Virgin and Child with Saints (van der Weyden)

Virgin and Child with Saints,^[3] is a large mid-15th century oil-on-oak altarpiece by the early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The work is lost since at least the 17th century, known only through three surviving fragments and drawing of the full work in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum by a follower of van der Weyden.^[4] The drawing is sometimes attributed to the Master of the Drapery Studies.

The drawing has a loosely sketched background and shows, from left to right: an unidentified bishop saint with mitre and crosier making a blessing gesture; a narrow gap with a few wavy vertical lines suggesting a start at the outline of a further kneeling figure; a barefoot bearded figure in a rough robe identified as Saint John the Baptist; a seated Virgin holding on her lap the Christ-child who leans to the right, looking at a book; and holding the book, a kneeling beardless male identified as John the Evangelist. The drawing stops at the end of John's robe, at about the point on the London panel where Joseph's walking stick meets John and the Magdalen's robes.^[4] This suggests that the Magdalen panel was the first to be cut from the larger work.

The altarpiece's date is uncertain but believed to be between 1435 and 1438. Van der Weyden was made painter to the city of Brussels in 1435, and it is believed to have been painted after this appointment. The National Gallery gives "before 1438".^[5] Art historian John Ward notes that the altarpiece was one of van der Weyden's first masterpieces, created early in his career when he was still heavily influenced by Robert Campin. He proposes a c. 1437 date based on similarities to Campin's Werl Altarpiece.^[6]

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(jazz music) Dr. Zucker: Under a black night sky, with this dim light and this sense of doom, the Virgin Mary's fingers are knit together in one of the most startling and stark images. Dr. Harris: We're looking at one of the jewels in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Roger van der Weyden's, The Crucifixion, with the Mourning Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist This is a radically reduced, simplified image that because of that reduction, conveys extraordinary emotional power. Dr. Zucker: There's a sense of solemnity here that is overpowering. The geometry creates eternal mourning, as if these figures will always be in this deep grief. Dr. Harris: We're looking at an earthly scene, the scene of the crucifixion. Dr. Zucker: On Golgotha. Dr. Harris: Right, the hill outside of Jerusalem where Christ was crucified, but there is a sense that we're not looking at that scene in the way that we usually do, where we see on either side the two thieves who were crucified along with Jesus, a landscape behind him filled with figures, other mourners at the base of the cross. This isn't so much a representation of the crucifixion as it is a representation of the idea of the crucifixion. Dr. Zucker: This is almost a emotional distillation. By removing everything that's unnecessary, there's a heightened emotional impact. It suggests to me that this was not meant for a public church, but perhaps it was meant for a monastic environment or an environment where people knew the story well and the idea here was to just intensify the emotion, to intensify the spiritual. Dr. Harris: Right, to simplify the image as a kind of aid in prayer and visualization to help us, as viewers, to feel the emotion that Mary feels. Dr. Zucker: An art historian has actually pointed out the relationship between this kind of rendering and the monastic work of Fra Angelico, for instance, an artist who's known for elegant and spare, but also very intensely emotional kind of painting. Dr. Harris: Right, and we might think of Fra Angelico's frescoes at the Monastery of San Marco, where he lived. Dr. Zucker: So powerful for me are those red banners that hang and frame both sets of figures. If you look on the left, you see Saint John, who's supporting Mary as she faints. She falls to the ground and we really feel her weight, we see her body under even the heavy cloth that she wears, but she falls so elegantly and so beautifully, but still completely enveloped in her pain. Christ is also beautifully illuminated against that brilliant red ground. That red is so vivid and so beautiful and so rich and so much an expression of the violence and passion and yet, also, the quiet of this moment. I think the thing that I find most startling is not only the black sky, but also that little shadow line behind the red cloths. Those curtains are hanging over that stone wall that creates such a shallow space in the painting as a whole, but they're not actually touching the wall. You'll notice that there's a lip at the top and so they hang over, creating this thin plane of air that's utterly still and because those curtains fall flat, we get a sense of the airlessness of this space, as if nothing is moving, nothing is changing. Dr. Harris: Yet, that very same shadow also convinces us of the reality of this scene and it makes it all the more concrete and palpable and also creates a flat vibrant surface that makes Christ's body stand out almost like sculpture. Dr. Zucker: Because that cloth had recently been folded and it's creases have not yet fallen out, there's a grid behind the body, as well. The strictness of the geometry against the body creates a kind of formality that is, in some ways, very powerful, visually. You've got the organic, stressed, tortured body against lines that are clear and structured. It makes it all the more vivid. Dr. Harris: It also contrasts with the fluttering of his loincloth, a kind of spiritual feeling within this otherwise very still and somber image. Dr. Zucker: That somberness is the result of the darks above, of the shallowness, and of course, of the sense of stillness. As you said, this is a painting that is really about our own reflection on these events. Look below Christ's feet, you can just see the little hill that is Golgotha, represented schematically. Just in front of that, you can see that there's a small ravine, which separates these spiritual figures, this spiritual space from our world, but on our side of that crevice, you see a skull. It's traditional to represent this skull, but this particular skull is staring out at us and seems to be a kind of warning, to be a kind of reminder, a reminder of death, a memento mori. Dr. Harris: Specifically, a reminder that Christ is our path away from death to eternal life in heaven. We're going to die, but it's through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, which is rendered so very close to that skull. The blood of the wound from the nail on his feet, drawing our eye down toward that skull. Dr. Zucker: In a typically northern fashion, that bolt that so violently pierces Christ's feet is painted with a vividness, an accuracy that makes it seem absolutely believable. Dr. Harris: This painting is really a remarkable combination of details that are rendered incredibly realistically, like that bolt or the creases in the cloth and then these supernatural elements. Dr. Zucker: There's also Mary being comforted by John, but Christ, the most tortured figure, is absolutely alone, that there is this sense of isolation, that there really is no way to comfort Christ. There's something terribly tragic that results from this. Dr. Harris: The way that John looks at Christ, there's a sense of how did we as humanity do this to God? This shallow space, this emphasis on human emotion. Paintings that are especially pared down, especially acetic are typical of his later work. (jazz music)

