The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus is a triptychpanel painting by the Flemish painter Dieric Bouts in the collegiate church of Saint Peter's in Leuven, Belgium. It commemorates the martyrdom and death of a European Christian figure from the fourth century, Saint Erasmus. It shows the Emperor Diocletian as one of four observers in the background of the center panel, as well as Saints Jerome and Bernard of Clairvaux in the wings of the altarpiece. All nine figures appear to express an exceptional tranquility and calm, in a landscape setting that is contiguous across the three panels.
The altarpiece was probably made prior to 1464, shortly before the artist would have begun his Last Supper altarpiece for a neighboring chapel in the church. The altarpiece has remained in place almost continuously since its installation in the chapel, and is overseen by the nearby M – Museum Leuven.
Description
The scene of the torture and death of Saint Erasmus of Formia (or Saint Elmo) is depicted on the center panel of the triptych. The Bishop of Antioch, Erasmus was martyred at Formia in the Roman Campagna under the Emperor Diocletian in the year 303.[1] By the fifteenth century in the Low Countries, Erasmus had emerged as a patron saint of Baltic seafarers[2] and Hansiatic merchants.[3] His attribute as a saint was the windlass or capstan, the winch on which a ship's anchor chains were hoisted and lowered.[4] The attribute, and not a narrative of the saint's life, informed the invented instrument of torture by the late 14th century.[2] Later, Erasmus became the patron saint of wood turners and of people suffering from stomach disorders.[5]
The three luxuriously clad[2] figures surrounding Diocletian could be portraits of contemporary men, and the figure in the orange tunic might represent the painting's patron, Gerard de Smet, or even be a self-portrait of artist.[3]
On the side panels two figures are shown facing inward: left, the Church FatherJerome and on the right is Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian Order wearing the costume of an abbot.[3] They are shown with their saintly attributes, namely a lion with Jerome, and crouching at the feet of Bernard, a devil in chains who represents the torments that the saint had resisted. While these two historical figures have virtually no link with the Erasmus, subject of the central panel, "their status as scholars would have made them admired by the members of the Confraternity, which had close ties with Louvain academic circles."[3]
The two saints in side panels are painted larger in scale, suggesting that the wings originally would have been hinged and angled inward toward the center, helping onlookers to feel embraced by, and even part of, the scene.[6] "Instead of bringing the narrative aspects and horror of the legend of Saint Erasmus to the fore, Bouts sought to emphasize the holiness of Erasmus, Jerome and Bernard and to present them as protectors and as objects of devotion."[7] Some have also regarded the image of the three saints as a tribute to the three forms of holiness: "Erasmus, the martyr, Jerome, the scholar, and Bernard, the mystic."[8]
Inscriptions
A painted inscription at the bottom of the center panel (a nineteenth-century addition laid onto a non-original frame[3]) runs: Opus Theodorici Bouts. Anno MCCCC4XVIII. This had overwritten the phrase added during the 1840–1845 restoration; Opus Johannis Hemling. Marks on the back, made after the transposition from oak panels to oak boards in 1840, show on the reverse of the left wing, Memlingii, pic / turam novae ta / bulae ab L.Mor/temard inductam / MDCCCXXXX. On the reverse of the right wing, Coloribus accu / rate interpo/lavit Carolus / De Cauwer / MDCCCXXXXIII.[9]
Left panel, showing Saint AnthonyRight panel, showing Saint Jerome
Critical response
The historian Johan Huizinga called the composition "clumsy and inept" and the entire scene "dermwinderken" ("gut-wrenching"),[10] because the central panel shows how, according to legend, the intestines of Saint Erasmus were extracted from his body with the help of a windlass. The literature about the Bouts picture notes how the figure of Erasmus undergoes his suffering without betraying any emotion. The executioners likewise "carry out their duties seriously", in "disturbing silence",[3] while the Emperor Diocletian and his three companions witnessing the event appear to stand in a meditative state, much as the saints on the side panels,[11] "anachronistically attending the same event."[12] The "sobriety and restraint" in the "calm atmosphere"[3] and Diocletian's "amiable indifference"[13] create a tableau of rather inappositely decorous balance and harmony. A newspaper observed in 2006:[14]
The martyr himself is pinioned, but passive. He lies there, stripped to a cloth, his bishop's mitre set on the ground next to him, his face slightly hardened, his body relaxed and unresponding. Even his flesh is without any natural resistance. From a neat opening in his belly, a thin line of innards is extracted bloodlessly and vertically from the horizontal man, with no more strain than drawing a thread through a needle.
