The Werl Triptych
The Werl Triptych is a triptych altarpiece completed in Cologne in 1438, of which the center panel has been lost. The two remaining wings are now in the Prado in Madrid, it was long attributed to the Master of Flémalle, now believed to have been Robert Campin, although this identity is not universally accepted. Some art historians believe it may have been painted as a pastiche by either the workshop or a follower of Campin or the Master of Flémalle; the right wing depicts a seated, pious Saint Barbara, shown engrossed in her reading of a bound and gilded holy book, seated in front of a warm open fire which lights the room with a golden glow. The left wing has a donor portrait of Heinrich von Werl, who kneels in prayer in the company of John the Baptist facing the missing devotional center-panel scene, lost and unrecorded; the two extant panels are in Madrid and renowned for their complex treatment of both form. The panels became influential on other artists from the mid-15th until the early 16th century, after when Early Netherlandish painting fell out of favour until it was rediscovered in the early 19th century.
From an inscription in the left wing, the panels are known to have been commissioned by Heinrich von Werl, provincial head of Cologne during 1438. He is shown in the left wing kneeling in devotion alongside Saint John the Baptist; this panel contains a number of elements indebted to Jan van Eyck, notably the convex mirror in the midground, which as with the 1434 Arnolfini Marriage, reflects the scene back at the viewer. Although the center panel is lost with no surviving copies, inventory records or descriptions, it has been speculated that it was set in the same room occupied by Saint Barbara; this is given the abrupt end of the lines of the beams of the roof and the frames of the window, as well as the direction of the falling light. The center panel may have formed the setting for a Virgo inter Virgines. Given that there is no surviving evidence of the triptych's influence on Cologne art until the middle of the century, it was the triptych was until positioned either in private or in an inaccessible place in the church large enough to hold a number of altarpieces.
However it became influential from the mid-15th century. Of the two panels, that of Barbara, although flawed in some anatomical respects, is richer in detail and considered the superior piece; the woman in this panel can be identified as Saint Barbara from the tower visible beyond the open window to her top left. A popular saint in the Middle Ages, she was a Christian martyr believed to have lived in the 3rd century. According to hagiography, her wealthy pagan father Dioscorus, seeking to preserve her from unwelcome suitors, imprisoned her in a tower. Captive Barbara let in a priest who baptised her, an act for which she was hunted and beheaded by her father, she became a popular subject for artists of Campin's generation. Jan van Eyck left a detailed but unfinished 1437 oak panel which focuses on the complex architectural details of an imagined Gothic tower; the artist depicts Barbara imprisoned in her tower, but engrossed in her reading of a book with her back against a large open fireplace.
Her brown hair is unbound and falling to her shoulders. She is seated on a wooden bench draped with deep red velvet cushions, she wears a sumptuous green dress lined with heavy angular folds. Yet Barbara's figure is weakly rendered – her shoulders and knees are anatomically unrealistic; the panel's strength comes from her well-described clothing and the detailed objects placed around her, most of which are shaped and contrasted by the two sources of light falling on their golden and polished surfaces. The fireplace emits a warm reddish glow, which contrasts with the hard light falling from the window and the unseen middle panel to the left; the ledge of the fireplace holds a glass flask while the chimney place contains a sconce holding an extinguished candle holder. A detailed sculpture of the Trinity is shown above the fireplace; the room is from a contemporary middle-class rather than biblical setting, contains many of the same details found in the center panel of the c 1425–28 Mérode Altarpiece attributed to Robert Campin.
These include the latticed and shuttered window, the reading Virgin seated on a long bench, the tilted iris in a vase on a table to her side. Writers Peter and Linda Murray note that the treatment in the work is better arranged and far more assured in its use of perspective; the perspective from which the room is viewed is unusually steep and positions the viewer as if he is on a higher floor to the Virgin and looking down at her. It has been identified as influenced by van Eyck's Washington Annunciation painted just a few years earlier; the painting contains a number of vanishing points stretching from the lower right hand to the open window serve to emphasise the panel's depth. The steep angle of the panel from the viewer's point of view is achieved through the tilt of the bench, side board, line of the fireplace, shutters of the window. According to Walther Ingo, the dramatic angle of these elements serves to demote the figure of St Barbara to secondary importance to an examination of the anatomy of the space itself.
