Pre-Eyckian Panel Paintingin the Low Countries

With the support of

The Courtin-Bouché Fund managed by the King Baudouin Foundation

and

The Richard Zondervan Trust

Contributions to Fifteenth-Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège

9

Under the auspices of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

and the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten

Publications:I. Corpus

II. RepertoryIII. Contributions

Chairman: Cyriel StrooVice-chairman: Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner

Members:Founding member:

Nicole Veronee-VerhaegenMembers representing the Académie royale des Sciences, Lettres et Beaux-Arts de Belgique:

Pierre Cockshaw†, Pierre Colman, Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren, Paul Philippot, Philippe Roberts-Jones

Members representing the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten:Guy Delmarcel, Elisabeth Dhanens, Henri Pauwels, Cyriel Stroo, Jan Van der Stock, Hans Vlieghe

Co-opted members:

Christina Ceulemans, Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner

Scientifi c board:Anne-Marie Bonenfant-Feytmans, Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, Dirk De Vos, Jacqueline Folie,

Nicole Goetghebeur, Roger Van Schoute

Scientifi c secretaries:Hélène Mund

Dominique Deneffe

Centre for the Study of Fifteenth-Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège

Pre-Eyckian Panel Paintingin the Low Countries

1

C A T A L O G U E

Brussels

2009

Dominique Deneffe, Famke Peters, Wim Fremout

Laboratory Studies

Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns

Technical Observations and Advice

Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Pascale Fraiture

Edited by

Cyriel Stroo

Working Committee

Cyriel Stroo, promotorDominique Vanwijnsberghe, co-promotor

Christina CeulemansChristina Currie

Livia Depuydt-ElbaumLiliane Masschelein-Kleiner

Hélène MundHans Nieuwdorp

Catheline Périer-D’IeterenJana Sanyova

Steven SaverwynsMyriam Serck-Dewaide

Jan Van der StockGuido Van de Voorde Hélène Verougstraete

TranslationDutch to English: Lee Preedy

5

Contents

Preface Lorne Campbell 7

Glimpses of a Lost Splendour. An Introduction to Pre-Eyckian Panel PaintingCyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe 13

Acknowledgements 33

Abbreviations 37

NOTES ON METHODOLOGY

Christina Currie

Examination of Paintings in Infrared at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage 41

Pascale Fraiture

Dendrochronological Analysis of Pre-Eyckian Paintings 47

Wim Fremout, Steven Saverwyns and Jana Sanyova

Pre-Eyckian Works in the Laboratory: Analytical Techniques and Methodology 71

CATALOGUE

1. Tower Retable with Scenes from the Infancy of Christ

(Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. no. 2) 83

2. Crucifi xion with St Catherine and St Barbara (Calvary of the Tanners) (Bruges, Cathedral of the Holy Saviour) 125

3. St Ursula Shrine

(Bruges, Memling in Sint-Jan – Hospitaalmuseum, inv. no. O.SJ149. V) 157

4. Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Kortessem Panel – Alken Predella)(Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des

Beaux-Arts de Belgique, inv. no. 4883) 197

6

5. Entombment (Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 1914-CF) 273

6. Triptych with Crucifi xion and Saints (Mechelen, Stedelijke Musea, Museum Schepenhuis,

OCMW Collection, inv. no. S 19) 289

7. Annunciation and Visitation (Walcourt Panels) (Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois,

Collection Société archéologique de Namur, inv. no. 36) 311

8. St Maurice Shrine (Namur, Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois,

Collection Société archéologique de Namur, inv. no. 150) 359

9. St Anne with the Virgin and Child (Neerlanden, Church of St Mary Magdalene) 387

10. Reliquary of the Virgin’s Veil (Tongeren, Basilica of the Nativity of Our Lady, inv. no. OLV-LI-225) 421

Bibliography 447

Index of Works 485

Photographic Acknowledgements 503

Preface

Lorne Campbell

7

Van Mander in 1604 called Jan van Eyck ‘a brilliant light […] so resplendent that art-loving Italy could behold it only with complete astonishment […]’.1 In 1822 Waagen wrote of ‘that total night of the arts from which Jan van Eyck suddenly emerged as a star of the fi rst rank’. Waagen hoped that, by studying manuscripts, he would be able ‘to some extent to illuminate that total night of the arts’.2 In 1854, he explained his purpose more clearly:

[…] with the exception of Italy, which possesses a large number of wall paintings and pictures on wood of the Middle Ages, the history of art as regards the other nations of Europe at such time is solely to be traced in their miniatures. These alone furnish us with a continuous series of specimens of the pictorial art of France, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain during a number of centuries, extending to the 15th century; the larger paintings of those ages, whether on walls, or on wood, having, with rare exceptions, entirely perished.3

Observing the ‘closest correspondence’ between manuscript illumination and panel painting in Tuscany in the fourteenth century and in the Low Countries between 1440 and 1500, he considered it legitimate to take miniatures, especially those from the ‘most sumptuous’ manuscripts, as a basis for ‘correct conclusions’ on stylistic development. He expressed an

[…] earnest desire to publish a history of the miniature painting of the Middle Ages illustrated by faithful facsimiles from the fi nest and best authenticated MSS. so as distinctly to show the development of painting in each nation from the 9th to the 15th centuries.

Realising that the dates of the manuscripts could be ‘often precisely determined’, he aimed to compare with the miniatures those few surviving wall paintings and panels of uncertain dates and so to place them chronologically and geo graph-ically.4

Though Waagen never managed to publish his faithful facsimiles, later scholars have done so; many of the illuminated manuscripts produced in France and the Low Countries between about 1350 and about 1450 have been carefully investigated. A few of the paintings on fabric supports, some of the murals and many of the paintings on panel have been attentively studied. Some, however, remain unfamiliar or unknown to most art-historians. The question of survival of

PREFACE

8

works of art has been examined and is coming to be better understood. A few myths and misconceptions, nevertheless, persist and are perpetuated in standard text-books.

Enormous numbers of paintings on cloth and on panel have been lost. They have fallen victims to iconoclasm, the ravages of wars or the neglect that was the fate of ‘primitive’ pictures in later centuries. Those few paintings that still exist have survived by chance: because they had been exported to safer regions, for example the duchy of Burgundy; because they had been removed from public view and relegated to store-rooms; or because they had been recycled. Some were adapted for different patrons, while others were made into furniture. The extant paintings constitute a random sample that may be representative. Many of the exported pictures, like the wing panels by Broederlam, are of exceptionally high quality. There is every reason to believe that many artists of outstanding ability, besides Broederlam, were active in the Low Countries between about 1350 and about 1430. It cannot be coincidental that the most highly respected artists active at the courts of France and in the duchy of Burgundy were from the Low Countries. Jean Bondol of Bruges became, some years before 1368, painter to Charles V of France, who paid him almost double the salary allowed to Jean d’Orléans, also his painter. Between 1374 and 1381, Bondol designed for Charles’s brother Louis I of Anjou the great tapestries of the Apocalypse, now preserved at Angers.5 Jacques Coene, another painter from Bruges, settled in Paris. In 1388, John I of Aragon, having heard of his skill in representing fi gures and in making likenesses, tried to persuade him to cross the Pyrenees and enter his service.6 Coene did not go to Aragon but in 1399 went to Milan as ‘engineer’ or architect of the cathedral.7 Jacquemart de Hesdin and Jean de Beaumetz probably came from Artois and Hainault. Jean Malouel and his nephews the three brothers de Limbourg were from Nijmegen; while Henri Bellechose was from Breda.8 Pol de Limbourg’s patron John, Duke of Berry, provided him with a rich wife and a palatial house, described in 1434 as ‘one of the largest, most spacious and most remarkable in Bourges […] suitable for lodging one of the princes of the royal family […]’. Charles VII then granted it to the Duke of Bourbon, who was to live there. The duke and his heirs were to have the property in perpetuity.9 Sculptors too went from the Low Countries to the courts of France: Jean de Liège; André Beauneveu, from Valenciennes; Jean de Cambrai; Claus Sluter, from Haarlem. In 1404, Charles VI admitted Jean de Cambrai to his Order of the Broom-Cod.10 Netherlandish painters also went further south, for example to Catalonia, where several Brabantine painters settled: maestre Enrich de Brusselles (1372);11 Joan and Nicolau de Bruseles (1379);12 Joan or Enequi de Bruxelles (1388-90);13 another(?) Nicholaus de Bruxelles (1393);14 another (?) Joan de Bruxelles (1402);15 Gerardus de Bruna, from Diest (1402).16

The fact that artists from the Low Countries were sought after and honoured throughout western Europe seems a fair indication that the towns of the Netherlands were centres where excellent and innovative artists were trained. The resident Netherlanders who taught the brilliant pupils must themselves have been outstanding artists who fostered progressive traditions. In the period around 1400,

PREFACE

9

Paris was without dispute the leading artistic centre of Europe; but its pre-eminence was due in large part to immigrant artists from the Low Countries.

