fabric of a local production.
It takes no account of the individual style of the master, the possibility of collaborative work and/or competing artists. Moreover, it becomes increasingly clear that the
‘regional’ dimension of an artistic production – a concept that often seems to be
underpinned only by romantic nationalistic ideas – takes insufficient account of socioeconomic reality. What a work of art would look like was also largely determined
by its patron and his or her milieu and budget, its destination and function, the
ability of the artist and his or her origin, training and experience. The material and
technical properties of the medium itself are also significant factors.
Therefore, we have tried to approach the entire issue without a priori assumptions.
In the first place it is necessary to study each work individually, to document it as
fully as possible from every relevant angle, and to trace a network of relationships,
both among the works themselves and in comparison with the artistic production of
around 1400 as a whole. On the other hand, the works’ pictorial diversity should also
be recorded in as nuanced a way as possible. Thus we hope to refine Panofsky’s sketch
of pre-Eyckian panel painting and to give it more relief, colour and perspective.
14
1. Norfolk Triptych
(opened: 33 × 58 cm),
Southern Netherlands, c.1415-1420 –
Rotterdam,
Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen
INTRODUCTION
Since Panofsky’s groundbreaking work the study of European painting around
1400 has gathered momentum. The exhibitions in Vienna in 1962,4 in Frankfurt am
Main in 1975-1976,5 and, of course, the great Parler event in 1978 in Cologne6 were
milestones in the appreciation of the subject and the charting of border-transcending
or ‘international’ relationships and influences. In 1990 a highly praiseworthy synthesis of the art of central Europe, the impressive Internationale Gotik in Mitteleuropa was
published by Götz Pochat and Brigitte Wagner. The research carried out at the IRPA/
KIK7 has coincided with the major international exhibitions held in recent years in
Paris8 (2004), Dijon (2004), Bourges (2004), Nijmegen (2005), Budapest (2006) and
Luxemburg (2006), all of which had a bearing on the art production of this period in
the areas surrounding the Low Countries. They evidence a revived interest in this
material. It is not by chance that a number of the works that are the focus of the
present research occupied a central place in some of these exhibitions. They confirm
the vital importance and key position of the medieval Netherlands as a crucible of
artistic innovation around 1400.
‘Flemish’ book illumination of this period has already been the subject of innovative and fundamental study at the Catholic University of Leuven under the direction
of the late Maurits Smeyers. The results have not yet been published in their entirety,9
but none the less a wealth of hitherto unknown visual material has been brought to
light. The present research makes ample use of the abundant comparative material
that was collected in the course of that study, and of the many new insights that
emerged from it.
The present research is complicated by several different factors. The art produced
around 1400 was dominated by the virtual ubiquity of the International Style, an
artistic phenomenon that set the trend at the princely courts of Europe. Despite common characteristics, however, the artistic expression of around 1400 is distinctly
diverse. A common aesthetic is apparent, but not to the extent that one can speak of
a uniform pictorial language. To put it another way, it is often possible to discern a
shared formal vernacular that seems regionally hued and individually articulated. It
is no easy matter to define the individual and/or regional stylistic and iconographic
accents precisely and to distinguish them from the generally prevailing characteristics and stereotypical modes of expression. Indeed, the same works have been attributed to the most diverse European artistic centres. The problem is compounded by
the meagre amount of relevant comparative material offered by other forms of art,
which is often equally hard to date and localize with accuracy and which consequently provides only an uncertain foundation on which to build.
Surviving pre-Eyckian panel painting of around 1400 is in short supply, but more
remains than was thought. At present the list of works to be studied includes some
thirty objects in collections in Belgium and elsewhere. Some are well known. Since
the nineteenth century most of them have been grouped under the heading of
‘Franco-Flemish’. This rather vague and poorly defined concept is used to denote
certain realistic tendencies in the areas north of Paris. In its strictest sense the term
encompasses the art of these areas,10 but most authors have used it rather to allude
to the impact of these realistic trends on French and particularly on Parisian art.
This latter sense, developed by Renan from 1862, was appropriated by Courajod
(1887-1896) and subsequently reiterated indiscriminately11 until it became a dogma,
15
INTRODUCTION
as Fierens-Gevaert12 and more recently Robert Didier13 have rightly emphasized.
Panofsky put the term in inverted commas and limited its application to artists born
in the Low Countries but active in Paris.14 After Panofsky, the term seems to have
fallen into disfavour; already abandoned by a specialist of the period like Millard
Meiss,15 it was deemed to be incorrect and was consequently resolutely avoided by
Françoise Baron.16
Although the term ‘Franco-Flemish’ has the virtue of highlighting the crossfertilization between the Netherlands and Paris, and distinguishing the existence of
innovative tendencies in the northern areas, the disentangling of these artistic contacts in stylistic terms is scarcely feasible. Other neighbouring regions such as the
Meuse area, Guelders and the Rhineland or the ‘Lower Rhenish’ region, as well as the
more distant Bohemia, northern Spain, Britain (with the so-called ‘Kanal Stil’) and
southern France, or political entities such as Burgundy, lend themselves equally often
to the purported discernment of presumed common characteristics. These problems
of localization and attribution reflect an inherent stylistic eclecticism as much as a complex tangle of evolving ideas on the matter. They have dominated the art-historical
discourse of the last century, which has not infrequently been biased by the chauvinistic
attitude of some authors.
Delineating the area of research is indeed not simple, either chronologically or
geographically. Whether it can or even should be so meticulously defined is highly
debatable. The ‘Netherlands’ did not form a well defined political or geographic entity
in the late fourteenth century, though Philip the Bold’s acquisition of Flanders and
subsequent expansion of the territory under his control was the first step in this direction. Many Netherlandish artists moved around, sometimes working far from their
places of origin, and they developed a network of contacts. The genesis of a work of
art and the artistic expression itself are still all too often regarded as static processes.
But motifs and compositions were purposefully borrowed, adapted and recycled.
They passed to and fro across political and geographic borders by way of artists’
sketchbooks and pattern books,17 and there were numerous prestigious architectural
and decorative projects that attracted an ‘international’ body of artists. Under Philip
the Bold and John the Fearless the Charterhouse of Champmol, with its manifold
artistic requirements, was one of the most notable magnets in this respect.18
The term ‘pre-Eyckian’ is no less problematic. Frédéric Lyna, its popularizer, sees
in it a reaction to courtly art or the International Style, ‘une tendance vers une expression sans cesse plus dégagée des contraintes de l’époque, une compréhension plus
indépendante de l’homme, même de l’homme du peuple et de ses réactions naturelles
dans des circonstances données. C’est cette négation ou peut-être cette ignorance
inconsciente de conventions bien établies qui différencie d’une manière si nette cet
art de la formule française modelée sur les habitudes et les exigences d’une cour
extrêmement raffinée […] [Ces miniatures] préparent [l’art] de Van Eyck et de Van
der Weyden’.19 Clearly this negative definition of pre-Eyckian art takes no account of
the ‘realistic’ tendencies that were also typical of the International Style associated
with Parisian art.20 Moreover, Gerhard Schmidt rightly stresses that the ‘realism’
(‘Realismus’) of pre-Eyckian illumination appeared simultaneously in other European
regions and that it by no means heralded the ‘realistic naturalism’ (‘realistischer
Naturalismus’) of the Van Eycks.21 None the less, we shall use the term ‘pre-Eyckian’
16
INTRODUCTION
here: it is well established in the art-historical discourse and has its uses as a broad
geographic and chronological definition of the art produced in the regions where the
Flemish Primitives would evolve their new techniques and ideas.
