Patrick Bade
Flemish Painting

Patrick Bade - Flemish Painting

- So, in the first half of the 15th century, there is one of the great revolutions in Western art when artists are engaging with the real world, and they’re trying to give a much more convincing picture of the real world, even a picture that the viewer might feel that they could physically enter. And this revolution takes place simultaneously in two different places in the first half of the century, in Florence, in Italy, and in Flanders in the North. And initially, these two revolutions are running along parallel lines, but they’re quite separate from one another. There’s very little contact in the first half of the 15th century between these two schools of art. Things begin to change ‘round about 1450. One reason for that is the invention of printing, which made ideas, much easier for ideas to circulate or move from one part of Europe to another. But you also find from around 1450 that artists from the North travel to Italy and they pick up Italian ideas. And I’m certainly going to be talking quite a lot about that today and on Sunday. So on the screen we have two depictions of the Madonna. The painting on the left, I’ve already talked about. It’s by Masaccio, it’s the “Pisa Madonna,” and it dates from 1526. And on the right-hand side is the so-called “Madonna of the Fire Screen,” which until recently was attributed to Robert Campin, a French-speaking Flemish artist. It’s been downgraded, so it’s now no longer ascribed directly to the master, the National Gallery say it’s by a follower of Robert Campin. They’ve also changed the date. It used to be dated to the 1520s, so exactly contemporary with the “Pisa Madonna,” and it’s now dated circa 1440. So about 15 years later.

But nevertheless, it’s perfect for my purpose here, which is to make a compare-and-contrast between Florentine painting and Flemish painting. Now, the Italians, their approach, you could say, is more cerebral; it’s more intellectual; they formulate the laws of perspective; they’re very interested in exploring the human body, even to the extent, as we’ve heard, of dissecting human bodies. They really want to know how the human body is put together. And the Italians, of course, also have the great advantage of the legacy of antique art: of Greek and Roman art, the fact that you could dig anywhere in Italy and you can find coins, you can find reliefs, you can find statues, you can find vases, and so on. Northern artists didn’t have those advantages, and their approach is empirical rather than intellectual. They used their eyes to look at the world. They had a great advantage that the Italians did not have initially, and that is that they developed the technique of oil painting. And I will be going into that and discussing the advantages that that technique brought. But in both cases, we’ve got a seated Virgin and Child. I’m not going to get into the question of the anatomy of these two babies. I’m an art historian, not a paediatrician, but I will point out the difference that the Italian baby weighs something. You feel that, you know, it’s a very solidly built little baby perched on the Virgin’s knee, and if she dropped it, it would hit the ground with a thunk. The Flemish baby, of course, is much more scrawny, much less volumetric, much less weighty.

As I said, the Italians have correct, by this time, they’d formulated the laws of perspective. So, Masaccio has constructed, very convincingly, a rather architectural throne for the Virgin. And she herself also is solid. She’s volumetric. We really understand her body underneath the drapery, we can see that she has knees and we know where her bottom is. It’s very firmly on the base of this throne. If we look at the Flemish painting, well, where is that, her bottom? I’m not quite sure. It’s somewhere in mid-air. It’s very unclear. And although the fabric with these typically Flemish, rather angular folds is marvellously painted, we don’t really have a sense of, much sense of her body underneath the fabric. Both artists have been presented with a problem of depicting a halo. Now, if you’re not really interested in depicting reality of the real world, a halo is not a problem. You just draw circular line 'round the head. But if you want to present a picture that’s a convincing image of reality, well, not many of us has ever met anybody who wears a halo. But you can see that at least for the halo on the Christ-Child, Masaccio does something quite radical. He doesn’t depict it as a circular dish on the back of the head. He depicts it as though it is a three-dimensional object that exists in space, and so he’s shown it as elliptical rather than circular. Campin, or his follower, instead of showing a halo, he had the fire screen in this picture with the flames behind, acts in lieu of a halo.

It’s a real object that is standing in for a halo. Now you can see that the Flemish artist has real problems with the perspective of the floor. And as with the Italian artists for quite a time in the 15th century, it’s the middle ground which causes the problem. So you’ve got the Virgin and Child in the foreground, as I said, somewhat ambiguously placed in front of this oak settee, But if you, where the middle ground is not covered by the settee, you can see the floor is all over the place. It makes you look, you feel almost seasick the way it seems to be lurching around the space. Now, Flemish artist, as I said, has the benefit of oil as a medium. Masaccio is using egg, which is very quick-drying, and it’s opaque. Oil is slow-drying, so the artist can work much, much more slowly, and he can build up the paint surface in transparent layers, what are called glazes. And that enables him to have much more subtle, gradual transitions of tone, much richer colours, and much, much finer detail, and more convincing rendering of textures. So for instance, you know, the fur on the sleeves of the Virgin, that’s something like that would just not be possible to render in tempera. And the detail, detail is absolutely amazing in this picture. I mean, notice that the-this a pre-printing- so the book is an illuminated manuscript, it’s a very, very precious object, so the Virgin handles it with care.

