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

2. According to legend, Saint
Luke was a painter and depicted
the Virgin Mary at least once. In
this work of about 1435-40 by
Rogier van der Weyden, Luke
draws her portrait in silverpoint.
The composition of the painting is
freely adapted from one by Jan van
Eyck in the Louvre thatfeatures a
portrait of the donor Nicholas
Rolin praying to the Virgin and
Child. It has been suggested that
this work, and two other versions,
in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich,
and the State Hermitage Museum,
Leningrad, are contemporary exact
copies of a lost original by van der
Weyden. Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Gift of Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Lee Higginson, 93.153
venerated. The image owes its appeal to an especially
tender treatment of the subject, with
mother and child embracing cheek to cheek,
but the source of its subsequent fame was its
reputation for effecting miracles. In 1454 a
member of the cathedral chapter commis-
sioned Petrus Christus to make three copies of
the picture, and in the next year he ordered
from Hayne de Bruxelles twelve more, one of
which is generally considered to be a picture in
Kansas City (fig. 4). The Museum's exceptionally
fine Virgin and Child by Dieric Bouts
(fig. 5) is obviously derived from the same
model, although slightly removed. This work
is remarkable for its natural detail-the com-
monness of the Virgin's hands, for instance-
yet its dependence upon what the artist quite
possibly believed to be an authentic portrait of
the Virgin cannot be denied.
Can we question whether Bouts considered
this work to be a portrait It is not, of course.
The difference between Bouts's Virgin and
Child and a true portrait lies not so much in
the religious theme of the subject as in the
relationship between the artist and the subject.
The difference in the relationship can be
demonstrated by comparing the Bouts to the
Museum's Portrait of a Carthusian by Petrus
Christus (figs. 6, 28), dated 1446. Because of
the incised gold halo, it has been suggested