In fact there are no fixed and well-defined criteria that allow one work to be
described as ‘pre-Eyckian’ and another not. Which parameters are employed and how
similarities are interpreted are questions that must be gauged afresh in each individual case. A minute comparison with images from other branches of art – with
works that can be dated and localized, preferably – offers, at best, the only (yet uncertain and always relative) foundation on which to build.
Assessments and treatment of the findings consequently demand a differentiated
approach. Given the substantial amount of archival data pertaining to it, Broederlam’s
work could certainly serve – and has indeed done so – as a starting point around
which, on various grounds, other works can be grouped. This approach builds critically and discerningly on earlier attributions to Broederlam, among which many of
the works studied here were once included. Indeed, the name of the Ypres-born artist
was long understood as a generic term for a certain period and provenance – circa
1400, and Flemish. Our research builds on those earlier attributions, which we
endeavour to refine and nuance in the hope of mapping a network of relationships.
Many works, however, have little if anything to do with Broederlam’s advanced
art, but can be grouped on the basis of entirely different and object-related criteria.
These are the small painted reliquaries of diverse shape, comparatively modest objects
and for that very reason most likely to be local works that may have been made not
far from their present locations. But of course there are always isolated cases as well,
which largely elude every attempt at grouping and classification.
Chronological limits are equally difficult to apply. We have kept to ‘around 1400’,
a description which, in the sense it has been used here, spans forty to fifty years, or
two generations, and which is just indefinite enough to allow the inclusion of ‘conservative’ works which – always on the basis of an approximate dating – must already
be regarded as ‘para-Eyckian’.
Though few in number the pre-Eyckian works are great in diversity. Among them
are reliquaries, altarpieces, devotional paintings in the shape of autonomous panels, a
tondo, a diptych, a triptych and a quadriptych. Shape and size vary according to the
work’s destination and function, from precious ‘joyau’ to impressive monument. One
might be a prestigious commission from the court, another was perhaps intended for
a more modest destination in a religious community, or for an individual.
This early panel painting appears to be a multifaceted art. The entire spectrum
of artistic ability is revealed in it, from the rudimentary to the sublime. A few
masterpieces attest to a great fertility of imagination and a refined aesthetic sense.
The technical versatility of painting around 1400 is also very striking. Each work
bears the signs of a carefully considered and creative exploitation of a whole gamut
of materials and techniques. They seem to have been used to produce the widest
possible range of optical effects, anticipating the virtually perfect illusionism of the
Flemish Primitives.
Melchior Broederlam’s Crucifixion Altarpiece in Dijon (fig. 2) exemplifies many
aspects of the métier. The oak panels of the support were not only skilfully prepared,
17
INTRODUCTION
2. Melchior Broederlam and Jacob
de Baerze, Crucifixion
Altarpiece
(closed: 166 × 251 ×
22 cm) – Dijon,
Musée des BeauxArts
they were also covered with linen, onto which the actual ground and painting were
applied. In other works of this period it is often only the joins between the boards
that were covered with strips of cloth or parchment.22 The panels of the Wilton Diptych (London, National Gallery) are probably completely covered with parchment.23
From the underdrawing it can be seen that Broederlam prepared every composition and motif in great and meticulous detail.24 The buildings in the Annunciation
and Presentation in the Temple he drew partly freehand, in a sketchy fashion, and
partly with the aid of ruler and compasses. He worked out the drapery of the garments to the last detail in the drawing, already making decisions about the play of
light and shade, establishing light values whose graduation gives weight and volume.
Save for a few minute details the positions of figures and objects correspond almost
perfectly in the painting.
The contours of certain motifs and areas to be gilded were incised into the ground
so that they were clearly distinguished from the areas to be painted. Along with the
frames they were first covered with gold leaf laid on a red bole. Silver leaf and tin
foil might also be used for the same purpose. The leaf was burnished then tooled with
punches, slender metal rods of various diameters with which motifs were scored or
punched into the metal foil without breaking the surface. Punching was often executed
freehand, though a ruler and/or a mechanical device – probably a wheel set with
pins at regular intervals – was evidently used as well. The result was a most refined
decoration, with arcades and stemwork, leaves, flowers and stars. Sometimes freehand
18
INTRODUCTION
punching was used to create light effects, achieved by varying the density of the
punchmarks. Where precious textiles were to be portrayed a relief effect might be
incised into the gold leaf or even directly into the ground before the foil was applied.
This punched decoration, executed in the main on gold leaf, has received little if
any attention to date. None the less, it is one of the most noteworthy characteristics
of pre-Eyckian panels and its study is essential, for it is particularly important in
tracing connections between the various works. It can be examined as a technique,
but also as a decorative system (motifs, style, where applied, intended effect). The
question of specialized tasks in the workshops also arises. According to Cennino
Cennini’s Libro dell’arte the working of gold leaf was a normal part of a painter’s
training in Italy. In certain commissions, such as the altarpiece made by the painter
Saladin de Stoevere in 1434 for the church of the Friars Minor in Ghent, punchwork
decoration was actually stipulated: ‘van fijnen ghebruneerden gaude ende wel ende
reinlic ghepointsonnert’.25
The backgrounds of other works, including the Crucifixion with St Catherine and
St Barbara in Bruges (see cat. no. 2), were decorated not with punchwork but with
brush-applied relief (pastiglia).26 Silks, brocades and other costly textiles were mimicked by painting patterns onto the gold, which may also have been punched. On the
Wilton Diptych and the Last Judgement (Brussels, KMSKB/MRBAB; on loan to the
Stedelijk Museum, Diest) patterns were achieved by scratching off the paint that had
been applied over the gold. This sgraffito technique was very popular in Italian panel
painting of the Trecento. Another technique involved gluing prefabricated reliefs in
metal foil (usually tin foil) onto the panel, as in the case of the Scenes from the Life of
the Virgin (Brussels) and the Dortmund Passion Altarpiece (St Reinold’s Church).
With the refined use of oil paint, and its ability to evoke the illusion of every kind
of textile, gold and silver leaf, tin foil, pastiglia and prefabricated reliefs became
virtually redundant. Nevertheless, occasional traces of them can still be found in the
work of the Flemish Primitives.27 Moreover, some decorations produced with brush
and paint are indebted in spirit to the older techniques. One thinks here of the backgrounds of various fifteenth-century panels, gilded and decorated with black, red
or brown dots, strongly reminiscent of punched gold leaf. Or the way in which
punchmarks are imitated with dots of yellow paint in the portraying of certain
costly textiles, striking so, for instance, in the brocade sleeves of Mary Magdalene’s
gown in Van der Weyden’s Braque Triptych (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Or how the
effect of the lines incised into the gold leaf have been reproduced in paint in the
rendering of the rich gown of one of the midwives in Robert Campin’s Nativity
(Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts). (figs. 3a and 3b)
Broederlam also polychromed the carving and sculptures created by Jacob de
Baerze for the interior of the Crucifixion Altarpiece. (fig. 4) On the older Bruges St
Ursula Shrine (see cat no. 3) painted and carved figures are integrated in the same
surface. This prompts the question of whether it was the work of a single individual
or of more than one. Some artists were adept in several disciplines. The example of
the Bruges painter Jan van Oosenbrugghe, who is known only through archival
sources, is worth mentioning in this respect. He is referred to in five documents, dating from 1426 to 1429, once as ‘beildesnidere’ or wood carver, twice as ‘steenhauwere’
or stone carver, and once as ‘scildere’ or painter.28
19
INTRODUCTION
20
INTRODUCTION
3a. Robert Campin,
Nativity (85.7 × 72) –
Dijon, Musée des
Beaux-Arts
3b. Robert Campin,
Nativity (detail) –
Dijon, Musée des
Beaux-Arts
21
INTRODUCTION
Reality and artifice are still closely interwoven in this
period. There is much experimenting with the representation
of space and volume, with apparently interacting figures in
attitudes expressive of emotion, but the older decorative and
often quite abstract schemes of patterns and shapes never
completely disappear. From work to work the balance can
even swing from one extreme to the other. In the most progressive works there is a new interest in quotidian reality.
