Origins of the Portrait
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see also:
Rogier
van der Weyden |
Rogier van der Weyden:
Portrait of a Lady
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Rogier van der Weyden
Portrait of a Lady
c. 1455
National Gallery of Art, Washington
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With the work of Rogier van der Weyden, early Netherlandish
portraiture entered a new stage in its development. It is thought
that Rogier became apprenticed at the workshop of Robert Campin at
Tournai, graduating in 1432 as Maistre of the Painters' Guild. He
was appointed official painter to the city of Brussels in 1436. His
work for the city included paintings on the theme of justice for the
court room of the town hall. Besides his official work, he was
commissioned to do a large number of portraits, usually by
distinguished patrons at the Burgundian court (Duke Philip the Good,
his son Duke Charles the Bold, Philippe de Croy, "Le Grand Batard de
Bourgogne", Francesco d'Este, Nicolas Rolin etc.).
While Jan van Eyck reproduces the texture of his sitters' skin in
microscopic detail, seeking in a manner analogous to that of the
nominalistic philosophy of his time to embrace the unique,
contingent physicality of each individual portrayed, however crude
or ugly this might make them seem, Rogier emphasises the social
status of his sitters, especially through his portrayal of hands and
face. Rank is primarily displayed - as it is with van Eyck - by
means of opulent robes and heraldic or emblematic attributes. But
Rogier's stylised portraits - his attention, for example, to the
sharply contrasting outlines of lips and nose, or his emphasis on
the slenderness of limbs - idealise his sitters, lending them a
greater sophistication. While van Eyck shows nature "in the raw", as
it were, Rogier improves on physical reality, civilising and
refining Nature and the human form with the help of his brush.
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 Rogier van der Weyden
Portrait of a Lady
c. 1445
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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His half-length, three-quarters view Portrait of a Lady
(Washington) serves to illustrate this. Her narrow face and
elaborately pinned-up, transparent veil covering ears and brow stand
out against a neutral, dark, two-dimensional background. Her hair,
brushed tightly back from her high forehead and held in place by the
black rim of her ornamental bonnet, pulls the corners of her eyes
into light, upward slants. The veil was usually worn to hide the
sensuality of the flesh; here, its fashionable transparency achieves
quite the opposite effect. Unlike Rogier's male sitters, the female
subjects of his portraits lower their gaze as a sign of chastity and
humility. One exception to this is his early portrait of a woman,
painted in 1435 - today in Berlin - and thought to represent the
artist's wife.
As in most of Rogier's head-and-shoulder portraits, particular
attention is paid to the refined delicacy of the sitter's hands. The
fashionably extended sleeves of her elegant dress cover the backs of
her hands, leaving only the slender frailty of her fingers in view,
whose finely chiselled, interlocking layers bear a similarity to the
exquisitely wrought golden buckle of the vermilion belt behind them.
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 Rogier van der Weyden
Portrait of a Lady
c.1464
National Gallery, London
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see also:
Jean Fouquet |
Jean Fouquet:
Etienne Chevalier Presented by St. Stephen
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Jean Fouquet
Estienne Chevalier with St Stephen
c. 1450
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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Van Eyck's realism soon enjoyed international renown. In Italy,
Bartolomco Fazio extolled the Flemish artist in 1455/56 as the
"prince of our century's painters". In France, too, where Burgundian
art was already well known, the new style quickly won favour,
becoming known as "la nou-velle pratique". Traces of its influence
can be felt in the work of Enguerrand Charonton, and in the
celebrated Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignon, painted c.
1470 by an anonymous master of southern France. The donor, whose
face is realistically represented, is shown kneeling in an attitude
of prayer at the bottom left of the Pieta. His white robe, as well
as the attribute of oriental architecture (the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem) against a gold background, suggest he has
travelled as a pilgrim to Jerusalem. The artist has given powerful
dramatic expression to the grief of the mourners, and the intention
to introduce the donor into their company seems obvious enough.
Nevertheless, the gaze and gestures of the donor have not (yet) made
any impression on the holy figures themselves, so that he remains
outside their gestural narrative. Although part of the painting, the
donor thus seems somewhat isolated within it. His gaze is intended
to be directed towards the events taking place, but in order meet
his patron's demands, the artist has painted him looking less into
the centre of the painting than diagonally out of it.
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Southern French Master
Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignon
Oil on panel, 163 x 218 cm
Paris, Musee du Louvre
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Etienne Chevalier's gaze is similarly posed by Jean Fouquet in a
work, commissioned by Chevalier, that was probably executed in 1451
following the artist's return from Italy to Tours (where he spent
much of his life working at one of the French royal residences).
Chevalier is portrayed on the left wing of a diptych, now at Berlin,
usually known as the "Melun Diptych" after the donor's place of
birth.
Chevalier, a high-ranking official at the courts of Charles VII and
Louis XI, is shown in a simple, but elegant, red robe. His long,
slender hands, whose pale, slightly flaccid skin contrasts so
strongly with the brownish complexion of his face, are held together
in the act of prayer. His portrait is the pair to the Virgin on the
right wing of the diptych. Unlike the donor, she is shown in
full-face view, idealised as an archaic object of worship. Etienne
Chevalier poses in three-quarters view; thus his gaze, although
turned to the Virgin, sees past her. Here, too, the purpose of the
portrait - to show the donor - conflicts with the donor's desire to
be part of the holy scene in the painting.
According to tradition, the Virgin is here represented with the
features of Agnes Sorel, the favourite of Charles VII. Richly
dressed in an ermine robe and a crown of pearls, her forehead shaved
according to the courtly fashion of the day, the Virgin meekly
lowers her eyes and offers the Child her breast. Behind her throne
stands a crowd of alternately red and blue, angelic putti.
