Madrid

by Jan Piet Filedt Kok

The exhibition Rogier van der Weyden, shown at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (closed 28th June), celebrated the highly ­specialised conservation treatment in the Prado between 2011 and 2015 of Rogier van der Weyden’s Crucifixion in the Escorial (cat. no.5), probably finished shortly before his death for the Charterhouse of Scheut (near Brussels), and acquired by the Spanish King Philip II in 1555. Lorne Campbell, the leading expert on Van der Weyden, curated the exhibition and edited and wrote most of the excellent catalogue that accompanied the show.1

The exhibition included all three paintings that, on the basis of early documentary evidence, can be unequivocally attributed to the artist: The descent from the Cross, painted before 1443 for a chapel in Leuven, bought by Philip II and now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid; the Miraflores triptych donated in 1445 to the Charterhouse of Miraflores by King John II of Castile, and now in Berlin; and the ­Crucifixion. The show was limited to four of the Prado’s exhibition rooms and centred on these three key works, to which were added a few more paintings accepted as by the artist or in his style, some copies and works in other media, such as one large Brussels tapestry (Episodes from the story of Jephthah) and some sculptures, reflecting Van der Weyden’s influence in the Iberian Peninsula. The last two rooms were dominated by Rogier’s Triptych of the Seven Sacraments from Antwerp (no.4), the Triptych of the Redemption in the Prado by a ­follower of Van der Weyden (no.9); a copy of Rogier’s Crucifixion in Vienna by the Master of the Legend of St Catherine (no.13); a polychromed sculpture from a Brussels workshop now in Laredo (no.11; Fig.83); St Francis(?) holding a crucifix on a panel from Lisbon by the workshop of Nuno Gonçalves (no.16); and finally, in the last room, the large Crucifixion from the Escorial.

Because of the inclusion of three very important works by Rogier, this small exhibition surpassed the much larger ones devoted to Van der Weyden held in Frankfurt, Berlin and Leuven in 2008 and 2009, although especially in Berlin there was a larger number of paintings by Rogier and his workshop.2

The large Crucifixion by Rogier van der Weyden (no.5; Fig.81), in the Escorial since 1574, dominated the end of the exhibition and is discussed several times in the catalogue. Before the painting’s recent conservation treatment, the panel was in such poor structural condition and so badly overpainted in the lower parts that in his 1999 monograph devoted to Rogier, Dirk de Vos wrote that ‘there is virtually no area of the painting in which the artist’s work has remained intact’.3 However, Van Asperen de Boer’s analysis of the underdrawing showed it to be very similar to those found in his other works, which proved its authenticity.4 Catherine Metzger examined the painting from scaffolding and reported that the faces and hands are much better preserved than had been thought: ‘many parts of the painted surface have all the bravado, confidence and brilliant placement of Rogier’s own work’.5 The treatment proved that most of the body of Christ and the hands and heads are well preserved.

The most recent dendrochronological investigation of the thirteen horizontally laid Baltic oak boards provides a terminus post quem of 1457 for the earliest possible use of the panel, but a later use in the beginning of the next decade is more probable. Lorne Campbell convincingly argues that Rogier reached ultimate perfection in painting the three figures of the Crucifixion. The panel is swiftly painted in long brushstrokes wet-in-wet. It must have been a gift from the artist to the chapel of the Carthusian Charterhouse of Scheut (near Brussels), built in 1450.6 Here one could have wished for the chance to compare the painting with the wings depicting St John with the Virgin and the Crucifixion now in Philadelphia, which must have been in Spain as early as the late fifteenth century. In the catalogue Campbell attributes this work to Rogier’s workshop, although it used to be seen as one of his most characteristic late works and ­superior in quality to the Escorial Crucifixion.7

The first room of the exhibition was ­dominated by the monumental Descent from the Cross in the Prado (no.1), painted before 1441 and since 1564 in Spain. It remains Rogier’s greatest painting, and has, moreover, survived in excellent condition. It will never leave the Prado.
The Miraflores triptych (no.3) was donated in 1445 by King John II of Castile to the Charterhouse of Miraflores near Burgos, which sold the work in the early nineteenth century; it was acquired in 1850 by the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. During most of the last century the reduced-size copies of the panels in New York and Granada were believed to be Rogier’s originals of the triptych. The cleaning and scientific examination of the Berlin panels in 1980 made it clear that they are in fact the originals, while a study of the panels in New York and Granada showed that they are late fifteenth-century copies made in Spain, probably by Juan de Flandes, the Flemish-trained court painter of Isabella the Catholic, who was active in Spain from 1496 to 1519. For the first time since it was painted, the New York panel of Christ appearing to the Virgin (no.15) was hanging next to the Miraflores triptych. It provided a great opportunity to compare them, although the visitor was not offered this chance for the two other copies, which remained in the Capilla Real, Granada.