In the work of the great masters of the following generation
these naturalistic forms of expression would be refined to the
utmost degree.
The paintings on panels still largely reflect the material
aesthetic of precious metalwork, with quasi-enamelled figures set against gold backgrounds embellished with decoration produced by the goldsmith’s punchwork technique. The
wood is masked, refined, and made sublime. It often looks
like a sort of ersatz art – though not in any pejorative sense
of the word – that creates the illusion of authentic richness.
Similar objects were listed among the ‘joyaux’ in the inventories of the jewels and valuables of contemporary princes.
Indeed, the rare painted panels (‘tableaux de bois […] faiz de
painture’) are scarcely distinguished from the many costly
items made of gold and silver and precious stones.29 They do
confirm the variety of shapes and sizes, as emerges, for
instance, from the descriptions of the few paintings in the
inventory made in 1420 of the possessions of Philip the Good:
circular panels (‘un autre tableau de bois rond […] tous faiz
de painture’), a square panel (‘un autre plus grant tableau
de boys, quarré […] tous de painture’), a panel in the shape of
a ‘door’ with inscriptions on it (‘un grandelet tableau de bois,
en façon de porte […] escript entour le diadesme de nostre
dame et en la bordure fait de painture’), a diptych (‘uns autres
tableaux de bois, ouvrans en deux pièces’) and a triptych
(‘ung autre tableau de bois, quarré, ouvrant a deux fueillez
[…] faiz de painture’).30 Judging by the subjects, most of these were devotional panels,
small in size, although there is the occasional portrait of the duke or a member of
his family. For instance, the ducal accounts of 1413-14 record a payment to a Master
Vrancke, an artist residing in Mechelen, for painting the portrait of Catherine of
Burgundy, daughter of John the Fearless.31
With the exception of Melchior Broederlam we know nothing about the artists
who created the objects studied here. Yet many names of painters active around 1400
have come down to us. A systematic and contextual examination of the archival
resources of the major centres of the Low Countries could still bring many data to
light.32 In documents dating from around 1400 in the Bruges archives some twenty
painters are referred to,33 most being employed to carry out decorative commissions
and ornamental works: the painting of the city’s arms on shields and banners, the
22
4. St Barbara,
sculpture on the
interior of the left
wing (166 × 125.5 cm)
of the Crucifixion
Altarpiece by Melchior
Broederlam and
Jacob de Baerze –
Dijon, Musée des
Beaux-Arts
INTRODUCTION
designing of tapestries and the ceremonial attire of burgomasters and aldermen, and,
not least, the embellishing of sculpture. This is perfectly in line with the kind of
commissions Broederlam was charged with as court painter to Philip the Bold; as
such he would also be involved in the execution of wall paintings, the design of
stained glass windows and floor tiles, and the ornamenting of armour.
In 1388-89 the Bruges town council paid Jan Coene, the town painter, for what is
generally interpreted as a panel depicting the Last Judgement: ‘Item ghegheven bi
beveilne van borghmeesters Jan Coenen van eenen barde daer ’t jugement in staet
bescreven, hanghende in scepenencamere ende coste: XLIs IIII d. gr.’34 The work has
not survived, but a Last Judgement would certainly have been one of the standard
features of the decoration of council chambers and sheriffs’ courtrooms in the principal towns of the Low Countries.35 In Ghent in 1413 Lieven van den Clite produced a
work of the same name for the council chamber of the Council of Flanders.36 It has
been identified with the abovementioned Last Judgement in Brussels (fig. 5), though
there seems to be very little basis for such a theory. Nevertheless, this panel could
well have been intended for a town hall in the Southern Netherlands. Whether or not
it can be regarded as belonging to the pre-Eyckian production is debatable, however.37
There must also have been panels of this kind in Brussels and Aalst at an early date,
for in 1422 the Aalst corporation commissioned Claus Poulette to paint a Last Judgement that was to equal or better the one in Brussels.38 From the description it seems
fairly clear that the Brussels work was a celebrated painting of great quality. Traces
of other lost works lead to Kortrijk (Courtrai), and a painting by Marcus van Ghistel
(1428).39 Perhaps the panel that the aldermen of Ghent commissioned from Hubert
van Eyck in 1424, a work for which the artist provided two sketches,40 also had a
jurisprudential theme. Hubert is often identified with the ‘magistro Huberto pictori’
who was paid by the chapter of the Church of Our Lady in Tongeren in 1409 for a
painting (‘de pictura tabule’), possibly an altarpiece.41
The work in relief (‘d’ouvrage eslevé’) that the painter Henry le Kien polychromed
in 1413 for the aldermen of Tournai, a small triptych with a Crucifixion on the centre
panel, St Piat and St Eleutherius on the wings, and bearing the arms of Tournai, has
survived and is now preserved in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.42 It was on
this work that public mandataries took their oaths. Strictly speaking, the work is not
a panel painting as such, but it is certainly in keeping with the ‘mixed media’ objects
in which painting and relief were combined, as in the case of the small St Ursula
Shrine in Bruges, for instance. Wills from Tournai and Douai also mention votive
paintings on panels: the earliest references date from 1385, 1392, 1400 and 1419.43
Among these works for private devotion, however, paintings on canvas were vastly
preferred to wooden panels.
Larger pictorial ensembles on panel, including the painted wings of carved altarpieces, must also have occupied an important place in the embellishing of churches
and chapels then. The Crucifixion Altarpiece created by Melchior Broederlam and Jacob
de Baerze, the example par excellence, was – according to the agreement with Philip
the Bold44 – an imitation, perhaps even a copy, of models in Dendermonde and Ghent.
The conjectured early-fifteenth-century Southern Netherlandish provenance of the
Passion Altarpiece in St Reinold’s Church in Dortmund45 (fig. 6), likewise with painted
wings and a carved centre section, would be an additional and significant indication
23
INTRODUCTION
24
INTRODUCTION
5. Last Judgement
(231.5 × 186.5 cm),
Southern Netherlands, c.1425-1435 (?)
– Brussels, KMSKB/
MRBAB (on loan to
the Stedelijk
Museum, Diest)
6. Passion Altarpiece
(open: 292 ×
730 cm), Southern
Netherlands (?),
early 15th century –
Dortmund,
St Reinold’s Church
that this was the case. It would follow that by around 1400 Bruges, where that
Passion Altarpiece was possibly produced, must already have been a major production
centre for this kind of work.46
The observations above regarding lost works bring together (by way of a sample)
just a handful of known facts which hold the promise of many more relevant archival
data. They could significantly alter our image of painting around 1400.