—Tom Lubbock, The Independent
Max Friedländer sums up the content of the panels as "relating a story, not of cruelty as such, nor of suffering and defiance, but rather of judicial equanimity and of submission. The repulsive scene is rendered tolerable, not by the introduction of an element of passionate agitation, but by documenting it with unvarnished and sober clarity, as though it were a surgical operation. Yet its realism is overlaid with so much supernatural detachment, is so stiffly symmetrical, so pedantically clean that it has the effect of a symbolic tableau in a medieval mystery play."[15]
Works in the oeuvre of Bouts often contain "spacious outdoor settings".[16] In discussing the continuity of the unified landscape background across the three parts of the painting,[12] Lynn Jacobs notes how "all three panels of the triptych's interior are situated within one continuous landscape space that spreads, seemingly without interruption, across the joints between the center and wings. This allows Saint Jerome and Saint Bernard in the wings, in a mystical transformation of history, to become present as witnesses to Erasmus's martyrdom. Such a demonstration of connections through space and time ultimately offers the same kinds of connections, and transcendence into the realm of the sacred, to the viewers of the triptych."[6] Bernhard Ridderbos likewise observes a "Mondrianish sense of balance constructed out of horizontals and verticals and colors."[7]
Patronage, commission and authorship
First mentioned in the sixteenth century,[17] the Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus was documented as owned by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament by 1535. Whether the sodality had given the order as a group to make the work is uncertain, though the altarpiece would surely have been in possession of the brotherhood after 1475.[18]
City plan of Leuven, c. 1890
The initial patron of this work may have been Gerard Fabri, also known as Gerard de Smet (†1469), master of the collegiate school and a member of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in Leuven.[19] De Smet endowed the saying of an annual mass in the chapel on his behalf.[3] The chapel had been dedicated to St. Erasmus in 1433, and the confranternity may have chosen Erasmus as the patron of this chapel because of its wish to honor Erasme van Brussele, a member of the brotherhood and the mayor of Leuven at the time.[20]
Exterior from southeast, Sint Pieters church, Leuven, Belgium, from postcard c. 1913
Until the early nineteenth century, the picture had been ascribed to Bouts' contemporary, Hans Memling[21] or to other artists.[3][22] After centuries of shifting attributions, Bouts’ authorship of the painting was put on solid ground with the discovery in 1858 of a receipt signed by the artist, an attribution that was secured with the publication in 1898 by Edward van Even of the contract executed 15 March 1476 between Bouts and the Brotherhood.[22][23]
Sources for the central image
Bouts likely drew upon images of the martyrdom of Erasmus from manuscript illustrations.[24][25] An illumination in a book of hours owned by Catherine of Cleves is discussed by Bert Cardon in his contribution to the 1975 exhibition catalog.[26] Inigo Bocken points to the similarity of Diocletian's clothing with that of the figure of Nicolas Rolin in a work by Jan van Eyck now at the Louvre.[27]
Placement and function
Erasmus chapel in St Peter's, Leuven, 2012
The altarpiece adorned the chapel for the Brotherhood, dedicated to Erasmus by the Dukes of Burgundy in 1475,[2] in the northeastern ambulatory of the church.[22] A complement to liturgies performed in the chapel, it would have acted as a backdrop to altar, priest, and congregants. Its two side panels, hinged and enclosing both the painted central scene as well as celebrant and participants in Christian services,[3] would have added depth and breadth to the space around the ritual.