Remnants

Fragments

At an unknown point before 1811, the original altarpiece was broken into at least three pieces,^[7] possibly due to damage, although the Magdalen fragment is in good condition. The black overpaint was likely added after the early 17th century when Netherlandish painting had fallen from favour and was unfashionable. Campbell believes that after the removal of the background detail "it looked sufficiently like a genre piece to hang in a well-known collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings".^[8] From the size of three surviving panels in relation to the drawing, it is estimated that the original was at least 1 m high by 1.5 m wide; the bishop and Magdalen seem to clearly mark the horizontal extremities, but the extent of the picture above and below the surviving elements and the drawing cannot be judged. Such a size is comparable with smaller altarpieces of the period.^[4] The background was overpainted with a thick layer of black/brown pigment until it was cleaned in 1955; it was only after the layer's removal that it was linked to the upper body and head of Joseph from the Lisbon piece. These two works were not recorded in inventory until 1907, when they appear in the collection of Léo Lardus in Suresnes, France.^[3]

The London panel shows much of the clothing of two other figures from the original altarpiece. To the left of the Magdalen is the red robe of what appears to be a kneeling figure. The figure and robe, and less precisely the background, match a kneeling Saint John the Evangelist.^[3] Behind the Magdalen is a standing figure in blue and red robes, with linear rosary beads in one hand^[9] and a walking stick in the other. A panel at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon shows the head of a figure believed to be the Saint Joseph; the background and clothes match with those of the figure behind the Magdalen on the London panel.^[3]

There is a further small panel in Lisbon of a female head, richly or royally dressed, which first appeared in 1907 with the Joseph panel when it was recorded in the inventory of Leo Nardus at Suresnes. The figure may represent Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and from both the angle of her cloth and the fact that the river behind her would be parallel to that in the exterior of the London panel it can be assumed that she was kneeling.^[10] In the Stockholm drawing she is omitted, or only traces of her dress shown. The Joseph panel has a sliver of a view through a window to an exterior scene; if the other female is presumed to be kneeling, the trees above the waterway aligns with those in the London panel.^[4] Some art historians, including Martin Davies and John Ward,^[11] have been slow to allow the Catherine panel as part of the altarpiece, though it is undoubtedly by van der Weyden or a near-contemporary follower. Evidence against this link includes the fact that the moulding of the window to the left of the Gulbenkian female saint is plain, while that next to Saint Joseph is chamfered. Such an inconsistency in a single van der Weyden work is unusual. The panels are of equal thickness (1.3 cm) and of near-identical size; the Saint Catherine panel measures 18.6 cm × 21.7 cm (7.3 in × 8.5 in), the Saint Joseph 18.2 cm × 21 cm (7.2 in × 8.3 in).^[12]

