ONE OF THE MOST powerful and perhaps

the most influential of all fifteenth-century

European masters, Rogier van der Weyden
emerged from scholarly and critical neglect only
with the revival of interest in the so-called
‘Flemish Primitives’ during the second half of the
nineteenth century. The immensely forceful,
frequently disturbing, images which Van der
Weyden produced owed as much to his supreme
control of paint as they did to his observation of
detail, which despite an almost clinical obsessive-
ness was never permitted to dominate the general
rhythm and pattern of the picture itself. These
qualities fused to.create a style with a direct
impact but one which was the result of only the
most subtle and painstaking calculations of colour
and balance. The drama inherent in the subject-
matter of Van der Weyden’s greatest paintings is
thus heightened to produce images of intense
emotion so that the agony of The Descent from the
Cross and the horrors and glories of The Last
Judgement become searingly palpable.
Lorne Campbell disentangles many of the
threads of a career which, although brilliantly
successful, is so scantily documented that much of
the personality and the development of one of the
most eminent painters of the fifteenth century
remains mysterious. Of his contemporary renown
there is no doubt, and Dr Campbell explores Van
der Weyden’s position both as official painter to
the city of Brussels and within the international
system of princely patronage which was evolving
during his lifetime. Starting from a core of
securely attributed works, Dr Campbell uses
documentary evidence and stylistic analysis to
construct a comprehensible and consistent corpus
of Van der Weyden’s surviving oeuvre. His lucid
and succinct study will long stand not only as a
model for approaching the problems of fifteenth-
century Netherlandish painting but also as a
basic and comprehensive introduction to the
achievement of a master whose images, with their
unnerving immediacy of presentation, seem to
have a special appeal for the our times.
VAN DER WEYDEN

jp) DETR B® hl .
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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This book, edited by Christopher Wright,

is a revised and updated version of an edition first published in 1977

Image Acknowledgement:
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AKG London
National Gallery Picture Library
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Printed in China by Sun Fung Offset Binding Co. Ltd.

Frontispiece: Zhe Braque Triptych, Detail of The Magdalen (Plate 59)

VAN DER WEYDEN

LORNE CAMPBELL

we
CHOHAUCER PRESS
LONDOWN
VAN DER WEYDEN

Detail of The Columba Triptych (Plate 65)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Itis not possible to list all the friends, museum and library staff, colleagues and students who have helped me in my research.
lam particularly grateful to Madame Micheline Comblen-Sonkes and her colleagues at the Centre National de Recherches
‘Primitifs flamands’ in Brussels, to the Managers of the Speelman Fellowship, to Margaret Scott and to Ian, Catriona and

Jennifer Campbell.

Fig, 12 is reproduced by Gracious Permission of Her Majesty the Queen. Sincere thanks are also due to the following for
their help in providing photographs and in giving permission for them to be reproduced: A.C.L. Brussels; Alte Pinakothek,

Munich; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Bibliothéque Municipale, Arras; British Museum, London; Museu Calouste

Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Capilla Real, Granada; Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent; Centre Hospitalier de Beaune, Beaune; Courtauld

Institute of Art, London; Dahlem Museum, Gemiildegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin; Eglise Notre-Dame, Ternant,

Niévre; Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California; Historisches Museum, Bern; Koninklijk
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Museo del Prado, Madrid;

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Muzeum Pomorskie Gdansk, Gdansk; National Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art,

Washington; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; National Trust, Upton House, Warwickshire; Nuevos Museos, Escorial; Oronoz,

Madrid; Service de documentation photographique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris; Sint Janshospitaal, Bruges;

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Staidelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt; Stichting Collectie Thyssen-Bornemisza,

Amsterdam

In Memoriam

L.M.J. Delaissé
VAN DER WEYDEN

Detail of Zhe Magdalen (Plate 19)

 VAN DER WEYDEN

LAMENTABLY LITTLE IS known about Rogier van der Weyden. Though archival research has
revealed a few facts about his life and work, the interpretation of several of those facts remains
controversial. His most celebrated paintings were destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century. In
spite of this, it may be fairly claimed that he was one of the most powerful, and perhaps the most
influential, of all fifteenth-century European painters.
Born at Tournai in about 1399, Roger de la Pasture was the son of a cutler. After serving a five-year
apprenticeship with Robert Campin, a leading Tournai painter, he became master of the Tournai Guild
of St Luke in 1432. By 1435 he had moved to Brussels and into the Flemish-speaking area of the
Netherlands. His name was translated into Flemish as Rogier van der Weyden, and under that name he
became famous. Rogier was official painter to the city of Brussels; his career was uneventful and
prosperous; he is said to have made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1450; and he enjoyed an international
reputation in his own lifetime. The German Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, writing in 1453, described him
as ‘the greatest of painters’. In 1460 Bianca Maria Sforza, Duchess of Milan, decided to send her court
painter, Zanetto Bugatto, to be instructed by Rogier in Brussels. Almost immediately the two men
quarrelled, and only after the intervention of the Dauphin of France, later Louis XI, did Rogier agree to
take Zanetto back into his workshop. Zanetto had to promise not to drink wine for a year. The Milanese
ambassador in Brussels, reporting back to Milan on the settlement of the dispute, quite gratuitously
called Rogier ‘the most noble of painters’. Van der Weyden died during the summer of 1464 and was
buried in the Church of St Gudule in Brussels. He is known to have made gifts of money and paintings
to the Charterhouses of Scheut and Hérinnes, where his eldest son was an inmate, to have served during
the years 1455 to 1457 as an administrator of the infirmary and the charitable foundation Ter Kisten of
the Brussels Béguinage and to have made bequests for the support of the poor in two Brussels parishes.
His renown endured into the seventeenth century, but, like most of his northern contemporaries, he
was almost totally forgotten in the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century his reputation was
gradually re-established, but only in the twentieth century was he acknowledged as one of the most
eminent painters of his time.
Almost nothing is known about Van der Weyden’s duties as painter to the city of Brussels, but they
certainly included the design of sculpted and other decorations for the Town Hall, which was then
being built. By a fortunate chance, a drawing survives which is a design for one of the capitals on the
main facade of the town hall (Plate 81). The capital was to be erected on the site of a house known as
the Scupstoe/, named after a form of torture which, in the distant past, had been carried out in that place.
By the fifteenth century the meaning of Scwpstoe/ had been forgotten, and the name was split into its
components scup and stoe/, ‘shovel’ and ‘chair’. The draughtsman, presumably working under Rogier’s
VAN DER WEYDEN

Ne
ae
f 5

fig. 1 Attributed to Jacques LE BOUCQ Copy of a Portrait of

Rogier Van der Weyden c. 1567. Chalk drawing. Arras,
a a ere Laer Bibliotheque Municipale (MS 266 fol. 276)

supervision, therefore produced this fanciful design of men with shovels heaping up piles of chairs. The
most ambitious project entrusted to Van der Weyden at the Town Hall of Brussels was the decoration of
one wall of a court-room with four large panels representing The Justice of Trajan, the Roman emperor,
and The Justice of Herkinbald, a legendary Duke of Brabant. The four panels, intended as a reminder to the
judges to dispense impartial justice and admired by generations of visitors to Brussels, were destroyed
when the city was bombarded by the French in 1695 and are now known only from descriptions and
from what must be an extremely free copy in tapestry (Plate 83). Each panel was about eleven feet high
and the total width of the four panels was about thirty-five feet. The first panel showed a widow
demanding justice of Trajan and Trajan ordering the execution of a soldier accused by the widow. The
second panel showed Pope St Gregory I, the Great, praying for Trajan’s salvation and then examining
the emperor’s skull to discover that his tongue, which had uttered the just judgement, had been
miraculously preserved. The third panel showed Herkinbald on his deathbed cutting the throat of his
nephew, who had committed rape. As Herkinbald refused to admit that this killing was a sinful act, he
was denied the last rites of the church, but the Host was conveyed to him miraculously.
This was the subject of the fourth panel. The tapestry leaves us with a very shadowy idea of the
appearance of the lost paintings, but it does include a head which is almost certainly a copy of the self-
portrait which Rogier is known to have inserted among a crowd of bystanders in the third panel
(frontispiece). The head was arbitrarily transferred by the weavers of the tapestry into their version of the
second panel, but has been copied with evident care, in a wider range of colours than any other head in
the tapestry. It gives us a better idea of Rogier’s disdainful appearance than do two later and rather poor
copies of another of his self-portraits (fig. 1). Zhe Justice of Trajan and The Justice of Herkinbald formed a
vast project which must have taken several years to design and execute. The first panel was dated 1439,
and there is some indication that the series was completed during the 1440s.
Van der Weyden did not work exclusively for the city of Brussels and is known to have undertaken
commissions from the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, whose court was often at Brussels, from
various foreign princes and from different patrons with in the Netherlands. The only painting now
surviving which seems to have been mentioned as Rogiet’s in a contemporary source is The Altar of the
Virgin at Berlin, which was given to the Charterhouse of Miraflores near Burgos in 1445 by King Juan II
of Castile (Plate 12). A record of the donation stated that the altarpiece was by ‘the great and famous
Fleming Rogel’. In fact it may not be by Rogier at all, for it is a replica of another altarpiece, now
mutilated and divided between the Capilla Real at Granada and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York (Plates 13-15). This altarpiece was bequeathed to the Capilla Real by Isabella, Queen of
Castile, the daughter of Juan II who had given the Berlin altarpiece to Miraflores. Perhaps Juan I was
the original owner of the Granada altarpiece, which would ultimately have been inherited by his
daughter Isabella, and commissioned a replica from Van der Weyden to give to Miraflores. Whatever the
explanation, it seems highly likely that the panels now at Granada and New York were designed by Van
der Weyden and that the altarpiece given to Miraflores in 1445 and now at Berlin is a replica executed in
Van der Weyden’s workshop.
In order to gain a clearer and fuller idea of Van der Weyden’s style, it is essential to examine two
paintings mentioned in sixteenth-century sources as by ‘Roger’. These are The Descent from the Cross in
the Prado and The Crucifixion in the Escorial, both of which formed part of a gift of paintings made by
Philip II of Spain to the Escorial in 1574. In the inventory of this gift, both are described as by ‘Roger’,
and in both cases there is other evidence to support their attribution to Van der Weyden.
A collation of several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources establishes the history of Zhe
Descent from the Cross (Plate 1). It was acquired by Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, from the
Chapel of Our Lady Without the Walls at Louvain, and passed from Mary to her nephew Philip II of
Spain. The Chapel of Our Lady Without the Walls was founded in the fourteenth century by the Great
Archers’ Guild of Louvain, and, if the small crossbows included in the tracery at the corners of The
Descent are original, it would seem that The Descent was commissioned by the Great Archers’ Guild for
their chapel. As The Descent was copied for a Louvain family in 1443, the painting was presumably
finished and installed at Louvain by 1443. In the Escorial inventory of 1574, it is described as the centre
panel of a polyptych with wings representing The Evangelists and The Resurrection. The wing panels have
disappeared without trace, and it is difficult to imagine how they can have been disposed around Zhe
Descent. The Descent was transferred from the Escorial to the Prado in 1939,
In the Escorial inventory of 1574 it is recorded that the great Crucifixion (Plate 69) had come from
the ‘Charterhouse of Brussels’, the Charterhouse of Scheut outside Brussels, to which Van der Weyden
is known to have made a gift of money and pictures. It seems reasonable to assume that Zhe Crucifixion
formed part of this gift, which was made after the foundation of the Charterhouse in 1454 and
probably before 1460.
We therefore have a drawing probably produced under Rogier’s supervision; a very free copy in
tapestry of his lost Justice of Trajan and Justice of Herkinbald; fragments of an altarpiece probably painted
by him before 1445 and a replica of that altarpiece painted in his workshop; the centre panel of a large
altarpiece, The Descent from the Cross, commissioned and painted before 1443, towards the beginning of
his career; and 7he Crucifixion, a large panel probably not commissioned but given by him to a local
VAN DER WEYDEN