Bouts came to be named city painter in 1468,[28] which would have placed him among upper tier of city officials and likely in contact with the members of the confraternity sponsoring the paintings.[29]
The triptych has remained in its original setting except after a fire in 1914, and has been lent to six special exhibitions between 1902 and 1998,[3] including the Flemish Primitives exhibition at Bruges in 1902.[3] Since 1998, the neighboring M – Museum Leuven provides curatorial care for the objects in Sint Pieters.[30] The triptych was featured in the 2023 exhibition of eleven works by Bouts n Leuven.[27]
The panels received conservation treatments in the 1840s (transfer of paint from wood to panel support, and new frames), 1930,[34] 1952 (retouching), 1958 (stabilization of paint), 1998 (UV glazing and anti-theft; cleaning and consolidation),[3] and 2019.[35] The transfer in 1840 caused some small losses requiring retouching,[9] with flattening of the paint layers, and the weave of the canvas used for that transfer left some pattern on the central panel.[3] Wolfgang Schöne wrote of damage and paint losses upon inspection in his 1938 dissertation,[31] and confirmed what Paul Heiland had recorded in 1902/1903.[36] The curatorial and conservation staff of the M – Museum Leuven act as custodians of the paintings.[37]
Hugo van der Goes was one of the most significant and original Early Netherlandish painters of the late 15th century. Van der Goes was an important painter of altarpieces as well as portraits. He introduced important innovations in painting through his monumental style, use of a specific colour range and individualistic manner of portraiture. From 1483 onwards, the presence of his masterpiece, the Portinari Triptych, in Florence played a role in the development of realism and the use of colour in Italian Renaissance art.
Dieric Bouts was an Early Netherlandish painter. Bouts may have studied under Rogier van der Weyden, and his work was influenced by van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. He worked in Leuven from 1457 until his death in 1475.
Justus van Gent or Joos van Wassenhove was an Early Netherlandish painter, perhaps from Ghent, who after training and working in Flanders later moved to Italy where he worked for Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, and was known as Giusto da Guanto, or in modern Italian Giusto di Gand etc. The artist is known for his religious compositions executed in the early Netherlandish idiom and a series of portraits of famous men, which show the influence of early Italian Renaissance painting.
Saint Peter's Church in Leuven, Belgium, is a Roman Catholic church built in the 15th century in the Brabantine Gothic style. The church has a cruciform floor plan and a low bell tower that has never been completed. It is 93 metres (305 ft) long. It is located on the city's Grote Markt, opposite the Town Hall. In 1999, the belfry and bell tower of the church was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Belfries of Belgium and France site, in recognition of the civil importance and architecture of the belfries in the region.
The decade of the 1470s in art involved some significant events.
The decade of the 1460s in art involved some significant events.
The Entombment is a glue-size painting on linen attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts. It shows a scene from the biblical entombment of Christ, and was probably completed between 1440 and 1455 as a wing panel for a large hinged polyptych. While the altarpiece remains lost as a complete set, it is thought to have contained a central crucifixion scene flanked by four wing panel works half its height – two on either side – depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The smaller flanking panels would have been paired in a format similar to Bouts's 1464–1468 Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament. The larger work was probably commissioned for export to Italy, possibly to a Venetian patron whose identity is lost. The Entombment was first recorded in a mid-19th-century inventory in Milan, and has been in the National Gallery, London, since its purchase on the Gallery's behalf by Charles Lock Eastlake in 1861.
Aert van den Bossche or the Master of the Crispinus and Crispinianus-Legend was an Early Netherlandish painter of altarpieces, active in Brussels and Bruges in the late 15th century. There is still doubt as to whether he should be identified with the Master of the legend of St. Barbara or was only one of the artists active in a workshop responsible for the works of that master.
The Triptych with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin is an oil painting on panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts. It was executed c. 1445 and is in the collection of the Museo del Prado, in Madrid.
Jan Rombouts the Elder, Jan Rombouts (I) (c. 1480 in Leuven – 1535 in Leuven), was a Flemish Renaissance painter, glass painter, draftsman, printmaker and glass designer. The subjects of his work are stories from the Old and New Testament and the lives of Christian saints. He was active in Leuven where he introduced the Renaissance innovations of Bernard van Orley and the Antwerp school.
Dieric Bouts the Younger, also Dirk Bouts the Younger, was a Flemish painter who was mainly active in Leuven. He is known for his altarpieces painted in the Early Netherlandish painting style.
Josse van der Baren was a Flemish painter of history paintings and a draughtsman active in the Leuven area around the turn of the 17th century.