She doesn’t want want to get grubby finger marks on it. So you can see that she picks it up in a towel, she doesn’t actually touch it. And if you can get close enough to this picture in the National Gallery in London, you can actually read the text. It’s so fine. And one of the most marvellous aspects of this, features of this picture, is the view through the window. And this really sets the tone for a lot of Northern painting right through to the 17th century with, why are we not not moving on? Yes. So we’re looking at a couple of square inches of paint through this window in the background. And we have a wonderfully vivid vignette of life in Flanders around 1440. We can see what the houses looked like. We can see people walking up or riding up and down the street. We can see a woman standing in a doorway; we can see workmen climbing a ladder to mend a roof. So this engagement with the everyday is a big feature of Northern painting. It’s something you’ll find that the landscape/townscape background, or sometimes it can be a still-life kitchen scene in the foreground becomes larger and more prominent as time goes on through the 16th century. And of course, by the time we get to the 17th century, and after the Reformation, the religious element in the painting can be discarded altogether, and you have secular paintings of landscapes/townscapes, still lifes, kitchen scenes, and so on.

Now, where did this revolution come from? In Italy, we have a very good idea, and we can see precedence, we can see the work of Giotto, and as I said, there was always the, you know, the ancient art there as an example for artists to learn from. In Flanders, it seemed for a long time that it just kind of happened, and we couldn’t see where this development came from. And now one reason for this is that so much art of this period has been destroyed in the North. A lot was destroyed in the Reformation. You had outbursts of iconoclasm. All the artworks of art were removed from churches and they were very often destroyed. And also that Flanders is probably the most fought-over piece of land in Europe. There have been constant wars, there’s the Thirty Years’ War; there were wars between Spanish Netherlands and Holland. There wars between Louis XIV and Holland. The Austrians, later of course, the First World War, you know, there’ll be waves and waves of invasions and huge destruction. So, many works of art that might have helped us understand the development of Flemish art have disappeared. The work we’re looking at was discovered by a very interesting, eccentric Austrian aristocrat. He was half-Austrian, half-American. But he was based in London. He fled from the Nazis in 1938. And in 1942, in the height of the Second World War, he saw this painting, which came up for sale at Christie’s. And Christie’s had no idea what it was.

They had it misattributed to a minor artist, and Count Seilern realised its importance, that in a way, this painting is the missing link that tells us where Flemish 15th-century painting came from. Dates from the very beginning of the century, it’s around about 1410, and it’s now thought to be the earliest-surviving work of Robert Campin. But it’s a traditional, it’s a transitional, transitional work. It’s got elements that are very Gothic that I’ll point out to you, but it also has elements of this new kind of, in inverted commas, “realism” that comes into Flemish painting in the first half of the 15th century. So if we look here at the left hand, looking at the whole thing, I think you can see that the most Gothic, the most old-fashioned panel is the right-hand panel of the Resurrection. So it’s possible that this was the first of the three panels to be painted. And we can see in this panel how the space just climbs up the picture. There’s really, it’s like a tapestry. There’s very little attempt to make you feel recession into space. And also the figures are very slender and without a strong sense, they’re not volumetric. There’s not much sense of body to them. At the top of all three panels, you’ve got this very Gothic feature.

I mean, Gothic is a very decorative style. So when you have the area of the sky is gilded, and it’s actually in relief, you know, it’s slightly 3D. This of course, again, completely contradicts any sense of space or recession. But looking at the central panel, we see interesting new things. Joseph of Arimathea, who’s wearing the yellow costume on the left, he’s got a very tubby potbelly, and he’s really weighty and solid-looking. And we also see figures seen from behind. Well, you’d be very unlikely to see this in Gothic art, and wonderful little details of a certain kind of emotional realism. This angel here using the back of her hand to wipe away a tear. And it’s been suggested that one of the important sources for the new realism in painting was from sculpture, and this is a detail of a mourning angel from the tomb of the late 14th century. And a possible key figure in all of this is the sculptor Claus Sluter, whose masterpieces survive, at the Chartreuse of Dijon. These are works from the very end of the 14th century, and they introduce in sculpture a radical new element of realism, and a sense of weight and volume. And it seems likely that the painters were picking up on this feature in the sculpture here. This is, again, it’s a detail of a piece by Claus Sluter, the “Well of Moses” in Dijon in the Chartreuse.