monastery between 1454 and 1460, towards the end of his career. It is by comparison with these few
works that other paintings are attributed to Van der Weyden, and it is by reference to them, particularly
to The Descent and to The Crucifixion, that an idea of his artistic achievement can be gradually formed.
The Descent from the Cross, a large and well-preserved picture over eight feet across, beats an obvious
resemblance to the carved altarpieces which were produced in large numbers in the Netherlands during
the fifteenth century and in which carved and painted figures were assembled in painted wooden boxes.
The picture has lost its original frame, but the painted frame which imitates carved and gilded wood and
which surrounds the top and sides of the panel must certainly have been intended to be seen as
continuous with that lost original frame. The background is gilded and covered with flecks and
crescents of brownish pigment which move in irrational, swirling patterns. Deep shadows are suggested
by darker flecks and dark brown glazes, penumbras by glazes alone. The structure of the box or niche
which appears to contain the figures is quite consistent; an arched vault springs from a simple cornice
and reaches its apex at the frame. Though the principal junctions of the sides of the niche are obscured
in shadow or concealed behind the tracery at the upper corners, it remains quite obvious that the space
enclosed by the niche is totally inconsistent with the space implied by the vegetation at the feet of the
figures and that the niche could never enclose the figures which appear to be placed within it. The
ambiguity of spatial relationships is clearly deliberate and is emphasized by the fact that the figure
furthest to the rear, the servant on the ladder behind the Cross, is placed against the enclosing tracery, in
which he even seems to have caught his sleeve (Plate 9). The Cross itself is strangely inadequate, as the
figure of Christ can never have hung from its extremely short “I” bar. The purpose behind such
inconsistencies seems to have been to induce a calculated feeling of unease in the spectator, who cannot
be sure whether he is looking at the image of an image or the representation of an event; who, even if
he is not immediately aware of the spatial ambiguities, cannot fail to be worried by them; and whose
attention, because all distracting detail has been suppressed, is at once concentrated on the figure group.
The composition must have been worked out in advance with extreme care, for the paint surface
shows no sign of more than the slightest alterations during the course of execution. It centres on the
two great descending diagonals along which Christ’s head and his body are falling. The pose of the dead
Christ is almost exactly repeated in that of the fainting Virgin, and the dead hand of Christ and the
almost lifeless hand of the Virgin hang next to each other in daring and moving juxtaposition (Plate 8).
The repetition of poses is clearly for expressive effect, though it has been suggested that it may also
refer to the Virgin’s compassio, her suffering with Christ, and her rdle as co-redeemer. The composition is
bracketed together by the figures of St John and the Magdalen, neither of whom is very securely posed.
St John sinks to his knees to sustain the Virgin. The Magdalen (Plate 2), crossing her feet in a writhing
gesture of grief, supports herself only by pressing against the side of the niche, while her mantle slips
from her back. Like the two principal figures of Christ and the Virgin, the two bracketing figures are
falling. In fact none of the ten figures is stably posed.
This instability, however, is not immediately apparent, for the figures give an initial impression of
frozen and statuesque immobility. The impression is produced partly by the beauty and immutability of
the patterns which they create, partly by the careful balancing of shapes and colours, partly by the

10
confident naturalism with which the figures are painted and partly by the painter’s skill in simplifying
and stressing the flowing lines of their contours. Once again a deliberate tension is created: between the
apparent stability and the actual instability of all the ten figures.
Each figure has a similar expression of restrained and pious grief, and there is little attempt to
distinguish their individual reactions to the central event. Indeed the most agitated passage in the whole
painting is the fluttering cloth tied round the head of the servant on the ladder, the least involved of all
the participants (Plate 9). Though the nails which the servant holds are viciously long and though
Christ’s wounds are clinically observed, with the flow of blood changing direction as the body is moved
and the blood clotting and separating into the ‘blood and water’ of John XIX: 34, such painful details
are not overstressed. Much of the power of the painting lies in its restraint. Van der Weyden was
interested less in producing a moving narrative than in making a calculated appeal to the emotional and
aesthetic instincts of the spectator.
Van der Weyden was clearly working from life drawings, and his observation was very acute. In
places, however, he distorted natural forms for expressive or decorative effect. The contours are all to
some extent simplified and stressed to create the rhythmic linear pattern of the picture surface. The left
knee of the woman supporting the Virgin is brought out to provide a decorated area behind the Virgin’s
arm, and the Virgin’s lower legs are greatly elongated, probably to conceal the point at which the Cross
and the ladder would have met the earth. If this area had not been concealed, the spatial inconsistencies
would have become much too obvious. The colour is controlled and balanced with extreme care,
though precisely the same colour never recurs. Even the whites are varied, for they reflect adjacent
colours. The pose of the old man beside the Magdalen is slightly distorted, apparently to allow an area
of green close to his heel to appear next to the lowest rung of the ladder. The scattered plants in the
foreground may have symbolic significance and certainly have an unobtrusive expressive function, for
example, the prickly, squirming plant which disappears beneath the Magdalen’s skirt.
While it is obviously impossible to explain the immensely powerful impact of 7he Descent or to follow
very far the creative processes of its painter, it nevertheless appears that Van der Weyden considered
this picture with exquisite and deliberate care. Confident of his mastery of natural form, he was quite
ready to distort for expressive or decorative effect and to introduce subtle tensions and contradictions
into his painting in a calculated attempt to disturb the spectator. He commanded his figures, made little
attempt to understand or interpret their emotions, but imposed upon them his own thoughts and
feelings. His real interest was less in straightforward narration than in his picture and the complexities of
its effect on the spectator. In this sense he was an astonishingly subjective artist.
The Escorial Crucifixion (Plate 69) is in many respects similar to Zhe Descent from the Cross. The
crucified Christ is placed against a folded red cloth and beneath a canopy of the same material. Carved
crucifixes were often displayed in churches against such folded cloths. The Virgin and St John are
dressed entirely in pale stone-coloured draperies and look very like sculptures in stone. Though the
cross rises from a hillock, there is a slate-coloured wall behind, on which the red cloth casts a shadow.
The painter of The Descent was once again expressing a magnificent contempt for the logic of
representation; once again the spectator cannot be sure whether he is looking at the image of an image

11
VAN DER WEYDEN

fig. 2.The Descent from the Cross

Detail of the face of the Virgin.

ort the representation of an event. The Virgin stands in a pose similar to that of the Magdalen in The
Descent, but het pose is even more precarious. Again, this may not be immediately apparent, so like a
statue does she seem, but here the precariousness is in counterpoint to the confident stance of St John.
The contrast between the two figures and their reactions to Christ’s suffering is more developed than
any such contrast in The Descent, partly because the composition is so very simple that this contrast
provides the main narrative interest of the picture. The Virgin’s draperies are disposed in broken,
angular shapes, and the line of her contour expresses a graceful shudder (fig. 2), while St John’s
draperies fall in continuous straight lines and his principal contours are fairly rigid verticals. Neither
figure makes an extreme display of grief or wonder. As in The Descent emotions ate expressed with
severe restraint. The restraint is carried into the colour, for the only positive colours are the red of
Christ’s blood and the folded hanging and the green of the crown of thorns and the fringes on the
canopy and the hanging.
The Crucifixion is exceptionally large, almost eleven feet high, and is sadly damaged. The heads,
however, ate quite well preserved, and the extremely simple composition and the very restricted colour
have probably not been dramatically altered by restoration. No one who has not seen the original can
begin to appreciate the power, on so vast a scale, of such simplicity, such disdain of representational
logic and yet such commanding and graceful naturalism.
The picture is all the more interesting as it was probably not commissioned but executed as a gift for
the Carthusian monastery of Scheut. It may well show Van der Weyden’s invention uninhibited by the
interference of a patron. He appears to have liked working on a grandiose scale, although commissions
for very large pictures may not have been frequent. In The Crucifixion he designed and painted with more
freedom than in any other picture.
Compared with The Descent from the Cross and The Crucifixion, the panels of the virtually identical
Granada (Plates 13, 14 and 15) and Miraflores (Plate 12) altarpieces are inevitably rather disappointing,
Working on a smaller scale, Van der Weyden seems to have made less use of life drawings, and his

12
 Fig. 3 The Holy Family
Detail of Virgin contemplating her child.

figures are a little stiff. The stiffness is, of course, put to impressive effect in the rigid corpse of Christ in
the Piefa and in the awkward movement of the dead Christ’s neck as it responds to the pressure of the
Virgin’s kiss. Each of the three scenes in the two altarpieces is set in a similar and completely unlikely
structure and behind a framing arch on which are relief sculptures of scenes from the life of the Virgin
and statues of saints. The iconographic programme is clearly complex and may have been drawn up by
a theologian. Perhaps Van der Weyden felt restricted by the amount of symbolism which he had to
introduce, presumably at his patron’s request. The panels of the Piefa and Christ Appearing to the Virgin
show something of Rogier’s abilities as a landscape painter. However naturalistic in detail, these
landscapes are conceived as decorative foils to the figure groups. In the panels of Zhe Holy Family and
Christ Appearing to the Virgin, there is an interesting contrast between two views of very similar interiors:
one normally lit, where the Virgin contemplates her child; (fig. 3) the other flooded with sunlight as the
Virgin turns from grief and prayer to recognize the miracle of the Resurrection. Van der Weyden was
far from indifferent to the beauties of nature and of light, but he commanded them as he commanded
his figures. Nothing is represented solely for its own sake; everything makes its orchestrated
contribution to the aesthetic and emotional effect of the entire altarpiece.
The Descent from the Cross, The Crucifixion and the Granada and Miraflores altarpieces allow us to form
a fairly complete idea of Van der Weyden’s style, to imagine how powerful must have been the impact of
the lost Justice of Trajan and Justice of Herkinbald and to broaden our view of his work by suggesting
further attributions.
There are, however, difficulties involved in making attributions to Rogier. It is evident that he was a
successful, fashionable and influential artist, and it is highly probable that, to meet the demand for his
work, he would have run a well-organized studio with several assistants. As nothing is known about his
assistants, it is a delicate problem to make the distinctions, on stylistic evidence alone, between Rogier’s
unaided work and work partly delegated to assistants; between work produced by assistants after
Rogier’s designs and under his supervision and work by highly trained assistants who had left the studio

13
VAN DER WEYDEN

to set up their own businesses; or indeed between the work of former assistants and that of painters
strongly influenced by Rogier and imitating his style. Ze Descent and The Crucifixion set superbly high
standards of design and execution. It is this standard of design which must be applied to separate Van
der Weyden’s own pictures, though they may have been executed partly by assistants, from those of his
imitators.
Several paintings of religious subjects exist which, in my view, meet this standard of design and
which are therefore acceptable as being by Rogier. Again in my view, they fall fairly easily into two
groups, which are probably his earlier and his later works. As none can be very accurately dated, it is
perhaps impossible to establish the exact chronology of his paintings. The paintings of the first,
presumably earlier, group, all of which bear a definite resemblance to the Granada and Miraflores
altarpieces, are: the Magdalen fragment in London (Plate 19) and the two fragments from the same
composition in Lisbon (Plates 16 and 17); St Luke Drawing the Virgin in Boston (Plate 23); The Virgin and
Child in the Prado (Plate 20); The Crucifixion triptych in Vienna (Plates 26—30); and Zhe Nativity triptych
in Berlin (Plates 31-34). The paintings of the second, presumably later, group are: the polyptych of The
Last Judgement (Plates 42—48,); the altarpiece of The Seven Sacraments (Plates 35-41); The Braque Triptych
(Plates 55—59); and The Columba Triptych (Plates 64-67).
In the paintings of the first group, the human figures are all drawn to the same scale. Their heads are
sometimes very slightly too large. Though all the principal figures are placed in the foreground, they
often form little circles and, generally keeping a fair distance one from another, they occupy distinct and
credible spaces. In the paintings of the second group, however, the figures may be drawn to several
different scales, and they tend to be more elongated in their proportions. There is very little concern for
logical spatial recession, and the figures are crowded together into more complex patterns. The colour is
normally much more intense than in the paintings of the first group.
The Descent from the Cross may mark the transition between the two groups, the point at which Van der
Weyden found that he could flout the laws of spatial recession with absolute impunity.
By comparison with the donor portraits in the altarpieces of The Crucifixion (Plate 28), The Nativity
(Plate 32) and The Last Judgement (Plate 44 and 45), five independent portraits may be attributed to Van
der Weyden: the Portrait of a Young Woman in Berlin (Plates 21 and 22); the Portrait of a Man in the
Thyssen Collection (Plate 76); the Portrait of Antoine of Burgundy in Brussels (Plate 80); the Portrait of
Francesco d’Esste in New York (Plate 79); and the Portrait of a Lady in Washington (Plate 68). With these in
turn may be associated four portraits of praying men, which were once the wings of folding diptychs:
the Portrait of Jean Gros in Chicago (Plate 63); the Portrait of John I, Duke of Cleves in the Louvre (Plate
72); the Portrait of Philippe de Croj in Antwerp (Plates 75); and the small Portrait of a Young Man at Upton
House (Plate 77). The Portrait ofJean Gros is certainly the pair to the damaged Virgin and Child in Tournai
(Plate 61), and the Portrait of Philippe de Croj perhaps formed a pair with the Virgin and Child in San
Marino, California (Plate 73). The pendants to the other two diptych portraits, however, have not been
found. On grounds of style, all these portraits except the Berlin Young Woman may be classified with the
second group of religious paintings as Van der Weyden’s later works.
 All the sitters are posed in full three-quarters view in front of plain backgrounds. As the heads are
fairly evenly lit, there are no strong tonal contrasts in the flesh. The heads are placed slightly off centre
and close to the upper edges of the panels. The areas of background are restricted, and are never visible
along all the contours of the figures. Though the dimensions of the panels vary, most of the heads are
approximately the same size. In four of the five independent portraits, the sitter’s hands are included
and the figure is cut off at the level of the hands, which appear to rest on the frame. This pose seems to
have been developed by Van der Weyden as a solution to the problem of designing a half-length
portrait. The hands and arms close the composition at the lower edge of the panel, and the hands are
compressed into a relatively small space so that they do not create too conspicuous an area of high tone
and distract attention from the head. They are formed into a triangle or parallelogram which echoes the
pyramidal composition of the portrait, giving incident at the base of the pyramid and focusing interest
along a broken diagonal. The series of diptych portraits probably begins with the Portrait of Jean Gros
(Plate 63), a portrait of standard size and format transformed only by the praying hands. Van der
Weyden must have realized that taller panels were more suitable for such diptych portraits, and the
panels depicting Philippe de Croy and the Duke of Cleves are about four inches higher than that of the
Portrait ofJean Gros. The elongated format permitted the praying hands to be more easily integrated into
the design and the head to be set lower on the panel, so that the donor might appear at a slightly less
exalted level than the Virgin whom he worshipped. Above all, it allowed the painter more freedom in
composing the picture of the Virgin on the opposite panel and more room into which to fit the figure
of the Christ Child.
The Portrait of a Young Woman in Berlin (Plates 21 and 22) shows the sitter looking directly at the
spectator. The portrait gives an impression of intimacy between artist and sitter which is altogether
exceptional in Van der Weyden’s work. The dress of the sitter indicates both that this portrait is earlier
than the rest and that the sitter was not a lady of rank. Perhaps the portrait was not commissioned but
was painted by Van der Weyden for a friend or for his own pleasure. In all the other portraits, however,
the sitters look into the middle distance with expressions of withdrawn piety. These expressions were
achieved by elongating the noses and by stressing, by means of tone and a higher degree of finish, the
areas of the lower lips and eyes. Certain lines around the eyes and mouths were emphasized; the eyes
were slightly enlarged; the eyebrows were a little raised; and the areas between eyes and eyebrows were
painted with meticulous care. The contour lines of the faces were given an interest which they may
never have possessed in nature. The result of these and other slight distortions is the familiar look of
pious nobility which is perhaps most perfectly realized in the Portrait of Philippe de Croj (Plates 75) and
which, even to a modern spectator, is deeply impressive.
Van der Weyden therefore depicted all his sitters in similar poses and imposed upon their features
similar expressions. Working for patrons of the highest rank at the Burgundian court, he was clearly a
successful and fashionable portrait painter: which indicates that his portraits were acceptable likenesses
and which may imply that he flattered his sitters. He certainly did his best to disguise the fact that
Philippe de Croy had a very large nose and an undershot jaw, and he placed the ear of the Washington
VAN DER WEYDEN