The donor, Heinrich von Werl, is named in the Latin inscription on the left wing, which translates as. Von Werl was a member of the Minorites order in Osnabrück, he moved to Cologne in 1430 to study at the university, where he receiv
Jacques Daret
Jacques Daret was an Early Netherlandish painter born in Tournai, where he would spend much of his life. Daret spent 15 years as a pupil in the studio of Robert Campin, alongside Rogier or Rogelet de le Pasture, afterwards became a master in his own right, he became a favorite of the Burgundian court, his patron for 20 years was the abbot of St. Vaast in Arras, Jean de Clercq. Though many works of Daret are mentioned in Jean de Clercq's account books, only four panels have survived: all are from the so-called Arras Altarpiece or Saint-Vaast Altarpiece, painted for the abbot between 1433 and 1435; these paintings show a striking resemblance to the Flemish realism of the Master of Flémalle. This is argued by most scholars to be evidence that the Master of Flémalle was Daret's master, Robert Campin. Daret features rather more in the art historical debates over his period than the merit of his work alone would justify because he is well-documented, in particular can be securely identified as the creator of the altarpiece mentioned above, as well as a pupil of Campin.
The stylistic similarity between him and the Master of Flémalle is therefore crucial evidence in the identification of the latter with Campin. This becomes an important connection in establishing a link between Robert Campin/the Master of Flémalle and his other major pupil, Rogier van der Weyden. Daret's four surviving securely identified works, all from the Arras Altarpiece, are the Visitation and Adoration of the Magi, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple. Media related to Jacques Daret at Wikimedia Commons Learned Reading, Vernacular Seeing: Jacques Daret's Presentation in the Temple, Art Bulletin, Sept, 2000 by Penny Howell Jolly Jacques Daret at Artcyclopedia Works of Jacques Daret at the Art Renewal Center Web Gallery of Art: Biography of Jacques Daret Web Gallery of Art: Paintings by Jacques Daret
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting is the work of artists, sometimes known as the Flemish Primitives, active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance in the flourishing cities of Bruges, Mechelen, Louvain and Brussels, all in present-day Belgium. The period begins with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the 1420s and lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, although many scholars extend it to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568. Early Netherlandish painting coincides with the Early and High Italian Renaissance but the early period is seen as an independent artistic evolution, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in Italy, although beginning in the 1490s as increasing numbers of Netherlandish and other Northern painters traveled to Italy, Renaissance ideals and painting styles were incorporated into Netherlandish and other Northern painting; as a result, Early Netherlandish painters are categorised as belonging to both the Northern Renaissance and the Late or International Gothic.
The major Netherlandish painters include Campin, van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch. These artists made significant advances in natural representation and illusionism, their work features complex iconography, their subjects are religious scenes or small portraits, with narrative painting or mythological subjects being rare. Landscape is richly described but relegated as a background detail before the early 16th century; the painted works are oil on panel, either as single works or more complex portable or fixed altarpieces in the form of diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs. The period is noted for its sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass and carved retables; the first generations of artists were active during the height of Burgundian influence in Europe, when the Low Countries became the political and economic centre of Northern Europe, noted for its crafts and luxury goods. Assisted by the workshop system, panels and a variety of crafts were sold to foreign princes or merchants through private engagement or market stalls.
A majority of the works were destroyed during waves of iconoclasm in the 17th centuries. Early northern art in general was not well regarded from the early 17th to the mid-19th century, the painters and their works were not well documented until the mid-19th century. Art historians spent another century determining attributions, studying iconography, establishing bare outlines of the major artists' lives. Attribution of some of the most significant works is still debated. Scholarship of Early Netherlandish painting was one of the main activities of 19th- and 20th-century art history, a major focus of two of the most important art historians of the 20th century: Max J. Friedländer and Erwin Panofsky; the term "Early Netherlandish art" applies broadly to painters active during the 15th and 16th centuries in the northern European areas controlled by the Dukes of Burgundy and the Habsburg dynasty. These artists became an early driving force behind the Northern Renaissance and the move away from the Gothic style.
In this political and art-historical context, the north follows the Burgundian lands which straddled areas that encompass parts of modern France, Germany and the Netherlands. The Netherlandish artists have been known by a variety of terms. "Late Gothic" is an early designation. In the early 20th century, the artists were variously referred to in English as the "Ghent-Bruges school" or the "Old Netherlandish school". "Flemish Primitives" is a traditional art-historical term borrowed from the French primitifs flamands that became popular after the famous exhibition in Bruges in 1902 and remains in use today in Dutch and German. In this context, "primitive" does not refer to a perceived lack of sophistication, but rather identifies the artists as originators of a new tradition in painting. Erwin Panofsky preferred the term ars nova, which linked the movement with innovative composers of music such as Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois, who were favoured by the Burgundian court over artists attached to the lavish French court.