The legend that Jan van Eyck invented oil-painting has at last been dismissed, since it is clearly established that painters in northern Europe had been working in oils for centuries before Jan’s time.17 He must have benefi ted greatly from the experience of many, many generations of oil-painters. Recent research has revealed how he and his contemporaries used manganese-containing glass as a drier.18 No doubt their predecessors had also experimented with driers, with different kinds of oil, with heat-bodied and partially heat-bodied oils and perhaps with volatile diluents. Spirits of turpentine and oil of spike of lavender were available by the mid-fourteenth century.19 Even if they did not serve as thinners, they could have been employed very effi caciously in cleaning brushes and other equipment. One question which needs further investigation is the use of egg-tempera by some fourteenth-century northern artists. The ‘Wilton Diptych’, for example, is painted in egg-tempera.20 Admiration for Sienese painting, especially after works by Simone Martini became available in Avignon and Dijon, may have encouraged experimentation with egg. Some fi fteenth-century Netherlandish painters, inclu-ding an artist of the Flémalle group, Rogier van der Weyden and Dirk Bouts, worked in oils over underpaintings in egg tempera, which had the advantage of drying very quickly. Jan van Eyck, however, seems not to have used egg.21

Constantly refi ning ideas on the uses of media, scholars continue to check and revise earlier hypotheses and to link results gained from increasingly sophisticated methods of technical analysis with statements made in fourteenth- and fi fteenth-century manuals on the art of painting.22

The present study focuses on a small but immensely signifi cant group of paintings, the sole survivors among the thousands that must have been produced in the Low Countries before the 1420s. Their connections with the illuminated manuscripts of those regions are re-examined. The book makes available a wealth of information on these pictures so that they will be more readily and correctly understood by art-historians across the world. It elucidates Waagen’s ‘total night of the arts’ from which Jan van Eyck emerged and, though nothing can diminish his sublime radiance, it will make his achievement more comprehensible. It should also show why his work looks dramatically different from that of his forebears. It was not that Jan was a better, more accurate draughtsman than his predecessors: Malouel and Bellechose, for example, were both wonderfully able, refi ned and correct draughtsmen. It has been claimed that Jan used optical devices to achieve the extraordinary verisimilitude of his pictures;23 but it was his ability to record changing tones, rather than his superb draughtsmanship, that made his paintings seem so very different from those of his antecedents. They tended to modulate tonal changes with false gentleness; while Jan, greatly extending the ranges of tones and colours used, had no inhibition about placing, when needful, the darkest dark next to the lightest light. His capacity to record the effects of light is of course one of his distinguishing qualities and may have been made possible by his unsurpassed mastery of the oil technique. His contemporaries, even the Master of Flémalle and

PREFACE

10

Rogier van der Weyden, pursued similar ends by differing means but could not equal his achievement in conveying effects of light and shadow.

It is interesting that two of Jan’s favoured Biblical passages, used in three of his paintings, described the Virgin in terms of light:

For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it.24

For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God.25

Waagen may not have been conscious that he was echoing these passages when he described Jan van Eyck as ‘a star of the fi rst rank’ emerging from ‘that total night of the arts’. His hopes of illuminating ‘that total night’ are at last fulfi lled, 185 years after he fi rst expressed them, in this ambitiously conceived and brilliantly accomplished publication.

1. Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 199.

2. ‘[…] uns jene gänzliche Kunstnacht, aus der J. v. Eyck plötzlich als ein Stern erster Größe heraustritt, einigermaßen zu erhellen […]’: Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Ueber

Hubert und Johann van Eyck, Breslau, 1822: 67-68.

3. Gustav Friedrich Waagen, ‘On the Importance of Manuscripts with Miniatures in the History of Art’, Philobiblon Society,

Bibliographical and Historical Miscellanies, I, London, 1854: 5-6.

4. Ibid: 6-11.

5. Charles Sterling, La peinture médiévale à Paris

1300-1500, I, Paris, 1987: 187-202.

6. ‘[…] sapia ben formar e propriament divisar fi gures de persones, e resemblar fi sonomies de cares’: see José M.a Madurell Marimón, ‘El pintor Lluís Borrassà. Su vida, su tiempo, sus seguidores y sus obras. III. Addenda al Apéndice documental’, Anales y

Boletín de los Museos de Arte de Barcelona, 10, 1952: 89.

7. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of

Jean de Berry, The Boucicaut Master, London, 1968: 60-62, 141.

8. Sophie Jugie, ‘Biographies des artistes principaux’, L’art à la cour de Bourgogne.

Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans

Peur (1364-1419) (exhib. cat. Dijon, Musée

des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art), Dijon, 2004: 353-355.

9. Jean-Louis-Alphonse Huillard-Bréholles, ‘Paul natif d’Allemaigne peintre du duc de Berry, grand oncle de Charles VI’, Archives de l’art français, 6, 1852: 216-218; an extract is in Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols., New York, 1974: 81.

10. Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière, Histoire de Berry […], Paris, 1689: 1042.

11. Antoni Rubio y Lluch, Documents per l’Historia de la Cultura Catalana Mig-eval, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1908-1921, II: 163-164

12. Joseph Gudiol, La pintura mig-eval Catalana, II, Els Trescentistes, segona part, Barcelona, 1929: 150.

13. José M.a Madurell Marimón, ‘El pintor Lluís Borrassà. Su vida, su tiempo, sus seguidores y sus obras, I. Texto. Apéndice documental. Indices’, Anales y Boletín de los Museos de Arte de Barcelona, 7, 1949: 104.

14. Madurell Marimón, cited in n. 6, pp. 150-151.

15. Gudiol, cited in note 12, p. 15016. Madurell Marimón, cited in note 6,

p. 330. The property of a Meester Geerts Brunen, den beeltmakere, is cited in a Diest document of 1438 (Eugène Frankignoulle, ‘Notes pour server à l’histoire de l’art en

Notes

PREFACE

11

Brabant’, Annales de la Société royale d’archéologie de Bruxelles, 39, 1935: 126, no. 461).

17. Jo Kirby in Lorne Campbell, Susan Foister and Ashok Roy, eds., Early Northern European Painting (National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 18), 1997: 40.

18. Marika Spring, ‘Pigments in Sixteenth-Century Paintings of the German School: New Perspectives from Cataloguing the Paintings in the National Gallery in London’, to be published in the proceedings of the Grünewald colloquium, Colmar, January 2006.

19. Kirby, cited in note 17, p. 42.20. Dillian Gordon, et al., Making & Meaning,

The Wilton Diptych (exhib. cat., London, National Gallery), London 1993: 80.

21. Lorne Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools, London, 1998: 30, 46, 52, 56, 60, 73, 94, 411, 428, 440.

22. Catherine Higgitt, Marika Spring and David Saunders, ‘Pigment-medium Interactions in Oil Paint Films containing Read Lead or Lead-tin Yellow’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 24, 2003: 75-95, especially p. 87, correcting misleading results from media analyses.

23. David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of theOld Masters, London, 2001; revised edn, London, 2006; see also the review by David Bomford, Burlington Magazine, 144, 2002: 173-174.

24. Wisdom of Solomon VII: 29.25. Ibid., VII: 26. The three paintings are:

the panel of the Virgin from the Ghent Altarpiece; the Virgin and Child with Saints and Canon van der Paele (Bruges); and the small triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor (Dresden).

13

Glimpses of a Lost SplendourAn Introduction to Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting

Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

The new artistic concepts of the Van Eycks, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden and their followers brought about a revolution in pictorial representation in the Southern Netherlands and subsequently in the whole of Europe. With its excep-tional precision in the representation of visible reality their art surpassed everything that had previously been achieved. The perfecting of the oil painting technique allowed almost infi nite variation in its use. The result was an extraordinary diversity of optical qualities. Their paintings refl ect the complexity of man’s ways of seeing. It seems as if they sought to duplicate our visual perception of the world. This mir-roring of reality was a highly signifi cant factor in the appreciation of their work. At the start of this research we believed that indications of this mastery must already be detectable in the work of their predecessors. We hoped that the experi-mental phase that preceded the Ars nova of the Flemish Primitives could be recon-structed to a certain extent. We were convinced that the creative development that led to this sophisticated imagery must be traceable in the art of around 1400. The results thus far are promising – partial, of course, in this phase of the research, but still of a nature to signifi cantly amend the traditional image of painting in this period. In his Early Netherlandish Painting, published in 1953, Erwin Panofsky devotes a measure of attention to panel painting in the Low Countries around 1400.1 In addition to the work of Melchior Broederlam he mentions ten panels, three in the Northern and seven in the Southern Netherlands. Apart from the dominating art of Broeder lam, which he considers superior in every respect, he distinguishes two different but related trends: the style of the northern and eastern areas of the Nether-lands and that of the south and west. The link between the two consists, according to Panofsky, of a prevailing ‘domestic naturalism’ for which the Scenes from the Life

of the Virgin in Brussels (see cat. no. 4) could be the paradigm. With a few characteristic features and on the basis of a handful of works Panofsky defi nes a number of ‘regional schools’ in the Netherlands. Apart from one or two paintings he considers highly sophisticated, among them Broederlam’s wings for the Crucifi xion Altarpiece (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), the Norfolk Triptych (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) (fi g. 1) and the Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych

(Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh and Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum), he assesses the painting in these regions rather as exemplifying an ‘average or even sub-average production’.2

INTRODUCTION

14

It is now realized that Panofsky’s picture of early Netherlandish painting was far from complete. It requires addition, nuance, and improvement. ‘Naturalism’ can no longer be regarded as the dominating, let alone the exclusive hallmark of art in the Low Countries around 1400.3 The division into ‘schools’ that are defi ned on the basis of scarcely more than a single work is untenable. Such objects as have survived can be regarded at most as the fortuitous survivors of just so many workshops or individual artists. With a single exception they are all isolated workss. The notion of ‘school’ itself sheds a far from adequate light on the (artistic) fabric of a local production. It takes no account of the individual style of the master, the possibility of collabo-rative work and/or competing artists. Moreover, it becomes increasingly clear that the ‘regional’ dimension of an artistic production – a concept that often seems to be underpinned only by romantic nationalistic ideas – takes insuffi cient account of socio-economic reality. What a work of art would look like was also largely determined by its patron and his or her milieu and budget, its destination and function, the ability of the artist and his or her origin, training and experience. The material and technical properties of the medium itself are also signifi cant factors. Therefore, we have tried to approach the entire issue without a priori assumptions. In the fi rst place it is necessary to study each work individually, to document it as fully as possible from every relevant angle, and to trace a network of relationships, both among the works themselves and in comparison with the artistic production of around 1400 as a whole. On the other hand, the works’ pictorial diversity should also be recorded in as nuanced a way as possible. Thus we hope to refi ne Panofsky’s sketch of pre-Eyckian panel painting and to give it more relief, colour and perspective.