In the first volume ten objects, which in fact constitute the majority of pre-Eyckian
works in Belgian collections, are documented as thoroughly as possible.47 Their interpretation is underpinned not only by classic pictorial analysis but also by macrophotography, X-radiography, infrared photography and reflectography, dendrochronological data and, in so far as was feasible or justifiable, laboratory analysis of pigments
and binding media.
The conservation of the objects varies considerably. Well-preserved works like the
Antwerp Tower Retable (see cat. no. 1) are exceptional. Cleaning the surface was all
that was required to restore it to its original splendour. Construction, painting and
decoration prove to be even more sophisticated than was originally thought, which
is entirely in keeping with the prestige of the milieu for which it was probably
intended.
Some works have undergone substantial restoration in the past, and not always in
accordance with today’s views and principles. For instance, the Calvary of the Tanners
in Bruges (see cat. no. 2) has been repainted in places with imitation craquelure.
A well-documented comparison with the Dortmund Passion Altarpiece revealed numerous striking and very close relationships. It offers a new line of approach to the thorny
issue of workshop practice and the export of works from the Southern Netherlands
around 1400. The X-radiographs of the Bruges St Ursula Shrine (see cat. no. 3)
25
INTRODUCTION
disclosed numerous overpaints. The spectacular discovery of the shrine’s original
stemwork decoration, concealed beneath the later red background, is at once an
important new starting point for further research. The Virgin and Child with St Anne
in the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Neerlanden (see cat. no. 9) was almost entirely
overpainted. After restoration the original execution was revealed, though in sadly
damaged shape, which makes any kind of thorough stylistic comparison with
contemporary works problematic. Nevertheless, it must have been a work of great
quality, its technical execution both varied and refined. The conservation of the small
Ghent Entombment (see cat. no. 5) also revealed a more subtle execution than was
originally suspected.
A fundamental incomprehension of cultural heritage has also left its marks. The
Scenes from the Life of the Virgin in Brussels (see cat. no. 4) survives in a far from
complete state. In several places the painting was planed away so the board could be
used as a dresser top; and an entire scene has gone from the right-hand side. The
underdrawing, brought to light for the first time, was a true revelation, evincing a
mature mastery that was partly lost again in the painting. The panel remains a
highly intriguing work whose purpose, function and production are open to interpretation. The Annunciation and Visitation, or Walcourt Panels in Namur (see cat. no. 7),
had been turned into the doors of a cupboard for liturgical garments. The panels
probably started life as the wings of an altarpiece, but they have been reduced by
more than a third in width and there are also very large areas of loss.
Losses, overpaints, and a whole variety of material modifications and injudicious
restorations complicate the study and aesthetic appreciation of the Bruges St Ursula
Shrine (see cat. no. 3), the St Maurice Shrine in Namur (see cat. no. 8), the Triptych
with Calvary and Saints in Mechelen (see cat. no. 6) and the Reliquary of the Virgin’s
Veil in Tongeren (see cat. no. 10). It should be borne in mind, however, that some
alterations or wear and tear may also attest to the intensive use of these objects.
They were exhibited, carried in processions, perhaps even touched by devout worshippers. As a cult’s popularity waxed their value increased, as it waned they sank
into obscurity.
In the first phase of the research the greatest attention turned out to be directed not
at what are generally regarded as the most important works, the highly sophisticated
products intended for executive circles, on the basis of which Panofsky developed his
views (which is not to underestimate their importance, of course). On the contrary,
most of the objects dealt with in this first volume are among the least known of the
works that can be deemed to belong to this category. Many have been damaged in
one way or another, or been subject to significant modification. With one or two
exceptions they are all relatively modest works, although certainly not without merit
and some even possess a ‘hidden’ refinement that only the most minute observation
reveals. None the less, these works have probably absorbed more influences than they
have emitted. Or at best they may embody an established tradition. For that very
reason they are crucial in the context of this project for they provide a more nuanced
picture of stylistic diversity than has been appreciated hitherto and give a glimpse of
a splendour that is lost almost beyond recall. These observations already allow us to
radically redraw the pre-Eyckian landscape. The insights gained will provide the
guideline for the study of the next group of works.
26
INTRODUCTION
The publication of the first ten pre-Eyckian works is the fruit of teamwork. The two
art historians, Dominique Deneffe and Famke Peters, together with chemists Wim
Fremout and his successor on the project for a short time, Matthieu Goursaud, as well
as the senior scientists, Jana Sanyova and Steven Saverwyns, carried out the fieldwork.
They assembled, evaluated and collated the diverse observations regarding each
object. Famke Peters and Dominique Deneffe also wrote the catalogue entries: the
former being responsible for entries 2, 5, 6, 8 and 10, and the latter for entries 3, 4, 7
and 9, while the text of the first entry is the result of their joint endeavour. For the
interpretation of the laboratory studies of the painting technique reported in the
technical sections, they could count on the contribution of Wim Fremout and Steven
Saverwyns (for entries 2, 3, 5, 6 and 10) and Jana Sanyova (for the entries 1, 4, 7, 8
and 9). These technical sections could also not have been produced without the participation of Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum and Pascale Fraiture. Christina
Currie supervised the interpretation of the underdrawing; Livia Depuydt-Elbaum
guided the various observations on supports and paint layers; Pascale Fraiture carried
out the dendrochronological research. Pigments and binders gave up their secrets, not
a dent or splinter in the wood, not a brushstroke went unexamined, the meaning of
every motif was mused upon. The researchers were fascinated by the image, determined to discover all that could be known. Without their enthusiasm, critical judgment and constant engagement this book would not exist. They have done a superb
job. More able and agreeable colleagues could not be wished for.
In volume two of this publication are a number of individual contributions by
‘guest authors’. They cover diverse topics, ranging from specific technical observations
regarding one noteworthy feature or group of works, to historical context, peripheral
iconographic phenomena, aspects of restoration, and even the exploration of Ghent’s
archives by way of a case study. We are particularly grateful to Barbara Baert,
Lorne Campbell, Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Elisabeth Dhanens, Ingrid
Geelen, Delpine Steyaert and Victor M. Schmidt for their great interest in the research
and of course for the way in which they have participated.
The research has also benefited to the full from the expertise and know-how of the
many specialists of the IRPA/KIK. Some of them took part in the meetings of the
working committee at which the results of the research were regularly discussed
before external advisors from various Belgian universities and study centres. They are
all named individually elsewhere but here too we tender our sincere thanks for their
contribution to the success of this project.
Lee Preedy was responsible for the English translation of the original Dutch texts.
In no time at all she became one of the team. She cherished our ‘treasures’, intellectually
and instinctively, if possible still more than we did ourselves, constantly searching for
the one nuance that brought clarity. Our sincere thanks to you, Lee.
27
INTRODUCTION
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
28
Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting,
Cambridge (Mass.), 1953: 91-99.
Ibid: 99.
On the issue of European stylistic trends
circa 1400, see especially: Gerhard Schmidt,
‘Kunst um 1400. Forschungsstand und
Forschungsperspektiven’, Internationale Gotik
in Mitteleuropa (Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch
Graz, 24), eds. Götz Pochat and Brigitte
Wagner, Graz, 1990: 34-49; Gerhard
Schmidt, ‘“Pre-Eyckian Realism.” Versuch
einer Abgrenzung’, Flanders in a European
Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around
1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings
of the International Colloquium Leuven,
7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated
Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5),
eds. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon,
Leuven, 1995: 747-769.
