Virgin and Child with Four Angels

Last updated
Gerard David, Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1510-15. 63.2 cm x 39.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gerard David - Virgin and Child with Four Angels - WGA6036.jpg
Gerard David, Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1510–15. 63.2 cm × 39.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Virgin and Child with Four Angels (or Virgin and Child with Angels) is a small oil-on-panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Gerard David. Likely completed between 1510 and 1515, it shows the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus, while she is crowned Queen of Heaven by two angels above her, accompanied by music provided by another two angels placed at either side of her. In its fine detail and lush use of colour the work is typical of both David and late period Flemish art.

Contents

The painting is heavily influenced by Jan van Eyck's Virgin with Child at a Fountain , especially in the modeling of the Madonna and child. However, David has introduced many significant modifications, [1] including the widening of the pictorial space, the placement of two additional angels, and the setting of the scene in a contemporary setting with a view of Bruges in the distance. Van Eyck's panel was heavily influenced by the conventions of Byzantine art, and was likely itself a blend of specific works. Yet the painting is mid-Renaissance in its humanising of the Virgin and child; in earlier works the mother and child figures were presented as distant and remote deities. In David's panel they are entirely human and recognisable as an affectionate and bonded mother and son.

Virgin and Child with Four Angels has been housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, since its donation from a private collection in 1977. [2] David inscribed the painting with the words "IHESVS [RE]DEMPT[OR]" ("Jesus Redeemer") on the columns. [3] [4]

Overview

Painted for private devotion, it shows a full-length Mary holding Jesus. Mother and son are surrounded by four angels; the two above Mary are adorned with large colourful wings and hold a golden crown, symbolising her role as Queen of Heaven [4] while another two, each bearing large wings, sit on either side of her playing a harp and lute respectively. The scene takes place below a Gothic arch in a walled garden —intended to represent Mary's pureness and virginity— [3] and before a view of contemporary Bruges.

Painted on wood with a narrow, fine brush, the work is unusually vivacious and detailed. [5] Mary has long curled blonde hair, the strands of which are finely detailed with extremely thin brush strokes. She wears a heavily folded red gown lined with minutely described gold stitches which are so delicately woven into the trims of dress they are not usually visible in reproduction. Jesus is wrapped in a white swaddling blanket, some of which hangs below him in vertical folds, [6] the lines of which are continued in the folds of Mary's dress. The angels to their right and left wear dark green and light blue robes respectively.

All the figures are highly idealised, typical of the art of the period; naturalism is abandoned in favour of elongated figures, who in this work are out of proportion to each other. Mary is far larger than the angels, [7] which adds to her unnatural, ethereal, heavenly presence. The eyes of all the figures are averted from the viewer; only the child Jesus looks directly out of the canvas. The work is highly symmetrical; the two central figures are balanced by two pairs of angels arranged on either side; Jesus occupies the dead centre of the canvas; and the garden is balanced by the lines of the pathway seen on either side of Mary. The church in the distance to the right is balanced by the hill in the far left. [6]

Madonna at the Fountain. Jan van Eyck, c. 1439. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. The cloth of honour held by the angels in the van Eyck is replaced by David with a golden crown. Eyck fountain Antwerpen.jpg
Madonna at the Fountain . Jan van Eyck, c. 1439. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. The cloth of honour held by the angels in the van Eyck is replaced by David with a golden crown.

The churches of Sint-Jakobs and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw can be identified in the cityscape beyond the garden. [8] The placement of a Carthusian monk walking underneath a tree in the garden behind the main figures makes it likely that the work was commissioned by a member of their Genadedal monastery in Sint-Kruis outside Bruges. [8] [9] It is likely that the painting was the centre panel of a triptych or small winged altarpiece which was broken up at some unknown point. It has been speculated that the archway above Mary extended to two side panels in reference to the Trinity. [5]

During the early 1500s Jan van Eyck's influence was at its height, and David heavily based his painting on van Eyck's late work Virgin and Child at a Fountain. [10] Due to the popularity and demand for devotional pictures for use in private worship, the format of many biblical scenes or standard iconography became standardised, often copied from earlier painters, especially if the source picture itself was successful commercially—a panel painting of this type would have been commissioned at the highest end of the market. [11] His Virgin and Child, also dated c 1510–15 and today part of a private collection in Belgium, is based on a painting by Adriaen Isenbrandt and is one of three near identical variants David painted of the scene in that format and pose. [12]

