Early Netherlandish Triptychs: A Study in Patronage

EARLY

NETHERLANDISH

TRIPTYCHS

CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ART

Walter Horn, General Editor

Advisory Board: H. W. Janson, Bates Lowry, Wolfgang Stechow

I The Birth of Landscape Painting in China, by Michael Sullivan

II Portraits by Degas, by Jean Sutherland Boggs

III Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A), by Carlo Pedretti

IV Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, by Lilian M. C. Randall V The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans, by John M. Rosenfield

VI A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination, by L. M. J. Délaissé

VII George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist, and A Catalogue Raisonné (two volumes), by E. Maurice Bloch

VIII Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance, by Juergen Schulz

IX Claude Lorrain: The Drawings—Catalog and Illustrations (two volumes), by Marcel Roethlisberger

X The Drawings of Edouard Manet, by Alain de Leiris

XI Theories of Modern Art, by Herschel B. Chipp with contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor

XII After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870-1900, by Alfred Frankenstein

XIII Early Netherlandish Triptychs: A Study in Patronage, by Shirley Neilsen Blum

EARLY NETHERLANDISH TRIPTYCHS

A STUDY IN PATRONAGE SHIRLEY NEILSEN BLUM

University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1969

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Early Netherlandish Triptychs is a volume in the California Studies in the History of Art sponsored in part by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Copyright © 1969 by The Regents of the University of California SBN 520-01444-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-10902 Designed by Robert Bruce Inverarity Printed in the United States of America

TO

K.M. B.

Acknowledgments

Of the many people who kindly helped in the preparation of this book I would like to thank especially Professors Robert A. Koch and Sixten Ringbom whose conscientious reading of the manuscript kept me from countless errors but at whose feet none of my present sins can possibly be laid; Mrs. Robin Jacoby whose patient and good-natured attention to the footnotes saved the manuscript from many a pitfall; and Professor F. Van Molle who kindly provided me with a ground plan of the Church of St. Peter in Louvain. I am most obliged to the many people at the Centre National de Recherches Primitifs Flamands in Brussels who allowed me to use all the material at their disposal and willingly gave of their intelligent advice. Generous grants from the University of California and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation made possible a full summer for research, a trip to Belgium, and many of the photographs and color plates in the book. And finally I shall always be indebted to Dr. and Mrs. M. L. Neilsen’s private foundation dedicated to the continuing moral and financial support of their daughter.

Several of my former professors, perhaps unknowingly and with heretofore little expression of gratitude on my part, have had much to do with the formulation of this present study: Otto von Simson whose compelling lectures on Early Christian art afforded me my first glimpse of the vital meaning of religious art when seen within its original context; Joshua C. Taylor who put the tools of art history into my hands and then wisely turned me in the direction of the Renaissance; and most particularly Karl M. Birkmeyer whose patient guidance and continued willingness to share his erudition made this book possible. Originally I had intended also to express my gratitude to the late Dr. Erwin Panofsky. Although I never had the good fortune to know him, I have long been, like hundreds of others, a student of his in absentia. This study could not have been undertaken without his many publications in the Netherlandish field. As of today I must trust celestial messengers, surely the most reliable and certainly no strangers to Dr. Panofsky, to deliver my deep appreciation for the vast learning he so generously shared with us all.

S.N.B.

March 14, 1968

Contents

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Notes

Bibliography

Index

1

The Emergence of the Triptych

as we do in most cases, but also the donor and the location of each work, as we rarely do. Few works have such complete documentation. Those that do are most frequently large public altarpieces. Because they were destined for a major church and given by a prominent citizen, the records for these paintings are often found within the city archives. These altarpieces are usually triptychs or polyptychs with movable wings that cover the interior representations. The numerous diptychs in which we can identify the donor constitute the major exception to this type of documented altarpiece. Because diptychs record the donor’s private adoration of Christ and the Virgin, they cannot be used to trace the more complicated interplay between the donation and the creation of a public altarpiece. They rely on one simple iconographic formula, which is not conditioned by a specified location.⁶ The other extant type of documented painting which is not in the form of a movable altarpiece is the single panel with donor, such as Jan van Eyck’s Rolin Madonna, or his Madonna of Canon Van der Paele, or Campin’s Madonna in Glory at Aix-en-Provence. A study of any of these panels, as well as of the movable altarpieces, should further our knowledge of the relationship between donation and artifact.