Vienna (1962), Kunsthistorisches Museum:
Europäische Kunst um 1400.
Frankfurt am Main (1975), Liebieghaus
Museum alter Plastik: Kunst um 1400 am
Mittelrhein: ein Teil der Wirklichkeit.
Cologne (1978), Kunsthalle: Die Parler und
der schöne Stil 1350-1400. Europäische Kunst
unter den Luxemburgern.
Some introductory, general findings have
already been published. See: Cyriel Stroo,
with Dominique Deneffe, Famke Peters
and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘De
pre-Eyckiaanse paneelschilderkunst in de
Nederlanden. Een prelude op de Vlaamse
Primitieven?’, Vlaanderen, 54 (2005):
130-135; Cyriel Stroo, Dominique Deneffe,
Famke Peters, Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
and Wim Fremout, ‘Onderzoek naar de
bronnen van de Vlaamse Primitieven.
De pre-Eyckiaanse paneelschilderkunst’,
Science Connection, 9, December 2005: 8-12;
Dominique Deneffe and Famke Peters, with
Cyriel Stroo, ‘De schilderkunst op paneel
voor Jan van Eyck: twee voorbeelden in
Brugge’, Museumbulletin Musea Brugge,
26/1 (2006): 4-11; Wim Fremout, Steven
Saverwyns, Famke Peters and Dominique
Deneffe, ‘Non-destructive Micro-Raman
and x-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy on
Pre-Eyckian Works of Art – Verification
with Results obtained by Destructive
Methods’, Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, 37
(2006): 1035-1045.
Paris (2004), Musée du Louvre: Paris 1400.
Les arts sous Charles VI; Dijon (2004), Musée
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland (2004), The
Cleveland Museum of Art: L’art à la cour de
Bourgogne. Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de
Jean sans Peur (1364-1419); Bourges (2004),
Musée du Berry: Une fondation disparue de
Jean de France, duc de Berry. La SainteChapelle de Bourges; Nijmegen (2005),
Museum het Valkhof: De Gebroeders Van
Limburg. Nijmeegse meesters aan het Franse hof
1400-1416; Budapest (2006), Szépmüvészeti
Múzeum and Luxemburg (2006), Musée
national d’histoire et d’art: Sigismundus.
Rex et Imperator. Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit
Sigismundus von Luxemburg 1387-1437.
See among others the diverse studies in:
Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript
Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and
Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven, 7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus
of Illuminated Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5) eds. Maurits Smeyers and
Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995. See also: Maurits
Smeyers, Bert Cardon, Susie Vertongen,
Katrien Smeyers and Rita Van Dooren, Naer
natueren ghelike. Vlaamse miniaturen voor Van
Eyck (ca. 1350 - ca. 1420), Leuven, 1993.
See the critical observations of: Anne
Hagopian van Buren, ‘Thoughts, Old and
New, on the Sources of Early Netherlandish
Painting’, Simiolus 16 (1986): 94; Michael V.
Schwartz, Höfische Skulptur im 14. Jahrhundert,
Worms, 1986: 211, discusses north-eastern
France, the Netherlands, Berry and Burgundy; Gerhard Schmidt, ‘Beiträge zu Stil
und Œuvre des Jean de Liège’, Metropolitan
Museum Journal, 4 (1971): 102-105,
adds to this the Meuse region.
E. Renan, ‘Discours sur l’état des BeauxArts en France, au xive siècle’, Histoire
littéraire de la France, 24, Paris, 1862: 603757 (p. 624-728); Louis Courajod, Leçons professées à l’école du Louvre, 2, Paris, 1901: 198
ff.; André Michel, Histoire de l’art depuis les
premiers temps chrétiens jusqu’à nos jours, 3.
Le réalisme. Les débuts de la Renaissance, 1,
Paris, 1907: 114 ff.
Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert, Études sur l’art
flamand. La Renaissance septentrionale et les
premiers maîtres des Flandres, Brussels,
1905: 6.
Robert Didier, ‘Flandern und Brabant’,
Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, 1350-1400.
Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgern
(exhib. cat. Cologne, Kunsthalle), 1,
ed. Anton Legner, Cologne, 1978: 79.
INTRODUCTION
14. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting,
Cambridge (Mass.), 1953: 35.
15. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of
Jean de Berry. The Late Fourteenth Century and
the Patronage of the Duke, London, 1967: IX.
16. Les fastes du gothique. Le siècle de Charles V
(exhib. cat. Paris, Galeries nationales du
Grand Palais), Paris, 1981: 61.
17. For a catalogue and study of medieval
pattern books, see Robert W. Scheller,
Exemplum. Model-Book Drawings and the
Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle
Ages (ca. 900-ca. 1450), translated by
Michael Hoyle, Amsterdam, 1995. The
drawings in the c.1400-1420 sketchbook of
Jacques Daliwe (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Liber
Picturatus, inv. no. A 74), a Flemish illuminator working in Paris, display Flemish,
Parisian and Bohemian influences. See Maurits Smeyers, Vlaamse miniaturen van de 8ste
tot het midden van de 16de eeuw. De middeleeuwse wereld op perkament, Leuven, 1998: 185;
Robert W. Scheller 1995: 233-240. Anonymous sketches and model drawings from the
Netherlands, dating from c.1380 to c.1410,
are collected in the Wiesbaden Miscellany
(Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv,
Cod. Abt. 3004 B 10). See Marta O. Renger,
‘The Wiesbaden Drawings’, Master Drawings,
25/4 (1987): 390-410.
18. For a recent publication on the Champmol
Charterhous, see Renate Prochno, Die
Kartause von Champmol. Grablege der
burgundischen Herzöge 1364-1477, Berlin,
2002. See also L’art à la cour de Bourgogne.
Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean
sans Peur (1364-1419) (exhib. cat. Dijon,
Musée des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland,
The Cleveland Museum of Art), Paris,
2004.
19. ‘a tendency towards an expression increasingly free of the constraints of the time, a
more independent comprehension of man,
even of the common man and his natural
reactions in the given circumstances. It is
this negation or perhaps this unconscious
ignorance of well established conventions
which so clearly differentiates this art from
the French formula modelled on the customs
and requirements of an extremely refined
court […] [These miniatures] prepare the way
for [the art of] Van Eyck and Van der Weyden’. Frédéric Lyna, ‘Les miniatures d’un ms.
du “Ci nous dit” et le réalisme préeyckien’,
Scriptorium, 1 (1946-1947): 116-117.
20. See Élisabeth Antoine, ‘Art parisien ou
Gothique international?’, Paris 1400. Les arts
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
sous Charles VI (exhib. cat. Paris, Musée du
Louvre), Paris, 2004: 307-308.
Gerhard Schmidt, ‘“Pre-Eyckian Realism.”
Versuch einer Abgrenzung’, Flanders in a
European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination
around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven,
7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated
Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5),
eds. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon,
Leuven, 1995: 747-769.
See also: Roger Van Schoute and Hélène
Verougstraete, ‘Technologie des cadres et
supports dans la peinture flamande vers
1400’, Flanders in a European Perspective.
Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in
Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven, 7-10 September,
1993 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts,
8. Low Countries Series, 5), eds. Maurits
Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995:
371-383.