(deft)
jig. 4 Robert CAMPIN Thief on the Cross (fragment) (eft)
Oak panel 133 x 92.5 cm. Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut.

(right
fig. 5 Robert CAMPIN St Veronica
Oak panel 151.5 x 61 cm. Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut.

(far right)
jig. 6 Robert CAMPIN Virgin and Child
Oak panel 160 x 68 cm. Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut.

Lady much too high, in order to make her neck look longer (Plate 68). He probably painted his sitters as
they wished to appear, but the fashionable image to which they all conform was his own creation. He
made surprisingly few concessions to his sitter’s individuality. Indeed the interest of the Portrait of a Lady
in Washington lies less in the sitter than in the elegant simplicity of the pattern which she creates. Van
der Weyden was concerned with the picture rather than the portrait, with his interpretation of the sitter
rather than with the sitter himself. In this way his portraits present a remarkably close parallel to his
religious paintings, for he was consistently subjective in his approach. He commanded his sitters like the
figures in his religious paintings. Going far beyond the straightforward representation of a person or an
event, he painted images which were calculated to induce a specific aesthetic and emotional response in
the spectator.
The surviving religious pictures and portraits are probably only a small fraction of the total number
painted by Van der Weyden. Though copies may preserve a record of the appearance of some of the
vanished pictures, his paintings of secular subjects are lost without real trace. The tapestry at Bern (Plate
83) gives only the vaguest indication of the magnificence of the lost Justice of Trajan and Justice of
Herkinbald and nothing compensates for the disappearance of a picture once at Genoa and described in
an Italian text of 1456. This represented a woman sweating in her bath and a little cat beside her, with
two leering youths peering at her through a crack in the wall. Since our knowledge of Van der Weyden’s
work is confined to a few religious paintings and portraits, our understanding of his achievement must
be exceedingly limited.
The same is true of most fifteenth-century Netherlandish painters, but it is still possible to attempt
to place Van der Weyden’s work in some sort of historical context.
Rogier’s style was founded on that of the so-called ‘Master of Flémalle’, who has been plausibly
identified as his teacher Robert Campin. Campin worked at Tournai from 1406 until his death in 1444
and was a successful and well-known painter. Among the pictures attributed to him are three which may
have been executed while Rogier was his apprentice: the Thief on the Cross in Frankfurt (fig, 4), the only

16
surviving fragment from a large triptych of Zhe Descent from the Cross; and St Veronica (fig. 5) and the
Virgin and Child (fig. 6), also at Frankfurt, wing panels of a second large altarpiece, which are alleged to
have come from an abbey at Flémalle, near Liége. Campin had a perfect command of the representation
of nature and was also a supremely gifted designer. Anxious to make his figures seem as life-like as
possible, he used bold tonal contrasts to stress volume. He foresaw, however, that too faithful an
imitation of reality might allow the spectator to forget that his pictures were flat, decorated surfaces,
and he was always careful to reconcile possible conflicts between the demands of representation and of
decoration. In his Virgin and Child, the picture surface is strongly asserted by the patterned brocade,
limiting the recession but also, by contrast with its decorated flatness, emphasizing the three-
dimensional bulk of the figures. In the vegetation at the Virgin’s feet, the plants are arranged in

17
VAN DER WEYDEN

18
unnatural, vertical tiers, to eliminate the disturbing effects of an abrupt spatial recession. The linear
emphasis on the contouts of the figures helps to hold a balance between the two- and three-dimensional.
In the 7hief fragment (fig. 4), damage has obscured the pattern of the gilded background and
diminished the decorative effect. Because the subject-matter demanded a greater expressive emphasis,
the Thief shows more clearly than the Vrgin Campin’s sensitivity to the expressive value of line. Though
the suffering of the thief is immediately and powerfully conveyed by the tortured face and by the
wounds in the broken legs, the agony is further stressed by contrasts between the lines of the stiff,
contorted body, the taut, straight ropes and the writhing forms of the patterned background. Campin’s
delight in pattern for its own sake is revealed not only in the clothes of the bystanders but also in the
bands of embroidery on the loin-cloth, which is in fact a shirt.
Campin’s portraits show similar preoccupations, for example the Portrait of a Woman in London
(fig. 7). As the sitter is strongly lit from the near side, there are fairly abrupt tonal contrasts in the flesh
and veil which emphasize the volume of the figure. The vivacity of the sitter’s expression indicates
something of Campin’s desire to record what he saw with vigorous objectivity. The restricted area of
black background both contrasts with the volume of the head and reasserts the flat picture surface. The
woman’s veil is brought forward across her right shoulder to minimize the effects of recession, and the
pattern of the folds in the veil shows something of Campin’s concern for pure decoration.
Comparison of Campin’s Virgin with Rogier’s Virgin and Child in the Prado (Plate 20) leaves no doubt
that Rogier derived from Campin his concept of feminine beauty and that he borrowed Campin’s ideas
on the elegant disposition of draperies. Comparison of any paintings by the two artists shows that both
composed in much the same way, with strong diagonal accents and with all the principal figures in very
nearly the same foreground plane. Campin’s 7hiefand Rogier’s Descent (Plate 1) demonstrate the powers
of both painters in representing scenes of pain and anguish. Campin’s Portrait of a Woman is very similar
in composition and style to Rogiet’s Portrait of a Young Woman in Berlin (Plates 21 and 22). In fact the
resemblances between the work of the two artists are so strong that the paintings attributed to Campin
have sometimes been claimed to be early works by Rogier. There are, however, quite significant
differences, which bear out the theory that Campin, though in some ways a painter of a contrary
character and inclination, was by far the strongest formative influence on Rogier.
It was undoubtedly from Campin’s example that Rogier developed his superb powers of
draughtsmanship and his desire and ability to record in minute detail the forms and textures of nature.
Like Campin, Rogier never forgot the importance of harmonious and varied design and never lost his
sensitivity to the beauties of abstract line and shape. Nevertheless he took less obvious delight in
pattern than did Campin, and his designs are more broken and angular. It was almost certainly through
Campin that Rogier became aware of the conflicts which were liable to arise among the demands of
representation, decoration and expression. As did Campin, he always contrived to hold them in balance,
but he tended increasingly to sacrifice the demands of objective representation to those of expression.
Rogier came to ignore the laws of spatial recession which Campin had more ot less strictly observed.

fig. 7 Robert CAMPIN Portraitof a Woman

Oak panel 40.7 x 27.9 cm. London, National Gallery.
19
VAN DER WEYDEN

eeeeen. |
ree a

jig. 8 Jan VAN EYCK Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin
Oak panel 66 x 62 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre.

20
 Jig. 9 Hubert and Jan VAN EYCK
The Adoration of the Lamb, exterior, dated 1432
Oak panels 350 x 223 cm. (overall measurement). Ghent, Sint
Baafskathedraal.

While Campin tried to explore and to record faithfully the emotional reactions of the figures in his
religious compositions and the facial expressions of the sitters in his portraits, Rogier was always less
objective, less direct in his interpretations. His figures are less robust, and their emotions and
expressions are imposed upon them.
The third outstanding Netherlandish painter of the first half of the fifteenth century was of course
Jan van Eyck, who died in 1441. Though Van der Weyden certainly saw pictures by Jan, nothing is
known of the contacts between them. Van Eyck’s influence on Rogier was much less strong than
Campin’s. Whereas Rogier, like Campin, thought of his paintings primarily as surfaces to be decorated,
Van Eyck saw his panels as boundaries marking, as unobtrusively as possible, the transition between
reality and the simulated reality of his pictures. This fundamental difference in outlook prevented
Rogier from imitating Van Eyck in anything but a superficial way.
Van der Weyden’s St Luke Drawing the Virgin (Plate 23) follows very closely, though in reverse, the
composition of Van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin (fig. 8). Characteristically, Rogier
introduced strong diagonal emphases into the forms of the figures and the landscape and limited the
space of the interior in which the figures are set. In the garden beyond, which is much smaller than Van
Eyck’s garden, the plants are arranged in vertical tiers which give little sense of recession. The whole
landscape is brought closer to the principal figures. Whereas Van Eyck left his interior open at the upper
edge of the picture, Van der Weyden enclosed his composition. The arch of the rear wall reaches its
apex just below the frame, and the near side of the Virgin’s canopy appears to hang from the frame.
Rogier’s architecture is much less richly embellished than Van Eyck’s, his landscape much less minutely
detailed and less thickly peopled.
The exterior of Rogier’s altarpiece of Zhe Last Judgement (Plate 42) is, perhaps deliberately, very similar
to that of the Van Eyck altarpiece of Zhe Adoration of the Lamb (fig. 9) in its combination of naturalistic
donor portraits and grisaille simulations of sculpture. Van Eyck astonishes by the accuracy of his
observation of the fall of light across stone, textiles and flesh; Van der Weyden produces an extremely

21
VAN DER WEYDEN

jig. 10 Jan VAN EYCK Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine and a Donor triptych, dated 1437
Oak panels 33.1 x 13.6 cm.; 33.1 x 27.5 cm.; 33.1 x 13.6 cm. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.

bold and arresting design. In these two instances, Rogier imitated the forms of Van Eyck’s
compositions but maintained unaltered his own distinctive style. His borrowings from Van Eyck may
have been almost acts of homage, but they demonstrate quite clearly how different were the aims and
interests of the two painters.
Rogier’s donor portrait of Chancellor Rolin in the altarpiece of The Last Judgement (Plate 44) was
painted probably about ten years later than Van Eyck’s portrait of the same sitter (fig. 8), but a
comparison reveals once more how different were the two artists’ attitudes to the problems of
representation. That Van Eyck chose to pose Rolin in near profile may have been due to the demands of
composition, or else to a desire to hide the ugliness of Rolin’s mouth. Rogier, again perhaps as
composition demanded but certainly according to his usual practice, painted his head in full three-
quarters view. It is this pose, rather than the sitter’s advancing age, which makes him appear more
grotesque in Rogier’s portrait. The features in both portraits correspond fairly exactly, but, if the Van
Eyck painting is taken as a model of accuracy, it becomes evident that Rogier lengthened Rolin’s nose,
enlarged his eyes and raised his eyebrows. His expression is similar to those of the sitters in Rogier’s
other portraits, whereas Van Eyck’s may be a more objective, impassive likeness. Rogier seems to have
neglected peculiarities of the structure of Rolin’s ear which Van Eyck meticulously recorded. While

