Flemish Primitives

Dans le paysage artistique brugeois de la fin du XV e siècle se distingue un peintre au style fortement caractérisé : le Maître de la Légende de sainte Godelieve. S'il apparaît comme archaïsant, c'est qu'il perpétue en réalité une tradition vernaculaire privilégiant les développements narratifs et concevant la figure comme simple ornement de la surface picturale, plutôt que d'adopter l'espace-ambiance unitaire des grands Primitifs flamands 1 . Il fait en cela partie des « petits maîtres », dont les noms furent souvent oubliés par la tradition historiographique.

La Mesa de los Pecados Capitales se expone en la sala 56A del Museo del Prado, deslucida y hasta cierto punto olvidada frente a la obra cumbre de la pintura bosquiana, El Jardín de las Delicias. Sin embargo, su estudio reviste un gran interés, puesto que es una pieza plagada de incógnitas. Su origen, empezando por la propia ejecución, está envuelto en el misterio, y su contenido, a primera vista fácil, no está exento de problemas de interpretación una vez nos adentramos en los detalles. Iremos investigando todo ello a lo largo de las siguientes páginas de este trabajo.

This article offers the first analysis of the Rolin Madonna (ca. 1435) in relation to Jan van Eyck’s trip to Castile and Granada (1429). The space and the architectural typology in the painting reveal Hispanic influences which are only explicable through first-hand experience by the artist. These elements were not fully understood by his Flemish peers, who adapted them to local use. This study allows us to re-position Van Eyck and Chancellor Rolin’s interests in line with the plurality of artistic models and the tensions between the existing hegemonies and the multiculturalism of the major global powers during the Early Modern period. //
Este artículo analiza por primera vez la Madonna Rolin (ca. 1435) en relación con el viaje de Jan van Eyck a Castilla y Granada (1429). El espacio y la tipología arquitectónica del cuadro denotan influencias hispanas explicables únicamente a través de la experiencia in situ del artista, elementos que sus colegas flamencos no comprendieron y readaptaron a sus usos locales. Como consecuencia, esta investigación permite resituar los intereses de Van Eyck y del canciller Rolin en línea con la pluralidad de modelos y con las tensiones entre hegemonías y multiculturalidad de las grandes potencias europeas en la temprana Edad Moderna.

The Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges (Exhibition of Flemish Primitives at Bruges) was an art exhibition of paintings by the so-called Flemish Primitives (nowadays usually called Early Netherlandish painters) held in the Provinciaal Hof in Bruges between 15 June and 5 October 1902.

It was the largest exhibition of c 15th c Flemish art to date, consisted of 413 official catalogue entries,[1] and drew some 35,000 visitors.[2] The exposition was highly influential, leading to at least five contemporary books as well as numerous scholarly articles, and initiated deeper study of the Flemish Primitives by a new generation of connoisseurs.[3][4] It also inspired Johan Huizinga to research and write his The Autumn of the Middle Ages.[5] The change in attribution of many important works (in table below) reflects progress in understanding the era by art historians since then, although it is an ongoing process.

Published in "Ons Geestelijk Erf" 86(3) (2015), 219-249.
doi: 10.2143/OGE.86.3.3154602

Depicting the Carthusian monk Jan Vos (successively prior of the Charterhouses of Bruges and Utrecht) kneeling in prayer in front of the Virgin and Child, Petrus Christus’ Exeter Madonna is a small painting probably destined to private devotional practices of its owner. This work is particularly interesting for it perfectly illustrates how the structuring of the pictorial space endows paintings that include devotional portraits with a dynamic dimension and how this dimension plays an essential role in the spiritual meaning and function of such images. The aim of this article is to show that by bring- ing together the worldly sphere below in the background and the sacred space in the foreground, where the Virgin welcomes the devotee, the Exeter Madonna can be under- stood as a visualization of the spiritual ascent of Jan Vos. To this end, the visual struc- ture of the painting is closely analysed, before being compared with devotional texts dealing with the theme of the spiritual ascent (such as De spiritualibus ascensionibus of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen), which Jan Vos knew well. Secondly, this devotional painting is re-placed within its context, namely the Charterhouses of Utrecht and Bruges and Carthusian spirituality in order to demonstrate that together with books, such images played a crucial role in the meditative practices of Carthusian monks.