When the Burgundian dukes established centres of power in the Netherlands, they brought with them a more cosmopolitan outlook. According to Otto Pächt a simultaneous shift in art began sometime between 1406 and 1420 when a "revolution took place in painting". In the 19th century the Early Netherlandish artists were classified by nationality, with Jan van Eyck identified as German and van der Weyden as French. Scholars were at times preoccupied as to whether the school's genesis was in Germany; these arguments and distinctions dissipated after World War I, following the leads of Friedländer, Pächt, English-language scholars now universally describe the period as "Early Netherlandish painting", although many art historians view the Flemish term as more correct. In the 14th century, as Gothic art gave way to the International Gothic era, a number of schools developed in northern Europe. Early Netherlandish art originated in French courtly art, is tied to the tradition and conventions of illuminated manuscripts.
Modern art historians see
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon is a museum of fine arts opened in 1787 in Dijon, France. It is housed in the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy in the historic center of Dijon. Being one of the oldest museums in France, the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon was founded in 1787 during the Age of Enlightenment, it is known for its collections in relation with the dukes of Burgundy, for the richness of its encyclopedic collections stretching from Egyptian art to the 20th century as well as the historical interest of the building that holds them, the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. The history of the Fine Arts Museum goes back to the creation of the art school by François Devosge in 1766, his collections, which have been presented within the Museum since 1787, represent the beginnings of the museum’s collections. It was made up of two rooms, the Statues Room – intended for sculpture, the Salon Condé – for paintings, which celebrate the glory of the Condés, governors of Burgundy, it is located in the former palace of the Dukes of Burgundy and in the eastern part of the Palace of the Estates.
The museum opened its doors to the public in 1799 and spread out within the palace being enriched by imperial grants, deposits by the State and legacies. As one of the largest museums of France, le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon is known for its rich collections of sculptures, art objects and various other items from the past; those interested in a specific historical age can admire various stunning items from Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance as well as masterpieces stretching from the 17th century to the 21st century. Among the attractions of the museum, you can find the tombs of Philippe le Hardi and Jean sans Peur, a collection of German and Swiss primitives and a collection of French paintings, rich in artists dating back to the time of Louis XIV, not forgetting the collection of contemporary art; the museum holds extra-European collections, such as ceramic and Islamic glasses and oriental caskets, ancient ivories of Africa, everyday objects and African ceremonial masks and Japanese porcelains, Korean stoneware and Indian sculptures and pre-Columbian ceramics.
The museum holds a large and varied collection of art: Various remains of the lavish court of the Dukes of Burgundy, including the famous tombs of Philip the Bold, John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria with their mourners from the Chartreuse of Champmol. A collection of Egyptian antiquities with a rare series of Fayum mummy portraits A collection of Roman art from Switzerland and Germany unique in France Some famous works from the Renaissance, 17th and 18th centuries, including works by Melchior Broederlam, Robert Campin, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Pontormo, Paolo Veronese, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Guido Reni, Georges de La Tour, Philippe de Champaigne, Charles Le Brun, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Hubert Robert A balanced representation of different currents of 19th century and a significant body of work of the sculptor Pompon A section of modern art including Granville gift: Théodore Géricault, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Georges Rouault Representative works of the school of Paris from 1950 to 1970 with Charles Lapicque, Vieira da Silva, Nicolas de Staël
The Cloisters
The Cloisters is a museum in Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights, New York City, specializing in European medieval architecture and decorative arts, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks shown in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys, its buildings are centered around four cloisters—the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem and Trie—which were purchased by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard, dismantled in Europe between 1934 and 1939, moved to New York. They were acquired for philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr.. Other major sources of objects were the collections of J. P. Joseph Brummer; the museum's building was designed by architect Charles Collens, on a site on a steep hill, with upper and lower levels. It contains medieval gardens and a series of chapels and themed galleries, including the Romanesque, Fuentidueña, Unicorn and Gothic rooms; the design and ambiance of the building is intended to evoke a sense of medieval European monastic life.