Portrait of Maria Portinari is a small c. 1470–72 painting by Hans Memling in tempera and oil on oak panel. It portrays Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, about whom very little is known. She is about 14 years old, and depicted shortly before her wedding to the Italian banker, Tommaso Portinari. Maria is dressed in the height of late fifteenth-century fashion, with a long black hennin with a transparent veil and an elaborate jewel-studded necklace. Her headdress is similar and a necklace identical to those in her depiction in Hugo van der Goes's later Portinari Altarpiece, a painting that may have been partly based on Memling's portrait.
Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament or Triptych of the Last Supper is a 1464–1468 dated folding triptych with at least five panel paintings attributed to the Flemish painter Dieric Bouts, now reassembled and held at its location of origin in the eastern choir chapel of St. Peter's Church, Leuven, Belgium.
Jan Van der Stock is a Belgian art historian and exhibition curator. He is a full professor at the University of Leuven, where he lectures on Medieval and Renaissance Arts, Graphic Arts, Iconography, Iconology, and Curatorship. He is the director of Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art and holder of the Van der Weyden Chair – Paul & Dora Janssen, the Veronique Vandekerchove Chair of the City of Leuven and the Chair of Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries. Jan Van der Stock was the husband of Christiane Timmerman and is a father of two.
Jan Willems was a Flemish painter of religious works as well as a polychromer and a designer of large figures used in processions. He was the city painter of Leuven where he spent his entire known career.
The Ascension of the Elect is a c. 1470 oil on panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts, originally produced as part of a triptych of the Last Judgment commissioned by the town of Louvain in 1468. The central panel is lost but the other side panel, The Fall of the Damned, survives. Concerning the Elect in the end times, the painting draws on Genesis 2:10, Book of Revelation and The Purgatory of St Patrick, a 14th-century Irish manuscript by Berol telling of Sir Owein's legendary trip to Purgatory. Ascension is now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille.
The Fall of the Damned is an oil on panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts, completed in 1470. It was produced as the rightmost section of a triptych of a Last Judgment scene commissioned for the town hall of Louvain, Belgium, in 1468. The central panel of the triptych is lost, but the left side panel, the Ascension of the Elect, survives along with the Fall of the Damned. The set of images would have drawn narrative inspiration from Genesis 2:10, the Book of Revelation and from the Purgatory of St Patrick, a 14th-century Irish manuscript by Berol telling of Sir Owein's legendary trip to Purgatory. The Fall has been on permanent loan from the Louvre to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, where it has been reunited with the Ascension since 1957.
The sacrament tower of St. Peter's Church in Leuven, Belgium is a twelve-meter high sacrament house located in the church's choir. Designed by architect Matheus de Laeyens from 1450, it was ordered by the Brotherhood of the holy Sacrament. The tower in St. Peter's Church was built between 1537 and 1539 and this makes it the oldest preserved sacrament tower in Belgium.
Lamentation of Christ is an Early Netherlandish panel painting made 1455–1460 by Flemish painter Dirk Bouts of the Lamentation of Christ. the picture was bequeathed to the Louvre Museum by Constant Mongé-Misbach in 1871, at which time it was misattributed to Rogier van der Weyden. It remains in that museum's collection as RF 1.
References
↑ Butler, Alban (1956). Butler's Lives of the Saints. Vol.2. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons. pp.453–454.
1 2 3 4 Smeyers, Maurits (1998). "Dirk Bouts, schilder van de stilte" (in Dutch). Leuven: Davidsfonds. pp.60–66. ISBN9061526086.
1 2 Jacobs, Lynn F. (September 2009). "Rubens and the Northern Past: The Michielsen Triptych and the Thresholds of Modernity". The Art Bulletin. 91 (3): 302–324. doi:10.1080/00043079.2009.10786156. S2CID191660750– via JSTOR.
1 2 Ridderbos, Bernhard (2014). Schilderkunst in de Bourgondische Nederlanden (in Dutch). Zwolle: WBOOKS. p.118. ISBN9789462580558.
1 2 Vries, Ary Bob (1957). Dieric Bouts (in French). Brussels: Editions de la Connaissance. pp.33–37.