And on the right-hand side is a detail of the “Ghent Altarpiece” by Van Eyck, with a fake sculpture on the exterior of the “Ghent Altarpiece.” It’s a painting en grisaille; in grey. Another important source, as I said, the Northern artists had to look, they didn’t have the example of the Classical antique art. They had to look elsewhere for their inspiration, and the painters in oil were certainly familiar with, and learning from, the great illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. This is a page from perhaps the most famous of all, it’s the “Tres Riches of the Duc de Berry,” which is now at Chantilly outside of Paris by the Limbourg brothers, which date, these date from around 1410, and have wonderful elements of real-life peasants working in the fields and so on; the seasons, seasonal occupations, and incredibly fine detail. So the fine detail, as we shall see, is an important element in Flemish painting. Now, here’s a more mature work, which is attributed to Robert Campin, it’s in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, it’s called the “Merode Altarpiece.” Again, it’s a triptych. And in the left-hand panel, we have the donors, in the central panel, we have the Annunciation to the Virgin of the impending birth of Jesus Christ. And in the right-hand panel, we have Joseph, who’s often depicted as an old man, much more old, much older than the Virgin Mary, and who’s traditionally believed to have been a carpenter. So he’s shown in a carpenter’s workshop.

And here again, you can see in the background of all three panels, the artist’s delight in depicting the real world. Here we have the central panel once again, where is the Virgin’s bottom? Where is she seated? And the perspective is very, very wonky. And you feel that he’s up-tilted the table, again, partly to cover up his difficulty with depicting the space of the middle ground. And we’ve got this wonderful still-life with this kind of double-perspective, which curiously predicts the kind of perspective used by artists in the early 20th century under the influence of Cubism, when you’re seeing objects from more than one viewpoint simultaneously. And the lily, which is a symbol of purity, in this very beautiful glazed earthenware vase. And here is Joseph in his workroom. And we get to see the, fascinating, of course, to see all the tools of a carpenter, or a furniture-maker of the 15th century. And again, through the background, we have another vignette of a Flemish city in the first half of the 15th century. And this curious, rather surreal detail of a mouse trap sitting on a little shelf projecting out of the window into space, which is apparently inspired by a quotation from St. Augustine about trapping the Devil.

I’ve got a slightly closer view of all of this. Now, I suppose this is the most famous Flemish painting of all of the 15th century, this is Jan Van Eyck. Vasari knew about Van Eyck. Van Eyck was internationally famous, and Vasari talks about him. Vasari claims, he asserts, that Van Eyck invented oil painting. Well, we know he didn’t, that it had existed for a generation at least, before Van Eyck, but he certainly exploits the possibilities of oil painting to a greater degree than any other artist before. This is a good reproduction, but you just have to see the real thing, ‘cause nothing, you cannot reproduce this painting, you really have to stand in front of it, and wonder, for instance, at the miraculous depiction of the passage of light across the wall in the background; the way his rendition of light on all the objects or the textures, and the incredible detail. I don’t think any artist in Western art has ever matched Van Eyck for precision, accuracy of detail. Every hair of that wiry little dog, depicted individually, and its little wet nose, and so on. It is just an incredible tour de force. Now, it’s been very, very hotly debated and discussed, and enormous amounts have been written about it. It’s traditionally called “The Marriage of Arnolfini” and it’s thought to have been commissioned by an Italian merchant from Luca called Giovanni Arnolfini, although there are some historians who dispute that, but I think we can accept that as being a very likely fact. So what is going on in this picture? And again, there are many, many different interpretations.

I tend to, when I talk about it in the National Gallery in London, I tend to stick to the traditional interpretation offered by the great art historian, Erwin Panofsky. But more recent art historians, well, you know how they are, they’re like washer-women taking in each other’s washing. You know, they find employment by contradicting one another. One art historian will come up with a theory and then another one will come up with a different one and so on and so on. But, so it’s a picture that is, we’re certainly aware that nothing is in this picture by accident; that everything has some kind of symbolic meaning. And it’s a picture that works on many different levels. Yes, it’s a portrait of a man, and he was a wealthy man, but he wasn’t a king, he wasn’t a saint, he wasn’t a bishop. He’s just a wealthy member of the bourgeoisie. That, in itself, is remarkable. That’s new. You wouldn’t have had that a generation earlier. I mean, he’s very individualised. I always say to people, if you met Mr. Arnolfini on a bus, of course you’d recognise him from this picture. You wouldn’t recognise Mrs. Arnolfini. Her name was Giovanna Cenami. Well, it’s been shown that actually it’s a posthumous portrait of her. She was actually dead by the time this picture was painted. So he may not have actually had her before his eyes. But in any case, we know that in Western art, men will tend to be more individualised in portraits and women will be more idealised; more generalised. Is she pregnant? That’s the other, people always ask that question. I can see there are 11 questions already, and I bet somebody’s saying, “Is she pregnant?” My guess is that, no, she’s not pregnant. This is the fashionable look of the 15th century, which the whole shape of women, with the kind of clothing they wore emphasises the belly; emphasises women’s function, which was seen as women were there to produce babies. That’s what they’re for in the 15th century.