Jip
both artists noticed the conspicuous smallness of Rolin’s hands, Rogier drew them according to his own
conventions, with long, tapering and curving fingers and exaggeratedly bent thumbs. Van Eyck
impassively recorded; Van der Weyden imposed a stylized and highly personal vision of the subject.
Faced with a commission to paint a triptych showing The Seven Sacraments (Plates 35-41), Rogier had
the brilliant and apparently novel idea of representing in the three panels the aisles and nave of a
church. Six of the sacraments are depicted in the side panels in the aisles or in chapels, while in the
centre panel the rite of the Eucharist is performed behind a vast crucifix which occupies the whole
height of the nave. In resolving this intractable compositional problem, Rogier may have remembered
Van Eyck’s triptych of the Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine (fig. 10), now in Dresden, in
which the two saints in the wing panels are represented in the aisles of a small church while the Virgin in
the centre panel is enthroned in the nave. In his neglect of logic of scale, Rogier may have been
encouraged by Van Eyck’s example, for Van Eyck, however meticulous an observer he might seem,
often painted figures who were out of scale with one another and with their architectural settings. If the
Virgin of the Dresden triptych were to rise from her throne and advance into the same plane as St
Michael and St Catherine, she would tower above them and also above the columns of the church. In
Van Eyck’s work such inconsistencies of scale are generally unobtrusive and may always have some
theological significance. In Van der Weyden’s work, they also may often have theological significance,
but, as in Zhe Seven Sacraments, they are usually quite deliberately obtrusive.
Van der Weyden therefore borrowed and adapted ideas from Van Eyck. He also adapted ideas from
many other sources and seems sometimes to have drawn inspiration from high medieval art. The
framing arches of the Granada (Plates 13-15) and Miraflores (Plate 12) altarpieces, for example, with
their sculpted scenes from the life of the Virgin, have certain precedents in earlier manuscript
illumination and sculpture. The fact of the borrowing is less interesting than the manner of adaptation.
If Rogier did indeed visit Rome in 1450, his experience of Italian art had little perceptible effect on the
way in which he drew and painted. Though he adapted ideas from various other artists, he seems to have
remained faithful to the tradition in which he was trained by Campin.
It was this Tournaisien tradition which he transplanted to Brussels when he moved there in the
1430s. While little is known about the arts in Brussels at the time of his arrival, several carved altarpieces
with painted wing panels are attributed to Brussels sculptors, and the painted panels were very probably
also executed in Brussels (fig. 13). They have almost nothing in common with the work of Van der
Weyden, which created such a stir that at least one group of local noblemen came to Brussels in 1441
expressly to see his Justice of Trajan and Justice of Herkinbald at the town hall. His style gradually displaced
the native Brussels tradition in painting.
Van der Weyden not only revolutionized the art of Brussels but also influenced profoundly every
branch of the visual arts throughout the Netherlands. The general run of second- and third-rate
Netherlandish painters strike us now as rather uninventive, content to repeat certain standard religious
compositions with few or no variations. No doubt this was partly due to the conservatism of most
patrons, who seem to have wanted predictable results of high technical quality. During the fifteenth
century, in contracts drawn up when pictures were commissioned, it was often stated that the painting

23
VAN DER WEYDEN

jig. 17 Unknown Brussels (?) artist

The Altarpiece of the Virgin, tight wing: Entombment of
the Virgin: Isabeau de Roye, Dame de Ternant, Presented by
St Catherine c. 1440s. Panel, each 98 x 39 cm. Ternant
(Niévre), Eglise Notre-Dame.

to be executed was to be exactly similar to a specified existing painting. The artists themselves kept and
handed down from generation to generation stocks of ‘patterns’ which could be repeated with suitable
variations for different patrons. Van der Weyden’s work seems to have struck his contemporaries as so
beautiful, so original and so imaginative that he was able to transcend this conservatism of taste by
setting artistic fashions, which eventually became conventions. Patrons grew to expect the paintings
which they commissioned to look like Van der Weyden’s work, to see the saints and the standard
religious subjects much as Van der Weyden had represented them. Rogier himself seems to have run an
efficient workshop, where his own patterns were repeated in quantities to meet the demand which his
success had created. In this way his compositions became accessible to a wide public. As his second son
Pieter, his grandson Goossen and his great-grandson Rogier were all painters, his stock of patterns
probably remained in circulation in their workshops at Brussels and Antwerp until the mid-sixteenth
century.
The reasons why Van der Weyden was able to achieve such a dominant position were no doubt many
and complex, and, because no contemporary observer thought of describing or explaining his success,
they may now mostly elude us. The elegant clarity of his compositions had an obvious appeal, and his
religious paintings are so moving that other artists would inevitably have tried to emulate their
expressive effect. Rogier seems to have been a mote inventive artist than any of his contemporaries and
to have developed, in his religious compositions and his portraits, what are almost formulas of
representation, which were easily copied, imitated or assimilated. His concept of the Prefd, with the rigid
body of Christ placed diagonally in a most unlikely position across the Virgin’s knees, was perhaps first
realized in the Granada altarpiece (Plate 14). Several versions of the same basic design appear to have

24
 fig. 12 after Rogier VAN DER WEYDEN Descent from the Cross
Panel 77.5 x 50.2 cm. Buckingham Palace, Royal Collection
(Reproduced by Gracious Permission of Her Majesty
the Queen).

been produced in his workshop for various patrons (Plate 84). The composition was striking in design
and moving in effect and had the added advantage of avoiding any difficult foreshortenings of or
contortions in the naked corpse of Christ. For the next century Rogier’s became the normal way of
representing the Presa.
Similarly, Van der Weyden created a whole range of compositions, figures and poses which were
adopted into every Netherlandish artist’s repertoire. They range from the distraught Magdalen of The
Descent from the Cross (Plate 12) to figures oppressed by graver sorrow, whose bending legs are parted
around a heavy fall of drapery (Plates 14, 27 and 36). Certain figures were so startlingly beautiful that
they may have been copied solely for that reason, for example the Tiburtine Sibyl of The Nativity
triptych (Plate 34) and the youngest king in The Columba Triptych (Plates 65 far right )and the girl with the
doves (Plate 67). Some of Rogier’s most fanciful ideas were also widely followed, Christ’s floating,
curling loin-cloth in the Vienna Crwafixion (Plate 26), for instance, and the framing arches of the
Granada and Miraflores altarpieces.
It seems to have been Rogier who revived the popularity of the half-length religious composition.
His only surviving picture of this type is Zhe Braque Triptych (Plate 55) but it is not a narrative picture.
Copies of a half-length Descent from the Cross (fig, 12), however, very probably derive from one of his lost
paintings. The half-length form, out of favour since the beginning of the fifteenth century, had a
resurgence of popularity both in northern Europe and in Italy in mid-century. It was certainly Rogier
who revived the popularity of the half-length diptych in the Netherlands, and in portraiture his
conventions of posing, his design for a half-length portrait with hands, were closely followed for several
generations. His influence, apparently spread by his small paintings and by workshop repetitions of his

25
VAN DER WEYDEN

fiz. 13 GAROFALO
Floly Family
Panel 53 x 81.6 cm. Frankfurt,
Stadelsches Kunstinstitut.

(right
jig. 14 Hans MEMLINC
The Last Judgement triptych
Oak panels 223.5 x 72.4 cm.;
220.9 x 160.7 cm.; 223.4 x
72.5 cm. Gdarisk, Muzeum
Pomorskie w Gdansku.

designs, extended to every corner of Europe. Even in Italy in the sixteenth century Garofalo painted a
very curious Holy Family which was obviously based on a lost composition by Rogier (fig. 13).
An attachment to realism, however, was fatal to an attempted emulation of Rogier. Probably for that
reason, none of his imitators could respond very fully to the power of his most ambitious
achievements, Zhe Descent from the Cross, The Last Judgement and the Escorial Crucifixion. The ablest of his
immediate followers was the German Hans Memlinc, who probably spent some years in Rogier’s
workshop before moving to Bruges, where he became a burgess in 1465 and where he died in 1494.
Even Memlinc failed to absorb much of Rogier’s command of design or his power to transform the
appearances of the natural and supernatural for expressive effect. When asked to paint a triptych of Zhe
Last Judgement, Memlinc based his design on that of Rogiet’s polyptych of The Last Judgement at Beaune
(Plate 46). Memlinc’s triptych, painted probably in the late 1460s and certainly before 1473, is now at
Gdansk (fig. 14). As copyists of The Descent from the Cross must invariably have found, it was a fruitless
task to try to adapt any of Rogier’s compositions to a different format, but Memlinc made a brave
attempt, and the result makes an interesting comparison with the Beaune polyptych.
Memlinc was more or less forced by the format of his triptych to crowd his figures around Christ,
who in the Beaune polyptych is enthroned in majestic isolation (Plate 47). Next to his figure of Christ,
Van der Weyden placed a lily and a fiery sword, emblems of power and justice, and entwined with them
inscriptions in white and red recording Christ’s words to the elect and to the damned. Memlinc cannot
have dared to introduce anything so unreal as an inscription, and he placed the lily and sword at rather
awkwatd angles to Christ’s head. Memlinc was also constrained to abandon Van der Weyden’s
arrangement of the apostles and saints in two shallow, sweeping arcs behind the figures of the Virgin
and St John the Baptist and lost much of the effect of Van der Weyden’s grandiose and simple division
between the golden zone of the celestial court and the earthly zone of St Michael and the resurrected.
The contours of the figures in the two zones interlock, occasionally just touch, but only at one point is
there a very slight overlap. Memlinc, on the other hand, placed a greater distance between the two

26
groups of figures. He faced a severe problem in filling the upper half of his e// panel, but decided to
bring some of the damned into this area without explaining how they had arrived there. One of the four
angels with trumpets, who in the Van der Weyden altarpiece surround the central figure of St Michael,
was displaced in Memlinc’s work to the top of the He// panel. The clarity and rigid symmetry of Van der
Weyden’s composition were irretrievably lost.
Van der Weyden’s St Michael, in priestly vestments, performs the weighing of the souls with solemn
and delicate impassivity (Plate 48). Memline’s St Michael, dressed in golden armour, strikes the figure
representing sin with his cross. Van der Weyden represented only a few of the resurrected, whom
unseen forces draw inexorably towards heaven or hell, whereas Memlinc included a great host of
resurrected souls, shepherded to heaven by angels or driven struggling into hell by demons. Though the
orderly procession of the elect and the surging crowd of the damned are impressively painted, the
action of St Michael, the acrobatics of his attendant flying angels and the struggles of the damned are
somehow indecorous in comparison with the solemn and inevitable order of Van der Weyden’s
polyptych. Memlinc, introducing narrative interest, represented a particular episode of judgement. Van
der Weyden depicted no particular moment, but achieved a comprehensive vision of the mystery in
which the evil are overpowered and consigned to eternal damnation.
Memlinc greatly extended the depth of the composition and must have felt a need to define the
spatial relationships between the principal figure groups. Though Christ seems to be enthroned only
VAN DER WEYDEN

fo HA DE MARS Nh ROEDER ANSE

jig. 15 Hans MEMLINC The Altarpiece of Jan Floreins, dated 1479

Oak panels 48 x 24.7 cm.; 46.5 x 57.2 cm.; 48 x 24.7 cm. Bruges, Sint Janshospitaal.

slightly behind St Michael in the foreground of the triptych, the rainbow on which he sits disappears
behind the distant horizon. The reasons for this inconsistency are not obvious. Van der Weyden’s
figures, however, all appear to be in much the same plane, but the spatial relationships are left carefully
undefined and the depth of the composition is deliberately and rigidly limited.
Memlinc’s adaptation, depriving Van der Weyden’s composition of much of its gravity and austerity,
seems to show an imperfect understanding of its dramatic force. The same may be said of Memlinc’s
triptych of Zhe Adoration of the Kings (fig. 15) in the Hospital of St John (Sint Janshospitaal) at Bruges,
which is based on Van der Weyden’s Columba Triptych, or indeed of all his borrowings from Rogier. Even
in his portraits and half-leneth diptychs, though he allowed his sitters a greater individuality of facial
expression than did Rogier, Memlinc developed Rogiet’s ideas only to destroy much of their aesthetic
effect. Rogier’s sitters rest their hands on the frames of their portraits, but Memlinc’s sitters sometimes
clutch at their frames and disturb the decorative unity of the picture surface (fig. 16). In his diptychs,
Memlinc placed the Virgin and the donor in a unified setting, whereas Rogier seems always to have
made a delicate but clear distinction between the celestial and profane spheres.
It would be presumptuous on my part to imply that I understand Rogier’s work better than did
Memlinc. Memlinc obviously did not wish to follow Rogier very far in the direction of abstraction. This
comparison of their work is not intended to indicate Memlinc’s shortcomings, but rather the originality
of Van der Weyden and the subjectivity of his approach.
Early commentators were less impressed by Van der Weyden’s supreme gifts as an expressionist and
decorator than by the ‘naturalness’ and ‘piety’ of his work. Most of his figures, including the sitters in
his portraits, are withdrawn in sorrowing piety, which is a dominant mood in all his compositions. His
figures are ‘natural’ in that even the stitches in the seams of their garments may be scrupulously
observed and recorded (Plate 1). The ‘naturalness’, however, goes little further, for Rogier avoided
foreshortening as much as possible and came increasingly to ignore logic of scale and spatial recession.

