Woman Bathing (van Eyck)

Last updated June 14, 2024

Woman Bathing (or Woman at Her Toilet, sometimes Bathsheba at Her Toilet) is a lost early 15th century panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck. It is known through two copies which diverge in important aspects;^[1] one in Antwerp and a more successful but smaller c 1500 panel in Harvard University's Fogg Museum, which is in poor condition.^[2] It is unique in van Eyck's known oeuvre for portraying a nude in secular setting,^[3] although there is mention in two 17th-century literary sources of other now lost but equally erotic van Eyck panels.^[4]

The attribution of either panel to an original by van Eyck is usually not contested; while it may be doubted whether either copy was completed until one or two generations after his early death c. 1441, it is accepted that neither is a forgery or wishful thinking. Art historians broadly consider it likely that both were copied from a single source, that is, one is not a copy of the other, and that both originate from roughly the same period.^[4]

Van Eyck's original was atypically daring and unusually erotic for a painting of the 1420s – early 1430s when it was presumably completed. Apart from its own qualities, it is interesting to art historians due to the many similarities of the Harvard panel to his famous 1434 London Arnolfini Portrait . Until the emergence of the Fogg copy around 1969, it was known mostly through its appearance in Willem van Haecht's expansive 1628 painting The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest , a view of a collector's gallery which contains many other identifiable old masters. Art historians have sought in vain to attach to either a biblical or classical source; the rapes of Bathsheba or Susanna have been suggested, although Judith is sometimes seen a more likely source, but the clues apply only to the Antwerp panel,^[5] traditionally known as "Judith Beautifying Herself".

Description

It shows a nude woman taking a sponge bath in an interior setting accompanied by a maid in a red gown. The woman preserves her modesty with a washcloth held in her left hand as she reaches with her right towards a basin placed on a side table. A convex mirror hangs from a central bar in the shuttered window above the basin and shows the reflection of both figures.^[6] In the tradition of such scenes, the mirror symbolises virtue and purity, while the dog in the lower center at the woman's feet – barely visible in the Fogg panel due to loss of paint, but more distinguishable in van der Geest's work – represents her fidelity.^[7] Her bedchamber is richly detailed; there is a wooden bed to the right, a tall folding chair against the back wall, and wooden beams running across the ceiling. An orange rests on the windowsill, and there are discarded pattens on the floor in the lower left corner.^[8]

Two other possible works by van Eyck of this style are known from descriptions only. In 1456, the Italian humanist Bartolomeo Facio described a panel in the collection of Ottaviano della Carda, a nephew of Federico da Montefeltro. In the panel, sometimes known as Bathing Woman, the woman is attended by an older clothed maid as she emerges from her bath in a veil of fine linen which leaves only her head and breasts exposed. Facio's description includes details of a dog, a burning lamp similar to the one in the Arnolfini Portrait,^[9] and a distant landscape visible through an open window. Facio mentions the innovative use of a mirror, which in the work is full length and reflects the entire back of the woman's body.^[4]

Arnolfini portrait

There are many similarities, especially with the Fogg panel, to van Eyck's famous London Arnolfini Portrait . While the former is much narrower and much smaller at 27.2 cm x 16.3 cm, it is around a third the size of the London portrait (without frame 82.6 cm x 60 cm).^[10]^[11] van Haecht's reproduction is thought closer to the actual scale than the Fogg panel, especially given that the other works in The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest are in general very close to the originals that survived or had their dimensions recorded. Given that van Haecht did not give the work an especially prominent position in his own painting, it is unlikely that he was exaggerating its importance, so it might be reasonably deduced that it was not much smaller than this representation.^[11]

Both the Fogg and London panels show an interior containing a bed and a small dog (probably an early form of the breed now known as the Brussels griffon), a mirror and its reflection, a chest of drawers and clogs on the floor, while the angle the attendant woman faces from, and her dress and the outline of her figure, are broadly similar. Art historian Linda Seidel speculates that it was created as an accompanying panel, and that the pair were intended as betrothal paintings. The London panel, she observes, may have been "painted for the wall of Giovanna Cenami's father's house where she would have seen it in the years between her betrothal and her marriage ... perhaps ... the erotic half may have been given to her future husband as a guarantee of what he was promised".^[1] Seidel believes that the pattens at the lower left hand corner of the panel, as well as the fact that the mirror is angled towards the viewer's point of view, reinforce the idea that a future husband was the intended audience. She notes the work's unusually steep perspective, and concludes that the "panel's controlling gaze align[ed] it with the mirror's reflection of the woman's naked body".^[1] Although variants of this view have been long maintained, they are complicated by the fact that the similarities apply to the Harvard panel only.

