A Man and A Woman is the title sometimes used for a pair of oil and egg tempera on oak panel[1] paintings attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Robert Campin, completed c. 1435. Although usually considered pendants or companion pieces, they may also have been wings of a since dismantled diptych.[2] The latter theory is supported by the fact that the reverse of both panels are marbled, indicating that they were not intended to be hung against a wall.
There has been considerable speculation as to the middle class sitters' identities. For a time in the early 19th century they were thought, on little evidence, to be of Quentin Matsys and his wife, later of Rogier van der Weyden and his wife.[3] There is no historical record of the couple's identities, and no evidence (inscriptions, coats of arms etc.) on the paintings themselves.
Both were acquired in 1860 by the National Gallery, London, where they are hung alongside each other.
The portraits are very similar in a number of aspects, apart from their near identical size and form (each is made from two vertically grained and laid boards of oak).[1] Both portrayed in half-length, and set against solid black featureless backgrounds. The panels are very brightly and evenly lit making the figures appear lifelike and three-dimensional. The framing is extremely tight and especially closely cropped around their heads, allowing the figures to dominate the pictorial space. As with many half-length portraits of the 1420–1430s, the heads are subtly large in proportion to the rest of their bodies.[4] They are each composed from a very limited set of colours; the man's portrait is dominated by red, dark green and black, the woman's by white, brown and black colours.[5]
Both figures wear extravagant and large headdress; his is a chaperon made from red fabric,[6] hers consists of two to three wrapped linenveils. The chaperon consists of a padded bourrelet, a tightly wrapped Liripipe (a cornette in French), and a shoulder-cape (patte).[7] There is a significant age difference between the two. The man has brown eyes and sagging eyelids, while her eyes are bright and blue.[5]
Attribution
Portrait of St. Veronica, c. 1410, attributed to Robert Campin
Since their rediscovery in the early 19th century, the paintings have at times been attributed Quentin Matsys, and later to Jan van Eyck (given it similarly to his presumed self-portrait, also in the National Gallery, but signed with a date of 1433, that two years earlier). In an 1860 catalog they were attributed to "Rogier van der Weyden the Younger".[4] Usually accepted as pendants of a married couple, in the cases of Matsys and van der Weyden, there was a presumption that the portraits were of that artist and their wife.[7] The more recent, and widely accepted attribution to Campin, who is usually identified as the Master of Flémalle, is based mainly on stylistic grounds. None of his documented works survive,[8] nor is there any hint either of his identification, in the form of inscriptions, coats or arms, on the panels.
Art historian Lorne Campbell believes the male portrait is similar to the Flémalle Saint Veronica, while the woman to a portrait of the Virgin in the same grouping. Campbell writes that with the man, "there is a similar sensitivity to the structure of the head and to the changing textures of the skin, especially in the areas of the mouths; a similar way of drawing the eyes and eye-sockets; and, in the Woman and the Child, a similar way of indicating the catch-lights of the eyes."[9]
Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture was an early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commissioned single and diptych portraits. He was highly successful in his lifetime; his paintings were exported to Italy and Spain, and he received commissions from, amongst others, Philip the Good, Netherlandish nobility, and foreign princes. By the latter half of the 15th century, he had eclipsed Jan van Eyck in popularity. However his fame lasted only until the 17th century, and largely due to changing taste, he was almost totally forgotten by the mid-18th century. His reputation was slowly rebuilt during the following 200 years; today he is known, with Robert Campin and van Eyck, as the third of the three great Early Flemish artists, and widely as the most influential Northern painter of the 15th century.
Robert Campin, now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle, was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of Early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance.
Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especially in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen, Leuven, Tournai and Brussels, all in present-day Belgium. The period begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the 1420s and lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, although many scholars extend it to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568–Max J. Friedländer's acclaimed surveys run through Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Early Netherlandish painting coincides with the Early and High Italian Renaissance, but the early period is seen as an independent artistic evolution, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in Italy. Beginning in the 1490s, as increasing numbers of Netherlandish and other Northern painters traveled to Italy, Renaissance ideals and painting styles were incorporated into northern painting. As a result, Early Netherlandish painters are often categorised as belonging to both the Northern Renaissance and the Late or International Gothic.
The Mérode Altarpiece is an oil on oak panel triptych, now in The Cloisters, in New York City. It is unsigned and undated, but attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Robert Campin and an assistant. The three panels represent, from left to right, the donors kneeling in prayer in a garden, the moment of the Annunciation to Mary, which is set in a contemporary, domestic setting, and Saint Joseph, a carpenter with the tools of his trade. The many elements of religious symbolism include the lily and fountain, and the Holy Spirit represented by the rays of light coming through from the central panel's left hand window.
Portrait of a Young Girl is a small oil-on-oak panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It was completed towards the end of his life, between 1465 and 1470, and is held in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It marks a major stylistic advance in contemporary portraiture; the girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, and stares out at the viewer with a complicated expression that is reserved, yet intelligent and alert.
Portrait of a Lady is a small oil-on-oak panel painting executed around 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The composition is built from the geometric shapes that form the lines of the woman's veil, neckline, face, and arms, and by the fall of the light that illuminates her face and headdress. The vivid contrasts of darkness and light enhance the almost unnatural beauty and Gothic elegance of the model.
Portrait of a Young Woman is a painting completed between 1435–1440 by the Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden.