28
 fiz.2. 16 Hans MEMLINC Portrait of a Woman, dated 1480
Panel 38 x 26.5 cm. Bruges, Sint Janshospitaal.

His attitude to his subject-matter is so personal that we may question to some degree his humility if not
his piety. His ‘piety’ and his expressionism, nevertheless, were intimately linked, and it was this aspect of
his work which was widely imitated. Even if his imitators, like Memlinc, hesitated to distort the
appearances of the natural world to the same extent as he himself had done, Van der Weyden occupies
so central a position in the history of European art that subsequent developments in Netherlandish
painting may be explained largely as reactions to or against his commanding influence.
Much remains to be discovered about Van der Weyden’s character, his life, his work, his painting
technique, his workshop and his pupils. Though argument may always rage over the question of
attributions, though the genius of the painter of The Descent from the Cross, The Last Judgement and the
Escorial Crucifixion may always defy verbal description, something of the beauty of his pictures will
emerge from the reproductions that follow.

29
VAN DER WEYDEN

\
i
AA
a I ERIRRD YTS 2

(above and right)

Jig. 17 Hans MEMLINC Diptych of Martin van Nieuwenhove, dated 1487.
Oak panels, each 44 x 33 cm. Bruges, Sint Janshospitaal.

30
VAN DER WEYDEN

NOTE, ON THE PVATES acquired by Mary of Hungary, Regent of the

In the pictures reproduced, Van der Weyden was Netherlands, who placed it in the chapel of her
probably using an oil-based medium, but little chateau at Binche. There it was described by two
reseatch has yet been done on his painting technique. Spanish courtiers who visited Binche in 1549. It was
later sent to Spain, where it was acquired or inherited
1 The Descent from the Cross, the centre panel of an by Mary’s nephew Philip II. From the Palace of El
altarpiece, of which the wings are lost. Pardo outside Madrid it was transferred to the
MADRID, Museo del Prado. Panel 220 x 262 cm. Escorial, where it was listed in the 1574 inventory of
Philip II’s gifts and where it was placed in the
The Descent was probably commissioned by the Great sacristy. It was transferred to the Prado in 1939,
Archers’ Guild of Louvain for the Chapel of Our There are very numerous copies, and the painting
Lady Without the Walls, demolished in 1798. It was was widely imitated.

$2;
2 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of the Magdalen
The Magdalen’s dress is complex in its construction, and the
violence of her movement has put considerable stress on the
stitches of several seams.
VAN DER WEYDEN

we

3 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of one of the Holy Women,
perhaps Mary the Virgin’s sister, the wife of Cleophas
Various women present at the Crucifixion are mentioned in Matthew
XXVII: 56, Mark XV: 40 and John XIX: 25.

(right)
4 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of one of the Holy Women

34
VAN DER WEYDEN

5 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of St John

36
6 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of the Virgin
> Z A jaa} ia = 4 va Q jaa Z
7 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of Christ

(left)
8 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the hands of the Virgin and Christ

39
9 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the figure of the servant,
with Joseph of Arimathaea supporting the
h body of Christ.

(above)
10 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of Nicodemus.
The fur collar could be closed with the hook and eye.

M1
VAN DER WEYDEN

11 The Descent from the Cross, detail of the head of an old man
The pot which he holds may be the attribute of the Magdalen, or it may contain the myrrh
and aloes brought by Nicodemus to embalm Christ’s body (John XIX: 39).

42
12 The Altar of the Virgin (The Miraflores Altarpiece) Family, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity,
BERLIN, Dahlem Museum, Gemialdegalerie der the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the
Staatlichen Museen. Oak panels, each 71 x 43 cm. Kings and the Presentation in the Temple; in the Presa,
Christ Taking Leave of the Virgin, the Virgin Told of
Given to the Charterhouse of Miraflores near Burgos Christ’s Arrest, the Way to Calvary, the Raising of the
in 1445 byJuan II, King of Castile, the altarpiece was Cross, the Crucifixion and the Entombment; in Christ
still at Miraflores in 1788. Removed from Spain by the Appearing to the Virgin, the Virgin and the Three Maries,
General vicomte d’Armagnac during the Napoleonic the Ascension, Pentecost, the Annunciation of the
wats, it passed into the collection of William II, King Virgin’s Death, the Death of the Virgin and the
of Holland, at whose sale in 1850 it was acquired for Coronation of the Virgin. The statues beneath are of
the Berlin Museum. The Latin texts on the scrolls held St Peter, St Luke, St John the Evangelist, St Matthew, St
by the angels are freely adapted from James I: 12, Mark and St Paul. The scenes on the sculpted capitals
Revelation II: 10 and Revelation VI: 2 and explain why behind the main figure groups are: in Zhe Holy Family,
the crowns are being offered to the Virgin. The hems the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Death of Absalom; in the
of the Virgin’s robes in all three panels are inscribed Pieta, the Expulsion from Eden; in Christ Appearing to
with words from the Magnificat. The small sculpted the Virgin, David and Goliath, Samson and the Lion
scenes on the framing arches, which should be ‘tread’ and Samson and the Gates of Gaza (Judges XVI: 1—3).
anticlockwise from the keystones, are: in 7he Holy

43
= <i Z Q cal me ZB eal De (a) Q Zi
 rl eee :

EE PEPE EY,58
;in "|ewe:
wh

(Left) seventeenth century; it is not known when the third

13 The Holy Family panel, which has not been cut, left the Capilla Real.
GRANADA, Capilla Real. Oak panel 50.2 x 37 cm. The three panels are virtually identical to those of
the slightly larger altarpiece at Berlin (Plate 12),
This Holy Family with the Granada Pieta (Plate 14) though in the Granada Prefa the Virgin wears blue
and the New York panel (Plate 15) are from an while in the Berlin Pie/a she is dressed in red.
altarpiece first mentioned, without attribution, in an
inventory dated 1505 of objects bequeathed to the (above)
Capilla Real by Isabella, Queen of Castile. The two 14 Pieta
panels still at Granada were cut down early in the GRANADA, Capilla Real. Oak panel 50.2 x 37 cm.
VAN DER WEYDEN

46
(left) Osuna in Madrid. It came onto the international art
15 The Resurrected Christ Appearing to the Virgin market a few years before 1908 and was bequeathed
NEW YORK, Metropolitan Museum of Art (bequest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Michael
of Michael Dreicer). Oak panel 63.5 x 38.1 cm. Dreicer in 1921.

The third panel of the altarpiece bequeathed to the (above)

Capilla Real in Granada by Queen Isabella, Christ 16 Head of a Female Saint (fragment)
Appearing to the Virgin \eft Granada at an unknown LISBON, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. Oak panel
date and was later in the collection of the duque de 21x 18 cm.

47
VAN DER WEYDEN

STP
RT
OOM
aD

17 Head of St Joseph (°) (fragment)

LISBON, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. Oak panel 21 x 18 cm.

48
iy

|
i
——

§
a,

SS

ies

18 Virgin and Child with a Bishop Saint, river behind her would have been on the level of the
St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist river in The Magdalen fragment. The Stockholm
(after Van der Weyden) drawing is a copy of part or parts of the same
STOCKHOLM, Nationalmuseum. composition and seems to date from the late
Pen drawing on paper 16.6 x 23 cm. fifteenth century. The drapery and the position of
the feet on the far left of The Magdalen fragment
The two Lisbon fragments (Plates 16 and 17), first reappear in the drawing, which shows that it formed
recorded in the collection of Léo Nardus at Suresnes part of a figure of St John the Evangelist. The
in 1907, were cut from the same panel as the London drawing comes from a volume of German drawings,
Magdalen (Plate 19). The presumed St Joseph is the apparently of Swedish provenance, acquired by a
head of the figure standing behind the Magdalen; the Norwegian, Christian Langaard, at Berlin in c. 1916
Female Saint was probably represented kneeling, as the and given by him to the Nationalmuseum in 1918.

49
VAN DER WEYDEN

19 The Magdalen (fragment) (right)

LONDON, National Gallery. Oak (?) panel transferred 20 The Virgin and Child in a Niche
to mahogany 61.5 x 54.5 cm. MADRID, Museo del Prado. Panel 100 x 52 cm.

Said to have formed part of the collection of the The picture was acquired in 1899 at the Palacio de
Demoiselles Hoofman at Haarlem, this fragment was Boadilla in Madrid by Pedro Fernandez-Duran, who
later in the collection of Edmond Beaucousin in bequeathed it to the Prado in 1930. The black
Paris, which was acquired by the National Gallery in background is overpainted, but X-ray photographs
1860. Until 1955 the background was concealed do not reveal any detail beneath the overpaint. The
under a layer of almost uniform brown pigment. The composition was frequently copied.
removal of the overpaint in 1955—56 revealed that
the fragment was from the same composition as the
two fragments in Lisbon (Plates 16 and 17), and that
the drawing in Stockholm (Plate 18) was a partial
copy of this composition before it was mutilated.

50
VAN DER WEYDEN

oy
lef with the portrait. A copy was sold in Venice in
21 Portraitof a Young Woman 1900. The sitter is not likely to have been of
BERLIN, Staatlichen Museen, Gemialdegalerie. high rank, as she is dressed relatively simply. She
Oak panel 47 x 32 cm. is sometimes claimed to be the painter’s wife,
but there is no evidence to support this
The portrait was in the collection of a Princess identification.
Soltikoff at St Petersburg and was acquired by
the Berlin Museum in 1908. On the reverse is a (above)
partly erased coat of arms, not contemporary 22 Portrait of a Young Woman, detail of the head.

53
VAN DER WEYDEN

(right damaged, is generally considered to be the original.

23 St Luke Drawing the Virgin St Luke is making a careful metalpoint drawing of
BOSTON, Museum of Fine Arts (gift of Mr and Mrs the Virgin’s head. On the arm of the Virgin’s throne
Henry Lee Higginson). Oak panel 137.7 x 110.8 cm. is carved a representation of the Fall of Man. The
two figures in the background have not been
Said to have come from Toledo, the picture was in identified. It is sometimes claimed that St Luke is an
the collection of the Infante Sebastian of Spain idealized self-portrait of Rogier.
probably before 1833 and certainly by 1853. It was
presented to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in
1893 by Mr and Mts H. L. Higginson. Several (above)
versions exist. The Boston painting, which is rather 24 St Luke Drawing the Virgin, detail of St Luke.

54
VAN DER WEYDEN

25 Portraitof a Young Woman drawing was in the collection of the Anglo-Irish

LONDON, British Museum, Department of Prints gentleman-painter Hugh Howard (1675-1738) and
and Drawings. Silverpoint drawing on cream was purchased in 1874 from his heir the fifth Earl of
prepared paper 16.6 x 11.6 cm. Wicklow. It is presumably a preliminary study for a
painted portrait which is now lost but which would
On the reverse of the drawing is a seventeenth- have been quite similar to the Portrait of a Young
century inscription ‘Roggero di Buselle/1460’: the Woman in Berlin (Plates 21 and 22).
attribution to Rogier is therefore traditional. The

56
26 The Crucifixion triptych was first recorded, without attribution, in the 1659
VIENNA, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Oak panels inventory of the collection of the Archduke Leopold
101 x 35 cm.; 101 x 70 cm.; 101 x 35 cm. Wilhelm at Vienna. The donors, whose dress
indicates that they were not of very high rank, have
The left wing shows St Mary Magdalen; the centre not been identified. Both the centre panel and the
panel, Christ on the Cross with the Virgin, St John wing panels were frequently copied.
and two donors; the right wing, St Veronica. The
figures are placed in a continuous landscape with a (following pages)
view of Jerusalem. Above are four lamenting 27 & 28 The Crucifixion triptych, details of the
cherubim. Each panel is surrounded by gilded bands, Magdalen and the heads of the donors.
hatched to imitate framing. These bands are
continuous from one panel to the next, and the three 29 & 30 The Crucifixion triptych, details of St.
panels may originally have been one. The painting Veronica and of Christ on the cross with the Virgin,
was already in the form of a folding triptych when it St. John and two donors.