And later, I’m going to show you a painting of Eve before the Fall, naked, and she looks pregnant. Well, clearly she can’t be pregnant, 'cause they haven’t had sex yet. But that is the fashionable look of the time. Now, the strange detail, I’ll get to some details here… Oh, yes, this is to make the point again, to reinforce the point, on the left-hand side is the “Wilton Diptych that dates from the 1390s, so it’s 40 years earlier. And it shows King Richard II. And he is the first English king for whom contemporary portraits, painted portraits, exist. There are two of them. But it’s not a portrait as we would understand it, 'cause this, in the 1390s when this was painted, King Richard II had a beard, and he’s not shown with a beard here. So this is not a portrait as a likeness, it’s a portrait as a representation of a king. So, it’s something entirely new to have a portrait as a physical likeness of the sitter. And also to have, as I said, to have a portrait of somebody who, although wealthy, is a commoner.

He’s not a king. And so this, we can see that this is the same man. This is also by Van Eyck. And this is a portrait in the National Gallery in Berlin, and it’s believed to be a portrait of Giovanni Bellini, er, Giovanni Arnolfini. So, if one of these guys is Giovanni Arnolfini, then I think we can accept that they both are. And now we come to this incredible detail of the mirror. Now what you can see on the screen is many, many times bigger than the detail in the actual painting. So we’ve got a convex mirror, mirror glass is very precious, very difficult to make in the 15th century. And we see Arnolfini and his wife from behind, and we see two people between them, somebody with a red hat, and somebody with a blue hat and clothing. And around the frame you can see tiny, tiny, I mean we’re talking about millimetres here, scenes from the Passion of Christ. So, it seems likely that the two people in the picture, they’re not there for nothing, they’re there as witnesses. And above the mirror, we see a very, very unusual signature. Well, it’s already quite a new thing in the 15th century, that artists are beginning to sign their work. But more often than not, it will be in a corner of the picture, at the bottom of the picture; here it’s in the middle of the picture.

And it’s in a very particular form. It’s in a very elaborate script that would be used on legal documents, and it’s in Latin, and it says "Johannes de Eyck fuit hic.” “Jan Van Eyck was here.” And it’s been suggested, and I think it’s very convincing, that the painting is also a kind of legal document recording the marriage of Arnolfini and his wife. And that is also, I think, corroborated by the strange detail of the one lighted candle, was traditional to have a single lighted candle present when signing a solemn document or entering a solemn contract. Let’s go back to the whole picture. So it’s a portrait of two people. That’s one level. It could be some kind of very elaborate record of a contract, but it’s also a painting that, although on the surface of it, it’s a secular painting, it’s a painting with quite elaborate religious connotations. You see the shoes that have been taken off as you would take off your shoes when going into a temple or a holy place. The fruit on the window sill is probably a symbol of the Fall. The dog, perhaps, a symbol of fidelity. And going back to the question of, or not, whether she’s pregnant on… Can we just get a closer detail? I’m not sure we can. But next to the bed, there is an elaborate chair. And on the finial of the chair is a carving of St. Margaret, who is the patron saint of childbirth. So that certainly re-informs, it certainly underlines that, whether she’s pregnant or not, that childbirth-or potential childbirth- is a very important element in this picture. This is also in the National Gallery in London, and it’s believed to be a self-portrait of Van Eyck.

And this is not absolutely certain, but there’s quite a lot of evidence that suggests it. Unusually, you can’t see it here, but it’s in its original frame. And on the frame, it says in Flemish, “Als Ich Can,” “As I Can,” which was the personal motto of Van Eyck. So that suggests that this could be a self-portrait. But also I think that the way he engages the viewer with such an intense, beady stare, I think this is, it’s not certain proof, but it does suggest that this is a self-portrait that’s been painted by observing himself in a mirror, and it’s just amazing to get up close to it. It’s a map of a face. Look at the way he’s painted the crow’s feet around the eyes, and every single bristle, he’s got like two, three-day growth stubble; every single bristle painted individually with the light glowing on it. And here we get right up to an eye, and you can see the red blood vessels in the eye. And as I said, the crow’s feet around the eye. So we’re looking at the tiniest, tiniest, you know, millimetres of paint. Now, the best-documented work by Van Eyck is this, this is the “Ghent Altarpiece.” It’s his most important surviving work. It’s in the Cathedral St. Bavo in Ghent. And there’s plenty of documentary evidence that it was painted by the Van Eyck brothers. Jan Van Eyck had an older brother, Hubert Van Eyck, who, in his day, was considered the greater of the two, was very famous. But nothing has been identified as surviving by Hubert, except this painting, which we know was partly painted by him. And art historians have tried to sort out the two hands and they generally ascribe the more backward-looking Gothic elements in the picture to Hubert, and the more forward-looking and real elements to Jan.