1. Norfolk Triptych (opened: 33 × 58 cm), Southern Nether-lands, c.1415-1420 – Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

INTRODUCTION

15

Since Panofsky’s groundbreaking work the study of European painting around 1400 has gathered momentum. The exhibitions in Vienna in 1962,4 in Frankfurt am Main in 1975-1976,5 and, of course, the great Parler event in 1978 in Cologne6 were milestones in the appreciation of the subject and the charting of border-transcending or ‘international’ relationships and infl uences. In 1990 a highly praiseworthy synthe-sis of the art of central Europe, the impressive Internationale Gotik in Mitteleuropa was published by Götz Pochat and Brigitte Wagner. The research carried out at the IRPA/KIK7 has coincided with the major international exhibitions held in recent years in Paris8 (2004), Dijon (2004), Bourges (2004), Nijmegen (2005), Budapest (2006) and Luxemburg (2006), all of which had a bearing on the art production of this period in the areas surrounding the Low Countries. They evidence a revived interest in this material. It is not by chance that a number of the works that are the focus of the present research occupied a central place in some of these exhibitions. They confi rm the vital importance and key position of the medieval Netherlands as a crucible of artistic innovation around 1400. ‘Flemish’ book illumination of this period has already been the subject of innova-tive and fundamental study at the Catholic University of Leuven under the direction of the late Maurits Smeyers. The results have not yet been published in their entirety,9 but none the less a wealth of hitherto unknown visual material has been brought to light. The present research makes ample use of the abundant comparative material that was collected in the course of that study, and of the many new insights that emerged from it. The present research is complicated by several different factors. The art produced around 1400 was dominated by the virtual ubiquity of the International Style, an artistic phenomenon that set the trend at the princely courts of Europe. Despite com-mon characteristics, however, the artistic expression of around 1400 is distinctly diverse. A common aesthetic is apparent, but not to the extent that one can speak of a uniform pictorial language. To put it another way, it is often possible to discern a shared formal vernacular that seems regionally hued and individually articulated. It is no easy matter to defi ne the individual and/or regional stylistic and iconographic accents precisely and to distinguish them from the generally prevailing characteris-tics and stereotypical modes of expression. Indeed, the same works have been attri-buted to the most diverse European artistic centres. The problem is compounded by the meagre amount of relevant comparative material offered by other forms of art, which is often equally hard to date and localize with accuracy and which conse-quently provides only an uncertain foundation on which to build. Surviving pre-Eyckian panel painting of around 1400 is in short supply, but more remains than was thought. At present the list of works to be studied includes some thirty objects in collections in Belgium and elsewhere. Some are well known. Since the nineteenth century most of them have been grouped under the heading of ‘Franco-Flemish’. This rather vague and poorly defi ned concept is used to denote certain realistic tendencies in the areas north of Paris. In its strictest sense the term encompasses the art of these areas,10 but most authors have used it rather to allude to the impact of these realistic trends on French and particularly on Parisian art. This latter sense, developed by Renan from 1862, was appropriated by Courajod (1887-1896) and subsequently reiterated indiscriminately11 until it became a dogma,

INTRODUCTION

16

as Fierens-Gevaert12 and more recently Robert Didier13 have rightly emphasized. Panofsky put the term in inverted commas and limited its application to artists born in the Low Countries but active in Paris.14 After Panofsky, the term seems to have fallen into disfavour; already abandoned by a specialist of the period like Millard Meiss,15 it was deemed to be incorrect and was consequently resolutely avoided by Françoise Baron.16

Although the term ‘Franco-Flemish’ has the virtue of highlighting the cross-fertilization between the Netherlands and Paris, and distinguishing the existence of innovative tendencies in the northern areas, the disentangling of these artistic con-tacts in stylistic terms is scarcely feasible. Other neighbouring regions such as the Meuse area, Guelders and the Rhineland or the ‘Lower Rhenish’ region, as well as the more distant Bohemia, northern Spain, Britain (with the so-called ‘Kanal Stil’) and southern France, or political entities such as Burgundy, lend themselves equally often to the purported discernment of presumed common characteristics. These problems of localization and attribution refl ect an inherent stylistic eclecticism as much as a com-plex tangle of evolving ideas on the matter. They have dominated the art-historical discourse of the last century, which has not infrequently been biased by the chauvinistic attitude of some authors. Delineating the area of research is indeed not simple, either chronologically or geographically. Whether it can or even should be so meticulously defi ned is highly debatable. The ‘Netherlands’ did not form a well defi ned political or geographic entity in the late fourteenth century, though Philip the Bold’s acquisition of Flanders and subsequent expansion of the territory under his control was the fi rst step in this direc-tion. Many Netherlandish artists moved around, sometimes working far from their places of origin, and they developed a network of contacts. The genesis of a work of art and the artistic expression itself are still all too often regarded as static processes. But motifs and compositions were purposefully borrowed, adapted and recycled. They passed to and fro across political and geographic borders by way of artists’ sketchbooks and pattern books,17 and there were numerous prestigious architectural and decorative projects that attracted an ‘international’ body of artists. Under Philip the Bold and John the Fearless the Charterhouse of Champmol, with its manifold artistic requirements, was one of the most notable magnets in this respect.18

The term ‘pre-Eyckian’ is no less problematic. Frédéric Lyna, its popularizer, sees in it a reaction to courtly art or the International Style, ‘une tendance vers une expres-sion sans cesse plus dégagée des contraintes de l’époque, une compréhension plus indépendante de l’homme, même de l’homme du peuple et de ses réactions naturelles dans des circonstances données. C’est cette négation ou peut-être cette ignorance inconsciente de conventions bien établies qui différencie d’une manière si nette cet art de la formule française modelée sur les habitudes et les exigences d’une cour extrêmement raffi née […] [Ces miniatures] préparent [l’art] de Van Eyck et de Van der Weyden’.19 Clearly this negative defi nition of pre-Eyckian art takes no account of the ‘realistic’ tendencies that were also typical of the International Style associated with Parisian art.20 Moreover, Gerhard Schmidt rightly stresses that the ‘realism’ (‘Realismus’) of pre-Eyckian illumination appeared simultaneously in other European regions and that it by no means heralded the ‘realistic naturalism’ (‘realistischer Naturalismus’) of the Van Eycks.21 None the less, we shall use the term ‘pre-Eyckian’

INTRODUCTION

17

here: it is well established in the art-historical discourse and has its uses as a broad geographic and chronological defi nition of the art produced in the regions where the Flemish Primitives would evolve their new techniques and ideas. In fact there are no fi xed and well-defi ned criteria that allow one work to be described as ‘pre-Eyckian’ and another not. Which parameters are employed and how similarities are interpreted are questions that must be gauged afresh in each indi-vidual case. A minute comparison with images from other branches of art – with works that can be dated and localized, preferably – offers, at best, the only (yet uncer-tain and always relative) foundation on which to build. Assessments and treatment of the fi ndings consequently demand a differentiated approach. Given the substantial amount of archival data pertaining to it, Broederlam’s work could certainly serve – and has indeed done so – as a starting point around which, on various grounds, other works can be grouped. This approach builds criti-cally and discerningly on earlier attributions to Broederlam, among which many of the works studied here were once included. Indeed, the name of the Ypres-born artist was long understood as a generic term for a certain period and provenance – circa 1400, and Flemish. Our research builds on those earlier attributions, which we endeavour to refi ne and nuance in the hope of mapping a network of relationships. Many works, however, have little if anything to do with Broederlam’s advanced

art, but can be grouped on the basis of entirely different and object-related criteria. These are the small painted reliquaries of diverse shape, comparatively modest objects and for that very reason most likely to be local works that may have been made not far from their present locations. But of course there are always isolated cases as well, which largely elude every attempt at grouping and classifi cation. Chronological limits are equally diffi cult to apply. We have kept to ‘around 1400’, a description which, in the sense it has been used here, spans forty to fi fty years, or two generations, and which is just indefi nite enough to allow the inclusion of ‘con-servative’ works which – always on the basis of an approximate dating – must already be regarded as ‘para-Eyckian’.