Lorne Campbell of the National Gallery is not convinced by the functional connection. While he acknowledges the similarities between the works, he points out that the Arnolfini has not conclusively been established as a wedding portrait, and that even if this was the case, it is more likely that the London panel was originally covered by wings rather than by a single panel. He reinforces his view with the fact the lost work differs in two important aspects: that the bed curtains are not red, and that the mirror is not decorated. Campbell rejects the similarities as "coincidental",^[12] although it might be better argued that the lost work was a prototype or study. Julius S. Held believed that the Fogg panel was created as a cover for the London painting, an idea that held traction until rejected by Campbell in 1988 when he argued that such a painting was more likely to be covered by wings than a single piece, and that further the London panel in probability does not depict or commemorate either a marriage or betrothal.^[12]^[13]

Related Research Articles

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. According to Vasari and other art historians including Ernst Gombrich, he invented oil painting, though most now regard that claim as an oversimplification.

Early Netherlandish painting is the body of work by artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period, once known as the Flemish Primitives. 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 Arnolfini Portrait is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It forms a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges.

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 Man is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, from 1433. The inscription at the top of the panel, Als Ich Can was a common autograph for van Eyck, but here is unusually large and prominent. This fact, along with the man's unusually direct and confrontational gaze, have been taken as an indication that the work is a self-portrait.

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.

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.

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.

Cornelis van der Geest was a spice merchant from Antwerp, who used his wealth to support the Antwerp artists and to establish his art collection. He was also the dean of the haberdashers guild.

Portrait of Margaret van Eyck is a 1439 oil on wood painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck. It is one of the latest of his surviving paintings, and one of the earliest European artworks to depict a painter's spouse. Completed when Margaret van Eyck was around 34, it was hung until the early 18th century in the Bruges chapel of the Guild of painters. The work is thought to be a pendant or diptych panel for either a now lost self-portrait known from records until 1769, or of Jan van Eyck's likely self-portrait now in the National Gallery in London. It is in the collection of the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium.

The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele is a large oil-on-oak panel painting completed around 1434–1436 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It shows the painting's donor, Joris van der Paele, within an apparition of saints. The Virgin Mary is enthroned at the centre of the semicircular space, which most likely represents a church interior, with the Christ Child on her lap. St. Donatian stands to her right, Saint George—the donor's name saint—to her left. The panel was commissioned by van der Paele as an altarpiece. He was then a wealthy clergyman from Bruges, but elderly and gravely ill, and intended the work as his memorial.

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.

Portrait of Isabella of Portugal was a betrothal painting by the early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck that was one of his earliest works, but is now lost and known only from copies. It dates froms his 1428-29 visit to Portugal on behalf of Philip the Good, when he was sent as part of an embassy to evaluate the then 30-year-old Isabella's suitability as a bride for Philip.

Don Diego de Guevara was a Spanish courtier and ambassador who served four, possibly five, successive Dukes of Burgundy, spanning the Valois and Habsburg dynasties, mostly in the Low Countries. He was also a significant art collector.

Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon is a very small oil on panel portrait of an unidentified man attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck.

Portrait of Baudouin de Lannoy is a small oil-on panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, completed c. 1435. It shows Baldwin of Lannoy, a contemporary Flemish statesman and ambassador for Philip the Good at the court of Henry V of England. From surviving documents it is known that the work was commissioned to mark his entry into the order Baudouin de Lanno.

Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini is a small c. 1438 portrait by Jan van Eyck believed to be the same person as in the famous 1434 Arnolfini Portrait due to the similarities of facial features. Thus, the work is van Eyck's second portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, a wealthy merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany in central Italy, who spent most of his life in Flanders.

