Virgin and Child

The Painting: Among the most beloved themes of early Netherlandish painting is the Virgin and Child in an enclosed garden. Here the Virgin sits on a grassy brick wall as she holds the Christ Child on her lap, her left hand around his midriff and her right hand tenderly grasping his right foot. She is regally dressed in a deep blue robe and brilliant red mantle, trimmed with gold at its edges, and fastened at the neck with a chain of pearls connected by two jewel-encrusted broches. Above, five hovering angels prepare to crown the Virgin as Queen of Heaven.

The enclosed garden (known in Latin as the hortus conclusus) presents a sanctuary of serenity and spirituality. It is often mentioned in Marian hymns and served as a metaphor for the Virgin. Specifically, it relates to a passage in the Old Testament Song of Solomon 4:12: “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” King Solomon’s nuptial song to his betrothed was reinterpreted by Medieval theologians as the love and union of Christ to the Church, and the mystical marriage with the Church as the Bride of Christ. The flowers depicted throughout this tiny painting carry symbolic meaning. The white roses covering the garden trellis allude to the Virgin’s innocence and purity; Saint Bernard of Clairvaux called the Virgin a “rose without thorns.” English daisies (Bellis perennis)— for salvation, eternal life, and immortality—are at the right and left of the Virgin on the grassy ledge; while Aconite buttercups (Ranunculus aconitifolius), symbolizing death because of its poisonous properties, appear in the lower left and right corners of the painting. A dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is at right of center at the lower edge of the painting. It symbolizes the bitter herbs used by the Jews at the Last Supper and thus is an allusion to the Passion of Christ. It blooms at Eastertime, and its prominent position in the painting is a reminder of Christ’s suffering on the cross for the redemption of humankind.[1]

The Christ Child turns to his left and appears to communicate with someone or something beyond the confines of the painting. It is quite likely that a second, now lost, panel representing a donor figure in prayer originally formed a diptych with The Met panel. Comparable examples are Hans Memling’s Diptych with the Virgin and Child and Four Musical Angels of about 1490 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)[2] or Jan Provoost’s wing of a diptych, the Madonna at the Fountain of the first quarter of the sixteenth century (Galleria Alberoni, Piacenza; see fig. 1 above). The Met’s Virgin and Child would have provided inspiration for daily devotions and the recitation of prayers by which the beholder would appeal to the Virgin for her intercession with Christ for the forgiveness of sins. The “O Intemerata…” prayer, often found in Books of Hours, was extremely popular during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The beginning text from a fifteenth-century devotional book, translated from the Latin, reads as follows:

O unspotted and forever blessed, unique and incomparable Virgin Mary, Mother of God, most graceful temple of God, sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, gate of the kingdom of heaven, by whom next unto God the whole world liveth, incline O Mother of Mercy thy ears of piety unto my unworthy supplications, and be merciful to me a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a helper in all things.[3]

Illustrations accompanying this Marian prayer in a Parisian Book of Hours dated 1407 (Circle of the Bedford Master, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms. Douce 144, fol. 23) and in the Hours of Simon de Varie of about 1455 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, 74 G 37, fol. 17v), just like The Met painting, show the Virgin and Child in an enclosed garden, attended by crowning angels (figs. 2, 3).[4] Text and image thus work in a symbiotic fashion in all of these examples, whether in Books of Hours or panel paintings.

The Attribution and Date: It is perhaps easy to see why the earliest proposed attribution of this painting was to Jan van Eyck (Parthey 1863, Hosäus 1883, Exh. Bruges 1902). The isolated Virgin and Child with angels in an enclosed garden calls to mind Van Eyck’s diminutive panel, the Virgin and Child at the Fountain of 1439 (Kononklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). Friedländer (1931) was the first to suggest alternatively the name of Jan Provoost, which has been maintained ever since (see References). The miniature, doll-like aspect of the Virgin and Child led Baetjer (1977) to consider the influence of Simon Marmion, the manuscript illuminator and panel painter of Valenciennes—a link strengthened by the fact that Provoost married Marmion’s widow. Sintobin (1998) concurred with Baetjer’s opinion, indicating that the painting should date after 1494, when Provoost had moved from Valenciennes and settled in Bruges, becoming a member of the painters’ guild there.

The reconsideration of Provoost’s oeuvre has been undertaken by Ron Spronk beginning with his 1993 doctoral dissertation for Groningen University,[5] and in the years since, he has continued to carry out technical study of the attributed works for a forthcoming monograph. The studies to date by Spronk and by Molly Faries have clarified in detail Provoost’s painting technique and working procedures, above all concerning the preparatory sketch or the underdrawing of his panel paintings.[6]

Complicating the question of the attribution of The Met painting is its poor condition. It has experienced considerable paint loss, has undergone several extensive restorations, and is covered by a thick yellow varnish (see Technical Notes). Nevertheless, considering Provoost’s small-scale works for comparison, namely the Piacenza Madonna at the Fountain (fig. 1), one can see distinct stylistic differences in a similar theme of an enclosed garden: the spatial concept here is far more sophisticated, showing the logical transition into a background townscape in the distance; the figures are more animated in their poses and interrelationship with each other; the anatomy of the Virgin and Child is more convincingly portrayed with modeling that accentuates their rounded forms and lifelike appearance. By comparison, and even considering the impoverished state of the work, The Met painting’s figures appear like flat, cardboard cutouts against an impenetrable wall of roses, presenting a distinctly different approach. Furthermore, the underdrawing that Spronk has identified in the works reliably assigned to Provoost is fully worked up with detailed sketches for not only the composition but also for the modeling of the figures and suggestion of the lighting scheme. The Met painting by contrast has no apparent underdrawing and cannot be positively compared with the technical features of the Provoost paintings as they have been discussed by Spronk (see Technical Notes).