Lorne Campbell thinks that though the Catherine head is "obviously less well drawn and less successfully painted than the Magdalen", it "seems likely" that all three fragments came from the same original work; he points out that "about half way up the right edge of this fragment ["Catherine"] is a small triangle of red, outlined by a continuous underdrawn brushstroke ... It is likely that the red is part of the contour of the missing figure of the Baptist".^[4] The small piece is on the outermost edge of the panel, and only visible when it was removed from the frame. Ward believes the piece corresponds directly with the folds of John's robes.^[12]

Drawing

The Stockholm drawing contains a narrow blank gap to the right of the bishop with a few indistinct lines that could represent the lower profile of the kneeling figure of Saint Catherine. Although none of the faces in the three surviving panels match any in the drawing, a 1971 reconstruction by art historian John Ward—which combined all of the works into a composition of a central Virgin and Child flanked by six saints—is widely accepted. The Stockholm drawing's original location or history before the 19th century is unknown, except that the verso shows a surviving carving of the Virgin and Child attributed to a Brussels workshop from about 1440. This carving is also now in Portugal.^[13]

References

Notes

^ Ward (1971), 27
^ Ward (1971), 29
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Campbell (2004), 49
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Campbell (1998), 398–400
^ "Rogier van der Weyden". National Gallery, London. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
^ Ward (1971), 28
^ Campbell (1998), 394, 398
^ Campbell (1998), 405
^ Joseph's beads closely resemble those in the Arnolfini Portrait, which was painted around the same time and is on permanent display in the National Gallery alongside The Magdalen Reading. See Jones, 46, 54
^ Campell (2009), 49
^ Davies and Ward have published, in 1957 and 1971 respectively, diagrammatic reconstructions of the altarpiece based on evidence available of the time. Campbell is responsible for much of the scholarship since.
^ ^a ^b Ward (1971), 32
^ Campbell (1998), 398–400, illustrating the drawing, and with a drawing of a full reconstruction.

Bibliography

Bolton, Roy (ed). The Collectors: Old Masters Painting. London: Sphinx Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-907200-03-8
Campbell, Lorne. The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings. London: National Gallery, 1998. ISBN 978-1-85709-171-7
Campbell, Lorne. Van der Weyden. London: Chaucer Press, 2004. ISBN 1-904449-24-7 (The text dates from 1977)
Davies, Martin. "Netherlandish Primitives: Rogier van der Weyden and Robert Campin". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, vol. 71, 1937. 140–145.
Davies, Martin. "Rogier van der Weyden's Magdalen Reading". Miscellanea Prof. Dr. D. Roggen. Antwerp: Uitgevrij de Sikkel, 1957. 77–89
Ward, John. "A Proposed Reconstruction of an Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden". The Art Bulletin, vol. 53, 1971. 27–35.

v t e Rogier van der Weyden
List of works
Single religious works	Virgin and Child Enthroned (c. 1430–1432) The Madonna Standing (c. 1430–1432) The Magdalen Reading (fragment, c. 1435–1438) Durán Madonna (c. 1435–1438) The Descent from the Cross (c. 1435–1438) Virgin and Child with Saints (c. 1435–1438) Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (c. 1435–1440) St Hubert Altarpiece (c. late 1430s) Christ on the Cross with Mary and St John (c. 1440) Pietà (c. 1441) Visitation (c. 1445) St Jerome and the Lion (c. 1450–1465) Virgin and Child (c. 1460) Lamentation of Christ (c. 1460–1463) Medici Madonna (c. 1460–1464)
Portraits	Portrait of a Woman (c. 1435) Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1440–1445) Portrait of Isabella of Portugal (c. 1445–1450) Portrait of Antoine, 'Grand Bâtard' of Burgundy (c. 1460) Portrait of Francesco d'Este (c. 1460) Portrait of a Lady (c. 1460) Portrait of Jean Gros (c. 1460–1464) Portrait of John I, Duke of Cleves
Diptychs	Diptych of Jeanne of France (c. 1452–1470) Crucifixion Diptych (c. 1464–1465) Diptych of Philip de Croÿ with The Virgin and Child (c. 1460)
Triptychs	Annunciation Triptych (c. 1434) Miraflores Altarpiece (c. 1442–1445) Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (c. 1448) Beaune Altarpiece (c. 1445–1450) Bladelin Altarpiece (c. 1450) The Braque Triptych (c. 1452) Saint Columba Altarpiece (c. 1455) St John Altarpiece (c. 1455)
Civic	The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald (c. 1450)
Miniature	Jean Wauquelin presenting his 'Chroniques de Hainaut' to Philip the Good (1447–1448)
Embroidery	Fragments of a Cope with the Seven Sacraments
Workshop	Portrait of Philip the Good (after 1450) Portrait of Charles the Bold (1460)

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