ABSTRACT

This study will examine the extent of Flemish stylistic influence on the portrait paintings of Jean Perréal, a French court artist in the late fifteenth century. It serves as an attempt to shed light on how Flemish artists came to work in France through the patronage of important figures like the French king and the dukes of Burgundy and the how the legacy of their work would influence the next generation of French artists. This investigation develops from the study of portraits as a tool for self-promotion and traces the artistic developments of the Flemish “ars nova” which was given added significance by the growing court fascination with physiognomy and portraiture. It delves into how the French artist Jean Perréal, aware of the significance and popularity of the Flemish portrait style, chose to emulate some of their
compositional forms.

Perréal’s portrait paintings, drawings and illuminations were stylistically examined as part of a case study that determines the extent of the Flemish influence on his technical methodology as an artist.

Jeroen Reyniers, 'The Iconography of Emperor Augustus with the Tiburtine Sibyl in the Low Countries. An Overview', in: Marco Cavalieri, Pierre Assenmaker, Mattia Cavagna, David Engels (ed.), Augustus Through the Ages: Receptions, Readings and Appropriations of the Historical Figure of the First Roman Emperor, Collection Latomus, Brussels, 2022, p. 209-236.

A red Jew or why the character in Bosch’s Epiphany is not the Antichrist

The character present in the stable of the Epiphany in Prado Museum – traditionally identified as the Antichrist – is the best link between Flemish Art and the historical legend of the red Jew.
Bosch uses a red shade to portray the unbelieving Jew who would not uncover in the presence of God, colouring his hair, clothes, even his skin, with this shade. When the Epiphany is painted, at the end of the 15th c., the “red danger” – an ethnic variety of Judaism – has spread all over Europe.

This peculiar religious group, originating in Gog’s and Magog’s apocalyptic lands would have been absorbed by the Ottoman Empire after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
During the second half of the 15th c., some artists in the Northern Flanders provinces depict any representative of the Hebrew nation in red, due to a fin de siècle terror that spreads around Flanders and Germany.

The Flemish artist starts a trend that would use a red shade to depict the unbelieving Hebrew. This is particularly popular in Southern Flanders art, where Jews are fully portrayed in red. Painters of Northern Flanders include a red badge in the yellow outfit instead. Due to traditional iconographic loans between the Hebrew and the Devil, the latter is dressed up in red, although none of the above-mentioned images depicts the Antichrist.

Resumen:
La mejor relación entre la pintura flamenca y la leyenda histórica de los judíos rojos, se logra en este personaje que asoma por el establo de la Epifanía del Museo del Prado, tradicionalmente identificado con el Anticristo.

El Bosco tiñó de color bermejo al judío incrédulo que no se descubre ante la divinidad. Tonalidad que ocupa el pelo, las ropas y hasta la piel. A fines del s. XV, cuando este artista de Bolduque pintó la tabla, el peligro rojo se había extendido por toda Europa. Esta peculiar etnia judía, procedente de las tierras apocalípticas de Gog y Magog, había sido absorbida por el Imperio Turco tras la conquista de Constantinopla en 1453. En la segunda mitad del s. XV, debido al terror finisecular que se despertó, algunos artistas del Norte de Flandes comenzaron a colorear de rojo a los representantes del pueblo hebreo. Tras el maestro de Bolduque el tono bermejo se impuso de forma generalizada en la imagen de los judíos, especialmente en las escuelas del Sur de Flandes, que los coloreó así en su totalidad. Los centros pictóricos del Norte, optaron por añadir un distintivo rojo en sus prendas junto al preceptivo color amarillo. Debido a los tradicionales préstamos iconográficos entre el hebreo y el diablo, éste último vistió también de colorado; aunque hay que informar que ninguna de las imágenes citadas corresponde al Anticristo.