Though few in number the pre-Eyckian works are great in diversity. Among them are reliquaries, altarpieces, devotional paintings in the shape of autonomous panels, a tondo, a diptych, a triptych and a quadriptych. Shape and size vary according to the work’s destination and function, from precious ‘joyau’ to impressive monument. One might be a prestigious commission from the court, another was perhaps intended for a more modest destination in a religious community, or for an individual. This early panel painting appears to be a multifaceted art. The entire spectrum of artistic ability is revealed in it, from the rudimentary to the sublime. A few masterpieces attest to a great fertility of imagination and a refi ned aesthetic sense. The technical versatility of painting around 1400 is also very striking. Each work bears the signs of a carefully considered and creative exploitation of a whole gamut of materials and techniques. They seem to have been used to produce the widest possible range of optical effects, anticipating the virtually perfect illusionism of the Flemish Primitives. Melchior Broederlam’s Crucifi xion Altarpiece in Dijon (fi g. 2) exemplifi es many aspects of the métier. The oak panels of the support were not only skilfully prepared,

INTRODUCTION

18

they were also covered with linen, onto which the actual ground and painting were applied. In other works of this period it is often only the joins between the boards that were covered with strips of cloth or parchment.22 The panels of the Wilton Dip-

tych (London, National Gallery) are probably completely covered with parchment.23

From the underdrawing it can be seen that Broederlam prepared every composi-tion and motif in great and meticulous detail.24 The buildings in the Annunciation and Presentation in the Temple he drew partly freehand, in a sketchy fashion, and partly with the aid of ruler and compasses. He worked out the drapery of the gar-ments to the last detail in the drawing, already making decisions about the play of light and shade, establishing light values whose graduation gives weight and volume. Save for a few minute details the positions of fi gures and objects correspond almost perfectly in the painting. The contours of certain motifs and areas to be gilded were incised into the ground so that they were clearly distinguished from the areas to be painted. Along with the frames they were fi rst covered with gold leaf laid on a red bole. Silver leaf and tin foil might also be used for the same purpose. The leaf was burnished then tooled with punches, slender metal rods of various diameters with which motifs were scored or punched into the metal foil without breaking the surface. Punching was often executed freehand, though a ruler and/or a mechanical device – probably a wheel set with pins at regular intervals – was evidently used as well. The result was a most refi ned decoration, with arcades and stemwork, leaves, fl owers and stars. Sometimes freehand

2. Melchior Broeder-lam and Jacob de Baerze, Crucifi xion

Altarpiece (closed: 166 × 251 × 22 cm) – Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

INTRODUCTION

19

punching was used to create light effects, achieved by varying the density of the punchmarks. Where precious textiles were to be portrayed a relief effect might be incised into the gold leaf or even directly into the ground before the foil was applied. This punched decoration, executed in the main on gold leaf, has received little if any attention to date. None the less, it is one of the most noteworthy characteristics of pre-Eyckian panels and its study is essential, for it is particularly important in tracing connections between the various works. It can be examined as a technique, but also as a decorative system (motifs, style, where applied, intended effect). The question of specialized tasks in the workshops also arises. According to Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’arte the working of gold leaf was a normal part of a painter’s training in Italy. In certain commissions, such as the altarpiece made by the painter Saladin de Stoevere in 1434 for the church of the Friars Minor in Ghent, punchwork decoration was actually stipulated: ‘van fi jnen ghebruneerden gaude ende wel ende reinlic ghepointsonnert’.25 The backgrounds of other works, including the Crucifi xion with St Catherine and

St Barbara in Bruges (see cat. no. 2), were decorated not with punchwork but with brush-applied relief (pastiglia).26 Silks, brocades and other costly textiles were mim-icked by painting patterns onto the gold, which may also have been punched. On the Wilton Diptych and the Last Judgement (Brussels, KMSKB/MRBAB; on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Diest) patterns were achieved by scratching off the paint that had been applied over the gold. This sgraffi to technique was very popular in Italian panel painting of the Trecento. Another technique involved gluing prefabricated reliefs in metal foil (usually tin foil) onto the panel, as in the case of the Scenes from the Life of

the Virgin (Brussels) and the Dortmund Passion Altarpiece (St Reinold’s Church). With the refi ned use of oil paint, and its ability to evoke the illusion of every kind of textile, gold and silver leaf, tin foil, pastiglia and prefabricated reliefs became virtually redundant. Nevertheless, occasional traces of them can still be found in the work of the Flemish Primitives.27 Moreover, some decorations produced with brush and paint are indebted in spirit to the older techniques. One thinks here of the back-grounds of various fi fteenth-century panels, gilded and decorated with black, red or brown dots, strongly reminiscent of punched gold leaf. Or the way in which punchmarks are imitated with dots of yellow paint in the portraying of certain costly textiles, striking so, for instance, in the brocade sleeves of Mary Magdalene’s gown in Van der Weyden’s Braque Triptych (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Or how the effect of the lines incised into the gold leaf have been reproduced in paint in the rendering of the rich gown of one of the midwives in Robert Campin’s Nativity (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts). (fi gs. 3a and 3b) Broederlam also polychromed the carving and sculptures created by Jacob de Baerze for the interior of the Crucifi xion Altarpiece. (fi g. 4) On the older Bruges St

Ursula Shrine (see cat no. 3) painted and carved fi gures are integrated in the same surface. This prompts the question of whether it was the work of a single individual or of more than one. Some artists were adept in several disciplines. The example of the Bruges painter Jan van Oosenbrugghe, who is known only through archival sources, is worth mentioning in this respect. He is referred to in fi ve documents, dat-ing from 1426 to 1429, once as ‘beildesnidere’ or wood carver, twice as ‘steenhauwere’ or stone carver, and once as ‘scildere’ or painter.28

INTRODUCTION

20

INTRODUCTION

21

3a. Robert Campin, Nativity (85.7 × 72) – Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

3b. Robert Campin, Nativity (detail) – Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

INTRODUCTION

22

Reality and artifi ce are still closely interwoven in this period. There is much experimenting with the representation of space and volume, with apparently interacting fi gures in attitudes expressive of emotion, but the older decorative and often quite abstract schemes of patterns and shapes never completely disappear. From work to work the balance can even swing from one extreme to the other. In the most pro-gressive works there is a new interest in quotidian reality. In the work of the great masters of the following generation these naturalistic forms of expression would be refi ned to the utmost degree. The paintings on panels still largely refl ect the material aesthetic of precious metalwork, with quasi-enamelled fi g-ures set against gold backgrounds embellished with decora-tion produced by the goldsmith’s punchwork technique. The wood is masked, refi ned, and made sublime. It often looks like a sort of ersatz art – though not in any pejorative sense of the word – that creates the illusion of authentic richness. Similar objects were listed among the ‘joyaux’ in the invento-ries of the jewels and valuables of contemporary princes. Indeed, the rare painted panels (‘tableaux de bois […] faiz de painture’) are scarcely distinguished from the many costly items made of gold and silver and precious stones.29 They do confi rm the variety of shapes and sizes, as emerges, for instance, from the descriptions of the few paintings in the inventory made in 1420 of the possessions of Philip the Good: circular panels (‘un autre tableau de bois rond […] tous faiz de painture’), a square panel (‘un autre plus grant tableau de boys, quarré […] tous de painture’), a panel in the shape of a ‘door’ with inscriptions on it (‘un grandelet tableau de bois, en façon de porte […] escript entour le diadesme de nostre dame et en la bordure fait de painture’), a diptych (‘uns autres tableaux de bois, ouvrans en deux pièces’) and a triptych (‘ung autre tableau de bois, quarré, ouvrant a deux fueillez […] faiz de painture’).30 Judging by the subjects, most of these were devotional panels, small in size, although there is the occasional portrait of the duke or a member of his family. For instance, the ducal accounts of 1413-14 record a payment to a Master Vrancke, an artist residing in Mechelen, for painting the portrait of Catherine of Burgundy, daughter of John the Fearless.31 With the exception of Melchior Broederlam we know nothing about the artists who created the objects studied here. Yet many names of painters active around 1400 have come down to us. A systematic and contextual examination of the archival resources of the major centres of the Low Countries could still bring many data to light.32 In documents dating from around 1400 in the Bruges archives some twenty painters are referred to,33 most being employed to carry out decorative commissions and ornamental works: the painting of the city’s arms on shields and banners, the

4. St Barbara, sculpture on the interior of the left wing (166 × 125.5 cm) of the Crucifi xion

Altarpiece by Melchior Broederlam and Jacob de Baerze – Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

INTRODUCTION

23

designing of tapestries and the ceremonial attire of burgomasters and aldermen, and, not least, the embellishing of sculpture. This is perfectly in line with the kind of commissions Broederlam was charged with as court painter to Philip the Bold; as such he would also be involved in the execution of wall paintings, the design of stained glass windows and fl oor tiles, and the ornamenting of armour. In 1388-89 the Bruges town council paid Jan Coene, the town painter, for what is generally interpreted as a panel depicting the Last Judgement: ‘Item ghegheven bi beveilne van borghmeesters Jan Coenen van eenen barde daer ’t jugement in staet bescreven, hanghende in scepenencamere ende coste: XLIs IIII d. gr.’34 The work has not survived, but a Last Judgement would certainly have been one of the standard features of the decoration of council chambers and sheriffs’ courtrooms in the princi-pal towns of the Low Countries.35 In Ghent in 1413 Lieven van den Clite produced a work of the same name for the council chamber of the Council of Flanders.36 It has been identifi ed with the abovementioned Last Judgement in Brussels (fi g. 5), though there seems to be very little basis for such a theory. Nevertheless, this panel could well have been intended for a town hall in the Southern Netherlands. Whether or not it can be regarded as belonging to the pre-Eyckian production is debatable, however.37 There must also have been panels of this kind in Brussels and Aalst at an early date, for in 1422 the Aalst corporation commissioned Claus Poulette to paint a Last Judge-ment that was to equal or better the one in Brussels.38 From the description it seems fairly clear that the Brussels work was a celebrated painting of great quality. Traces of other lost works lead to Kortrijk (Courtrai), and a painting by Marcus van Ghistel (1428).39 Perhaps the panel that the aldermen of Ghent commissioned from Hubert van Eyck in 1424, a work for which the artist provided two sketches,40 also had a jurisprudential theme. Hubert is often identifi ed with the ‘magistro Huberto pictori’ who was paid by the chapter of the Church of Our Lady in Tongeren in 1409 for a painting (‘de pictura tabule’), possibly an altarpiece.41