Here you can see full-sized nudes, male and female, of Adam and Eve. And as I said, Eve already looks pregnant, but she cannot possibly be, because well, she’s got the apple in her hand. She, so she can’t, there’s not much time for her to have got pregnant; she hasn’t even taken a bite out of it yet. And this is, it’s a polyptych, that’s a many-paneled altarpiece, And in Lent, and at certain religious festivals, it will be closed, and on the outside, you see these grisaille fake statues. You can see another depiction of the Annunciation to the Virgin, and we see portraits of the donors of the “Ghent Altarpiece.” This is one of the most spectacular surviving pieces by Van Eyck. This is in Bruges, the museum there. And this is the “Virgin with Canon van der Paele,” and two saints, St. George, who’s his patron saint, who presents him to the Virgin, and St. Donatian on the left-hand side. And as I said, well, there’s this incredible fineness of detail, but you never feel that it’s pedantic or laboured. It’s crystalline; it’s jewel-like. And the colours have this extraordinary glowing richness, which is achieved by this use of glazes that’s superimposed transparent layers. Here again, is Canon van der Paele. This is more, it’s a map of face, isn’t it? Van Eyck has explored every crevice, every wrinkle, every line on this face. Here is his patron, St. George, and this marvellously shimmering, glittering rendition of his armour and his chain mail. And this is the cope of St. Donatian, who’s an early mediaeval French saint who was a small child who was thrown into a river and a holy man rescued him by means of a wheel with candles on it, don’t ask me how that worked, but, and so a wheel with candles is what he’s holding, and that is his attribute. Somebody was asking me, I think last time, or the time before about saints and their stories.

You can, there are plenty of books, you can get dictionaries of saints, or nowadays you don’t need it, you can just look up a saint on Wikipedia and find out what the attributes of the saints were. So when you go to a museum, you can identify the saints by their attributes. And here’s a tiny detail in the background of Cain killing Abel. And this, again, miraculous, this sharp detail where you can actually read the text of the illuminated manuscript through the glasses of Canon van der Paele. This is in the Louvre, this is “The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin.” So this is a painting I get to see quite often and it’s fun to see people looking at it. I’ll never forget once going there and seeing a group of Japanese tourist art lovers, of course it’s under glass to protect it, but they had their noses right up against the glass and they were mesmerised by the detail in the background of this painting. So we had the donor, Chancellor Rolin, who is the most important political figure in Burgundy in the 1430s. And here is the background with this view into a mountainous distance. Get even closer. These, again, we’re looking at, you know, a square inch of paint with this bridge, with the figures crossing it. So miraculously fine detail. So Van Eyck is with without doubt the most important, the greatest figure, followed by Rogier van der Weyden, who was clearly indebted to Van Eyck. This is his “Virgin with St. Luke,” which is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And you can see it’s quite heavily based, compositionally, on the Van Eyck, but it’s also interestingly different. Now, Max Friedlander, who was the greatest expert on Flemish painting in the early 20th century, he compares the two. And he says, “The world of of Rogier van der Weyden is physically barer, but spiritually richer than that of Van Eyck.” And I think that sort of sums it up. Although Van Eyck paints many religious paintings, I don’t get a tremendous sense of religious belief or spirituality.

He’s somebody who’s so engaged with reality, with the real world; whereas, I think one does feel from Rogier van der Weyden that he was probably a deeply pious and religious man. So here, we’ve got of course, the background of the Rogier van der Weyden by anybody else’s standards is pretty detailed, but quite simple, by comparison, with the detail in the background of the Van Eyck. Now he was born in Tournai in the French-speaking part of the Netherlands, and was almost certainly trained by Robert Campin. His original name was Roger de le Pasture. He changed his name to Rogier van der Weyden when he moved to Flemish-speaking Brussels. And he painted the other great polyptych of the first half of the 15th century that survives, which is the “Beaune Altarpiece.” And again, you can see that it’s certainly inspired by the format of the “Ghent Altarpiece” on the left, the “Beaune Altarpiece” on the right by Rogier van der Weyden. And the “Beaune Altarpiece” was commissioned by, again, by Chancellor Rolin. So this actually gives us a fascinating opportunity to make a comparison of the same man painted by Rogier van der Weyden on the left, and Van Eyck on the right. This is his first great masterpiece, which is the “Deposition” which is in the Prado in Madrid. And it’s a painting of, it’s a big painting, it’s monumental, it’s a painting of incredible emotional power, I mean, a palpable emotion, all the figures, of course, weeping. He clearly loves painting tears. Now, Rogier van der Weyden is perhaps the first major artist who makes contact with Italian art.