Dillian Gordon (with an essay by Caroline
M. Barron and contributions by Ashok Roy
and Martin Wyld), Making and Meaning of
the Wilton Diptych, London, 1993.
For a new study of the underdrawing in
Broederlam’s work, see the contribution by
Christina Currie in vol. 2 of this publication.
‘of fine burnished gold and well and carefully
punched’. See the contribution by Elisabeth
Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.
On this and other techniques using applied
reliefs for decoration, see the contribution by
Ingrid Geelen and Delphine Steyaert in
vol. 2 of this publication.
Applied brocade has been used in the Bad
Thief in Frankfurt (Städelsches kunstinstitut) by the Flémalle/Campin group, on
the centre panel of the Adoration of the Lamb
(St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent), more specifically on the cloths of honour behind the
enthroned deity, Mary and John the Baptist,
and on the exterior of the wings of Rogier
van der Weyden’s Last Judgment in Beaune.
It has also been documented in some works
of a later date attributed to the Master of the
View of St Gudule. Moreover, Jan van Eyck
still used gold leaf for the beams via which
the dove descends in the Washington
Annunciation (National Gallery of Art).
Remains of silver leaf are still present in the
window openings of the interior of the Brussels Annunciation (KMSKB/MRBAB), one of
the early works of the Flémalle group. The
background of the Seilern Triptych in London
(Courtauld Gallery), also attributed to Robert
29
INTRODUCTION
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
30
Campin, is entirely covered with stemwork
in pastiglia. The use of applied brocades and
pastiglia around 1400 is examined at length
in the contribution by Ingrid Geelen and Delphine Steyaert in vol. 2 of this publication.
Albert Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te
Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge
tot de dood van Gerard David, 2. L-Z (Fontes
historiae artis neerlandicae, II), eds. Erik
Duverger and Henry Pauwels, Brussels,
2004: 86-87.
See also: Philippe Lorentz, Des tableaux de
peinture comme les tableaux d’orfèvrerie, in
Paris 1400. Les arts sous Charles VI (exhib.
cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre), Paris, 2004:
194-200.
Alexandre de Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne.
Etudes sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle et plus particulièrement dans
les Pays-Bas et le duché de Bourgogne, II:
Preuves, Paris, 1851: 240-241.
‘A maistre Vranque, paintre, demourant à
Malines, pour paindre et faire la figure de
madamoiselle Katherine de Bourgogne, fille
de MdS […]’. Cited after: Alexandre de
Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne. Etudes sur les
lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle
et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le
duché de Bourgogne, I: Preuves, Paris, 1849: 97.
This was probably a panel painting. In
public buildings the likenesses of the
Burgundian rulers were also executed as
wall paintings, such as the portraits of
Philip the Bold and his duchess, Margaret of
Male, painted by Melchior Broederlam in
1407 on the walls of the comital chapel in
the Church of Our Lady in Kortrijk.
On the relevant archival material from the
Ghent area, see the contribution by Elisabeth
Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.
See also Daniel Lievois, ‘ “Le Chêne qui
cache la forêt – Van (een) Eyck die het bos
verbergt.” La peinture sur panneau à Gand à
l’époque de Robert Campin et de Jan van
Eyck’, Campin in Context. Peinture et société
dans la vallée de l’Escaut à l’époque de Robert
Campin 1375-1445 (Actes du Colloque international … Tournai, 30 mars-1er avril 2006),
eds. Ludovic Nys and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, Valenciennes-Tournai, 2007: 205-222.
On panel painting in Tournai in Campin’s
time, see Douglas Brine, ‘Campin’s Contemporaries: Painting in Tournai in the Early
Fifteenth Century’, Campin in Context.
Peinture et société dans la vallée de l’Escaut à
l’époque de Robert Campin 1375-1445 (Actes
du Colloque international … Tournai,
30 mars-1er avril 2006), eds. Ludovic Nys
33.
34.
35.
36.
and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ValenciennesTournai, 2007: 101-112.
Albert Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te
Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge
tot de dood van Gerard David, 1. A-K (Fontes
historiae artis neerlandicae, II), Brussels,
1989. Idem, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge.
Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge tot
de dood van Gerard David, 2. L-Z (Fontes
historiae artis neerlandicae, II), eds.
Erik Duverger and Henry Pauwels, Brussels,
2004.
‘Item given by order of the burgomaster
Jan Coenen of a board on which the judgment is described hanging in the aldermen’s
room and costing: XLIs IIII d. gr.’ Albert
Schouteet 1989 (cited in n. 31): 125. The
transcription is incomplete, for, as in all
account entries, on the line following the
recording of the money paid out this sum is
converted into pounds parisis: ‘somme xxiiij
lb. xvi s’. According to Noël Geirnaert
(archivist at the Bruges municipal archives)
the panel was probably relatively cheap and
small. I am most grateful to Noël Geirnaert
for his helpful examination of the original
text and its subsequent interpretation.
For general observations and publications on
this subject, see also Cyriel Stroo and Rita
Van Dooren, ‘Wat hemlieden toebehoort
die vonnesse wijzen zullen”. Bouts’ werk
voor het Leuvense stadhuis in een ruimer
perspectief’, Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410-1475),
een Vlaams primitief te Leuven (exhib. cat.
Leuven, St Peter’s Church and Friars Minor’s
Church), ed. Maurits Smeyers, with the
collaboration of Katharina Smeyers, Leuven,
1998: 137-151.
‘Item à Liévin de le Clite, pointre, demourant en la ville de Gand, pour la fachon d’un
très-bel tabbel tout doré et de fin aisur, du
Jugement de Nostre-Seigneur Jhésu-Crist,
par lui livré en ladicte chambre en l’an mil
quatre cens et treize.’ See: Juliaan H.A.
De Ridder, Gerechtigheidstaferelen voor
schepenhuizen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de
14de, 15de en 16de eeuw (Verhandelingen van
de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België.
Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 51, 45),
Brussels, 1989: 24-25. See also: Juliaan
H.A. De Ridder, ‘Vlaamse Primitief op de
dool: “Het Laatste Oordeel” van Lieven van
den Clite’, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone
Kunsten van België. Musées royaux des BeauxArts de Belgique. Bulletin (Miscellanea Henri
Pauwels), 38-40/1-3 (1989-1991) 1992:
91-123; Rudy Van Elslande, ‘Het Laatste
INTRODUCTION
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
Oordeel (Diest, Stedelijk Museum) van
Lieven van den Clyte’, Ghendtsche Tydinghen.
Tweemaandelijks Tijdschrift van de Heemkundige
en Historische Kring Gent, 30/6 (2001): 367371. See also the contribution by Elisabeth
Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.
In this connection, see: Roel Slachmuylders,
Het Laatste Oordeel van Diest (ca. 1430-1445).
Een kritische studie (unpublished licentiate’s
thesis, K.U. Leuven, 1987). The Diest Last
Judgment will be discussed in a subsequent
volume of our study of pre-Eyckian panels.
‘Item ende dit ordeel es bestaet te werkene
an Claus Poulette, ende es voorwaerde dat
hy ’t maken sal, alse goed of beter alse
’t oordeel es te Brussel, in de camere van
scepenen, so de voorwaerde inhoud, ende
salre af hebben: xxxvj liv. Parises.’ Cited in:
Alexandre Pinchart, ‘Rogier van der Weyden
et les tapisseries de Berne’, Bulletin de
l’Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des
beaux-arts de Belgique, 17 (1864): 54-55;
J.G. Van Gelder, ‘Enige kanttekeningen bij
de gerechtigheidstaferelen van Rogier van
der Weyden’, Rogier van der Weyden en zijn
tijd. Internationaal Colloquium 11-12 juni
1964, Brussels, 1974: 119-164 (121).