The work in relief (‘d’ouvrage eslevé’) that the painter Henry le Kien polychromed in 1413 for the aldermen of Tournai, a small triptych with a Crucifi xion on the centre panel, St Piat and St Eleutherius on the wings, and bearing the arms of Tournai, has survived and is now preserved in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.42 It was on this work that public mandataries took their oaths. Strictly speaking, the work is not a panel painting as such, but it is certainly in keeping with the ‘mixed media’ objects in which painting and relief were combined, as in the case of the small St Ursula

Shrine in Bruges, for instance. Wills from Tournai and Douai also mention votive paintings on panels: the earliest references date from 1385, 1392, 1400 and 1419.43 Among these works for private devotion, however, paintings on canvas were vastly preferred to wooden panels. Larger pictorial ensembles on panel, including the painted wings of carved altar-pieces, must also have occupied an important place in the embellishing of churches and chapels then. The Crucifi xion Altarpiece created by Melchior Broederlam and Jacob de Baerze, the example par excellence, was – according to the agreement with Philip the Bold44 – an imitation, perhaps even a copy, of models in Dendermonde and Ghent. The conjectured early-fi fteenth-century Southern Netherlandish provenance of the Passion Altarpiece in St Reinold’s Church in Dortmund45 (fi g. 6), likewise with painted wings and a carved centre section, would be an additional and signifi cant indication

INTRODUCTION

24

INTRODUCTION

25

that this was the case. It would follow that by around 1400 Bruges, where that Passion Altarpiece was possibly produced, must already have been a major production centre for this kind of work.46 The observations above regarding lost works bring together (by way of a sample) just a handful of known facts which hold the promise of many more relevant archival data. They could signifi cantly alter our image of painting around 1400.

In the fi rst volume ten objects, which in fact constitute the majority of pre-Eyckian works in Belgian collections, are documented as thoroughly as possible.47 Their inter-pretation is underpinned not only by classic pictorial analysis but also by macro- photography, X-radiography, infrared photography and refl ectography, dendrochrono-logical data and, in so far as was feasible or justifi able, laboratory analysis of pigments and binding media. The conservation of the objects varies considerably. Well-preserved works like the Antwerp Tower Retable (see cat. no. 1) are exceptional. Cleaning the surface was all that was required to restore it to its original splendour. Construction, painting and decoration prove to be even more sophisticated than was originally thought, whichis entirely in keeping with the prestige of the milieu for which it was probably intended. Some works have undergone substantial restoration in the past, and not always in accordance with today’s views and principles. For instance, the Calvary of the Tanners in Bruges (see cat. no. 2) has been repainted in places with imitation craquelure.A well-documented comparison with the Dortmund Passion Altarpiece revealed numer-ous striking and very close relationships. It offers a new line of approach to the thorny issue of workshop practice and the export of works from the Southern Netherlands around 1400. The X-radiographs of the Bruges St Ursula Shrine (see cat. no. 3)

5. Last Judgement (231.5 × 186.5 cm), Southern Nether-lands, c.1425-1435 (?) – Brussels, KMSKB/MRBAB (on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Diest)

6. Passion Altarpiece (open: 292 ×730 cm), Southern Netherlands (?),early 15th century – Dortmund, St Reinold’s Church

INTRODUCTION

26

disclosed numerous overpaints. The spectacular discovery of the shrine’s original stemwork decoration, concealed beneath the later red background, is at once an important new starting point for further research. The Virgin and Child with St Anne in the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Neerlanden (see cat. no. 9) was almost entirely overpainted. After restoration the original execution was revealed, though in sadly damaged shape, which makes any kind of thorough stylistic comparison with contemporary works problematic. Nevertheless, it must have been a work of great quality, its technical execution both varied and refi ned. The conservation of the small Ghent Entombment (see cat. no. 5) also revealed a more subtle execution than was originally suspected. A fundamental incomprehension of cultural heritage has also left its marks. The Scenes from the Life of the Virgin in Brussels (see cat. no. 4) survives in a far from complete state. In several places the painting was planed away so the board could be used as a dresser top; and an entire scene has gone from the right-hand side. The underdrawing, brought to light for the fi rst time, was a true revelation, evincing a mature mastery that was partly lost again in the painting. The panel remains a highly intriguing work whose purpose, function and production are open to interpre-tation. The Annunciation and Visitation, or Walcourt Panels in Namur (see cat. no. 7), had been turned into the doors of a cupboard for liturgical garments. The panels probably started life as the wings of an altarpiece, but they have been reduced by more than a third in width and there are also very large areas of loss. Losses, overpaints, and a whole variety of material modifi cations and injudicious restorations complicate the study and aesthetic appreciation of the Bruges St Ursula

Shrine (see cat. no. 3), the St Maurice Shrine in Namur (see cat. no. 8), the Triptych

with Calvary and Saints in Mechelen (see cat. no. 6) and the Reliquary of the Virgin’s

Veil in Tongeren (see cat. no. 10). It should be borne in mind, however, that some alterations or wear and tear may also attest to the intensive use of these objects. They were exhibited, carried in processions, perhaps even touched by devout wor-shippers. As a cult’s popularity waxed their value increased, as it waned they sank into obscurity. In the fi rst phase of the research the greatest attention turned out to be directed not at what are generally regarded as the most important works, the highly sophisticated products intended for executive circles, on the basis of which Panofsky developed his views (which is not to underestimate their importance, of course). On the contrary, most of the objects dealt with in this fi rst volume are among the least known of the works that can be deemed to belong to this category. Many have been damaged in one way or another, or been subject to signifi cant modifi cation. With one or two exceptions they are all relatively modest works, although certainly not without merit and some even possess a ‘hidden’ refi nement that only the most minute observation reveals. None the less, these works have probably absorbed more infl uences than they have emitted. Or at best they may embody an established tradition. For that very reason they are crucial in the context of this project for they provide a more nuanced picture of stylistic diversity than has been appreciated hitherto and give a glimpse of a splendour that is lost almost beyond recall. These observations already allow us to radically redraw the pre-Eyckian landscape. The insights gained will provide the guideline for the study of the next group of works.

INTRODUCTION

27

The publication of the fi rst ten pre-Eyckian works is the fruit of teamwork. The two art historians, Dominique Deneffe and Famke Peters, together with chemists Wim Fremout and his successor on the project for a short time, Matthieu Goursaud, as well as the senior scientists, Jana Sanyova and Steven Saverwyns, carried out the fi eldwork. They assembled, evaluated and collated the diverse observations regarding each object. Famke Peters and Dominique Deneffe also wrote the catalogue entries: the former being responsible for entries 2, 5, 6, 8 and 10, and the latter for entries 3, 4, 7 and 9, while the text of the fi rst entry is the result of their joint endeavour. For the interpretation of the laboratory studies of the painting technique reported in the technical sections, they could count on the contribution of Wim Fremout and Steven Saverwyns (for entries 2, 3, 5, 6 and 10) and Jana Sanyova (for the entries 1, 4, 7, 8and 9). These technical sections could also not have been produced without the par-ticipation of Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum and Pascale Fraiture. Christina Currie supervised the interpretation of the underdrawing; Livia Depuydt-Elbaum guided the various observations on supports and paint layers; Pascale Fraiture carried out the dendrochronological research. Pigments and binders gave up their secrets, not a dent or splinter in the wood, not a brushstroke went unexamined, the meaning of every motif was mused upon. The researchers were fascinated by the image, deter-mined to discover all that could be known. Without their enthusiasm, critical judg-ment and constant engagement this book would not exist. They have done a superb job. More able and agreeable colleagues could not be wished for. In volume two of this publication are a number of individual contributions by ‘guest authors’. They cover diverse topics, ranging from specifi c technical observations regarding one noteworthy feature or group of works, to historical context, peripheral iconographic phenomena, aspects of restoration, and even the exploration of Ghent’s archives by way of a case study. We are particularly grateful to Barbara Baert, Lorne Campbell, Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Elisabeth Dhanens, Ingrid Geelen, Delpine Steyaert and Victor M. Schmidt for their great interest in the research and of course for the way in which they have participated. The research has also benefi ted to the full from the expertise and know-how of the many specialists of the IRPA/KIK. Some of them took part in the meetings of the working committee at which the results of the research were regularly discussed before external advisors from various Belgian universities and study centres. They are all named individually elsewhere but here too we tender our sincere thanks for their contribution to the success of this project. Lee Preedy was responsible for the English translation of the original Dutch texts. In no time at all she became one of the team. She cherished our ‘treasures’, intellectually and instinctively, if possible still more than we did ourselves, constantly searching for the one nuance that brought clarity. Our sincere thanks to you, Lee.

INTRODUCTION

28

Notes

1. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953: 91-99.

2. Ibid: 99.

3. On the issue of European stylistic trends circa 1400, see especially: Gerhard Schmidt, ‘Kunst um 1400. Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven’, Internationale Gotik in Mitteleuropa (Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch Graz, 24), eds. Götz Pochat and Brigitte Wagner, Graz, 1990: 34-49; Gerhard Schmidt, ‘“Pre-Eyckian Realism.” Versuch einer Abgrenzung’, Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven, 7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5), eds. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995: 747-769.