It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, all European and dating from the Byzantine to the early Renaissance periods during the 12th through 15th centuries. The varied objects include stone and wood sculptures, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, of which the best known include the c. 1422 Early Netherlandish Mérode Altarpiece and the c. 1495–1505 Flemish Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. Rockefeller purchased the museum site in Washington Heights in 1930, donated it and the Bayard collection to the Metropolitan in 1931. Upon its opening on May 10, 1938, the Cloisters was described as a collection "shown informally in a picturesque setting, which stimulates imagination and creates a receptive mood for enjoyment"; the basis for the museum's architectural structure came from the collection of George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and collector who single-handedly established a medieval art museum near his home in the Fort Washington section of Upper Manhattan. Although he was a successful sculptor who had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, his income was not enough to support his family.
Barnard led most of his life on the edge of poverty. He moved to Paris in 1883, he lived in the village of Moret-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau, between 1905 and 1913, began to deal in 13th- and 14th-century European objects to supplement his earnings. In the process he built a large personal collection of what he described as "antiques", at first by buying and selling stand-alone objects with French dealers by the acquisition of in situ architectural artifacts from local farmers. Barnard was interested in the abbeys and churches founded by monastic orders from the 12th century. Following centuries of pillage and destruction during wars and revolutions, stones from many of these buildings were reused by local populations. A pioneer in seeing the value in such artifacts, Barnard met with hostility to his effort from local and governmental groups, yet he was an astute negotiator who had the advantage of a professional sculptor's eye for superior stone carving, by 1907 he had built a high-quality collection at low cost.
Reputedly he paid $25,000 for the Trie buildings, $25,000 for the Bonnefort and $100,000 for the Cuxa cloisters. His success led him to adopt a somewhat romantic view of himself, he recalled bicycling across the French countryside and unearthing fallen and long-forgotten Gothic masterworks along the way. He claimed to have found the tomb effigy of Jean d'Alluye face down, in use as a bridge over a small stream. By 1914 he had gathered enough artifacts to open a gallery in Manhattan. Barnard neglected his personal finances, was so disorganized that he misplaced the origin or provenance of his purchases, he sold his collection to John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1925 during one of his recurring monetary crises. The two had been introduced by the architect William W. Bosworth. Purchased for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the acquisition included structures that would become the foundation and core of the museum. Rockefeller and Barnard did not get along; the English painter and art critic Roger Fry was the Metropolitan's chief European acquisition agent and acted as an intermediary.
Rockefeller acquired Barnard's collection for around $700,000, retaining Barnard as an advisor. In 1927 Rockefeller hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. son of one of the designers of Central Park, the Olmsted Brothers firm to create a park in the Fort Washington area. In February 1930 Rockefeller offered to build the Cloisters for the Metropolitan. Under consultation with Bosworth, he decided to build the museum at a 66.5-acre site at Fort Tryon Park, which they choose for its elevation and accessible but isolated location. The land and existing buildings were purchased that year from the C. K. G. Billings estate and other holdings in the Fort Washington area; the Cloisters building and adjacent 4-acre gardens were designed by Charles Collens. They incorporate elements from abbeys in France. Parts from Sant Miquel de Cuixà, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Bonnefont-en-Comminges, Trie-sur-Baïse and Froville were disassembled stone-by-stone and shipped to New York City, where they were reconstructed and integrated into a cohesive whole.
Construction took place over a five-year period from 1934. Rockefeller bought several hundred acres of the New Jersey Palisades, which he donated to the State in an effort to preserve the
Notname
In art history, a Notname is an invented name given to an artist whose identity has been lost. The practice arose from the need to give such artists and their untitled, or generically titled works, an acceptable if unsatisfactory grouping, avoiding confusion when cataloging; the phrases provisional name, name of convenience and emergency names are sometimes used to describe anonymous masters. The practice of using generic names for unidentified artists is most common in the study of art of the antiquity of the Roman era or with artists of the Northern Renaissance until about 1430. A pseudonym is applied after commonality is established for a grouping of works, of which a similarity of theme, iconography, biblical source or physical location can be attributed to one individual or workshop, but because of lack of surviving documentary record, the name of that individual is lost. Groupings of works under a given notname can be contentious. Linking a generically titled old master with a historical person is a tempting and exciting prospect, would establish an art historian's reputation.
