Early Flemish Portraits 1425-1525: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ...

ficity in the figures of a lady and gentleman
in Petrus Christus's Saint Eligius at the
Metropolitan (fig. 7), painted three years later,
has caused most observers to conclude they
cannot possibly be true portraits. Their appearance
and contemporary dress notwithstanding,
these probably are, as Max J.
Friedlander asserts, no more than a generalized
"portrait" of a betrothed couple, a sort
of upper-class Everyman and his fiancee. The
meaning of this unusual composition is enigmatic-not
even the identification of Eligius is
secure.
A small panel at the Museum attributed to
Hugo van der Goes (fig. 8) presents a similar
problem of interpretation. For years the painting
has been thought to be a portrait of a Benedictine
monk, which it indeed appears to be.
However, the panel has been cut down on all
four sides, and Lorne Campbell has rightly
observed that the head might be a fragmentary
representation of a Benedictine saint,
perhaps Benedict himself To a degree it conforms
to a saintly type, and the cleric's expression,
unusually somber for a portrait of the
period, supports this view.
Recognizing portraits in early Flemish
paintings is made more difficult by the development
of disguised or participant portraiture,
whereby living individuals are depicted
9. The first known participant
portraits appeared toward the
middle of the fifteenth century in
Flanders. Rogier van der Weyden's
Entombment of about 1450, in
which Nicodemus (wearing a hat)
has portraitlike features, may be
an early example. A documented
instance is the self-portrait that
Rogier included among the bystanders,
presumably along with
portraits of others, in one of the
panels illustrating the Justice of
Herkinbald painted about 1440 for
the Brussels town hall (destroyed
in 1695). Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence
10. The Marriage Feast at
Cana, by Juan de Flandes, includes
a figure outside the loggia at
the left that appears to be a participant
portrait, possibly of the artist
himself It is one offorty-seven
panels that were painted about
1500for Isabella the Catholic,
queen of Castile and Leon, and
one of these contains a participant
portrait of the queen. 81/4 X 6/4 in.
TheJack and Belle Linsky Collection,
1982 (1982.60.20)