This study, however, is concerned only with altarpieces in the form of triptychs, which contain three hinged panels: a central panel and two side panels called wings. Since each wing is half the width of the center panel, when both wings are closed they completely cover the interior painted surface. In the triptych there is a distinct separation between two entirely different visual fields: the exterior representation, which is always on the obverse of the two wings,⁷ and the interior representation, which covers all three interior panels. In some instances these altarpieces might be more correctly called polyptychs, for their wings or center panels sometimes are made up of more than one panel, and infrequently there are two sets of wings.⁸ These polyptychs, however, function in the same manner as the triptych in that their total iconographic program can never be seen at one time, for they contain separate interior and exterior images. Because single panels and pseudotriptychs do not operate in the same way as polyptychs and triptychs, they are not discussed. They are different in kind, for their whole pictorial statement is always visible; they are not additive in form. Through the triptych alone we shall trace the relationship between artist, donor, sacred subject, and physical context.

In the fifteenth century in the North when the art of painting was freed from the manuscript, it often had to carry an iconographic program that had formerly been found in architecture and sculpture.⁹ The new painted image was no longer supplementary or even complementary to a text. Instead its entire content was restricted to the visual field of representation. Panel painting did not inherently have such architectural divisions as portal, apse, pier, or window to aid in its iconographic explanation. The triptych form was an expedient means of solving the new problems confronting the panel painter. By using it, he did not have to face immediately the prospect of condensing a total thought realm onto a single panel. The tryptych afforded him a series of units on which he might continue to weave his many patterns around the life of Christ and the saints. The lack of coordination of the parts and the multiplicity of the units not only accommodated, but actually encouraged, his still medieval, analogical spirit of addition and repetition. It suggested a hierarchy of presentation, which he understood and utilized. The exterior, which is seen first, is preparatory in nature and less complicated in form. The interior is twice as large and has a deeper sense of mystery, since it is both hidden and revealed by the wings. Hence the artist portrayed the primary image or idea on the interior and used the wings as a complement, a lesser foil in the sacred hierarchy, as they were in the physical scheme. The triptych form easily served as a transitional structure to bridge the interval between the predominance of architectural sculpture in the late Middle Ages and the predominance of panel painting which characterized the Renaissance.¹⁰

The triptych form, particularly in large scale, re-created certain experiences that had previously been found in medieval architecture. The spectator sees both an exterior and an interior setting; the terms themselves are derived from the language of architectural description. He first contemplates the exterior, which is less complex than the interior because it is smaller in size and simpler in iconography. When he passes from the exterior to the interior, just as when he passes through a portal, the content and form of the exterior can be retained only in his memory, for a new visual realm is disclosed. As this new realm appears, the spectator is asked to make a careful, step-by- step progression through it. He is not visually led by a series of driving orthogonals to a single point of reference which contains the nexus of the subject. Instead his attention is drawn toward the central panel, which is larger and carries the most important scene in the hieratical sense. It does not stand alone, however, and in fact often includes more than one representation. Rather than being immediately apparent, the iconography unfolds slowly. The spectator must move through the central panel and then through the two wings. As in a medieval church, the total thought realm is not revealed until all the parts have been experienced. Only in the mental synthesis of the interior and exterior is the full content comprehended.

In a frescoed chapel or a Gothic cathedral the spectator is compelled to move physically through the space. He sets his frame of reference by his position and ambulation. The iconography and the physical layout give him his general direction or set his course. But since he is always smaller than that which surrounds him, he must realize slowly, part by part, the architectural units that contain the visual expression. Before the triptych the spectator remains fixed. He is closer in size to the object that he confronts and he is not physically surrounded by it. The framing device must be his guide, for it is the basic means of separation between the real and the unreal space. It helps to establish the extent of the viewer’s inclusion and exclusion from the pictorial world.¹¹ The triptych is as demanding of its viewer as is an edifice, although in a less complex and dramatic way. The viewer is limited to a fixed pattern of viewing, a pattern that is sequentially ordered in both time and significance. The parts are unified by their adherence to an expression of a particular Christian concept. In respect to such mental and visual peripatetics the experience may be likened to that of architectural space in which the eye can never encompass the total. In the unification by analogical thought units rather than by visual logic, the iconography of the triptych may be likened to the expression of medieval architectural iconography.