1 2 Comblen-Sonkes, Micheline (1996). The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter, Louvain. Vol.1. Brussels: International Studiecentrum voor de Middeleeuwse Schilderkunst in het Schelde- en het Maasbekken. pp.85–117. ISBN9782870330081.
↑ Huizinga, Johan (2021). Small, Graeme; Van der Lem, Anton (eds.). Autumntide of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life and Thought of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Low Countries. Translated by Webb, Diane. Leiden: Leiden University Press. p.471. ISBN9789087283131.
1 2 Jacobs, Lynn F. (2012). Opening Doors—The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp.125, 129, 133, 141, 160, 179 + color plate 14 following page 168. ISBN9780271048406.
↑ Panofsky, Erwin (1953). Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Vol.1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p.318.
↑ Cardon, Bert (1998). "'Na allen synen bestn vermoegenen': Dirk Bouts en zijn opdracthevers". Dirk Bouts—Leuven in de late Middeleeuwen: Het Laatste Avondmaal (in Dutch). Tielt: Lannoo. pp.74–75. ISBN9020933914.
1 2 3 Wisse, Jacob. "Official City Painters in Brabant, 1400–1500: A Documentary and Interpretive Approach." Ph.D. dissertation—New York University, 1999: page 181, note 22.
↑ "Le Contrat pour l'execution du triptyche de Thierry Bouts, de la collégiale Saint-Pierre, à Louvain (1464)". Bulletin de l'Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. 35: 469–479. 1898.
↑ Grebe, Anja. "Dirk Bouts und the Gent-Brügger Buchmalerei." In Bouts Studies conference proceedings. (Leuven, 26–28 November 1998.) Leuven: Peeters, 2001: pages 337–341.
↑ Smeyers, Katharina (1998). "De Marteling van de H. Erasmus door Dirk Bouts. Een speurtocht naar inspiratiebronnen en navolgingen". In Smeyers, Maurits (ed.). Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475), een Vlaams primitief te Leuven. Tentoonstellingscatalogus (in Dutch). Leuven: Peters. pp.127–135.
↑ Cardon, Bert (1975). "Inspiratiebronnen". Dirk Bouts en zijn tijd. Tentoonstelling (in Dutch). Leuven: Sint-Pieterskerk. pp.217–219.
1 2 Bocken, Inigo (2023). "Dieric Bouts, De marteling van de heilige Erasmus met de heiligen Hieronymus en Bernardus, cat. 10". In Carpreau, Peter (ed.). Dieric Bouts, Beeldenmaker (in Dutch). Leuven: Hannibal. pp.198–203. ISBN9789464666663.
↑ Snyder, James (1983). "Bouts, Dirk". In Strayer, Joseph R. (ed.). Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p.350. ISBN0684170221.
↑ Belozerskaya, Marina (1999). "Bouts, Dirck". In Gredler, Paul F. (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp.272–274. ISBN068480509X.
1 2 Schöne, Wolfgang (1938). Dieric Bouts und seine Schule (in German). Berlin, Leipzig: Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft. pp.84–86, no. 5.
↑ Smeyers, Katharina (1998). "De Marteling van de H. Erasmus door Dirk Bouts. Een speurtocht naar inspiratiebronnen en navolgingen". In Smeyers, Maurits (ed.). Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475), een Vlaams primitief te Leuven. Tentoonstellingscatalogus (in Dutch). Leuven: Peeters. pp.127–135.
↑ Smeyers, Maurits (1998). Dirk Bouts, schilder van de stilte (in Dutch). Leuven: Davidsfonds. pp.60–66. ISBN9061526086.
↑ Smeyers, Maurits (1975). "Schilderijen van Dirk Bouts". Dirk Bouts en zijn tijd. Tentoonstelling (in Dutch). Leuven: Sint-Pieterskerk. pp.211–219.
Comblen-Sonkes, Micheline. The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter, Louvain. 2 volumes. (Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la principauté de Liège au quinzième siècle 18.) Brussels: International Studiecentrum voor de Middeleeuwse Schilderkunst in het Schelde- en het Maasbekken, 1996, pages 85–117 + plates.
Marits Smeyers, ed. Dirk Bouts (c.1410–1475)—een Vlaams primitief te Leuven. Exhibition catalog. Leuven: Peeters 1998. ISBN 9042906618
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