This paper seeks to give a spotlighted insight on the state of research of transmissions of artistic patterns in late medieval manuscript illumination. Starting from an example of a motif’s multiple repitition in more than a dozen Flemish books of hours over the period of five decades, it calls into question popular patterns of explanation, such as the economization of production, but propose to rethink our understanding of how and traditions were re-invented in manuscript painting. In this context, the role of model and pattern books should be renegotiated as is also for the illuminators methods of work. By offering a critical reading of our history of notion and concept, the paper aims to sensibilize for an unbiased view on processes of copying, repetition and tradition building. Instead of evaluating processes of transmission by reflecting their innovational impact we propose to concentrate more on the process itself. The history of lost intermediaries, traces uncovered by contemporary conservatory methods and the reexamination of workshop practices is only just beginning.

Paper presented on the Conference AUGUSTE A TRAVERS LES AGES : RECEPTIONS, RELECTURES ET APPROPRIATIONS DE LA FIGURE DU PREMIER EMPEREUR ROMAIN AUGUSTUS THROUGH THE AGES: RECEPTIONS, READINGS AND APPROPRIATIONS OF THE HISTORICAL FIGURE OF THE FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR - Brussels, Royal Library, November 6 2014.

PDF article for proceedings on request

This article deals with the study of a Flemish triptych dated around 1400 from the monastery of San Juan Bautista de Quejana, today preserved in a private collection. The history of the work is analyzed, as well as its specific artistic affiliation and the possible circumstances of its arrival, since it was painted in the Southern Netherlands. In this sense, it is likely that it was donated by a member of the Ayala family, the founders and protectors of Quejana. In view of its chronology, it is one of the first examples of pre-Eyckian painting of which its exportation is known, in this case, to Hispanic lands, together with a set of small triptychs from the monastery of the Holy Cross in Rostock, now kept in the Staatliches Museum in Schwerin (Germany). In addition, all these works have the interest of having been made by the same painter or workshop. The importance of the latter has led us to propose a name for this painter, that of “Master of the Quejana Triptych”, since it is his most relevant work.

The fact that so many of the iconographical details of the Ghent Altarpiece are derived from the Apocalypse of John makes it easy to overlook the fact that others are not. Whoever was responsible for the iconographical program of the altarpiece clearly drew on several subsidiary sources besides the bible. In this paper it is suggested that one of these subsidiary sources was the Revelations of Bridget of Sweden. Reminiscences of
Bridget’s visions may be found not merely in the iconography of the altarpiece, but also in its inscriptions.

La familia de los Ayala promovió la construcción del conjunto monástico palacial de Quejana. Allí depositaron el Tríptico de la Pasión recientemente expuesto en Bilbao. A partir de él, el autor ha podido reconstruir la personalidad de un artista que trabajó en Flandes hacia 1400, antes de la irrupción de los hermanos Van Eyck.

uri: https://orfeo.belnet.be/handle/internal/9760

Table of Contents : Introduction — Eduardo Lamas & David García Cueto; Castilian Legacy and Juan de Flandes’s Miraflores Copy — Jessica Weiss; Imitation, Inspiration or Innovation? Juan de Flandes and the Use of Models from Illuminated Manuscripts — Nicola Jennings; Spanish Fortunes of a Flemish ‘Ecce Homo’: On the Bouts Family’s Originals, Workshop Replicas, Flemish Copies, and Hispanic Imitations — Miquel Àngel Herrero-Cortell & Isidro Puig Sanchis; Jan Gossaert’s Deesis: Copying Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece — José Juan Pérez Preciado; Michiel Coxcie’s Copies for the Spanish Court: A Technical Comparison between the Copy of the Van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece and the Copy of Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross — Laura Alba, Lorne Campbell, Hélène Dubois and José Juan Pérez-Preciado; Mastering Divine Faces: Titian’s Sacred Images of Christ and the Virgin for Charles V — Astrid Harth; Las copias de los retratos de Antonio Moro durante su segunda estancia en España (1559–1561) — Almudena Pérez de Tudela; Les copies de Marcellus Coffermans pour le marché espagnol — Marie Grappasonni; Copies Emulating Federico Zuccari’s Model for the Annunziata Church in Rome (1570–1600) — Macarena Moralejo Ortega; ‘It copies the Crucifixion from Alsemberg’: On the Influence of Coxcie on the Calvary of Hendrick de Clerck for the Church of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode in Brussels — Ana Diéguez-Rodríguez ; Rubens, Martínez del Mazo and the Decoration of the Prince’s Apartments in the Alcázar of Madrid — Ángel Rodríguez Rebollo ; The Reflection of ‘Flandes’ in the Spanish Royal Collections: Copies after Rubens in the Patrimonio Nacional — David García Cueto ; ‘It is a copy after Rubens or Van Dyck’: Copying Flemish Paintings in Granada — Manuel García Luque ; The Copies by Miguel Manrique and Western Mediterranean Commercial Networks — Eduardo Lamas