57
VAN DER WEYDEN

58
VAN DER WEYDEN

60
Tht TH,

ee
%
VAN DER WEYDEN

31 The Nativity triptych known as “The Bladelin Triptych’. A late copy on canvas
BERLIN, Staatlichen Museen, Gemaldegalerie. is in the church at Middelburg, and in 1641 an
Oak panels 91 x 40 cm.; 91 x 89 cm.; 91 x 40 cm. engraving of the castle in the background of the
centre panel was published in Sanderus’s Hlandria
In the left wing, the Tiburtine Sibyl shows a vision of I/lustrata as a contemporary view of the castle of
the Virgin and Child to the Emperor Augustus; in Middelburg, The triptych was therefore believed,
the centre panel are the Nativity, an unidentified during the seventeenth century, to have had some
donor and, in the background on the left, the connection with Middelburg, but this is not
annunciation to the Shepherds; in the right wing, the sufficient evidence for identifying the donor as
star, in the form of a child, appears to the three Bladelin. Both the centre panel and the wing panels
kings. On the reverses of the wing panels is an were frequently copied. Rubens’s drawing after the
Annunciation by a second and probably later painter. head of the Tiburtine Sibyl is at the Herzog Anton
The triptych was acquired shortly before 1834 from Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick.
the Snoy family of Malines by the dealer
Nieuwenhuys, who sold it to the Berlin Museum in (right)
1834. The Nativity triptych is usually stated, 32 The Nativity triptych, detail of the head of the
incorrectly, to have come from the church at donot.
Middelburg in Flanders. Middelburg is a small town
north of Bruges which was founded by Pieter (following pages)
Bladelin (c. 1400-1472), an official of the 33 & 34 The Nativity triptych, details of a view of a
Burgundian financial administration. The donor is town and of the Tiburtine Sibyl.
therefore identified as Bladelin, the founder of both
the town and the church, and the triptych is generally

62
VAN DER WEYDEN

64
65
VAN DER WEYDEN

35 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece included in an altarpiece commissioned by Chevrot.

ANTWERP, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Other figures may be portraits, but none has been
Kunsten. Panels 119 x 63 cm.; 200 x 97 cm.; convincingly identified. It is not known for which
OE OSien: church or chapel the altarpiece was commissioned. It
is first recorded at Dijon in 1826, when it was
In the left wing are represented the sacraments of acquited by the Chevalier Florent van Ertborn from
baptism, confirmation and confession; in the centre the heirs of Jean Pérard (b. 1753), Président of the
panel, behind the Cross, the Eucharist; in the right Parlement of Burgundy. It formed part of the Van
wing, ordination, marriage and extreme unction. The Ertborn bequest to the Antwerp museum in 1841.
altarpiece may once have had folding wing panels like Several heads in the side panels are overpainted, and
those of the Beaune Last Judgement (Plates 42—54). the figures of the man behind the column in the
The scrolls held by the angels bear inscriptions in centre panel and the male witness at the marriage
Latin adapted from biblical and other texts and ceremony ate later additions, perhaps by the same
referring to each of the sacraments. The coats of painter who overpainted the heads. The rest of the
arms in the upper corners of the three panels are altarpiece is well preserved. The two dogs in the side
those of Jean Chevrot and the bishopric of Tournai. panels are based on the same drawings as the two
The altarpiece was therefore commissioned by Jean similar dogs in The Columba Triptych (Plates 64 and 65).
Chevrot (c. 1380-1460), who was Bishop of Tournai
between 1436 and 1460. Chevrot himself, easily (following page)
recognizable from other portraits, appears as the (ify)
bishop administering the sacrament of confirmation. 36 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, centre panel
The young man in black who stands on Chevrot’s
right has been identified, by comparison with another (r2gh?)
portrait, as Pierre de Ranchicourt, who was to 37 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, detail of the Holy
become Bishop of Arras in 1462 and who died in Women
1499. It is not clear why his portrait should have been

66
ee
se!
ameere
VAN DER WEYDEN

68
 Sree
a ea
Se eek :

‘ ;
evr

=
VAN DER WEYDEN

70
38 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, detail of the angels holding scrolls with Latin inscriptions

(ey
39 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, detail of the angel from the scene of extreme unction
VAN DER WEYDEN

40 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, detail showing Jean Chevrot as a bishop admininstering the sacrament of
confirmation.

(right
41 The Seven Sacraments altarpiece, detail of the marriage ceremony.

72
Cae
ee
ha
VAN DER WEYDEN

42 The Last Judgement altarpiece, exterior colour. The effect is rather impaired, as only traces
BEAUNE, Hotel-Dieu. Oak panels, some remain of a scarlet pattern which originally covered
transferred to canvas the gold cloths hanging behind them and as some
220 x 273 cm. (overall exterior pigments in other areas have altered in colour. The
measurement, including frames). altarpiece was undoubtedly painted for the Hotel-
Dieu, which was founded in 1443. It was presumably
The frames are original. The wing panels of Zhe Last commissioned in or after 1443 and before 1451,
Judgement were sawn through during a major when St Anthony, represented on the exterior, was
restoration in Paris in 1875—78, and the exterior and replaced by St John the Baptist as patron of the
interior of the altarpiece are now exhibited hospital. The polyptych may have been finished by
separately. ZheAnnunciation and the figures of St 1451, when the hospital chapel was dedicated. It is
Sebastian and St Anthony are painted in grisaille and first recorded in an inventory of 1501, when it was
simulate sculpture. The figures of the donots, placed on the high altar of the hospital chapel.
identifiable from their coats of arms as Nicolas Rolin
and his third wife Guigonne de Salins, the founders (above)
of the Hospital of the Hétel-Dieu, are painted in 43 Detail of The Last Judgement altarpiece.

74
VAN DER WEYDEN

44 The Last Judgement altarpiece, Portrait of Chancellor entered the service of the Dukes of Burgundy by
Nicolas Bolin 1408, became Chancellor of Burgundy in 1422 and
Oak panel 129.5 x 73.1 cm. died at Autun in 1462. From relatively humble
beginnings he attained great power and wealth, part
Nicolas Rolin was born at Autun in c. 1376, had of which he used to endow the Hétel-Dieu.

76
45 The Last Judgement altarpiece, Portrait of chapel there, in front of the altar on which The Last
Guigonne de Salins Judgement was placed. The appearance of this panel
a
Oak panel transferred to canvas 129.8 x 73.7 cm. has greatly altered with age: the cloth behind
Guigonne was once scarlet and gold brocade; the
Guigonne de Salins married Rolin as his third wife blackish areas of the shield and the cloth covering
shortly after 1419. They had three children. After her the prie-diew were once blue; the light green niche was
husband’s death in 1462 she retired to Beaune and originally light blue.
died at the Hotel-Dieu in 1470. She was buried in the

Vat
VAN DER WEYDEN

46 The Last Judgement altarpiece, interior shows hell. The two small upper wing panels
Oak panels, some transferred to canvas 220 x represent four angels with the Instruments of the
548 cm. (overall interior measurement). Passion. The altarpiece has suffered from neglect and
from restoration. The wing panels, which have been
Christ is seated in judgement; below, St Michael sawn laterally in two, ate in worse condition than the
weighs the souls of the resurrected. The outer left central triptych, which is relatively well preserved. All
panel shows paradise; the two inner left panels show the nude figures were clothed early in the nineteenth
four male saints, six apostles and the Virgin; the two century. The draperies were removed during the
inner right panels show St John the Baptist, six major restoration of 1875—78, but all the figures
apostles and three female saints; the outer right panel were to some extent damaged in the process.

78
is)
Bsw—
. ce,
SENTs
exce
ae
Se Sa
seats
oO
 (
e -

47 The Last Judgement altarpiece, centre panel the figure representing sins ascending. It may have
of the interior been considered more appropriate that the figure
Oak panel 212 x 101 cm. representing sins should descend towards hell. The
whole altarpiece, however, is pessimistic in tone, and
The Latin inscriptions on either side of Christ are there are many more souls in hell, or on their way
from Matthew XXV: 34 and 41: ‘Come, ye blessed of there, than in paradise.
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world’; and ‘Depart from (left)
me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the 48 The Last Judgement altarpiece, detail of St. Michael
devil and his angels’. Above the nude figures on the from the centre panel of the interior.
scales held by St Michael are the inscriptions virtutes
(‘virtues’) and peccafa (‘sins’). The evil outweighs the (following pages)
good, though the scales were originally drawn with 49 - 52 details from The Last Judgement altarpiece.

81
VAN DER WEYDEN

82
VAN DER WEYDEN

84
VAN DER WEYDEN

53 The Last Judgement altarpiece, detail of the left panel showing paradise

(opposite)
54 The Last Judgement altarpiece, detail of the right panel showing hell

86
VAN DER WEYDEN

88
 he
i6

sz
et

om
‘
™

\]

5|
q

GIR
SS
ig
eT

(above ) Latin inscription based on Ecclesiasticus XLI: 1—2

55 The Braque Triptych, interior (‘O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee’,
etc.) and the arms of Braque impaling Brabant.
(4) Another inscription BRACQVE & BRABANT
56 The Braque Triptych, exterior was still legible during the last century. On the
PARIS, Musée du Louvre. Oak panels 41 x 34.5 cm.; reverse of the frame of the left wing is a painted
41 x 68 cm.; 41 x 34.5 cm. (with the original frames). inscription in French, which may be translated ‘Mark,
you who are so proud and avaricious; My body which
In the left wing is St John the Baptist; the Baptism of was fine gold is meat for [worms]’. The triptych can
Christ takes place in the background; the Latin be shown to have belonged to Catherine de Brabant,
inscription is from John I: 29: ‘Behold the Lamb of who married Jehan Braque of Tournai in about 1451.
God, which taketh away the sin of the world, In the Jehan died in 1452. The funereal inscriptions on the
centre panel are the Virgin, Christ and St John the reverse suggest that the triptych was commissioned
Evangelist; the Latin inscriptions are from Luke I: or adapted as a memorial to Jehan. It was probably,
46-47: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my but not necessarily, commissioned by Jehan Braque
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour’, from John ot his wife, and it is mentioned, without attribution,
VI: 51: ‘Iam the living bread which came down from in her will of 1497. It can be traced in the possession
heaven’ and from John I: 14: ‘And the Word was of their heirs until c. 1586. Claimed to have been
made flesh, and dwelt among us’. On the right wing imported from Flanders, it was bought at a sale by a
is St Mary Magdalen; the Latin inscription is from priest in the north of England, from whom it was
John XII: 3: ‘Then took Mary a pound of ointment acquited before 1845 by the painter Richard Evans
of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of (1784-1871). It was later in the collections of the
Jesus’. On the reverses of the wings (Plate 56) are Marquess of Westminster and his youngest daughter
representations of a brick and a skull and the coat of Lady Theodora Guest (d. 1924) and was acquired by
arms of the Braque family; and a cross bearing a the Louvre in 1913.
VAN DER WEYDEN

57 The Braque Triptych, central panel

with paintings of the Virgin, Christ
and St John the Evangelist

(overleaf)
58 The Braque Triptych, left panel,
St John the Baptist

59 The Braque Triptych, right panel,

St Mary Magdalen

90
VAN DER W
AN DER WEYDEN
(above) The picture was in the collection of the Van Caloen
60 Virgin and Child, reverse with the emblem and family at Bruges, from whom it was acquired in 1888
device of Jean Gros. by Alfred Moulant. It was later in the collections of
Emile Renders and of Herman G6ring, but was
recovered by the Belgian government after the
(Heft) Second World War and deposited at Tournai. The
61 Virgin and Child painting, which is in poor condition, is essentially a
TOURNAI, Musée des Beaux-Arts. repetition of the figures of the Virgin and Child in S¢
Oak panel 36 x 27 cm. Luke Drawing the Virgin (Plate 23).
VAN DER WEYDEN

62 Portrait of Jean Gros, detached reverse with the coat

of arms, emblem and device of Jean Gros

63 Portrait of Jean Gros the same size and with similarly decorated reverses,
CHICAGO, Att Institute of Chicago (Mr and Mrs must originally have formed a diptych. The coat of
Martin A. Ryerson collection). arms, the emblem of the pulley, the initials ‘JG’ and
Oak panel 38.5 x 28.6 cm. the device ‘Graces A Diew’ identify the donor as Jean
Gros, who by 1450 was secretary to Philip the Good:
In 1867 the portrait was in the collection of Dr de Duke of Burgundy. He later held various important
Meyer in Bruges, who is said to have inherited it posts in the Burgundian administration and died in
from his father; it was later in the Kann collection in 1484. He amassed a large fortune, built a residence in
Paris and the Ryerson collection in Chicago, which Bruges and evidently took a discerning interest in the
was given to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1933. arts. The Chicago portrait is better preserved than
This portrait and Virgin and Child (Plate 61), nearly the Virgin and Child.