4. Vienna (1962), Kunsthistorisches Museum: Europäische Kunst um 1400.

5. Frankfurt am Main (1975), Liebieghaus Museum alter Plastik: Kunst um 1400 am Mittelrhein: ein Teil der Wirklichkeit.

6. Cologne (1978), Kunsthalle: Die Parler und der schöne Stil 1350-1400. Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgern.

7. Some introductory, general fi ndings have already been published. See: Cyriel Stroo, with Dominique Deneffe, Famke Peters and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘De pre-Eyckiaanse paneelschilderkunst in de Nederlanden. Een prelude op de Vlaamse Primitieven?’, Vlaanderen, 54 (2005): 130-135; Cyriel Stroo, Dominique Deneffe, Famke Peters, Dominique Vanwijnsberghe and Wim Fremout, ‘Onderzoek naar de bronnen van de Vlaamse Primitieven. De pre-Eyckiaanse paneelschilderkunst’, Science Connection, 9, December 2005: 8-12; Dominique Deneffe and Famke Peters, with Cyriel Stroo, ‘De schilderkunst op paneel voor Jan van Eyck: twee voorbeelden in Brugge’, Museumbulletin Musea Brugge, 26/1 (2006): 4-11; Wim Fremout, Steven Saverwyns, Famke Peters and Dominique Deneffe, ‘Non-destructive Micro-Raman and x-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy on Pre-Eyckian Works of Art – Verifi cation with Results obtained by Destructive Methods’, Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, 37 (2006): 1035-1045.

8. Paris (2004), Musée du Louvre: Paris 1400. Les arts sous Charles VI; Dijon (2004), Musée

des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland (2004), The Cleveland Museum of Art: L’art à la cour de Bourgogne. Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (1364-1419); Bourges (2004), Musée du Berry: Une fondation disparue de Jean de France, duc de Berry. La Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges; Nijmegen (2005), Museum het Valkhof: De Gebroeders Van Limburg. Nijmeegse meesters aan het Franse hof 1400-1416; Budapest (2006), Szépmüvészeti Múzeum and Luxemburg (2006), Musée national d’histoire et d’art: Sigismundus.Rex et Imperator. Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismundus von Luxemburg 1387-1437.

9. See among others the diverse studies in: Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Collo-quium Leuven, 7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 8. Low Coun-tries Series, 5) eds. Maurits Smeyers andBert Cardon, Leuven, 1995. See also: Maurits Smeyers, Bert Cardon, Susie Vertongen, Katrien Smeyers and Rita Van Dooren, Naer natueren ghelike. Vlaamse miniaturen voor Van Eyck (ca. 1350 - ca. 1420), Leuven, 1993.

10. See the critical observations of: Anne Hagopian van Buren, ‘Thoughts, Old and New, on the Sources of Early Netherlandish Painting’, Simiolus 16 (1986): 94; Michael V. Schwartz, Höfi sche Skulptur im 14. Jahrhundert, Worms, 1986: 211, discusses north-eastern France, the Netherlands, Berry and Bur-gundy; Gerhard Schmidt, ‘Beiträge zu Stil und Œuvre des Jean de Liège’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 4 (1971): 102-105, adds to this the Meuse region.

11. E. Renan, ‘Discours sur l’état des Beaux-Arts en France, au xive siècle’, Histoire littéraire de la France, 24, Paris, 1862: 603-757 (p. 624-728); Louis Courajod, Leçons pro-fessées à l’école du Louvre, 2, Paris, 1901: 198 ff.; André Michel, Histoire de l’art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu’à nos jours, 3.Le réalisme. Les débuts de la Renaissance, 1, Paris, 1907: 114 ff.

12. Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert, Études sur l’art fl amand. La Renaissance septentrionale et les premiers maîtres des Flandres, Brussels, 1905: 6.

13. Robert Didier, ‘Flandern und Brabant’, Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, 1350-1400. Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgern (exhib. cat. Cologne, Kunsthalle), 1, ed. Anton Legner, Cologne, 1978: 79.

INTRODUCTION

29

14. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953: 35.

15. Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry. The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, London, 1967: IX.

16. Les fastes du gothique. Le siècle de Charles V (exhib. cat. Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais), Paris, 1981: 61.

17. For a catalogue and study of medieval pattern books, see Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum. Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900-ca. 1450), translated by Michael Hoyle, Amsterdam, 1995. The drawings in the c.1400-1420 sketchbook of Jacques Daliwe (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Liber Picturatus, inv. no. A 74), a Flemish illumi-nator working in Paris, display Flemish, Parisian and Bohemian infl uences. See Mau-rits Smeyers, Vlaamse miniaturen van de 8ste tot het midden van de 16de eeuw. De middel-eeuwse wereld op perkament, Leuven, 1998: 185; Robert W. Scheller 1995: 233-240. Anony-mous sketches and model drawings from the Netherlands, dating from c.1380 to c.1410, are collected in the Wiesbaden Miscellany (Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Cod. Abt. 3004 B 10). See Marta O. Renger, ‘The Wiesbaden Drawings’, Master Drawings, 25/4 (1987): 390-410.

18. For a recent publication on the Champmol Charterhous, see Renate Prochno, Die Kartause von Champmol. Grablege der burgundischen Herzöge 1364-1477, Berlin, 2002. See also L’art à la cour de Bourgogne. Le mécénat de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (1364-1419) (exhib. cat. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts and Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art), Paris, 2004.

19. ‘a tendency towards an expression increas-ingly free of the constraints of the time, a more independent comprehension of man, even of the common man and his natural reactions in the given circumstances. It is this negation or perhaps this unconscious ignorance of well established conventions which so clearly differentiates this art from the French formula modelled on the customs and requirements of an extremely refi ned court […] [These miniatures] prepare the way for [the art of] Van Eyck and Van der Wey-den’. Frédéric Lyna, ‘Les miniatures d’un ms. du “Ci nous dit” et le réalisme préeyckien’, Scriptorium, 1 (1946-1947): 116-117.

20. See Élisabeth Antoine, ‘Art parisien ou Gothique international?’, Paris 1400. Les arts

sous Charles VI (exhib. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre), Paris, 2004: 307-308.

21. Gerhard Schmidt, ‘“Pre-Eyckian Realism.” Versuch einer Abgrenzung’, Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceed-ings of the International Colloquium Leuven, 7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5), eds. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995: 747-769.

22. See also: Roger Van Schoute and Hélène Verougstraete, ‘Technologie des cadres et supports dans la peinture fl amande vers 1400’, Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the Inter-national Colloquium Leuven, 7-10 September, 1993 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 8. Low Countries Series, 5), eds. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995: 371-383.

23. Dillian Gordon (with an essay by Caroline M. Barron and contributions by Ashok Roy and Martin Wyld), Making and Meaning of the Wilton Diptych, London, 1993.

24. For a new study of the underdrawing in Broederlam’s work, see the contribution by Christina Currie in vol. 2 of this publication.

25. ‘of fi ne burnished gold and well and carefully punched’. See the contribution by Elisabeth Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.

26. On this and other techniques using applied reliefs for decoration, see the contribution by Ingrid Geelen and Delphine Steyaert in vol. 2 of this publication.

27. Applied brocade has been used in the Bad Thief in Frankfurt (Städelsches kunst-institut) by the Flémalle/Campin group, on the centre panel of the Adoration of the Lamb (St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent), more specifi -cally on the cloths of honour behind the enthroned deity, Mary and John the Baptist, and on the exterior of the wings of Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgment in Beaune. It has also been documented in some works of a later date attributed to the Master of the View of St Gudule. Moreover, Jan van Eyck still used gold leaf for the beams via which the dove descends in the Washington Annunciation (National Gallery of Art). Remains of silver leaf are still present in the window openings of the interior of the Brus-sels Annunciation (KMSKB/MRBAB), one of the early works of the Flémalle group. The background of the Seilern Triptych in London (Courtauld Gallery), also attributed to Robert

INTRODUCTION

30

Campin, is entirely covered with stemwork in pastiglia. The use of applied brocades and pastiglia around 1400 is examined at length in the contribution by Ingrid Geelen and Del-phine Steyaert in vol. 2 of this publication.

28. Albert Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge tot de dood van Gerard David, 2. L-Z (Fontes historiae artis neerlandicae, II), eds. Erik Duverger and Henry Pauwels, Brussels, 2004: 86-87.

29. See also: Philippe Lorentz, Des tableaux de peinture comme les tableaux d’orfèvrerie, in Paris 1400. Les arts sous Charles VI (exhib. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre), Paris, 2004: 194-200.

30. Alexandre de Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne. Etudes sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pen-dant le XVe siècle et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le duché de Bourgogne, II: Preuves, Paris, 1851: 240-241.

31. ‘A maistre Vranque, paintre, demourant à Malines, pour paindre et faire la fi gure de madamoiselle Katherine de Bourgogne, fi lle de MdS […]’. Cited after: Alexandre de Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne. Etudes sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle et plus particulièrement dans les Pays-Bas et le duché de Bourgogne, I: Preuves, Paris, 1849: 97. This was probably a panel painting. In public buildings the likenesses of the Burgundian rulers were also executed as wall paintings, such as the portraits of Philip the Bold and his duchess, Margaret of Male, painted by Melchior Broederlam in 1407 on the walls of the comital chapel in the Church of Our Lady in Kortrijk.