Reviews:
https://hnanews.org/hnar/reviews/copies-of-flemish-masters-in-the-hispanic-world-flandes-by-substitution/

The collection of Pablo Bosch, bequeathed to the Museo del Prado in 1915, was one of the most prestigious in early twentieth-century Spain. To date, no detailed study of it has been undertaken. Documentary sources allow for a reconstruction of Bosch's life and his network of contacts, revealing his artistic preferences and notably his taste for early Flemish painting. Information provided by his correspondence also supports a reconstruction of his two principal collections (paintings, and coins and medals) and new data on many of the works that he owned is published here. An analysis of legal documents and the minutes of the meetings of the museum's board of trustees provides more detailed information on the Prado's management of the bequest from 1915 and permits some suggestions to be formulated regarding the decisions taken by Bosch in his several wills.

This is the first exhaustive catalogue of paintings with devotional portraits produced in the Low Countries between c. 1400 and 1550. This catalogue is an appendix to the book Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish Painting.
Available online free of charges: https://brill.com/view/title/55785

Studie van de iconografie van Keizer Augustus met de Tiburtijnse sibille in Berghse kroniekenhandschrift.

Analysis of the Emperor Augustus with the Tiburtine Sibil iconography in the Chronicle manuscript Castle Bergh.

Jeroen Reyniers, 'Keizer Augustus en de Tiburtijnse sibille in het Berghse kroniekenhandschrift', Wim van Anrooij & Jeanne Verbij-Schillings (red.), Het Berghse kroniekenhandschrift. Ontstaan, inhoud en functie van een laatmiddeleeuws geschiedenisboek, Hilversum, (Uitgeverij Verloren), 2021, p. 243-259.

This paper examines the Flight into Egypt attributed to Adriaen Isenbrandt presently kept in the Eva Klabin Foundation (Rio de Janeiro). It discusses the painting’s attribution - comparing  it both to other works of Isenbrandt and to the tradition of the representation of the Flight into Egypt - and formal and iconographical aspects of the panel, including the small monkey that can be seen in the far left.

Jeroen Reyniers, ‘Onbekend maakt onbemind. Een vijftiende-eeuws schilderij in de stijl van Rogier van der Weyden in de Antwerpse kathedraal’, Revue belge d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Oudheidkunde en Kunstgeschiedenis, vol. 84 (2015), p. 57-123.

Fifteenth-century Flemish artists used earrings as a visual convention to mark figures as outsiders: “others” with regard to the Christian society of fifteenth-century Northern Europe. But, in an innovation possibly first seen in Rogier van der Weyden’s art, rather than simply motivating rejection of these outsiders by viewers, these earrings signal acceptance. We see this in Rogier van der Weyden’s Columba Altarpiece Adoration of the Magi where earrings, by intensifying figures’ outsider status, make these non-Christians’ eventual conversion all the more remarkable. The Magus’s earringed Black attendant will soon see the Christ Child, and will acknowledge him as Son of God, while a turbaned and earringed onlooker, a Jew, is at this very moment “seeing the light.” I call this new use of earrings the even he/she  topos, meaning even such a nonbelieving outsider as he/she can experience a revelation and convert. The power of being a Christian insider is reinforced by heightening the otherness of the earringed outsider; Christianity’s universal appeal is reconfirmed; and revelation and salvation are possible for all, because even he/she responds to Christianity and therefore converts.

In 1843, Augustus Pugin, the leading architect of the Gothic Revival in early Victorian Britain, wrote of his plans to ‘work all day’ at the museum at Antwerp, ‘where I shall find the most Beautiful authorities’. The result of his visit was a series of drawings, now divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University, which record Florent van Ertborn’s collection of early Northern paintings, bequeathed in 1841 to what is now the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Pugin’s drawings of the Van Ertborn pictures attest to a keen interest in early Netherlandish painting, which is also reflected in his writings and in his own art collection.