96
VAN DER WEYDEN

64 The Adoration of the Kings triptych, known as The of the Boisserée collection in 1827 by Ludwig I,
Columba Triptych King of Bavaria, for the Alte Pinakothek. The
MUNICH, Alte Pinakothek. Oak panels 138 x 70 cm.; triptych was frequently copied and imitated by
138% 153;em 138) 7Olem: German artists of the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries and was clearly at Cologne from
The left wing shows The Annunciation; the inscription an eatly date. The chapel which it decorated in 1801
is AVE GRACIA PLENA DOMINVS TECVM; was founded, perhaps in the 1460s, by Goddert von
the carved panel of the Virgin’s prie-dieu represents dem Wasservass. The altarpiece may have been given
the Fall of Man. The centre panel shows. Zhe to the chapel by its founder, and the donor may
Adoration of the Kings with an anachronistic crucifix therefore be this Goddert, a prominent citizen of
placed above the Virgin’s head and with a donor Cologne who was nine times burgomaster between
kneeling on the extreme left. The right wing shows 1437 and 1462 and who died before 1489. The donor
The Presentation in the Temple: the Latin inscription is portrait may not have been painted by Van der
from Luke II: 29: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant Weyden himself. The two dogs in the centre panel
depart in peace, according to thy word’. The reverses and the right wing are based on the same drawings as
of the wings are covered by a protective coating of the two dogs in The Seven Sacraments (Plate 35).
paint, but there is no evidence that this conceals
remains of any grisaille or other decoration. The (right
triptych is first recorded in an inventory, dated 1801, 65 The Columba Triptych, centre panel
of the contents of the chapel of the Von dem
Wasservass family in the Church of St Columba at (overleaf)
Cologne. Acquired from this chapel in 1808 by Sulpiz 66 & 67 The Columba Triptych, left and right panel
and Melchior Boisserée, it was bought with the rest

98
100
VAN
DER
WEYDEN

ned
FOS
ibs aeis easEETaac
101
VAN DER WEYDEN

(above) 69 The Crucifixion

68 Portrait of a Lady ESCORIAL, Nuevos Museos. Panel 325 x 192 cm.
WASHINGTON, National Gallery of Art (Andrew W.
Mellon collection). Panel 37 x 27 cm. The Crucfixion probably formed part of a gift of
money and pictures made by Rogier to the
By 1883 the portrait was in the collection of Charterhouse of Scheut, near Brussels, which was
Friedrich I. Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, at the founded in 1454. It was later at the Bosque de
Gotisebes Haus in Wo6rlitz. The identity of the sitter Segovia (Valsain) in the possession of Philip II of
cannot be established. Her dress is fairly, but not Spain, who presented it to the Escorial in 1574. It was
extravagantly, rich, and its fashion suggests a date placed in the sacristy. Badly damaged, presumably in
very late in Rogier’s career. the fire of 1671 at the Escorial, the panel underwent
a major restoration in 1946 47.

102
VAN DER WEYDEN

70 The Crucifixion, detail of the Virgin

104
71 The Crucifixion, detail of St John

105
VAN DER WEYDEN

72 Portrait of John 1, Duke of Cleves Burgundian court, where he lived on intimate terms
PARIS, Musée du Louvre. Oak panel 50 x 33 cm. with his uncle and where he received the Order of
the Golden Fleece in 1451. The painting is always
The portrait is thought to have been bequeathed to dismissed as an old copy but appears to be a
the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, by the Belgian damaged original. The best preserved parts, the
scholar Joseph van Pract (1754—1837) and was hands, the fur and the collar of the Golden Fleece,
deposited at the Louvre in 1943. The traditional are painted with a sensitivity to structure and texture
identification of the sitter is confirmed by four which indicates direct observation, and a major
inscribed copies at Cleves, Emmerich, Rees and alteration in the drawing of the costume would be
Wesel. John I (1419-1481) was the son of Adolf I, difficult to explain in a copy. The portrait is
Duke of Cleves, and Mary of Burgundy, a sister of presumably the right wing of a diptych.
Duke Philip the Good. He was brought up at the

106
AN DER WEYDEN
73 Virgin and Child
SAN MARINO (CALIFORNIA), Henry E. Huntington Library and Art
Gallery. Oak panel, transferred to canvas and retransferred to panel
49 x 31.cm.

The painting is first traceable in 1892 in the collection of Henry

Willett in Brighton and was later in the Kann collection in Paris.

109
VAN DER WEYDEN

74 Portrait of Philippe de Croj reverse with the coat

of arms of Philippe de Croy

75 Portrait of Philippe de Croy to his brother in 1461. Philippe de Croy (c.

ANTWERP, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone 1430 1483), a favourite of Philip the Good, came of
Kunsten. Panel 49 x 30 cm. (a vertical strip c. 8 cm. an important aristocratic family and succeeded his
wide on the right being a replacement). father as comte de Chimay in 1472. Soldier and
ambassador, he owned a notable collection of
The painting was acquired from a chateau near illuminated manuscripts. The portrait seems to have
Namur by the Chevalier Florent van Ertborn, who been the right wing of a diptych. Though there is no
bequeathed his collection to the Antwerp museum in real proof, the left wing is usually claimed to have
1841. The monogram has not been satisfactorily been the Virgin and Child in San Marino (Plate 73).
interpreted, but appears in manuscripts which This or a similar diptych is described in an inventory
Philippe owned. The inscription on the reverse is dated 1629 of pictures belonging to Philippe’s
‘[Phillippe de Croy [Seig]neur de Sempy’, a title descendant Alexandre d’Arenberg, prince de Chimay.
which the sitter held by 1454 and which he resigned

110
VAN DER WEYDEN

76 Portrait of a Man
MADRID, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Oak panel 32 x 26 cm.

The portrait was acquired before 1898 in Paris by Richard von Kaufmann of Berlin and
passed into the Thyssen Collection in or shortly before 1930. It underwent a major
restoration in 1918. The sitter has not been identified.

112
77 Portrait of a Young Man
UPTON HOUSE (WARWICKSHIRE), National Trust, Bearsted collection.
Oak panel 20 x 15.3 cm.

The panel has been cut along the lower edge. Brought to England from western Canada
before 1914, it was acquired by a dealer in 1920 from the executors of the Bulwer family in
Norfolk. Its earlier history cannot be established, and the sitter cannot be identified. The
portrait was probably the right wing of a small diptych and is not in immaculate condition.

13
VAN DER WEYDEN

‘feaucitqur «
78 Portrait of Francesco d’Este, reverse with the coat of
arms of Francesco d’Este

79 Portrait of Francesco d’Este sitter’s personal device and ‘non plus courcelles’ may
NEW YORK, Metropolitan Museum of Art (bequest be a later addition. Francesco d’Este (c. 1433 p. 1475)
of Michael Friedsam). Oak panel 29.8 x 20.4 cm. was an illegitimate son of Lionello d’Este. Marquis
of Ferrara, and in 1444 he was sent to the
The portrait was acquired in 1909 by R. Langton Burgundian court to be educated with the young
Douglas from Sir Audley Neeld (1849-1941) of Charles the Bold. He spent most of his life in the
Chippenham: it was later in the collections of Sir Netherlands, where he was called the ‘Marquis of
Edgar Speyer and Michael Friedsam, who Ferrara’ and held various military offices. On several
bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in occasions he returned to Italy, usually as an
1931. The sitter’s identity is established by the coat of ambassador of Burgundy. He is last mentioned in the
arms and the inscription ‘francisque’ on the reverse. Netherlands in 1475. The hammer is an emblem of
Of the other inscriptions on the reverse, ‘m e’ may authority, but its exact significance and that of the
stand for ‘Marchio Estensis’, ‘voir tout’ may be the ting ate obscure.

114
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80 Portrait of Antoine, the ‘Grand Batard’ of Burgundy of the sitter in the Brussels painting. Antoine
BRUSSELS, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts. Oak (c. 1430-1504) was an illegitimate son of Philip the
panel 39 x 28.5 cm. Good, an important figure at the Burgundian and
French courts and the owner of an enviable
The portrait was acquired from the dealer collection of illuminated manuscripts. He received
Nieuwenhuys in 1861. An early version in a London the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1456. The
collection has on the reverse the emblem and device significance of the arrow, clutched to the sitter’s
of Antoine of Burgundy, which establish the identity heart, has not been satisfactorily explained.

116
 GOribs ain slTUDIO WORK

81 The ‘Scupstoel’ The drawing is the design for one of the sculpted
NEW YORK, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Robert capitals on the facade of the Town Hall of Brussels
Lehman collection). Pen drawing on paper 29.8 x and almost without question would have been
42.5 cm. executed in the workshop of Van der Weyden, the
city painter.

117
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82 Copy after a lost self-portrait by Rogier van der same, tapestry belonged to Lionello d’Este at
Weyden from a tapestry in the Historisches Museum, Ferrara, who died in 1450. The tapestry is a free and
Bern (Plate 83). compressed copy of Van der Weyden’s four large
panels of The Justice of Trajan and The Justice of
(overleaf) Herkinbald, painted for the Town Hall of Brussels
83 The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald and destroyed during the bombardment of Brussels
BERN, Historisches Museum. Tapestry 461 x in 1695. The panels were described by several
1053 cm. fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
authors. Their frames carried long explanatory
Sewn to the tapestry are five shields with the arms of inscriptions which were almost the same as those on
Georges de Saluces, Bishop of Lausanne from 1440 the tapestry. Nicholas of Cusa in 1453 and the
until his death in 1461. It therefore belonged to the French traveller Dubuisson-Aubenay in the 1620s
bishop, even if it was not necessarily woven for him. recorded that Van der Weyden had included a self-
He bequeathed most of his possessions to the portrait in the lost compositions. One of the heads
Cathedral of Lausanne, and the tapestry was in the tapestry (//#) is reasonably claimed to be a
acquired by the city of Bern in 1536 with the copy of this self-portrait.

119
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84 Pieta mith St Dominic (2), St Jerome and a Donor the figures of the saints and donor are less well
LONDON, National Gallery. Oak panel 35.5 x 45 cm. drawn and are not very convincingly related to the
principal group. It seems plausible to consider this
The painting was in the collection of the Earl of and similar pictures as being relatively unimportant
Powis by 1896 and was acquired by the National of uninteresting commissions which Rogier
Gallery in 1955. A copy, in which the bar of the entrusted to assistants working from his designs and
Cross is visible, is in a Palermo collection. The donor possibly under his supervision. While nothing is
has not been identified. The Piedad is one of several known about Van der Weyden’s workshop ot his
pictures of high quality which are very similar in style assistants, it is established that his contemporaries
to paintings acceptable as Rogier’s. Though the kept stocks of ‘patterns’ which could be repeated,
figures of the Virgin and the dead Christ are with suitable variations, for different clients.
probably based on a drawing by Van der Weyden,

122
VAN DER WEYDEN

85 Portrait of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy succeeded his father as Duke of Burgundy in 1467.
BERLIN, Dahlem Museum, Gemiaildegalerie der He received the Order of the Golden Fleece shortly
Staatlichen Museen. Oak panel 49 x 32 cm. after his birth in 1433. There are numerous versions,
none of which is of particularly high quality. A
The portrait was acquired with the collection of similar portrait, now lost, was in the collection of
Edward Solly in 1821. The traditional identification Charles’s granddaughter Margaret of Austria and was
of the sitter is confirmed by comparison with other described in an inventory of 1516 as being by Rogier.
portraits of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), the only The Berlin portrait is probably an early copy of this
sutviving legitimate child of Philip the Good, who lost original.

124
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

This book was written in 1977. Since then, much has been discovered about van der Weyden’s life and
work. Doubtless much more remains to be discovered. Several monographic studies have been
published: the catalogue of the exhibition Rogier van der Weyden / Rogier de le Pasture, Peintre officiel de la Ville
de Bruxelles, Portraitiste de la Cour de Bourgogne, Musée Communal, Brussels, 1979; Odile Delenda, Rogier
Van der Weyden Roger de Le Pasture, Paris 1987; E. Dhanens and J. Dijkstra, Rogier de /e Pasture van der Weyden.
L’Oeuvre, Les Sources, Tournai 1999; Albert Chatelet, Rogier van der Weyden (Rogier de le Pasture), Paris and
Milan 1999; idem, Rogier van der Weyden, problemes de la vie et de loeuvre, Strasbourg 1999; Stephan
Kemperdick, Rogier van der Weyden 1399/1400 — 1464, Cologne 1999; Dirk De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden,
The Complete Works, Antwerp 1999. At the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tournai has been set up an
‘imaginary museum’ of full-size colour photographs of almost all the paintings attributed to Rogier and
to the Master of Flémalle. These photographs, of outstandingly high quality, were taken and printed by
the late Alfons Lieven Dierick.