32. On the relevant archival material from the Ghent area, see the contribution by Elisabeth Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.See also Daniel Lievois, ‘ “Le Chêne qui cache la forêt – Van (een) Eyck die het bos verbergt.” La peinture sur panneau à Gand à l’époque de Robert Campin et de Jan van Eyck’, Campin in Context. Peinture et société dans la vallée de l’Escaut à l’époque de Robert Campin 1375-1445 (Actes du Colloque inter-national … Tournai, 30 mars-1er avril 2006), eds. Ludovic Nys and Dominique Vanwijns-berghe, Valenciennes-Tournai, 2007: 205-222. On panel painting in Tournai in Campin’s time, see Douglas Brine, ‘Campin’s Contem-poraries: Painting in Tournai in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Campin in Context.Peinture et société dans la vallée de l’Escaut à l’époque de Robert Campin 1375-1445 (Actes du Colloque international … Tournai,30 mars-1er avril 2006), eds. Ludovic Nys

and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, Valenciennes-Tournai, 2007: 101-112.

33. Albert Schouteet, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge tot de dood van Gerard David, 1. A-K (Fontes historiae artis neerlandicae, II), Brussels, 1989. Idem, De Vlaamse Primitieven te Brugge. Bronnen voor de schilderkunst te Brugge totde dood van Gerard David, 2. L-Z (Fontes historiae artis neerlandicae, II), eds. Erik Duverger and Henry Pauwels, Brussels, 2004.

34. ‘Item given by order of the burgomaster Jan Coenen of a board on which the judg-ment is described hanging in the aldermen’s room and costing: XLIs IIII d. gr.’ Albert Schouteet 1989 (cited in n. 31): 125. The transcription is incomplete, for, as in all account entries, on the line following the recording of the money paid out this sum is converted into pounds parisis: ‘somme xxiiij lb. xvi s’. According to Noël Geirnaert (archivist at the Bruges municipal archives) the panel was probably relatively cheap and small. I am most grateful to Noël Geirnaert for his helpful examination of the original text and its subsequent interpretation.

35. For general observations and publications on this subject, see also Cyriel Stroo and Rita Van Dooren, ‘Wat hemlieden toebehoortdie vonnesse wijzen zullen”. Bouts’ werk voor het Leuvense stadhuis in een ruimer perspectief’, Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410-1475),een Vlaams primitief te Leuven (exhib. cat. Leuven, St Peter’s Church and Friars Minor’s Church), ed. Maurits Smeyers, with the collaboration of Katharina Smeyers, Leuven, 1998: 137-151.

36. ‘Item à Liévin de le Clite, pointre, demour-ant en la ville de Gand, pour la fachon d’un très-bel tabbel tout doré et de fi n aisur, du Jugement de Nostre-Seigneur Jhésu-Crist, par lui livré en ladicte chambre en l’an mil quatre cens et treize.’ See: Juliaan H.A. De Ridder, Gerechtigheidstaferelen voor schepenhuizen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de 14de, 15de en 16de eeuw (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschap-pen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 51, 45), Brussels, 1989: 24-25. See also: JuliaanH.A. De Ridder, ‘Vlaamse Primitief op de dool: “Het Laatste Oordeel” van Lieven van den Clite’, Koninklijke Musea voor SchoneKunsten van België. Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Bulletin (Miscellanea Henri Pauwels), 38-40/1-3 (1989-1991) 1992: 91-123; Rudy Van Elslande, ‘Het Laatste

INTRODUCTION

31

Oordeel (Diest, Stedelijk Museum) van Lieven van den Clyte’, Ghendtsche Tydinghen.

Tweemaandelijks Tijdschrift van de Heemkundige

en Historische Kring Gent, 30/6 (2001): 367-371. See also the contribution by Elisabeth Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.

37. In this connection, see: Roel Slachmuylders, Het Laatste Oordeel van Diest (ca. 1430-1445).

Een kritische studie (unpublished licentiate’s thesis, K.U. Leuven, 1987). The Diest Last

Judgment will be discussed in a subsequent volume of our study of pre-Eyckian panels.

38. ‘Item ende dit ordeel es bestaet te werkene an Claus Poulette, ende es voorwaerde dat hy ’t maken sal, alse goed of beter alse ’t oordeel es te Brussel, in de camere van scepenen, so de voorwaerde inhoud, ende salre af hebben: xxxvj liv. Parises.’ Cited in: Alexandre Pinchart, ‘Rogier van der Weyden et les tapisseries de Berne’, Bulletin de

l’Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des

beaux-arts de Belgique, 17 (1864): 54-55;J.G. Van Gelder, ‘Enige kanttekeningen bij de gerechtigheidstaferelen van Rogier van der Weyden’, Rogier van der Weyden en zijn

tijd. Internationaal Colloquium 11-12 juni

1964, Brussels, 1974: 119-164 (121).

39. Hans Van Miegroet, ‘Gerard David’s “Justice of Cambyses”: “Exemplum Iustitiae” or Political Allegory?’, Simiolus, 18 (1988): 117, n. 4.

40. ‘Ghegheven meester Luberecht over syn moyte van ii bewerpen van eenre taeffele die hy maecte ten bevelene van scepenen’. See: W. H. James Weale, Hubert and John

van Eyck, their Lives and Work, London and New York, 1908: xxviii.

41. Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert et Jan van Eyck, Antwerp, 1980: 20-23; Pierre Colman, ‘« En Liège » vers 1400. L’orfèvre Henri de Cologne, Hubert van Eyck et Claus Sluter’, Bulletin de la Classe des Beaux-Arts, 17 (2006) : 97-140.

42. ‘A maistre Henry le Quien, pointre, pour son sallaire d’avoir point et doré le tavelet servant au siege des eschevins pour faire les sermens, et tous les ymages qui y sont, de fi n or, et y fait armoiries, 48s’. See: A. de la Grange, Les tableaux pour les prestations de

serment, in Bulletin de la Société historique et

littéraire de Tournai, 21 (1886): 10-11. On the identifi cation of the work, see: Ludovic Nys, ‘Un petit triptyque sculpté de prestation de serment tournaisien du début du XVe siècle, conservé au Musée des arts décoratifs de Paris’, Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art

de Louvain, 24 (1991): 47-56.

43. Ludovic Nys, ‘Le Triptyque Seilern: une nouvelle hypothèse’, Revue de l’art, 139 (2003): 19, n. 84; Marc Gil, ‘Commande privée et typologie des œuvres à partir des testaments douaisiens (fi n XIVe siècle-1500)’, La peinture en province. De la fi n du Moyen Âge au débutdu XXe siècle, ed. Jean-Pierre Lethuil lier, Rennes, 2002: 31-45.

44. Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, (with Nicole Veronee-Verhaegen), Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (Les Primitifs Flamands, 1. Corpus de la Peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridi-onaux au quinzième siècle, 14), Brussels, 1986: 134. See also the contribution of Elisa-beth Dhanens in vol. 2 of this publication.

45. For the most recent views in this matter, see: Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, Das Flügelretabel auf dem Hochaltar der Dortmunder Kirche St. Reinoldi. Untersuchungen zu seiner Gestalt, Ikonographie und Herkunft, Cologne, 2004; Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, ‘Das Hochaltar-retabel der Dortmunder Reinoldikirche. Ein herausragendes Zeugnis franko-fl ämischen Kunstschaffens aus den Werkstätten der burgundischen Niederlande’, Städtische Repräsentation. St. Reinoldi und das Rathaus als Schauplätze des Dortmunder Mittelalters, eds. Nils Büttner, Thomas Schilp and Barbara Welzel, Bielefeld, 2005: 181-203; Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig, Das Altarretabelin der Dortmunder St. Reinoldikirche (Dortmunder Mittelalter-Forschungen, 10), Bielefeld, 2007.

46. In this connection, see the carved retables that were attributed by Robert Didier and John Steyaert to a Bruges sculptor, and were intended for the parish church of Bokel (Hanover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum), Grönau (Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum), Neetze, and for St Antao de Faniqueira (Portugal). See: Robert Didier, ‘Flandern und Brabant’, Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, 1350-1400. Europäische Kunst unter denLuxemburgern (exhib. cat. Cologne, Kunst-halle), 1, ed. Anton Legner, Cologne, 1978: 91. Didier and Steyaert attribute the Dort-mund Passion Altarpiece to a Brabant (Brus-sels) workshop, however. For a recent opinion on this topic, see the entry on the so-called Grönauer Altar in Lübeck in Uwe Albrecht, Jörg Rosenfeld and Christiane Saumweber, Corpus der mittelalterlichen Holz skulptur und Tafelmalerei in Schleswig-Holstein, I. Hansestadt Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum, ed. Uwe Albrecht, Kiel, 2005: 114-122.

47. The results of the study of the pre-Eyckian panels in collections outside Belgium will be published in a subsequent volume. This

INTRODUCTION

3232

research will include works such as the Norfolk Triptych (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), the Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych (Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh and Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum), the Virgin and Child Tondo (Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum), the Passion Altarpiece (Dortmund, St Reinold’s Church), the Large Carrand Diptych (Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello), Chapelle Cardon (Paris, Musée du

Louvre), the Last Judgement (Brussels, KMSKB/MRBAB; on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Diest), the Sachs Annunciation (Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art), the Crucifi xion Triptych with Saints Anthony, Christopher, James and George (Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago), the Holy Family with Angels and the Trinity Triptych (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie), the Altarpiece of St Crispin and St Crispinian (Saint-Omer, Musée de l’Hôtel Sandelin), amongst others.