Taking the drawings as its starting point, this article examines Pugin’s engagement with early Netherlandish painting. It assesses the importance for him of such pictures – experienced both at first hand and through reproductions – and their impact on his impassioned revival of the Gothic style. Pugin’s enthusiasm for early Netherlandish art was fuelled by his Catholic faith and by his priorities as a designer in search of ‘authorities’ to inform his work, especially in stained glass and book illustration. His experience of the Van Ertborn pictures is placed in the context of other collections he knew that featured ‘Flemish Primitives’, including that of his patron, Lord Shrewsbury, and the influential Aders collection in London, from which he purchased some pieces. The article concludes with consideration of Pugin’s abiding impact on the study of early Netherlandish painting through his influence on W.H. James Weale, whose pioneering research forms the bedrock of modern scholarship in the field.

Dominique Deneffe and Jeroen Reyniers, 'The Ghent Altarpiece, a Bibliography', in: B. Fransen and C. Stroo (ed.), The Ghent Altarpiece. Research and Conservation of the Exterior, Contributions to the Study of the Flemish Primitives, 14, Brussels (KIK-IRPA), 2020, p. 393-395.

The impact of Byzantium on Western Renaissance art is generally acknowledged and this topic has been the subject of numerous conferences and publications. However, these studies mainly tend to focus on Renaissance Italy and not so much -or, in any case, to a lesser extent- on territories North of the Alps. During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, images of the Virgin and Child were among the most common devotional artifacts in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands. Just as devotional texts encouraged the devotee to imagine and experience the events described, such ‘Andachtsbilder’ served the same purpose, offering the spectator to empathize and identify with the characters depicted. Most of these images are in fact contemporary interpretations of Eastern or (Italo)-Byzantine icons, adapted to the prevailing style and devotional practices current in the Low Countries. Sometimes, this assimilation is so thorough that the link to the original prototypes has virtually been lost.
This paper will investigate the integrating of such Byzantine and byzantinizing representations of the Virgin and Child into the mainstream of Early Netherlanidsh painting, focussing on the  the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Rewatch the symposium on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDC4k8T5aas&ab_channel=Palaisdesbeaux-artsdeBruxelles

Johan Huizinga conceptualized and composed his masterpiece during World War I, a great war fought on medieval battlegrounds and on the very soil of the Burgundian borderlands whose decadent culture he had devoted himself to excavating. This chapter investigates the ways that Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen functions as a critique of medieval-ism as it had developed in the decades prior to the war and during the war itself. Writing in the neutral Netherlands, and yet strongly attuned to the unfolding events around him, Huizinga both explicitly and implicitly sought to expose the dangers of locating the origins of modernity in an age of political, cultural, and moral decay. In this work, he accordingly exposed the deadly logic of his contemporaries' passionate and divisive embrace of the bellicose nationalist ideologies undergirding the war as the medieval world continued to furnish the imagery, vocabulary, and emotional charge of wartime propaganda on the Western Front.

In these pages, we study "The Virgin of the Carmelites", an oil on panel painting preserved in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid. The painting was made in Flanders in the first decades of the sixteenth century and nowadays it is still considered as anonymous. In this article we have reviewed the different authorship hypotheses that have been proposed concerning the piece. Nevertheless, we are now introducing a new one, namely, that the author is the Master of 1518. Besides the questions related to authorship are developed, the represented iconography is also analyzed.

Domain specific modeling methodology employed in this solution provides abstractions in the problem domain that expresses designs in terms of concepts in the application domain. Presented in this paper therefore is a metamodelling tool, an integrated platform which offers layered collections of reusable software primitives whose semantics are familiar only to engineering design mechanisms. It is intended to eliminate the complexities associated with the domain of computing technologies such as CAD systems where the focus is solely on engineering designs expertise in the software systems logic. This tool which was built on the DSL processor engine that compiles the DSL Builder files at the core will enable non design experts to be able to evolve designs specific to their domains of operations and reflecting their view points. At the Development Interface, the templates are created for every transformation added to our model that can be applicable in the physical design of objects in the engineering industry. It will in line remove hassles and complexities of expertise centric design platforms to produce artifacts that will help engineers manage very complex design concepts.