Vienna Diptych

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Hugo van der Goes - The Fall of Man and The Lamentation - Google Art Project.jpg
The Fall of Man (left panel)
Goes - Lamentation of Christ - Vienna Diptych right.jpg
Lamentation (right panel)

The Vienna Diptych or the Fall and Redemption of Man [1] is a religious diptych by the Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes depicting the fall of man on the left panel and the lamentation of Christ on the right panel. Painted in the second half of the 15th century, the diptych is housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. [1] According to Wolfgang Kermer, who also described the work in detail in its condition in 1967, the diptych is unique in the history of diptych painting in terms of its subject matter (antithesis: Fall of Man / Redemption). [2]

The tempting Serpent is depicted as a bipedal salamander-like creature because it was assumed that the serpent could walk before God's curse compelled it to crawl and eat dust. [3] The human-headed Serpent was introduced into art in the late 13th century. [3] Subsequent Renaissance artists generally abandoned the depiction of Serpent as a human-headed creature. [3]

The reverse side of the left panel has an image of Saint Genevieve painted on it. [4] The reverse side of the right panel bears traces of a coat of arms, consisting of a shield with a black eagle and two supporters, of which only the feet survived. [4] The coat of arms was painted in the 17th century and indicates possible House of Habsburg ownership of the diptych. [4]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Altarpiece</span> Religious artwork behind an altar

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renaissance art</span> Visual arts produced during the European Renaissance

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugo van der Goes</span> Flemish painter (c. 1430/1440–1482)

Hugo van der Goes was one of the most significant and original Flemish 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.

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<i>Portrait of Francesco dEste</i> Painting by 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.

<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>Adam and Eve</i> (Cranach) 1528 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder

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<i>Crucifixion Diptych</i> (van der Weyden) Diptych by Rogier van der Weyden

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<i>Portrait of Margaret van Eyck</i> 1439 painting by Jan van Eyck

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.

<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</i> diptych Two panel paintings 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>Madonna Standing</i> (van der Weyden) Painting by Rogier van der Weyden

The Madonna Standing is a small painting by the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden dating from about 1430–1432. It is the left panel of a diptych held in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM), Vienna since 1772. The right panel portrays St. Catherine and is also attributed by the KHM to van der Weyden, but is inferior in quality and generally regarded as by a workshop member.

<i>Virgin and Child Enthroned</i> c. 1433 painting attributed to Rogier van der Weyden

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.

<i>Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove</i> Painting by Hans Memling

The Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove is a 1487 painting by Hans Memling, showing on the left side the Virgin and Child, and on the right side Maarten van Nieuwenhove. It is now kept in the Old St. John's Hospital in Bruges. It is unsigned, but has invariably been attributed to Hans Memling since the middle of the 19th century.

<i>Pagagnotti Triptych</i> Triptych by Hans Memling

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. 1 2 "Goes, Hugo van der – Vienna Diptych". Van Pelt Library . Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  2. Wolfgang Kermer: Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts; mit einem Katalog. Düsseldorf: Dr. Stehle, 1967 [PhD diss., Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 1966], 2 vols., 1:151–154 (iconographic interpretation), 2:136–137 (with bibliography), ill. 175, 176.
  3. 1 2 3 Koch, Robert A. (1965). "The Salamander in Van der Goes' Garden of Eden". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 28 (1): 323–326 [323]. doi:10.2307/750680. JSTOR   750680. S2CID   195042873.
  4. 1 2 3 Trowbridge, Mark (2011). "Sin and Redemption in Late-Medieval Art and Theater: The Magdalen as Role Model in Hugo van der Goes's Vienna Diptych". In Sarah Blick; Laura Deborah Gelfand (eds.). Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical, and Spatial Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art. Brill. pp. 415–445 [444]. doi:10.1163/9789004215139_013. ISBN   978-9004205734.