Hans Van Miegroet, ‘Gerard David’s “Justice
of Cambyses”: “Exemplum Iustitiae” or
Political Allegory?’, Simiolus, 18 (1988):
117, n. 4.
‘Ghegheven meester Luberecht over syn
moyte van ii bewerpen van eenre taeffele
die hy maecte ten bevelene van scepenen’.
See: W. H. James Weale, Hubert and John
van Eyck, their Lives and Work, London and
New York, 1908: xxviii.
Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert et Jan van Eyck,
Antwerp, 1980: 20-23; Pierre Colman,
‘« En Liège » vers 1400. L’orfèvre Henri de
Cologne, Hubert van Eyck et Claus Sluter’,
Bulletin de la Classe des Beaux-Arts,
17 (2006) : 97-140.
‘A maistre Henry le Quien, pointre, pour
son sallaire d’avoir point et doré le tavelet
servant au siege des eschevins pour faire les
sermens, et tous les ymages qui y sont, de fin
or, et y fait armoiries, 48s’. See: A. de la
Grange, Les tableaux pour les prestations de
serment, in Bulletin de la Société historique et
littéraire de Tournai, 21 (1886): 10-11. On the
identification of the work, see: Ludovic Nys,
‘Un petit triptyque sculpté de prestation de
serment tournaisien du début du XVe siècle,
conservé au Musée des arts décoratifs de
Paris’, Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art
de Louvain, 24 (1991): 47-56.
43. Ludovic Nys, ‘Le Triptyque Seilern: une
nouvelle hypothèse’, Revue de l’art, 139 (2003):
19, n. 84; Marc Gil, ‘Commande privée et
typologie des œuvres à partir des testaments
douaisiens (fin XIVe siècle-1500)’, La peinture
en province. De la fin du Moyen Âge au début
du XXe siècle, ed. Jean-Pierre Lethuillier,
Rennes, 2002: 31-45.
44. Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, (with Nicole
Veronee-Verhaegen), Le Musée des Beaux-Arts
de Dijon (Les Primitifs Flamands, 1. Corpus
de la Peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux au quinzième siècle, 14), Brussels,
1986: 134. See also the contribution of Elisabeth Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.
45. For the most recent views in this matter, see:
Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, Das Flügelretabel
auf dem Hochaltar der Dortmunder Kirche
St. Reinoldi. Untersuchungen zu seiner Gestalt,
Ikonographie und Herkunft, Cologne, 2004;
Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, ‘Das Hochaltarretabel der Dortmunder Reinoldikirche. Ein
herausragendes Zeugnis franko-flämischen
Kunstschaffens aus den Werkstätten der
burgundischen Niederlande’, Städtische
Repräsentation. St. Reinoldi und das Rathaus
als Schauplätze des Dortmunder Mittelalters,
eds. Nils Büttner, Thomas Schilp and
Barbara Welzel, Bielefeld, 2005: 181-203;
Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, Das Altarretabel
in der Dortmunder St. Reinoldikirche
(Dortmunder Mittelalter-Forschungen, 10),
Bielefeld, 2007.
46. In this connection, see the carved retables
that were attributed by Robert Didier and
John Steyaert to a Bruges sculptor, and were
intended for the parish church of Bokel
(Hanover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum),
Grönau (Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum),
Neetze, and for St Antao de Faniqueira
(Portugal). See: Robert Didier, ‘Flandern
und Brabant’, Die Parler und der Schöne Stil,
1350-1400. Europäische Kunst unter den
Luxemburgern (exhib. cat. Cologne, Kunsthalle), 1, ed. Anton Legner, Cologne, 1978:
91. Didier and Steyaert attribute the Dortmund Passion Altarpiece to a Brabant (Brussels) workshop, however. For a recent opinion
on this topic, see the entry on the so-called
Grönauer Altar in Lübeck in Uwe Albrecht,
Jörg Rosenfeld and Christiane Saumweber,
Corpus der mittelalterlichen Holzskulptur und
Tafelmalerei in Schleswig-Holstein, I. Hansestadt
Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum, ed. Uwe Albrecht,
Kiel, 2005: 114-122.
47. The results of the study of the pre-Eyckian
panels in collections outside Belgium will be
published in a subsequent volume. This
31
INTRODUCTION
research will include works such as the
Norfolk Triptych (Rotterdam, Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen), the AntwerpBaltimore Quadriptych (Antwerp, Museum
Mayer van den Bergh and Baltimore, The
Walters Art Museum), the Virgin and Child
Tondo (Baltimore, The Walters Art
Museum), the Passion Altarpiece (Dortmund,
St Reinold’s Church), the Large Carrand
Diptych (Florence, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello), Chapelle Cardon (Paris, Musée du
32
Louvre), the Last Judgement (Brussels,
KMSKB/MRBAB; on loan to the Stedelijk
Museum, Diest), the Sachs Annunciation
(Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art),
the Crucifixion Triptych with Saints Anthony,
Christopher, James and George (Chicago, The
Art Institute of Chicago), the Holy Family
with Angels and the Trinity Triptych (Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie), the Altarpiece of St Crispin
and St Crispinian (Saint-Omer, Musée de
l’Hôtel Sandelin), amongst others.
Acknowledgements
This publication presents research results of the Impulse for research in the Belgian
federal scientific institutes initiated by the Belgian State, Federal Public Planning
Service Science Policy.
The research project was initiated with the kind support of Liliane MasscheleinKleiner, former director of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (IRPA/KIK) in
Brussels, and is continued today under the direction of Myriam Serck-Dewaide. The
authors are most grateful for their full and ongoing confidence.
We would like to thank the project’s promoter Cyriel Stroo, and co-promoter
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe. They directed the research with the utmost dedication and were always willing to communicate and discuss new ideas.
We are deeply indebted to the other members of the working committee, Bert
Cardon, Christina Ceulemans, Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Liliane
Masschelein-Kleiner, Hélène Mund, Hans Nieuwdorp, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren,
Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns, Myriam Serck-Dewaide, Jan Van der Stock,
Guido Van de Voorde and Hélène Verougstraete, for their many critical observations on the catalogue entries, the extensive scientific documentation and the
analyses.
The specialists of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage have been most generous
with their help. Without the advice and the active participation of Christina Currie,
Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns and Guido Van de Voorde,
this study would never have been completed.
We are most grateful to the IRPA/KIK’s photographer, Jean-Luc Elias, and to his
colleagues Jacques Declercq, Marleen Sterckx, Jean-Louis Torsin and Olivier Depauw,
for the excellent documents they provided.
To Guido Van de Voorde, assisted by Catherine Fondaire, we owe the X-radiographic documentation, enhanced by his judicious interpretation.
The study could not have been undertaken without Sophie De Potter who made
the high quality computerised reflectogram assemblies and assisted in the complex
design and layout of some of the illustrations.
We are grateful to Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns and their team from the Scientific Department, assisted by Cécile Glaude and Matthieu Goursaud for their high
quality paint layer analysis.
Dendrochronological analysis was carried out by Pascale Fraiture. She also revised
Jozef Vynckier’s report on the Neerlanden St Anne with the Virgin and Child in the
light of new observations in the field.