And we know that he went to Italy in 1450, was a Holy Year; declared a Holy Year, and he went on a pilgrimage to Rome. And he attracted a lot of attention in Italy, and he received commissions from the Medici, and from the Este family. And this painting on the left-hand side, it was a commission from the Medici. And actually at the bottom, you can’t see it here, but it has the Medici coat of arms. And he’s adopting an Italian format, the sacra conversazione, so Veneziano, a typical example of an Italian sacra conversazione of Virgin and Child surrounded by saints. And also very interesting here, this comparison, and he almost certainly went to Florence, and he saw the work of Fra Angelico. And we’ve got a “Deposition” here, Fra Angelico on the left and one by Rogier van der Weyden, that seems to be a direct response to the Fra Angelico. And this is one of his last important works, it’s the “Columba Altarpiece.” It’s in Munich, in the Alte Pinakothek, and particularly the panel on the right seems to show that he certainly picked up some elements from Italian paintings. A far more convincing perspective in the background of this than you find in any earlier Flemish painting. And there’s also this detail that people have pointed out of the girl who seems to be turning towards the viewer and looking towards the viewers.

It’s a kind of detail you find in many Italian paintings like this; Benozzo Gozzoli where he’s showing his self-portrait identified by his name on his hat with the eyes coming out of the picture towards the viewer. Portraiture. So it’s the Flemish artists, they were particularly famous in Italy in the 15th and 16th, into the 17th century as portrait specialists. They were thought to be very good at it. And it seems to be Robert Campin again, who devises this format, of the bust-length, three-quarter view. These are paintings by by Robert Campin. Look at this detail. Isn’t that wonderful, of “Face of a Woman” by Robert Campin. And Rogier van der Weyden also was much in demand as a portraitist. Here are two portraits by Rogier. And again, you can make the same kind of comparison. This is Van Eyck, a portrait of his wife, Margaret Van Eyck on the left-hand side. Much more truthful, I think, and the Rogier van der Weyden on the right, more idealised; more stylized. Now moving into the second half of the 15th century, the greatest Flemish figure is Hugo van der Goes, and his supreme masterpiece is this, the “Portinari Altarpiece” which is now in the Uffizi in Florence. And it was a commission from a wealthy Italian banker called Portinari. And you can see him kneeling, presented again by his patron saints, the Virgin in the left-hand panel, and his wife presented by her patron saints in the right-hand panel. And in the central panel is an Adoration of the Shepherds.

Yes, and they’re depicted, oh, look, isn’t that so convincingly, so lovingly, you can see how he’s really enjoyed, in fact, the painting has, is an example of continuous narration. So you have different stories and different episodes in different stories being represented on the same panel. So in the background here, we see we have the Annunciation to the Shepherds, and in the foreground we have the shepherds coming to adore the Christ-child. And you can see the sense of wonder and delight in their faces. Here are the donors, left and right, and this wonderful wintry Northern European landscape where in the background we see the Three Kings asking their way to Bethlehem to offer their gifts to the Infant Jesus. Here is, presumably, a servant; you can see the Three Kings, and their servant who is asking the way. And in the background of the other panel, we have the journey to Bethlehem, where Christ is born. And we see Joseph very solicitously helping along the pregnant Mary. And this wonderful detail in the foreground, still-life, the flowers on the left in a luster-glazed albarello. Now this painting was commissioned for a hospital, and so there are various elements that are clearly connected with that. An albarello is a container, is an apothecary’s container, and it was used to contain medicines and herbs. And the flower, all the flowers here are flowers that are, could be used for medicinal purposes in hospital. They also have a symbolic meaning.

The white irises for purity, the red flowers, a symbol of the Passion. The three little red carnations represent the three nails that were used to crucify Jesus Christ, and the little violets along the bottom symbolising modesty. Now it was a painting that had a great impact. So we’ve got really a two-way traffic here, between North and South. And this painting was a key work because it was on display in Florence from 1470s when it was delivered. And it’s been suggested, for instance, that Leonard da Vinci took note of it and was influenced by the composition for his “Adoration of the Magi” which you see on the right-hand side. Now, ooh, rather running out of time. So I’m going to move a little faster. This is the most prolific and successful Flemish artist of the second half of the 1470s, 1480s, second half of the 15th century. This is Hans Memling, and this is the so-called “Donne Triptych.” It was actually commissioned by a wealthy English merchant who you see with his wife as donors in the foreground. So he was an artist who, again, had an international reputation and an international clientele. But he’s tended to be somewhat downplayed by 20th-century historians because he’s, you know, he’s not an artist who takes things further. He’s an artist who’s looking back rather than forward. And we do feel that, apart from the great “Portinari Altarpiece” that I’ve already discussed, that somehow, Flemish painting in the later part of 15th century, stagnated.