Acknowledgements

This publication presents research results of the Impulse for research in the Belgian federal scientifi c institutes initiated by the Belgian State, Federal Public Planning Service Science Policy.

The research project was initiated with the kind support of Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner, former director of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (IRPA/KIK) in Brussels, and is continued today under the direction of Myriam Serck-Dewaide. The authors are most grateful for their full and ongoing confi dence.

We would like to thank the project’s promoter Cyriel Stroo, and co-promoter Dominique Vanwijnsberghe. They directed the research with the utmost dedica-tion and were always willing to communicate and discuss new ideas.

We are deeply indebted to the other members of the working committee, Bert Cardon, Christina Ceulemans, Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Liliane Masschelein-Kleiner, Hélène Mund, Hans Nieuwdorp, Catheline Périer-D’Ieteren, Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns, Myriam Serck-Dewaide, Jan Van der Stock, Guido Van de Voorde and Hélène Verougstraete, for their many critical obser-vations on the catalogue entries, the extensive scientifi c documentation and the analyses.

The specialists of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage have been most generous with their help. Without the advice and the active participation of Christina Currie, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns and Guido Van de Voorde, this study would never have been completed. We are most grateful to the IRPA/KIK’s photographer, Jean-Luc Elias, and to his colleagues Jacques Declercq, Marleen Sterckx, Jean-Louis Torsin and Olivier Depauw, for the excellent documents they provided. To Guido Van de Voorde, assisted by Catherine Fondaire, we owe the X-radio-graphic documentation, enhanced by his judicious interpretation. The study could not have been undertaken without Sophie De Potter who made the high quality computerised refl ectogram assemblies and assisted in the complex design and layout of some of the illustrations. We are grateful to Jana Sanyova, Steven Saverwyns and their team from the Scien-tifi c Department, assisted by Cécile Glaude and Matthieu Goursaud for their high quality paint layer analysis. Dendrochronological analysis was carried out by Pascale Fraiture. She also revised Jozef Vynckier’s report on the Neerlanden St Anne with the Virgin and Child in the light of new observations in the fi eld.

33

Ingrid Geelen provided us with the highly clarifying diagram in the entry on the Brussels Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Kortessem Panel). Valuable advice and information were also gained from our colleagues Chris-tine Cession, Christina Ceulemans, Amandine Crabbé, Jacques Debergh, Leonoor De Schepper, Gilberte Dewanckel, Hélène Dubois, Dominique Otjacques-Dustin, Chantale Fontaine-Hodiamont, Bart Fransen, Isabelle Lecocq, Dahlia Mees, Emmanuelle Mercier, Hélène Mund, Marie Postec, Walter Schudel, An Tant, Marina Van Bos, Beatrijs Wolters van der Wey and Helena Wouters. Logistic and administrative support was kindly given by Isabelle Depoorter, Maria Peeters, Karine Renmans and Saïd Amrani. We express our deep gratitude to all of them.

In the course of preparing this publication we have become much indebted to the many people who kindly allowed us to study the objects in their collections. Hans Nieuwdorp, curator of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, who had already allowed the Tower Retable to be examined and cleaned at the IRPA/KIK, some time before the project offi cially began, continued his unconditional support and gener-ously shared his broad knowledge in the fi eld. We received a most hearty welcome in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin by the late Rainald Grosshans. His colleagues Stefan Kemperdick and Beatrix Graf gave particularly helpful advice on our examinations of two contemporary paintings, the Trinity Triptych and the Holy Family, while also providing us with new technical documentation. The staff of the Memlingmuseum in Bruges, in particular Eva Tahon and Joris Capenberghs, made it possible for the St Ursula Shrine to be studied at the IRPA/KIK. The Memlingmuseum also provided funding for its (ongoing) restoration. Sister Aleydis Baeke, archivist of the Sint-Janshospitaal, was very generous in communicating interesting data on the shrine. Also in Bruges, Benoit Kervyn, curator of the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour, kindly allowed us to study and fully document the Crucifi xion with St Catherine and

St Barbara (Calvary of the Tanners) in situ, having it removed from its place in the Treasury and its protective casing to make some minor interventions possible. Eliane Dewilde, director of the Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and her successors Hélène Bussers and Michel Draguet, together with Véronique Bücken and Ingrid Goddeeris, were most supportive in allowing us to study and document the Kortessem Panel and other paintings, and to take samples. We would like to thank in particular our colleagues Pascale d’Olne and Anne Dubois for generously sharing with us their most interesting observations. Our thanks also go to Emiel Peeters-Saenen and Thea Henderix, successive cura-tors of the Stedelijk Museum in Diest, for allowing us to study and document the Last Judgement. It is diffi cult adequately to acknowledge all the help we received from Sophie Jugie, curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, and her staff, during our examinations of Broederlam’s Crucifi xion Altarpiece. Twice she allowed both us and our colleagues to study, (re-)photograph and take infrared refl ectograms of the famous triptych. Studying and documenting the large Passion Altarpiece in Dortmund seemed an impossible venture at fi rst, but it succeeded thanks to the kind and practical help

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

34

of Michael Küsterman and ‘Herr Kaaz’ in St Reinold’s Church. Evelyn Bertram-Neunzig and Professor Barbara Welzel of Dortmund University joined us there and kindly shared their views on the painting. The Entombment from the Ghent Museum voor Schone Kunsten could be studied in optimum conditions in the IRPA/KIK thanks to the kind collaboration of Monique Tahon and Lieven Gerard, who also gave permission for its restoration. For the same reasons we owe special thanks to the staff of the Stedelijke Musea in Mechelen, where we could count on the support of Annemie de Vos and Bart Stroobants for the study of the Triptych with Crucifi xion and Saints; and to Albert Boulet (administrator) and Karin Vanderstraeten, curator of the Reliquary of the Virgin’s Veil in the Treasury of the Basilica of the Nativity of Our Lady in Tongeren. Jacques Toussaint, curator of the Musée provincial des Arts anciens du Namurois, gave us kind permission and support to comprehensively examine in situ the Walcourt

Panels and St Maurice Shrine. In the Church of St Mary in Neerlanden we were greatly helped in the completion of our examination and documentation of St Anne with the

Virgin and Child by Jos Vrancken, treasurer of the Parish Council. Preliminary examination and photographic documentation of the Norfolk Triptych in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam were kindly allowed by Jeroen Giltaij and Friso Lammertse. We were supported in our preliminary study of the Large Carrand Diptych in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence by curators Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi and Maria Grazia Vaccari, with whom we hope to collaborate further in the near future.

We were fortunate in being able to rely on the valuable documentation in the Centre for the Study of Fifteenth Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Bishopric of Liège (Brussels) and in Illuminare: Centre for the Study of the Illumi-nated Manuscript K.U.Leuven, supervised by Professor Jan Van der Stock.

Colleagues and friends in various libraries, archives, universities and museums have been extraordinarily helpful in many different ways. We would like to thank in particular Mia Awouters, Barbara Baert, Ignace Bossuyt, Lorne Campbell, Aurore Carlier, Geert Claasens, Hilde De Bruyne, Brigitte Dekeyzer, Albert Derolez, Noël Geirnaert, Olga Kotkova, Philippe Lorentz, Hélène Mund, Michel Nuyttens, Ludovic Nys, Claudia Rabel, Bernadette Roose, Katharina Smeyers, Anna Trobec, Axel Vaeck, Stéphane Vandenberghe, Paul Vandenbroeck, Maurice Vandermaesen, Steven Vandewal, Raf Van Laere, Annelies Vogels, Martha Wolff and Nancy Zinn.

Lee Preedy translated the texts from the Dutch. We thank her warmly for her unwavering dedication, her marked interest in the subject matter and for her patience. It was a most rewarding collaboration. We also warmly thank Michael Lomax who translated Livia Depuydt-Elbaum’s article from the French.

This publication is the joint endeavour of three institutions. The Centre for the Study of Fifteenth Century Painting in the Southern Nether-lands and the Bishopric of Liège has included the publication in its prestigious series and has supported the work thanks to the substantial fi nancial sponsorship of

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

35

the Richard Zondervan Trust. We owe them both our most heartfelt thanks. The Léon Courtin-Marcelle Bouché Foundation, administered by the King Baudouin Foundation and directed by Dominique Allard and Anne De Breuck, has provided the larger part of the production costs. We are greatly indebted for this support. The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, which initiated the research project in 2003, has funded all the documentation and the English translation. For this we are sincerely grateful. Without the generosity of all these people this book would never have seen the light of day.

The authors

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

36

BL British Library, London Bodleian Library, OxfordBM Bibliothèque municipale British Museum, LondonBnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, ParisBU Bibliothèque de l’Université, LiègeFWM Fitzwilliam Museum, CambridgeHL Huntington Library, San MarinoIRPA/KIK Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique/

Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium, BrusselsKB Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Det Kongelige Bibliotek, CopenhagenKBR Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I/

Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, BrusselsKMKG/MRAH Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis/

Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, BrusselsKMSKA Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, AntwerpKMSKB/MRBAB Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België/

Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, BrusselsK.U.Leuven Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenMMA The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkMMW Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, The HagueMLM The Morgan Library and Museum, New YorkOCMW Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk WelzijnÖNB Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna SB Stadtbibliothek, NurembergUB Universiteitsbibliotheek, UtrechtUL University LibraryULg Université de LiègeWAM The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Abbreviations

37