David has added two more angels to van Eyck's scene, and sets the figures in a recognisable contemporary location. The figures of Mary and Jesus are near identical in both works, from the vertical folds of Mary's dress, to the raised knee and arms of Jesus, with one arm reaching over his mother's shoulder, while the other reaches for her neck. [6] van Eyck's work was influenced by the Icons of Byzantine art, and this influence carries through to Gerard's piece. [13]

Art historian Maryan Ainsworth describes the painting as a "devotional object for the veneration of an esteemed icon" and believes that the Byzantine influence "trickled down" from van Eyck. It is not known for certain, however, which specific icons may have formed the basis for Virgin with Child at a Fountain, [13] though suggestions based on similarity of pose and form have been made, including frescos in Notre Dame des Grâce in Montreal and Santa Maria del Carmine, Naples. [6] Gerard presents a very different representation of the Virgin than found in Byzantine representations. She is less a remote iconic deity and more recognisably human. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerard David</span> Early Netherlandish painter

Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known. He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges. Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early Netherlandish painting</span> Work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and 16th-century 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mérode Altarpiece</span> 15th-century painting by the workshop of Robert Campin

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petrus Christus</span> Flemish painter (c.1410–1475)

Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444, where, along with Hans Memling, he became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. He was influenced by van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and is noted for his innovations with linear perspective and a meticulous technique which seems derived from miniatures and manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him. The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl ; both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nursing Madonna</span>

The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte. It was a common type in painting until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, in which it was rather discouraged by the church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety.

<i>Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin</i> Painting by Rogier van der Weyden

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.

<i>Madonna at the Fountain</i> Painting by Jan van Eyck

The Madonna at the Fountain is a 1439 oil on panel painting by the early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck. It belongs to van Eyck's late work, and is his last signed and dated painting. It retains its original frame, which bears the inscription; "ALS IXH CAN", "JOHES DE EYCK ME FECIT + [COM]PLEVIT ANNO 1439

<i>Madonna in the Church</i> Small oil panel by Jan van Eyck

Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–1440, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon. Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life. In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Like other Byzantine depictions of the Madonna, van Eyck depicts a monumental Mary, unrealistically large compared to her surroundings. The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral's windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary's virginal purity and God's ethereal presence.

<i>Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych</i> Two small painted panels attributed to Jan van Eyck

The Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych consists of two small painted panels attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, with areas finished by unidentified followers or members of his workshop. This diptych is one of the early Northern Renaissance oil on panel masterpieces, renowned for its unusually complex and highly detailed iconography, and for the technical skill evident in its completion. It was executed in a miniature format; the panels are just 56.5 cm (22.2 in) high by 19.7 cm (7.8 in) wide. The diptych was probably commissioned for private devotion.

<i>Triptych of the Sedano family</i> Triptych by Gerard David

Triptych of the Sedano family is an oil-on-panel triptych altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Gerard David, usually dated between 1490 and 1498, probably c. 1495. It is noted for its innovative framing and for its rendering of the decorative oriental carpet seen at Mary's feet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambrai Madonna</span>

The Cambrai Madonna, also called the Notre-Dame de Grâce, produced around 1340, is a small Italo-Byzantine, possibly Sienese, replica of an Eleusa icon. The work on which it is based is believed to have originated in Tuscany c. 1300, and influenced a wide number of paintings from the following century as well as Florentine sculptures from the 1440–1450s. This version was in turn widely copied across Italy and northern Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries; Filippo Lippi's 1447 Enthroned Madonna and Child is a well known example.

<i>Madonna of the Dry Tree</i> Painting by Petrus Christus

Madonna of the Dry Tree or Our Lady of the Barren Tree are names given to a small 14.7 centimetres (5.8 in) x 12.4 centimetres (4.9 in) oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1462–1465 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. Unusually dark and dramatic for the mid-15 century, it shows the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, who holds an orb crowned with a cross, standing on a disembodied dead tree trunk, surrounded by withered branches that encircle them to form a crown of thorns. It was unattributed and largely unknown until 1919, when it was examined by the art historian Grete Ring while in a private collection. She first attributed Christus and through analysis of its iconography, assigned its current title.

