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.
The triptych was purchased by the Louvre in 1890.
The work was commissioned by the Castilian merchant Jean de Sedano, and features the Virgin and child in an enclosed garden. Each wing shows a donor kneeling in prayer accompanied by a saint: John the Baptist is seen to the left, John the Evangelist to the right. The panels are unified by the continuous background landscape of green fields and a serene, deep blue seascape. When the wings are closed, the exterior shows Adam and Eve, thereby creating a contrast between the heavenly interior and sinful exterior.
Art historian Maryan Ainsworth notes that the triptych's dense imagery appears to be "a conflation of features of some of the most notable Netherlandish art of the last sixty years", indicating that it was created in response to the high demand across Europe at the time for Netherlandish triptychs. [1] Specifically, the figures are painted in a manner similar to Jan van Eyck's work, particularly Adam and Eve, [2] while the overall design and composition seem derived from Hans Memling. Maryan Ainsworth of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sees this as a conscious decision of the artist to align and identify himself as on a par with the masters of Netherlandish art. [3]
In 1503, de Sedano joined the Confraternity of the Holy Blood, a sect devoted to the veneration of a 12th-century relic brought from Jerusalem. The donor appears kneeling in prayer in the left wing, being blessed by John the Baptist, with his young son by his side. His much younger wife is shown in the right panel, presented to the Virgin by John the Evangelist. In the year he joined the Confraternity, de Sedano commissioned David to produce a painting of the Marriage at Cana. [4]
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.
Hans Memling was a German-Flemish painter who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. Born in the Middle Rhine region, he probably spent his childhood in Mainz. During his apprenticeship as a painter he moved to the Netherlands and spent time in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. In 1465 he was made a citizen of Bruges, where he became one of the leading artists and the master of a large workshop. A tax document from 1480 lists him among the wealthiest citizens. Memling's religious works often incorporated donor portraits of the clergymen, aristocrats, and burghers who were his patrons. These portraits built upon the styles which Memling learned in his youth.
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 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.
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.
Joos van Cleve was a leading painter active in Antwerp from his arrival there around 1511 until his death in 1540 or 1541. Within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, he combines the traditional techniques of Early Netherlandish painting with influences of more contemporary Renaissance painting styles.
A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or her, family. Donor portrait usually refers to the portrait or portraits of donors alone, as a section of a larger work, whereas votive portrait may often refer to a whole work of art intended as an ex-voto, including for example a Madonna, especially if the donor is very prominent. The terms are not used very consistently by art historians, as Angela Marisol Roberts points out, and may also be used for smaller religious subjects that were probably made to be retained by the commissioner rather than donated to a church.
The Braque Triptych is a c. 1452 oil-on-oak altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. When open, its three half-length panels reveal, from left to right, John the Baptist, The Virgin Mary with Jesus and Saint John the Evangelist, and on the right, Mary Magdalene. When the wings are closed, the work shows a vanitas motif of a skull and cross.
Virgin and Child with Four 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.
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.
The Madonna of Nicolas van Maelbeke was a large but now lost hinged triptych attributed to Jan van Eyck, thought to have been completed late in his career, perhaps his final work. It is known today through a replica dating to 1757–1760, and several near contemporary silverpoint copies, one by Petrus Christus or his workshop c. 1445 in Vienna, and another by an unknown artist, probably a member of his workshop, which is now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. The original was commissioned by Nicolas Maelbeke for the Saint Martin monastery in Ypres where it was installed in 1445. That the donor is present in the central panel is unusual; typically in mid-15th century triptychs donors would be in an accompanying wing.
Madonna of the Dry Tree or Our Lady of the Barren Tree is a small oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1462–1465, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child standing on a disembodied dead tree trunk. The painting's imagery is unusually dark and dramatic and shows a encircled woman within folds of black and withered branches that may represent a crown of thorns.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Moreel Triptych is the name given to a 1484 panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It was commissioned by the prominent Bruges politician, merchant and banker Willem Moreel and his wife Barbara van Vlaenderberch, née van Hertsvelde. It was intended as their epitaph at the chapel of the St. James's Church, Bruges, an extension they paid for, to the funerary church of Willem's family, where the couple intended to be interred in an underground tomb before the altar.
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.
Exeter Madonna or Virgin and Child with Saint Barbara and Jan Vos are names given to a small oil-on-wood panel painting completed c. 1450 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows Saint Barbara presenting a Carthusian monk identified as Jan Vos, to the Virgin Mary who holds the Christ Child in her arms. Its diminutive size suggests it was meant as a personal devotional piece.