The given notname depends on the artist's location, the most distinctive feature of their work, or the theme or iconographic element they are best associated with. Some notnames created based on a single artwork, called namepiece. Well known examples include the Master of the Embroidered Foliage so named after his distinctive way of painting grass and trees, the Master of the Life of the Virgin and the Master of the Legend of the Magdalen both named after scenes from the Life of the Virgin attributed to them, the Master of the Prado Adoration of the Magi named after his most famous panel, the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, named after a manuscript owned by one of his patrons; the Berlin Painter was named by Sir John Beazley for a large lidded amphora in the Antikensammlung Berlin, the Berlin Painter's namepiece. In the case of 14th and early 15th-century Netherlandish and German painters and illuminators, the problem is acute and stems from a number of factors; the practice of signing and dating works is seen in the region until the 1420s, the inventories of collectors were uninterested in the artist's names.
Many of the unidentified late 14th and early 15th-century northern artists were of the first rank, but because they have not been attached to any historical person, have suffered from academic neglect. It is a truism to say that, as Susie Nash put it, "much of what cannot be attributed remains less studied"; some art historians believe that this has led to a lack of caution in connecting works with historical persons, that such connections hang on thin threads of circumstantial evidence. The identities of a number of well-known artists have been founded on the basis of a single signed, documented or otherwise attributed work, with similar works sharing close style or within a geographical range attached to that name. Examples include Robert Campin, Stefan Lochner and Simon Marmion. List of anonymous masters Name Susie. Northern Renaissance art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-1928-4269-2
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900; the Gallery is an exempt charity, a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture and Sport. Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, entry to the main collection is free of charge, it is among the most visited art museums in the world, after the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection, it came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, by private donations, which today account for two-thirds of the collection.
The collection is encyclopaedic in scope. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, but this is no longer the case; the present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins's building was criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space; the Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. The current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi; the late 18th century saw the nationalisation of royal or princely art collections across mainland Europe. The Bavarian royal collection opened to the public in 1779, that of the Medici in Florence around 1789, the Museum Français at the Louvre was formed out of the former French royal collection in 1793.
Great Britain, did not emulate the continental model, the British Royal Collection remains in the sovereign's possession today. In 1777 the British government had the opportunity to buy an art collection of international stature, when the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole put his collection up for sale; the MP John Wilkes argued for the government to buy this "invaluable treasure" and suggested that it be housed in "a noble gallery... to be built in the spacious garden of the British Museum" Nothing came of Wilkes's appeal and 20 years the collection was bought in its entirety by Catherine the Great. A plan to acquire 150 paintings from the Orléans collection, brought to London for sale in 1798 failed, despite the interest of both the King and the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger; the twenty-five paintings from that collection now in the Gallery, including "NG1", arrived by a variety of routes. In 1799 the dealer Noel Desenfans offered a ready-made national collection to the British government.
This offer was declined and Bourgeois bequeathed the collection to his old school, Dulwich College, on his death. The collection opened in 1814 in Britain's first purpose-built public gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery; the Scottish dealer William Buchanan and the collector Joseph Count Truchsess, both formed art collections expressly as the basis for a future national collection, but their respective offers were declined. Following the Walpole sale many artists, including James Barry and John Flaxman, had made renewed calls for the establishment of a National Gallery, arguing that a British school of painting could only flourish if it had access to the canon of European painting; the British Institution, founded in 1805 by a group of aristocratic connoisseurs, attempted to address this situation. The members lent works to exhibitions that changed annually, while an art school was held in the summer months. However, as the paintings that were lent were mediocre, some artists resented the Institution and saw it as a racket for the gentry to increase the sale prices of their Old Master paintings.
One of the Institution's founding members, Sir George Beaumont, Bt, would play a major role in the National Gallery's foundation by offering a gift of 16 paintings. In 1823 another major art collection came on the market, assembled by the deceased John Julius Angerstein. Angerstein was a Russian-born émigré banker based in London. On 1 July 1823 George Agar Ellis, a Whig politician, proposed to the House of Commons that it purchase the collection; the appeal was given added impetus by Beaumont's offer, which came with two conditions: that the government buy Angerstein's collection, that a suitable building was to be found. The unexpected repayment of a war debt by Austria moved the government to buy Angerstein's collection, for £57,000; the National Gallery opened to the public on 10 May 1824, housed in Angerstein's former townhouse at No. 100 Pall Mall. Angerstein's paintings were joined in 1826 by those from Beaumont's collection, in 1831 by the Reverend
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