<i>Nativity</i> (Christus) Oil on wood panel painting by Petrus Christus

The Nativity is a devotional mid-1450s oil-on-wood panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows a nativity scene with grisaille archways and trompe-l'œil sculptured reliefs. Christus was influenced by the first generation of Netherlandish artists, especially Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and the panel is characteristic of the simplicity and naturalism of art of that period. Placing archways as a framing device is a typical van der Weyden device, and here likely borrowed from that artist's Altar of Saint John and Miraflores Altarpiece. Yet Christus adapts these painterly motifs to a uniquely mid-15th century sensibility, and the unusually large panel – perhaps painted as a central altarpiece panel for a triptych – is nuanced and visually complex. It shows his usual harmonious composition and employment of one-point-perspective, especially evident in the geometric forms of the shed's roof, and his bold use of color. It is one of Christus's most important works. Max Friedländer definitely attributed the panel to Christus in 1930, concluding that "in scope and importance, [it] is superior to all other known creations of this master."

<i>St John Altarpiece</i> (Memling) Altarpiece by Hans Memling

The St John Altarpiece is a large oil-on-oak hinged-triptych altarpiece completed around 1479 by the Early Netherlandish master painter Hans Memling. It was commissioned in the mid-1470s in Bruges for the Old St. John's Hospital (Sint-Janshospitaal) during the building of a new apse. It is signed and dated 1479 on the original frame – its date of installation – and is today still at the hospital in the Memling museum.

<i>Vera Icon</i> (van Eyck) Lost painting by Jan van Eyck

Vera Icon is a lost oil-on panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, which probably formed half of a since dismantled diptych. The original is known through three contemporary copies from his workshop. They were completed in 1438, 1439 and 1440; with the first and last in Bruges, and the 1439 version in Munich.

<i>Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine</i> (Memling) Painting by Hans Memling

The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine is a c. 1480 oil-on-oak painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The panel shows an enthroned Virgin holding the Child. St Catherine of Alexandria and St Barbara are seated alongside. Angels playing instruments flank the throne, while the male figure to left is presumably the person who commissioned it as a devotional donor portrait.

<i>Annunciation</i> (Memling) Painting by Hans Memling

The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. The painting was executed in the 1480s and was transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928; it is today held in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miniature Altarpiece with the Crucifixion</span>

Miniature Altarpiece with the Crucifixion is a very small and complex early 16th century Netherlandish microcarved miniature sculpture in boxwood, now in The Cloisters, New York. The central carvings of the upper triptych show the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, each outer wing contains two scenes from the biblical Old Testament. The complex base contains a round carving which opens like a boxwood prayer nut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rest on the Flight into Egypt</span> Subject in Christian art

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a subject in Christian art showing Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus resting during their flight into Egypt. The Holy Family is normally shown in a landscape.

<i>Pagagnotti Triptych</i>

The Pagagnotti Triptych is an oil-on-wood triptych by Hans Memling produced circa 1480. The original was disassembled and separated, with the center panel held at the Uffizi gallery in Florence and the two wing panels at the National Gallery in London.

References

  1. ↑ Harbison, 161
  2. ↑ Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman. Smeyers 15
  3. 1 2 Baetjer et al., 48
  4. 1 2 Ainsworth; Christiansen, 306
  5. 1 2 Harris, Beth; Zucker, Steven. 'Virgin and Child with Angels'. Smarthistory.org. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Harbison, 160
  7. ↑ though less so than in the van Eyck
  8. 1 2 'Virgin and Child with Four Angels, ca. 1510–15'. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  9. ↑ Wrightsman Collection: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture , p. 60, at Google Books
  10. ↑ Ainsworth; Christiansen, 222
  11. ↑ at the lower end journeymen or guild apprentices would make multiple versions of a near copy and hold them in inventory to be sold at art markets.
  12. ↑ Borchert, 144
  13. 1 2 Powell, Amy. "A Point "ceaselessly Pushed Back": the Origin of Early Netherlandish Painting". The Art Bulletin 88.4, 2006.
  14. ↑ "Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 8 July 2011.

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.