It now appears that Rogier’s apprenticeship with Campin was a legal formality and that, after moving to
Brussels, he continued to run a workshop in Tournai: see J. Dumoulin and J. Pycke, ‘Comptes de la
paroisse Sainte-Marguerite ... Documents inédits relatifs 4 Roger de la Pasture, Robert Campin et
d’auttes artistes tournaisiens’ in Les Grands Siécles de Tournai (12° - 15° siécles) (Tournai, Art et Histoire, vol.
VII), Tournai 1993, pp. 279-320. Rogier’s nephew Louis Le Duc, a renowned painter, probably trained
with his uncle in Brussels but established himself in Tournai in 1453 and in Bruges in 1460: see A.
Schouteet, De V/aamse primitieven te Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge tot de dood van Gerard David,
vol. I (Fontes historiae artis neerlandicae, II), Brussels 1989, pp. 182-3. Louis may have supervised
branches of the family business in those towns.

Though published in 1975, a passage from Jean Jouffroy’s De dignitate cardinalatus, written in 1468, has
escaped the notice of most specialists. Jouffroy (c.1405/10-1473), who became Bishop of Arras in 1453
and a cardinal in 1461, spent much of his time between 1441 and 1461 at the Burgundian court and
referred to Rogier as ‘my dearest friend, whose pictures ornament the courts of all the kings’ (Massimo
Miglio, Storiografia pontificia del quattrocento, Bologna 1975, p. 141 note 3). Jouffroy had visited the courts of
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, England, Bohemia, Poland and Hungary; he was a notable
humanist; it is interesting to speculate on the subjects which he and his dearest friend Rogier might have
discussed. The problem of Rogiet’s possible journey to Rome for the Jubilee of 1450 may be elucidated
by the discovery that the painter André d’Ypres, who worked in Paris, died at Mons in 1450 on his way
back from Rome (D. Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Du nouveau sur le peintre André d’Ypres, artiste du Nord installé

125
VAN DER WEYDEN

4 Paris’, Bulletin monumental, vol. 158, 2000, pp. 365-9). Why André should have been journeying from
Rome to Paris via Mons is something of a mystery. Perhaps he was travelling with Rogier; or perhaps it
was André alone who visited Rome and, a famous painter from beyond the Alps, he was soon confused
with Rogier.

Additional information on work executed by Rogier for the Burgundian court may be found in Eddy
VHondt, Extraits des comptes du Domaine de Bruxelles des XVe et XVIe siécles concernant les artistes de la cour
(Miscellanea archivistica, Studia 4), Brussels 1989, pp. 17-19, 24. In 1456-7, ‘a pattern of Our Lady’ by
master Rogier of Brussels was brought to ’s-Hertogenbosch for the Confraternity of Our Lady (G.C.M.
Van Dijck, De Bossche Optimaten, Geschiedenis van de Ilustere Lieve Vrouwebroederschap te’s-Hertogenbosch, 1318-
1973, Vilbarg 1973; p: 139).

Rogier’s contacts with Milan and the career of his pupil Zanetto Bugatto have been investigated by Luke
Syson, ‘Zanetto Bugatto, court portraitist in Sforza Milan’, Burkngton Magazine, vol. 138 (1996), pp. 300-8;
I have studied his contacts with the court of Ferrara (Lorne Campbell, ‘Cosmé Tura and Netherlandish
Art’ in the exhibition catalogue edited by Stephen Campbell, Cosme Tura, Painting and Design in Renaissance
Ferrara, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 2002, pp. 71-105).

The most important discovery of recent years was that the Miraflores Triptych in Berlin is undoubtedly
an original by van der Weyden and that the document of 1445, which describes it as the work of ‘the
great and famous Fleming Rogel’, is totally accurate. The versions in Granada and New York, long
regarded as originals, are copies made towards 1500 by an artist (Juan de Flandes?) trained in the Low
Countries but active in Castile. Technical examination of the Berlin panels revealed many changes made
by the artist and the removal of layers of discoloured and degraded varnishes allowed the exquisite
quality of the paintings to be admired once more. The triptych survives in very good condition. See R.
Grosshans, “Rogier van derWeyden, Der Marienaltar aus der Kartause Miraflores’, Jahrbuch der Berliner
Museen, vol. 23, 1981, pp. 49-112.

The Prado Descent from the Cross, cleaned in 1992-3, is also remarkably well preserved (M.T. Davila and C.
Garrido, ‘Proceso de restauracidn del Descendimiento de la Cruz. Roger van der Weyden. Museo del
Prado N® Cat. 2825” in X Congreso de Conservacion y Restauracion de Bienes Culturales, 20 de Septiembre al 2 de
Octubre de 1994, Cuenca, pp. 231-50). In contrast, the third ‘authenticated’ painting, the Escorial
Crucifixion, is a magnificent ruin. More information on its history has been discovered (published by M.
Soenen in the catalogue of the 1979 Brussels exhibition already cited); Dijkstra has examined its
connection with the ‘Retable of the Parlement of Paris’ in the Louvre (J. Dijkstra, Enkele opmerkingen
overt het Retable du Parlement de Pans in P. van den Brink and L.M. Helmus, eds, Album Discipulorum ].R.J.
van Asperen de Boer, Zwolle 1997, pp. 53-9). A sixteenth-century copy has turned up which is probably the
one made by El Mudo to replace the original when Philip Il of Spain had it moved from the Bosque de

126
Segovia to the Escorial. This copy, now in the Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo, may preserve some of the
beauties lost from the original when it was damaged (see De Vos, op. cit., p. 292).

Other recently cleaned paintings by Rogier are the Portrait of Jean Gros (Chicago), the Virgin and Child
(San Marino) and the Portrait of a Lady (Washington). The Saint John Triptych (Berlin) and the diptych
of the Crucifixion (Philadelphia) have also been cleaned: though most authorities consider that they are
by Rogier, I view them as works by assistants or imitators and do not believe that they were designed by
him or produced under his control and supervision. See M. Tucker, “Rogier van der Weyden’s
Philadelphia Crucifixion’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 139 (1997) pp. 676-83. On the matter of the workshop,
see Lorne Campbell, “Rogier van der Weyden and his Workshop’, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.
LXXXIV, 7993 Lectures and Memoirs, 1994, pp. 1-24.

Van der Weyden’s panels and frames have been studied by H. Verougstraete-Marcq and R. Van Schoute,
Cadres et supports dans la peinture flamande aux 15¢ et 16¢ siécles, Heure-le-Romain 1989, and by the
dendrochronologist Peter Klein, ‘Dendrochronological Studies on Oak Panels of Rogier van der
Weyden and his Circle’, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, Colloque VII, Louvain-la-Neuve 1987, Louvain-
la-Neuve 1989, pp. 25-36. His underdrawings have been investigated by J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, J.
Dijkstra and R. Van Schoute, Underdrawings in Paintings of the Rogier van der Weyden and Master of Fiémalle
Groups (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 41, 1990), Zwolle 1992. His pigments and media and
painting techniques have been scrutinised at the National Gallery in London, where it has been
established that he and his followers sometimes used egg-tempera for underpaintings but worked over
such preparatory layers in oils. They normally employed linseed oil, often heat-bodied, but occasionally
chose walnut oil. Clearly they were exploiting a profound knowledge of the properties of oils based on
generations of experience and experiment. See L. Campbell, S. Foister and A. Roy, eds, “Early Northern
European Painting’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, vol. 18, 1997.

Detailed studies of individual paintings attributed to van der Weyden, his workshop and his followers
may be found in the recent catalogues of the following collections: Antwerp (P. Vandenbroeck,
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, Catalogus schilderijen 14° en 15° eeuw, Antwerp 1985);
Brussels (C. Stroo and P. Syfer-d’Olne, Catalogue of Early Netherlandish Paintings in the Royal Museums of
Fine Arts of Belgium, The Flemish Primitives, \, The Master of Flémalle and Rogier van der Weyden Groups,
Brussels 1996); Frankfurt (J. Sander, Niéederlandische Gemdlde im Stidel 1400-1550, Mainz 1993); London
(L. Campbell: National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, London 1998); New
York (M.W. Ainsworth and K. Christiensen, eds, From Van Eyck to Bruegel, Early Netherlandish Painting in
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1998); the Louvre, Paris (P. Lorentz and M. Comblen-Sonkes,
Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux ...,19, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 11, Brussels 2001); and
Washington (J.O. Hand and M. Wolff, Zhe Collections of the National Gallery of Art, Systematic Catalogue,
Early Netherlandish Painting, Washington 1986). The St Luke drawing the Virgin has been the subject of a

127
VAN DER WEYDEN

volume of essays: Ze Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Rogier van der Weyden. St. Luke drawing the Virgin. Selected
Essays in Context, Tarnhout 1997.

For the lost Svenes of Justice, see Dhanens in Dhanens and Dijkstra, op. ct, pp. 118-24. She argues that the
‘Golden Chamber’ for which they were painted was the room now known as the ‘Salle Gothique’ of the
Town Hall in Brussels and that the four panels were even larger, perhaps around 4 x 4.5 metres, and
mote ambitious than I, following Cetto, had calculated.

For the clothes depicted by Rogier, see M. Scott: Late Gothic Europe (The History of Dress Series),
London 1980. For drawings, see the exhibition catalogue F. Koreny et al., Early Netherlandish Drawings
from Jan van Etyck to Hieronymus Bosch, Rabenshuis, Antwerp 2002. For sculpture, Lorne Campbell, “The
Tomb of Joanna, Duchess of Brabant’, Renaissance Studies, vol. 2, 1988, pp. 163-72; John W. Steyaert, Late
Gothic Sculpture. The Burgundian Netherlands, Ghent 1994; Lynn F, Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved
Altarpieces, 1380-1550, Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing, Cambridge 1998. For manuscripts, Dagmar
Thoss, Das Epos des Burgunderreiches, Girart de Roussillon, Graz 1989; Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens,
ed., Les Chroniques de Hainaut ou les Ambitions d’un Prince Bouguignon, Brussels 2000; ‘Thomas Kren and Scot
McKendrick, eds, /uminating the Renaissance. The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Ecurope,
exhibition catalogue, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and Royal Academy, London, 2003-4. For
tapestry, A. Rapp Buri and M. Stucky-Schiirer, Burgundische Tapisserien, Munich 2001.

For the Master of Flémalle, see the monographs by A. Chatelet, Robert Campin, Le Maitre de Flémalle, La
fascination du quotidien, Antwerp 1996, and S. Kemperdick, Der Meister von Flémalle. Die Werkstatt Robert
Campins und Rogier van der Weyden, Tarnhout 1997, and the collection of essays edited by S. Foister and S.
Nash, Aobert Campin, New Directions in Scholarship, Tarnhout 1996. For Memling, see D. De Vos, Hans
Memling, The Complete Works, London 1994.

For relationships between Netherlandish and Italian art, see M. Rohlmann, Aajftragskunst und Sammlerbild,
Altniederlandische Malerei im Florenz des Quattrocento, Alfter 1994, and Christiensen’s essay, ‘The View from
Italy’, in Ainsworth and Christiensen, op. ciz., pp. 39-61.

For a general survey of Early Netherlandish painting, see my ‘Introduction: Netherlandish Painting in
the Fifteenth Century’ in Lorne Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues cited above, pp. 18-35, where I
attempt to reconstruct the fifteenth-century Netherlandish painters’ attitudes to imitation and invention,
fidelity to nature and imaginative originality.

128
 an
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LORNE CAMPBELL was born in Stirling in
1946 and was educated at Edinburgh University
and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of
London, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1973.
He was a Lecturer at Manchester University from
1970 to 1971, Speelman Fellow in Dutch and
Flemish Art at Wolfson College, Cambridge
University, from 1971 to 1974 and from 1974 has
been a Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute. He is
the author, with Colin Thompson, of Hugo van der
Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh, and he
has contributed articles to The Burlington
Magazine, The Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, The Connoisseur and the
Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de
Belgique. Dr Campbell is currently a Curator at
the National Gallery, London.

Cover: details of The Adoration of the Kings

triptych, known as The Columba Triptych
MUNICH, Alte Pinakothek.
Oak panels 138 x 70 cm.;
138 x 153 em.; 138 x 70 cm.

Chaucer Press
20 Bloomsbury Street
London
WCI1B 3JH
www.chaucer-press.com
 ISBN 1-904449-24-7

RNS, 904°449245