It got into something of a rut. And after, by the end of the century, you’ve got, and the early 16th century, you have prints circulating. So Flemish artists are becoming familiar with the innovations of the Italian Renaissance. And quite after 1500, a whole series of Flemish artists actually go to Italy. And often the impact of, particularly the High Renaissance, Michelangelo, was not very happy. These are two paintings by an artist who’s either known as Jan Gossaert or Mabuse, goes under both names. On the left you can see him working in a manner which is quite traditional and Flemish-looking, although he certainly acquired proper Italian perspective, as you can see in the background. On the right hand side, here’s Adam and Eve, where you feel that, “Yes, oh dear. He’s swallowed Michelangelo whole without really being able to digest it.” And it’s a rather uncomfortable and unfortunate fusion of Italian High Renaissance and Northern. I mean, I think one of the real problems is that Northern artists, we’ll see this again on the weekend with Durer, they’re so obsessed with the particular, with the novels, and the bumps and the lumps and the creases. I mean, look at those knees, that they’re incapable of smoothing things out and generalising in a way that Italian artists do. And this is another artist with very much the same kind of problem. This is Martin van Heemskerck, who also goes to Rome. He’s shown himself very proudly standing in front of the of the Colosseum.

And he’s a very good portrait painter, but his attempts to paint in the Italian Grand Manner are somewhat unfortunate. So I’m afraid I’ve only got five minutes or so to mention the two great 16th-century Flemish painters. This is Hieronymus Bosch, who was born in, his name was actually van Aken, he came from Aachen in Germany, but oh, his family did, but he was born in ’s-Hertogenbosch where he spent all his life and painted a series of altarpieces, which really captured people’s imagination from the first. I mean, he’s always been an artist who was admired and copied and faked. And this is perhaps his greatest, most famous masterpiece, which is the so-called “Garden of Earthly Delights” which is in the Prado in Madrid. So this is a painting of around 1500, so we’re in the middle of the High Renaissance in Italy. Certainly, Leonardo has already painted “Madonna of the Rocks” years before this. But so these two great Flemish artists of the 16th century, Bosch and Bruegel, were able to operate completely independently of Italian influences. And in many ways, of course, Bosch seems to be his imagination, his fantasy seems to be a throwback to the Middle Ages.

And again, he’s an artist; numerous, numerous attempts to explain these pictures, either in terms of mediaeval religious beliefs and the sort of imagery you can find in mediaeval cathedrals, you know, carved capitals or in the borders, fantastic teeming imagination you find in the borders of mediaeval prayer books and so on, you find similar kind of imagery. There’ve been Freudian attempts, of course, to explain his work as well in the 20th century. So a very strange idea, I think for us, that you go into a church and you kneel before an altarpiece. And this would be the central panel with this wild, orgiastic, hedonistic party, “Garden of Earthly Delights”. But it has, of course, a very moralising thing, it’s sort of saying, you know, people who indulge in all these things, they’re going to land up in Hell. And he’s, I suppose it’s particularly for his images of Hell that he’s most admired and most known, and these incredible scenes at the top of this panel of a burning city. And it’s known that in 1483, when he was 13 years old, ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he lived, was consumed, almost the whole city was consumed in a terrible fire. And he certainly must have witnessed this. And it certainly seems to have made a tremendous impact on his imagination.

And I’m going to finish with just a very brief mention of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the founder member, most important member, of the Bruegel family of painters. He’s influenced by Bosch, and there are paintings by him that show a similar kind of imaginative world. But unlike Bosch, he didn’t stay in Flanders, we know that he went to Italy, and that he was sometime in Rome. Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know it from his paintings. I suppose the only, it’s only his response to very dramatic alpine scenery, of mountains, very different from the flatness of Flanders that might tell us, “Yes, yes. He’s been on this great journey. He’s crossed the Alps,” which were this huge barrier between North and South in Europe. And this is the “Conversion of St. Paul.” So, as I said, you’ve got this very dramatic alpine scenery. In one way, of course, he does conform to the taste of the “Mannerist period” in inverted commas, where you’ve got, now look carefully at this picture before I tell you. See if you can identify where the figure of St. Paul, or Saul, conversion of Saul, that is the subject of this picture. You can see it’s pushed right back into the middle ground. It’s in the centre of the picture. You can see the horse and you can see the figure of Saul who’s fallen off the horse onto the ground. He’s wearing a blue robe, but it is not something that strikes you straight away. And that of course is, as we’ve seen, is a common feature of Mannerist painting. And the response to the alpine scenery, also in this, one of his most famous pictures, “The Hunters in Snow” in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. And he’s a wonderful draughtsman and a wonderful printmaker.