33
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ingrid Geelen provided us with the highly clarifying diagram in the entry on the
Brussels Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Kortessem Panel).
Valuable advice and information were also gained from our colleagues Christine Cession, Christina Ceulemans, Amandine Crabbé, Jacques Debergh, Leonoor
De Schepper, Gilberte Dewanckel, Hélène Dubois, Dominique Otjacques-Dustin,
Chantale Fontaine-Hodiamont, Bart Fransen, Isabelle Lecocq, Dahlia Mees,
Emmanuelle Mercier, Hélène Mund, Marie Postec, Walter Schudel, An Tant,
Marina Van Bos, Beatrijs Wolters van der Wey and Helena Wouters.
Logistic and administrative support was kindly given by Isabelle Depoorter, Maria
Peeters, Karine Renmans and Saïd Amrani.
We express our deep gratitude to all of them.
In the course of preparing this publication we have become much indebted to the
many people who kindly allowed us to study the objects in their collections.
Hans Nieuwdorp, curator of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, who had already
allowed the Tower Retable to be examined and cleaned at the IRPA/KIK, some time
before the project officially began, continued his unconditional support and generously shared his broad knowledge in the field.
We received a most hearty welcome in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin by the late
Rainald Grosshans. His colleagues Stefan Kemperdick and Beatrix Graf gave particularly
helpful advice on our examinations of two contemporary paintings, the Trinity Triptych
and the Holy Family, while also providing us with new technical documentation.
The staff of the Memlingmuseum in Bruges, in particular Eva Tahon and Joris
Capenberghs, made it possible for the St Ursula Shrine to be studied at the IRPA/
KIK. The Memlingmuseum also provided funding for its (ongoing) restoration.
Sister Aleydis Baeke, archivist of the Sint-Janshospitaal, was very generous in
communicating interesting data on the shrine.
Also in Bruges, Benoit Kervyn, curator of the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour,
kindly allowed us to study and fully document the Crucifixion with St Catherine and
St Barbara (Calvary of the Tanners) in situ, having it removed from its place in the
Treasury and its protective casing to make some minor interventions possible.
Eliane Dewilde, director of the Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and her
successors Hélène Bussers and Michel Draguet, together with Véronique Bücken and
Ingrid Goddeeris, were most supportive in allowing us to study and document the
Kortessem Panel and other paintings, and to take samples. We would like to thank in
particular our colleagues Pascale d’Olne and Anne Dubois for generously sharing
with us their most interesting observations.
Our thanks also go to Emiel Peeters-Saenen and Thea Henderix, successive curators of the Stedelijk Museum in Diest, for allowing us to study and document the
Last Judgement.
It is difficult adequately to acknowledge all the help we received from Sophie Jugie,
curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, and her staff, during our examinations
of Broederlam’s Crucifixion Altarpiece. Twice she allowed both us and our colleagues to
study, (re-)photograph and take infrared reflectograms of the famous triptych.
Studying and documenting the large Passion Altarpiece in Dortmund seemed an
impossible venture at first, but it succeeded thanks to the kind and practical help
34
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
of Michael Küsterman and ‘Herr Kaaz’ in St Reinold’s Church. Evelyn BertramNeunzig and Professor Barbara Welzel of Dortmund University joined us there and
kindly shared their views on the painting.
The Entombment from the Ghent Museum voor Schone Kunsten could be studied
in optimum conditions in the IRPA/KIK thanks to the kind collaboration of Monique
Tahon and Lieven Gerard, who also gave permission for its restoration. For the same
reasons we owe special thanks to the staff of the Stedelijke Musea in Mechelen, where
we could count on the support of Annemie de Vos and Bart Stroobants for the study
of the Triptych with Crucifixion and Saints; and to Albert Boulet (administrator) and
Karin Vanderstraeten, curator of the Reliquary of the Virgin’s Veil in the Treasury of
the Basilica of the Nativity of Our Lady in Tongeren.
Jacques Toussaint, curator of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois,
gave us kind permission and support to comprehensively examine in situ the Walcourt
Panels and St Maurice Shrine. In the Church of St Mary in Neerlanden we were greatly
helped in the completion of our examination and documentation of St Anne with the
Virgin and Child by Jos Vrancken, treasurer of the Parish Council.
Preliminary examination and photographic documentation of the Norfolk Triptych
in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam were kindly allowed by
Jeroen Giltaij and Friso Lammertse.
We were supported in our preliminary study of the Large Carrand Diptych in the
Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence by curators Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi and
Maria Grazia Vaccari, with whom we hope to collaborate further in the near future.
We were fortunate in being able to rely on the valuable documentation in the Centre
for the Study of Fifteenth Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the
Bishopric of Liège (Brussels) and in Illuminare: Centre for the Study of the Illuminated Manuscript K.U.Leuven, supervised by Professor Jan Van der Stock.
Colleagues and friends in various libraries, archives, universities and museums have
been extraordinarily helpful in many different ways. We would like to thank in
particular Mia Awouters, Barbara Baert, Ignace Bossuyt, Lorne Campbell, Aurore
Carlier, Geert Claasens, Hilde De Bruyne, Brigitte Dekeyzer, Albert Derolez, Noël
Geirnaert, Olga Kotkova, Philippe Lorentz, Hélène Mund, Michel Nuyttens, Ludovic
Nys, Claudia Rabel, Bernadette Roose, Katharina Smeyers, Anna Trobec, Axel Vaeck,
Stéphane Vandenberghe, Paul Vandenbroeck, Maurice Vandermaesen, Steven Vandewal,
Raf Van Laere, Annelies Vogels, Martha Wolff and Nancy Zinn.
Lee Preedy translated the texts from the Dutch. We thank her warmly for her
unwavering dedication, her marked interest in the subject matter and for her
patience. It was a most rewarding collaboration. We also warmly thank Michael
Lomax who translated Livia Depuydt-Elbaum’s article from the French.
This publication is the joint endeavour of three institutions.
The Centre for the Study of Fifteenth Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Bishopric of Liège has included the publication in its prestigious series
and has supported the work thanks to the substantial financial sponsorship of
35
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the Richard Zondervan Trust. We owe them both our most heartfelt thanks.
The Léon Courtin-Marcelle Bouché Foundation, administered by the King
Baudouin Foundation and directed by Dominique Allard and Anne De Breuck,
has provided the larger part of the production costs. We are greatly indebted for
this support.
The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, which initiated the research project in
2003, has funded all the documentation and the English translation. For this we are
sincerely grateful.
Without the generosity of all these people this book would never have seen the
light of day.
The authors
36
Abbreviations
BL
British Library, London
Bodleian Library, Oxford
BM
Bibliothèque municipale
British Museum, London
BnF
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
BU
Bibliothèque de l’Université, Liège
FWM
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
HL
Huntington Library, San Marino
IRPA/KIK
Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique/
Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium, Brussels
KB
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague
Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen
KBR
Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I/
Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Brussels
KMKG/MRAH
Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis/
Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels
KMSKA
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
KMSKB/MRBAB Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België/
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
K.U.Leuven
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
MMA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
MMW
Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, The Hague
MLM
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York
OCMW
Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn
ÖNB
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
SB
Stadtbibliothek, Nuremberg
UB
Universiteitsbibliotheek, Utrecht
UL
University Library
ULg
Université de Liège
WAM
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
37