The essentially additive and hierarchical nature of the triptych with its many panels and visual fields made it uniquely suitable for a period whose thought was still largely medieval in its content and symbolism. In Netherlandish painting theological concepts are the predominant principle of visual congruency, for an aggregate of finite objects still find homogeneity in an idea. Like the medieval artists before them, the Flemish painters were not restricted by a necessary agreement between the temporal and the spatial realm. Their time was that of eternity; their space that of infinity. Phenomena found their beginnings in this world but could be combined and visually re-created apart from or in spite of their natural setting. There is a new correctness in the parts and in the objects, but not necessarily in their spatial surroundings or in their relation to one another. Congruity between the subject and its environment was not a prerequisite for the representation. Although God was thought to be reflected in every living thing, His reflection was not forced to conform to the natural laws of all living things. In the Netherlands until the last third of the fifteenth century, the natural world remained in the service of the spiritual world. Correspondingly, it was not until this late period that the triptych with its multiple units became an anachronistic and awkward form.¹²

In the South during the fourteenth century the triptych was most popular in Gothic Siena and Florence.¹³ By the beginning of the fifteenth century, it had become an archaic form in Italy. Only such men as Monaco, Sasetta, and Fra Angelico still used the movable triptych. These were not the men who were primarily concerned with the impact of a theoretically devised rationalization of space brought about by the early discovery of mathematical perspective. As soon as focal-point perspective became the major requirement of easel painting, the movable triptych became cumbersome, for it did not permit a rigorously organized single unit of space. Either the wings had to be treated as smaller, separate spatial units, each with its own focal point, or they had to be included in the mathematical layout of the central panel. In the former instance, the finished product exhibited three focal points—a distracting and unsatisfactory solution for the fifteenth- century Italian painter enchanted by the consistent illusionistic unit. In the latter, the necessary hinged division of the panels disrupted the total organization, creating a caesura unnatural to the logic of true perspective. The duality between the interior and the exterior further defeated the possibility of a single spatial realm. The exterior presented an added problem: if it was treated as a single symmetrical unit, the focal point necessarily fell upon the crack. If the function of the painter, as Alberti defined it, is to describe with lines and to tint with colour on whatever panel or wall is given him, similar observed planes of any body so that at a certain distance and in a certain position from the centre they appear in relief and seem to have mass, ¹⁴ and perspective is the means used to unify the spatial realm for this subject or body, then the convergence of the orthogonals on the crack or enframement would lead to some confusion between the surface being transformed and the physical frame surrounding it and separating it from reality. It would exemplify a total misunderstanding of the function of perspective, as Alberti understood it, for, in this instance, it would confuse rather than clarify. In short, it would have been an absurd solution. These many difficulties made the movable triptych anathema to the early Renaissance painters in Italy. Although men like Baldovinetti or Perugino might use the pseudotriptych form—that is, a three- part painting whose wings did not fold but remained fixed, thereby maintaining one visual plane—the true triptych became a rarity in the hands of the progressive painters.

The Netherlands in the fifteenth century did not follow the Southern pattern of a fully developed artificial-perspective system, which was enthusiastically employed by almost every painter. The North had no counterpart to that favorable conspiracy of events found in Florence in the early fifteenth century. ¹⁵ The Northern artists were not committed to an unqualified naturalism in which the painter has nothing to do with things that are not visible. The painter is concerned solely with representing what can be seen. ¹⁶ This was not their criterion, but Alberti’s. Their growing naturalistic style was still in the service of a symbolic subject matter, which was to convey moral and religious truths above all else. The rationalization of space was a slow internal development coming through visual experimentation and empirical approximation, rather than a mathematical theory developed early in the century by an architect. Consequently the final realization of an artificial-perspective system occurred later in the North than it did in Italy.¹⁷

The popularity of the triptych in the North is evidenced by the large number of triptychs painted by the Netherlandish masters. From the inception of the style that we have come to associate with the ars nova of Melchior Broederlam,¹⁸ every artist used the triptych and many used it frequently. Robert Campin, for example, painted the early Seilern triptych, the Merode altarpiece, and the lost Descent triptych. Jan van Eyck’s most famous painting, the Ghent altarpiece, is in the form of a large triptych. He also painted the tiny triptych of the Madonna Enthroned in Dresden and began the triptych of Nicolas van Maelbeke. Rogier van der Weyden also used the triptych frequently: the Vienna triptych, the Last Judgment altarpiece in Beaune, the Co- lumba altarpiece, the Bladelin altarpiece, and the Jean Braque triptych. The form was also utilized by his close followers, as in the Edelheer Master’s Descent triptych, the Sforza triptych, the Abegg altarpiece, and numerous examples of the Virgin and Child theme.¹⁹ Similar multiple examples can be cited for virtually every painter of this period. The only