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 Virgin Mary sits on a throne in a garden holding the Child Jesus in her lap. Mother and child are flanked by angels playing musical instruments, with St Catherine of Alexandria to the left opposite St Barbara on the right. The male figure standing slightly behind the celestial group presumably commissioned the painting as a devotional donor portrait.

The Madonna of Jan Vos is a small oil panel painting begun by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck c. 1441 and finished by his workshop after his death in 1442. As he died during the period of its completion, it is generally considered to be his last work.

A Man and A Woman is the title sometimes used for a pair of oil and egg tempera on oak panel 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. 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.

References

Notes

1 2 3 Seidel, 38
↑ Schabacker; Jones, 56
↑ Harbison, 89
1 2 3 Schabacker; Jones, 59
↑ Schabacker; Jones, 65
↑ Bohn, Saslow, 35
↑ Schabacker; Jones, 66
↑ Ridderbos et al, 68
↑ Campbell, 200
↑ Campbell, 174
1 2 Schabacker; Jones, 60
1 2 Campbell, 201
↑ Ridderbos et al, 412

Sources

Bohn, Babette; Saslow, James M. A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. ISBN 1-4443-3726-2
Campbell, Lorne. The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings, London: National Gallery, 1998. ISBN 0-300-07701-7
Harbison, Craig. Jan van Eyck, The Play of Realism. London: Reaktion Books, 1991. ISBN 0-948462-18-3
Held, Julius. "Artis Pictoriae Amator. An Antwerp Art Patron and His Collection". Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Volume 6, 1957.
Ridderbos, Bernhard; Van Buren, Anne; Van Veen, Henk. Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-89236-816-0
Schabacker, Peter; Jones, Elizabeth. "Jan van Eyck's Woman at Her Toilet; Proposals concerning Its Subject and Context". Annual Report, Fogg Art Museum, 1974/1976.
Seidel, Linda. "The Value of Verisimilitude in the Art of Jan Van Eyck". "Yale French Studies"; Contexts: Style and Values in Medieval Art and Literature, 1991.

External links

Fogg Museum

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[s38-1] 1 2 3 Seidel, 38

[S&J-2] Schabacker; Jones, 56

[3] Harbison, 89

[S&J59-4] 1 2 3 Schabacker; Jones, 59

[SJ65-5] Schabacker; Jones, 65

[boSa-6] Bohn, Saslow, 35

[sj66-7] Schabacker; Jones, 66

[r68-8] Ridderbos et al, 68

[c200-9] Campbell, 200

[10] Campbell, 174

[S&J60-11] 1 2 Schabacker; Jones, 60

[Campbell,_201-12] 1 2 Campbell, 201

[13] Ridderbos et al, 412

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v t e Jan van Eyck
List of works
Portraits	Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon c. 1430 Léal Souvenir (1432) Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati (1432) Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) (1433) Arnolfini Portrait (1434) Portrait of Baudouin de Lannoy c. 1435 Portrait of Jan de Leeuw (1436) Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini c. 1438 Portrait of Margaret van Eyck (1439)
Single religious works	Annunciation (Madrid) c. 1432–1434 Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata c. 1432–1440 Annunciation (Washington) c. 1434–1436 Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (1435) Lucca Madonna (1436) Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele (1436) Madonna in the Church c. 1438–1440 Madonna at the Fountain (1439) Madonna of Jan Vos (1441–1443)
Polyptychs	Ghent Altarpiece (with Hubert van Eyck, completed 1432) Crucifixion and Last Judgement Diptych c. 1430–1440 Dresden Triptych c. 1437
Illuminated manuscripts	Turin–Milan Hours ("Hand G", c. 1420)
Drawings	Saint Barbara (1437) Study for Cardinal Niccolò Albergati c. 1432 Study for a Crucifixion c. 1440
Lost	Portrait of Isabella of Portugal c. 1428–29 Saint Christopher c. 1460 Woman Bathing c. 1434 Vera Icon (Head of Christ) (before 1438) Madonna of Nicolas van Maelbeke (after 1440)
Contested	The Three Marys at the Tomb c. 1420s The Fountain of Life c. 1432 Portrait of a Man with Carnation (1435)
Workshop	Crucifixion c. 1430–1432 Ince Hall Madonna (after 1434) Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and Saint John c. 1435 Saint Jerome in His Study (1442)
Related	Hubert van Eyck (brother)