Now, superficially, there’s nothing Italianate in his work. No idealised figures, no beautiful nudes, no Italianate architecture. If he has responded to Italian art, it is perhaps only in the monumentality of his conception, and the fact that the figures are so sculptural and so volumetric. In that way, of course, he’s very, very different from Bosch. We have these little, tiny, scrawny figures. How about this extraordinary timeless drawing; could be a 20th-century drawing of beekeepers by Bruegel. And I’m going to finish with this very famous image, of course he’s often referred to as “Peasant Bruegel.” This is “The Village Wedding” again in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. And where he gives, you know, a tremendous power, and even monumentality to these very coarse figures, or Flemish peasants. And here is my final image of this little child on the floor eating something delicious in “The Village Wedding.”

So that is it for today. Let’s see what we’ve got in the way of questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “Does Baby Jesus ever have clothes on in any pictures?”

A: Yes, he does. Look, again, I’d really like you to, recommend again this wonderful picture, “Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art.” If you Google that, it will come up. It was a best-seller in the 1980s, and it will really explain a lot to you about this whole question of how the Baby Jesus is represented and very often shown naked. And very often I think somewhat disturbingly to us, he’s shown with an upper garment that’s being lifted by the Virgin to expose his genitalia. And sometimes she’ll be pointing to the genitalia or touching it. But that, as I said, if you read that book, all will be explained to you.

Thank you, Jennifer, for your very, very kind comments. It’s my great aim is to try and get people to look at pictures.

“The picture you just showed had a pregnant woman and someone bending over with underwear showing.” I don’t which one that, what one would that be? Must have been at the beginning of my lecture. Can’t think what it was. Was it actually the “Seilern Triptych”? Which is, you know, is Flemish, it’s not Italian. And it’s quite likely there would be Hebrew letters. They’re very often used in these pictures. Yes, oh, you’re talking about the “Merode Triptych.” It does look like a Jewish prayer shawl. It does indeed, in the left-hand panel of that picture.

Q: “Where is 'The Marriage of Arnolfini’?”

A: It’s in the National Gallery in London. And I think when you see the name of the painting, I think that’s the “Merode Altarpiece” which is in the Metropolitan in New York. Yes, as I said at the beginning, that there was a mistake in the Dropbox, and if you want the proper list, ask Lockdown and they’ll send it to you.

Q: “Why did the king have a halo in the early triptych?”

A: Well, it would be a saint. If it’s got a halo, it would be a saint.

Q: “Is it known how Mrs. Arnolfini died?”

A: The strong likelihood, of course, is childbirth. It was such a common form of death for young women.

Yes, “Als Ich Can.” It’s not, is half-German, of course it works in German as well, “Als Ich Can.”

Q: “How long would it have taken Van Eyck?”

A: God knows. I mean, you know, you think it would’ve taken a lifetime just to paint that one painting.

“The artist I admire.” He has a website, you can see his work. He’s called Paul Rumsey, and that is R-U-M-S-E-Y, Paul Rumsey. Do have a look at his work. I think he’s really fantastic.

Q: “What were these works commissioned by the Church or the aristocracy?”

A: Well, quite a number, it’s interesting that quite a number of the works I talked about tonight were commissioned by wealthy merchants. And that would’ve been a new thing in the 15th century. But certainly aristocracy and the Catholic Church were commissioning the bulk of the work.

Q: “Who determined who were the patron saints to the patrons?”

A: suppose their parents did by their choice of names at baptism.

Q: “Why haven’t I included Petrus Christus?”

A: Because he is a relatively minor artist and there are dozens of artists like that I could have included, but I only have an hour and I’m very conscious of an enormous number of artists that I’ve left out.

Well, I try, in these pictures, ‘cause you have to see the whole picture, 'cause you’re going to see, you need to see the composition. But I hope you notice that when I can get hold of sufficiently high quality details, I do like to show you the details, as well.

Q: “When am I going to resume my tours to Paris next year?”

A: Well, I have. I’ve already done one tour, and it was a particular delight for me to have seven Lockdown people on that tour. I’m doing another tour at Christmas. I haven’t been booked for any dates, yet. I think the tour operators are still a bit nervous about what’s going to happen this winter.

Q: “Is it right that Flemish artists tend to paint the Virgin Mary in blue robes?”

A: No, no it isn’t. There are plenty of Italians, artists who paint the Virgin in blue; blue and red, actually.

“Portinari Altarpiece” is Hugo van der Goes, spelled G-O-E-S.

Somebody’s saying wish I could go slower. Well, this one, it was intended to be two lectures, but the two got shoe-holed into one. But yeah, there’s always more to say, of course.

Right. Thank you very much, indeed. And I’ve got one more in this series, which is German Renaissance, and then I’m going to have a change of tack, change of mood, and I’m going to be talking about opera for the next few weeks until Christmas. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye 'til Sunday.