Portrait of Francesco d'Este is a small oil on wood panel painting by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden dating to around 1460. The work is in good condition and has been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York since 1931. When attributed as a van der Weyden in the early 20th century, there was much speculation amongst art historians as to the sitter's identity. He was identified as a member of the d'Este family from the crest on the reverse, and long thought to be Francesco's father Lionello, an Italian and highly placed Burgundian prince and patron of Rogier. In 1939 Ernst Kantorowicz identified the man as Lionello's illegitimate son Francesco, which is now generally accepted. The panel was painted when the sitter was about 30 years old and is considered one of van der Weyden's finest portraits, in many ways a culmination of his later, more austere work.
The Magdalen Reading is one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th-century oil-on-panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The panel, originally oak, was completed some time between 1435 and 1438 and has been in the National Gallery, London since 1860. It shows a woman with the pale skin, high cheek bones and oval eyelids typical of the idealised portraits of noble women of the period. She is identifiable as the Magdalen from the jar of ointment placed in the foreground, which is her traditional attribute in Christian art. She is presented as completely absorbed in her reading, a model of the contemplative life, repentant and absolved of past sins. In Catholic tradition the Magdalen was conflated with both Mary of Bethany who anointed the feet of Jesus with oil and the unnamed "sinner" of Luke 7:36–50. Iconography of the Magdalen commonly shows her with a book, in a moment of reflection, in tears, or with eyes averted.
Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols.
The Werl Triptych is a triptych altarpiece completed in Cologne in 1438, of which the center panel has been lost. The two remaining wings are now in the Prado in Madrid. It was long attributed to the Master of Flémalle, now generally believed to have been Robert Campin, although this identity is not universally accepted. Some art historians believe it may have been painted as a pastiche by either the workshop or a follower of Campin or the Master of Flémalle.
Glue-size is a painting technique in which pigment is bound (sized) to cloth with hide glue, and typically the unvarnished cloth was then fixed to the frame using the same glue. Glue-size is also known as distemper, though the term "distemper" is applied variously to different techniques. Glue-size was used because hide glue was a popular binding medium in the 15th century, particularly among artists of the Early Netherlandish period, who used it as an inexpensive alternative to oil. Although a large number of works using this medium were produced, few survive today, mainly because of the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue. Well-known and relatively well-preserved – though substantially damaged – the most notable examples include Quentin Matsys' Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine and Dirk Bouts' Entombment. In German the technique is known as Tüchleinfarben, meaning “small cloth colours”, or Tüchlein, derived from the German words Tüch and Lein.
Virgin and Child with Saints, is a large mid-15th century oil-on-oak altarpiece by the early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The work is lost since at least the 17th century, known only through three surviving fragments and drawing of the full work in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum by a follower of van der Weyden. The drawing is sometimes attributed to the Master of the Drapery Studies.
The Magdalen Weeping is an oil on oak panel painting attributed to the workshop of the unidentified Early Netherlandish artist known today by the notname the Master of the Legend of the Magdalen, active in Brussels. Although beautiful, the painting is significantly damaged and has been restored and overpainted a number of times since the 19th century; not always successfully and the impact of the image is considered to have been lessened as a result.
Ian Lorne Campbell is a Scottish art historian and curator. Campbell was Beaumont Senior Research Curator at the National Gallery, London from 1996 to 2012, and from 1974 to 1996 lectured on the Northern Renaissance at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He has curated major exhibitions at the National Gallery and other museums, including ones on Rogier van der Weyden at Leuven in 2009 and the Prado in 2015.
Durán Madonna is an oil on oak panel painting completed sometime between 1435 and 1438 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The painting derives from Jan van Eyck's Ince Hall Madonna and was much imitated subsequently. Now in the Prado, Madrid, it depicts a seated and serene Virgin Mary dressed in a long, flowing red robe lined with gold-coloured thread. She cradles the child Jesus who sits on her lap, playfully leafing backwards through a holy book or manuscript on which both figures' gazes rest. But unlike van Eyck's earlier treatment, van der Weyden not only positions his Virgin and Child in a Gothic apse or niche as he had his two earlier madonnas, but also places them on a projecting plinth, thus further emphasising their sculptural impression.
The Christ and the Virgin Diptych consisted of two small oil on oak panel paintings by the Early Netherlandish painter Dirk Bouts completed c. 1470-1475. Originally they formed the wings of a hinged devotional diptych.
The Annunciation Triptych is an oil-on-panel triptych by the Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden, dating from around 1434. It was originally formed by three panels, the central one being now at The Louvre museum in Paris, France; the side panels are at the Galleria Sabauda of Turin, northern Italy.
Pietà is a painting by the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden dating from about 1441 held in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. There are number of workshop versions and copies, notably in the National Gallery, London, in the Prado, Madrid, and in the Manzoni Collection, Naples. Infrared and X-radiograph evidence suggest that the Brussels version was painted by van der Weyden himself, not necessarily excluding the help of workshop assistants. Dendrochronological analysis gives a felling date of 1431 for the oak panel backing, supporting the dating of the painting to around 1441.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned is a small oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1433, usually attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden. It is closely related to his Madonna Standing, completed during the same period. The panel is filled with Christian iconography, including representations of prophets, the Annunciation, Christ's infancy and resurrection, and Mary's Coronation. It is generally accepted as the earliest extant work by van der Weyden, one of three works attributed to him of the Virgin and Child enclosed in a niche on an exterior wall of a Gothic church. The panel is housed in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
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