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

Donor
Portraits
13. Luis Dalmau's Virgin of the
Councillors, dated 1445, was
paintedfor the chapel of Barcelona's
town hall. The altarpiece
demonstrates the artist's familiarity
with the choir of angels from the
interior of Hubert and Jan van
Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, which
Dalmau must have seen just after
its completion. The figures of
the Virgin and Child appear to be
dependent upon Jan's painting for
Canon van der Paele (fig. 16), and
the arrangement of the donors may
reflect a lost design by Hubert of
about 1425for an altarpiece com-
missioned by the city magistrates of
Ghent. The contract of 1443 for
the Virgin of the Councillors
stipulates that the councillors each
be depicted wearing "a coifed cap
of scarlet color," but this was not
carried out. They must have realized
that it would have appeared
disrespectful not to have removed
their hats in the presence of the
Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.
Museo de Arte de Cataluna,
Barcelona
n about 1513 Albrecht Diirer, the first
northern European artist to record his ideas
on his profession, wrote in a draft for the
introduction to his book on painting that its
function is "to serve the Church . . . and to
preserve the likeness of men after their death."
This statement serves well to introduce the
propelling force behind the works of northern
European painters of the preceding
century, especially Flemish
donor portraits. It ex-
presses both spir-
duality of purpose that motivated patrons
who were at once deeply religious and
highly worldly.
The artistic flowering in Flanders during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the result
of unparalleled local prosperity that fostered a
large, wealthy middle class including merchants,
bankers, and lay clergy. Although they
were thoroughly entrenched in the
material world, members of
the new monied society,
like all Christians,
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