Aside from the three key paintings, only one fully autograph painting by Rogier was on display: the Virgin and Child of c.1435–38 from the Prado itself, known as the Durán Virgin (no.2). It must have been among the first paintings by Rogier to arrive in Spain, since it was copied there very early (see no.17). Exceptional was the presence in the exhibition of the recently cleaned (and reframed) Triptych of the Seven Sacraments (no.4) from Antwerp, probably commissioned c.1450 by Jean Chevrot, Bishop of Tournai. Seeing it with Rogier’s autograph works drew attention to the triptych’s weaker parts, especially in the wings, confirming the ­suggestion that the painting was made with the help of studio assistants.8

The differences between the paintings ­produced in Rogier’s workshop by assistants and those made after his death were less easy to determine. The small oblong Pietà in the Prado (no.8) comes close in style and technique to Rogier, but the colour scheme is quite ­different. The central panel from the Prado’s Triptych of the Redemption (no.9; shown in the exhibition without its wings), formerly attributed to Vrancke van der Stock, is now given to a follower of Rogier. It is badly in need of cleaning. While it is one of the most complex ensembles in the idiosyncratic Rogierian style, it seems unlike works from Rogier’s workshop and could well have been made after his death. Although it was already in Spain in the sixteenth century, it is not ­certain that it and the Pietà in the Prado were made for a Spanish audience. On the other hand, the few examples of high-quality sculpture shown in the exhibition were certainly made for a Spanish clientele. The greatest ­surprise was the work of the Flemish sculptor Egas Cueman (Coeman) from Brussels, documented in Spain between 1454 and 1495,
who was represented by a life-size polychromed alabaster statue of Bishop Fray Lope de Barrientos (no.19; Fig.82). The exhibition contained three drawn designs by the same master for the sculpted decoration of the chapel of St Anne at Guadalupe (c.1460–67; no.18). Just as fascinating was the Crucifixion group (Fig.83) taken from a sculpted altarpiece of Our Lady of Bethlehem in the parish church in Laredo (no.11), where the wooden sculpture is incorporated into a large Baroque retable. Although the Baroque polychromy and setting has considerably altered the appearance of the sculpture, it is still possible to recognise the Brussels origin of the original altarpiece. Despite Bart Fransen’s suggestion (in 2013) that the altarpiece was based on designs by Rogier van der Weyden and/or his workshop around 1430–40, this reviewer is inclined to date the rather dramatic figures of the Virgin and St John as part of a later Brussels retable of c.1460–70.9

Altogether the exhibition provided a marvellous opportunity to see and study the core of the painted work by Rogier van der Weyden, the most influential Flemish master of his
age, along with a few prime examples that demonstrated his impact on fifteenth-century Spanish art.

1     Catalogue: Rogier van der Weyden and the Kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. Edited by Lorne Campbell, with contributions by the editor, Carmen García-Frias Checa, Stephan Kemperdick, José Juan Pérez Preciado and Pilar Silva Maroto. 192 pp. incl. 108 col. + 22 b. & w. ills. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2015), €25. ISBN 978–84–8480–315–7. Spanish edition: ISBN 978–84–8480–314–0.
2     Both exhibitions were reviewed by Paula Nuttall in this Magazine, 151 (2010), pp.860–63, and by the present writer in Simiolus 34 (2009/10), pp.56–65; a review of the current state of Rogier van der Weyden studies was given in the last article and is supplemented by
the publication by L. Campbell et al., eds.: Rogier van der Weyden in context (Papers presented at the Seventeenth Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting held in Leuven 22–24 October 2009), Paris, Leuven and Walpole (MA) 2012.
3     D. de Vos: Rogier van der Weyden: the complete works, New York 1999, p.291.
4     See pp.50 and 57 in the catalogue, and J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer et al.: Underdrawing in paintings of Rogier van der Weyden and Master of Flémalle Groups, Zwolle 1992, pp.23–25 and 144–51.
5     See C. Metzger: ‘An Assessment of the Escorial “Crucifixion”: Condition, Quality and Maker’, in Campbell et al., op. cit. (note 2), pp.159–68.
6     The catalogue is not very specific about the original location in the Chapel, for which see, most recently, B. Ridderbos: Schilderkunst in de Bourgondische Nederlanden, Leuven 2014, pp.99–100.
7     It was recently established that the Rogierian paintings (given to the Master of the Prado Adoration) of the Annunciation in Dijon and Christ appearing to the Virgin in Washington were originally the obverses of the panels in Philadelphia; see V. Bücken and G. Steyaert: The Heritage of Rogier van der Weyden, Brussels 2013, pp.156–59. Van Asperen de Boer et al., op. cit. (note 4), pp.25–26 and 152–58, considers the underdrawing as characteristic for Rogier and judges the painting to be autograph.
8     See, most recently, G. Steyaert in Campbell et al., op. cit. (note 2), pp.121–22, who identified two principal ­assistants. Van Asperen de Boer et al., op. cit. (note 4), pp.271–77, considers that, with the exception of the angels, the underdrawing seems far removed stylistically from the underdrawings in Rogier’s core group of paintings.
9     See B. Fransen: Rogier van der Weyden and Stone Sculpture in Brussels, Turnhout 2013, pp.171–78. Hopefully the current examination and restoration of the Laredo altarpiece will bring more information to bear on the dating of the original Brussels altarpiece.