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Jean Fouquet
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels
c. 1450
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
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According to tradition, Fouquet painted the Virgin
with the features of Agnes Sorel, the favourite of Charles VII.
Agnes Sorel made Eticnne Chevalier her executor, undoubtedly the
sign of a close relationship between them.
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Jean Fouquet
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (detail)
c. 1450
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
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The portrait of Etienne Chevalier is similar, in some respects,
to van Eyck's portrait of Chancellor Rolin. Fouquet too was
commissioned to paint an official who had risen from a
non-aristocratic background to a high-ranking position in the feudal
absolutist state, and whose desire to create a memorial to himself
betrayed his need to compete for social status with the nobility. At
the same time, the diptych may have been an ex-voto gift, a token of
his gratitude on being appointed Chancellor "Tresorier") of France
in 1451. Possibly, it was intended to commemorate the king's
respected mistress, who had died on 9 Feb. 1450. Whereas van Eyck
had found a "progressive" solution to the problem of integrating
into a spatial and narrative unity a donor worshipping the Virgin,
Fouquet, who had been leading court artist for many years, although
not officially made "peintre du roi" until 1475, shows Chevalier and
St. Stephen, the donor's patron saint, in silhouette. The purity of
the outlines and trenchant, extensive areas of colour are emphasised
by the light background of the marble wall and pilasters, on which
the name of the donor is repeated in a frieze-like pattern.
Fouquet's novel departure from Netherlandish donor portraiture is
the reduction of his subject's complexity to a minimum of clear,
expressive components. Van Eyck's compression of numerous allusive
details in his compositions contrasts with Fouquet's simple,
lapidary symbols: the stone, for example, evidently a sign of the
artist's interest in geology, resting on a leather-bound, gilt-edged
prayer-book. Like the wound on the saint's tonsure, from which blood
drips down into the hood of his dalmatic, the stone signifies the
patron saint's martyrdom. In a Book of Hours produced for Chevalier
(1452-60), and now at the Musee Conde at Chantilly, Fouquet painted
the lapidation of St. Stephen in miniature.
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Jean Fouquet
Self-portrait
1450
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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see also:
Hans Memling
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Hans Memling:
Man with a Roman Coin (Giovanni de Candida?)
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Hans Memling
Portrait of a Man with a Roman Coin
1480
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
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More than any other painter in the second half of the fifteenth
century, Hans Mem-ling can be said to have added a new dimension to
the type of portrait founded by Jan van Eyck in the Netherlands, and
developed further by Petrus Christus and Rogier van der Weyden.
Unlike his predecessors, Memling characterises his sitters in a
highly personalised manner, a technique learned partly from his
Italian contemporaries. He achieves this - in this small-format
portrait now at Antwerp - by using landscape to evoke a mood which
corresponds to his subject's sensibility. In contrast to van Eyck's
dark and neutral backgrounds, or Petrus Christus' use of paneling to
suggest interior space - as can be seen in his portrait of a young
lady, now at Berlin - Memling follows the example of quattrocento
Italian portraiture in making the landscape background an essential
part of the portrait itself. The role of landscape in Memlmg's "ceuvre"
is to reflect the mental and emotional state of the sitter, although
conventional symbols and emblems, suggesting the ethical and
religious coordinates of his sitters' lives, still figure in his
background scenes. Here, the young man is painted wearing a black
gown and cap whose colour merges with, and therefore emphasises, the
darkness of his hair. He is posed before a riverscape with trees,
over which dusk is beginning to fall. A man riding a white horse
along the riverbank is possibly an allusion to the rider in the
Revalation of St. John (6, 2), whom medieval exegetes saw as the
victorious figure of Christ. The motif is consistent with the swans,
which, owing to their legendary dying songs, have often been related
to Christ's Passion. The palm-tree, too, highly unusual in a
northern European landscape, and therefore particularly significant,
would fit the context of the Passion. Perhaps the artist has been
put in mind of New Testament martyrdom by the antique coin bearing
the head of Nero (54-68). The young man, evidently the owner of the
coin, is deliberately showing it to the spectator. According to the
"Annals" (XV, 44) of Tacitus, Nero persecuted the Christians in
Rome. Before they were executed, he had them subjected to the most
bestial tortures.
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 Hans Memling
Portrait of a Man with a Roman Coin
(detail)
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Memling's painting is based on a portrait of a young man - of which he had
probably seen a copy, or which he may have been acquainted "with as a type -
whose hands encompass a medallion bearing the head of Cosimo de' Medici. This
portrait (Sandro Botticelli Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder ),
now in the Uffizi, is ascribed to Botticelli. The medallion must have been cast
after 1465, since it carries the inscription MAGNVS COSMVS/MEDICES PPP. The
abbreviation PPP stands for "Primus Pater Patriae", a title conferred
posthumously upon Cosimo. A miniature by Francesco d'Antomo del Cherico,
contained in an Aristotelian manuscript now at the Laurenziana, shows that the
medallion was cast for Cosimo's son Piero ll Gottoso, who died in 1469. It must
therefore have been made between 1465 and 1469, and Botticelli must have painted
his portrait not long afterwards. The identity of the sitter has been the
subject of much fruitless speculation. Sometimes seen as Piero il Gottoso
himself, he has been equated with - among others - Pico della Mirandola, Niccolo
Fiorentino and Cris-toforo di Geremia. Since the young man with the red cap is
holding the medallion close to his heart, thereby revealing the extent of his
feelings for it, the portrait may be viewed as a demonstrative sign of the
sitter's support for the Medici during the period of the Pazzi consiracy (1478).
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Sandro Botticelli
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder
c. 1474
Tempera on panel, 57,5 x 44 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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