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

21. Rogier van der Weyden's
Crucifixion Triptych, painted
shortly after 1440, is one of the
earliest surviving in which a continuous
landscape unites the scenes
in the center panel and the wings.
Portraits of the donor and his wife
appear at the lower right corner of
the center panel, but a fissure between
them and the Crucifixion
seems to keep the donors at a
certain distance. If the fissure refers
to the earthquake that occurred at
the moment of Christ's death and
rent the veil of the Temple, it can
be interpreted, paradoxically, as a
symbol of the "new and living
way" for all believers into the
presence of God. Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna
The donor's acceptance of a preexisting com-
position betrays what here must have been a
much less intense interaction between artist
and patron than that between van Eyck and
van der Paele. Perhaps this donor's financial
means were more modest than those of the
canon, but the formulization in evidence reflects
in general a relaxed attitude toward iconography
in works by artists near the end of the
fifteenth century, and especially those by
Memling, who recycled this and other compositions
for various patrons.
A similarly loose appropriation of imagery
is found in the works of Gerard David, Mem-
ling's most important successor in Bruges.
The center panel of his Triptych of the Nativity
at the Museum (fig. 20) is a free copy after a
lost original by Hugo van der Goes. The donors,
kneeling and presented by their patron
saints, are depicted in the wings; the man is
with Saint Jerome at the left and his wife is
with Saint Vincent at the right. The arrangement
of these portraits is the most common
form-indeed, nearly standard-in donations
by married couples. Were this not the case, we
might not recognize these figures as portraits
because, at an early date, for unknown reasons,
they were transformed into images of
Saints Anthony Abbot and Catherine of
Alexandria by the addition of appropriate
attributes: he acquired a pig, and she received
a crown, a sword, and a wheel.
The concept of creating a distance between
mortal and divine beings that we detected in
Campin's triptych (fig. 1) has by now been
relaxed considerably as well. The donors are
relegated to the wings, but they are, through
the artist's advanced skill with perspective,
combined with the figures of the Nativity in a
single, continuous space-the interior of the
manger unifying the three panels.
Rogier van der Weyden's Crucifixion Triptych
in Vienna (fig. 21), painted shortly after
1440, is one of the earliest surviving triptychs
in which the three parts are united by a continuous
landscape. At the right of the center
panel the unidentified donors kneel reverently
at Calvary. However, a fissure dividing the
ground between the couple and the Crucifixion
appears to separate the mortals from the
holy event-to preserve a proper distance. At
the same time, it may be the result of the
earthquake that occurred at the moment of
Christ's death and rent the veil of the Temple
(Matthew 27:51) and hence a symbol of the
"new and living way" for all believers into the
presence of God (Hebrews 10:20). Thus the
dividing fissure signifies, paradoxically, that it
can be bridged by faith.
John the Evangelist, like the male donor,
looks toward Christ while he supports the
swooning Virgin, who embraces the foot of
the cross. Contemporary theology granted to
the Virgin an important role in man's redemp-