There are clues, however, that The Met painting most likely was produced in Bruges, for the motif of the Virgin and Child was incorporated by several Bruges painters in their works. The Virgin and Child among Virgins by the Bruges Master of 1499 (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; fig. 4) places this motif at the very center of a more developed composition, where the Virgin and Child are surrounded by female saints. This artist is thought to have originated in Ghent, as he copied works by Hugo van der Goes, the Richmond panel possibly being one of these. The Virgin and Child Among Musical Angels is the central painting of the multi-paneled Évora Altarpiece (Museu Regional, Évora, Portugal; fig. 5) that was most likely produced in Évora about 1500–1510 by artists trained in Bruges and clearly influenced by and even copying works after Hugo van der Goes and Gerard David.[7] In addition to the Virgin and Child, the Évora example shows the hovering angels about to crown the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, a motif that is featured in The Met painting. These examples all indicate that there were patterns and models circulating among artists’ workshops that could be repurposed and arranged according to the theme at hand. As the evidence shows, these patterns were shared between manuscript illuminators and panel painters and were quite possibly disseminated in Bruges by illuminators who had come from Ghent with exposure to the works of Hugo van der Goes.[8] Although it is not possible to identify the artist of The Met panel, they most likely worked in Bruges, where they produced this painting about 1495–1500.

Maryan W. Ainsworth 2022

[1] My thanks to Susan Moody for help in identifying the plants in this painting. The associated symbolic meanings of the flower identifications discussed here are found in Mirella Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance, Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting, Florence, 1977.
[2] Illustrated in Dirk De Vos, Hans Memling, The Complete Works, Ludion Press, Ghent, 1994, pp. 312–15, no. 87.
[3] ©copyrighted by Michael Martin, http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/BVM/OIntemerata.html.
[4] I am grateful to Christine Seidel for calling these examples to my attention.
[5] Ron Spronk, Jan Provoost, Art Historical and Technical Examinations, Doctoraalscriptie, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, October 1993.
[6] Molly Faries, “The Underdrawings of Jan Provoost’s Last Judgment and Related Paintings,” in Roger van Schoute and Hélène Verougstraete-Marcq, eds., Geographie et Chronologie du Dessin sous-jacent, Colloque VII Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la Peinture, 1987, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1989, pp. 137–44. Ron Spronk in Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, ed., Bruges and the Renaissance: Memling to Pourbus, exh. cat. Bruges, Memlingmuseum, Ghent, 1998, pp. 94–108; and in the accompanying volume Bruges et la Renaissance. De Memling à Pourbus: Notices, Ghent, 1998, pp. 31–48. See also the following publications by Ron Spronk: “An Early Sixteenth-Century Last Judgment by Jan Provoost,” in Roger van Schoute and Hélène Verougstraete, eds., Le Dessin sous-jacent et Technologie de la Peinture. Perspectives, Colloque 11, Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la Peinture, 1995, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997, pp. 43–51; “Tracing in the Making of Jan Provoost’s Last Judgment Through Technical Examinations and Digital Imaging,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, no. 72, 1998, pp. 66–79; “The Underdrawing of Jan Provoost’s Crucifixion,” in Hélène Verougstraete and Roger van Schoute, eds., Le Peinture dans les Pays-Bas au 16e Siècle, Pratiques d’Atelier Infrarouges et Autres Méthodes d’Investigation, Colloque XII, Le Dessin sous-jacent rt la Technologie dans la Peinture, 1997, Leuven, 1999, pp. 37–48; “The Reconstruction of a Triptych by Jan Provoost for the Jerusalem Chapel in Bruges,” The Burlington Magazine, no. 147, 2005, pp. 109–11. Most recently, see Ron Spronk et al., Jan Provoost, O Triptico de Nossa Senhora da Misericórdia, exh. cat., Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, September 2012, Lisbon, 2012.
[7] Maryan Ainsworth and Catherine Metzger, “The Évora Altarpiece: A Preliminary Report,” in The Quest for the Original, Hélène Verougstraete and Colombe Janssens de Bisthoven, eds., Proceedings of the conference “Underdrawing and Technology in Painting,” symposium XVI, Bruges, September 21–23, 2006. Louvain: Peeters, 2009, pp. 10–20.
[8] Ibid., p. 11, note 8. See also Stephanie Buck, “The Impact of Hugo van der Goes as a Draftsman,” Master Drawings 41, no. 3 (2003), pp. 228–39, and Maryan W. Ainsworth, “‘Diverse patterns pertaining to the crafts of painters or illuminators’: Gerard David and the Bening Workshop,” Master Drawings 41, no. 3 (2003), pp. 240–65.

Support: The support is a single wood panel with the grain oriented vertically. At some point before entering the museum’s collection, the panel was cradled. Several exposed insect channels on the back of the panel demonstrate that it was thinned prior to cradling; it now measures about 6 mm thick. The panel has not been analyzed with dendrochronology.

Preparation: The panel was prepared with a whitish ground. Unpainted margins and the presence of a barbe along all four edges indicate that the panel was prepared in an engaged frame and that the original dimensions are preserved. No underdrawing was detected using infrared reflectography.[1]

Paint Layers:Visual analysis of the original painting technique and materials is complicated by the compromised condition of the paint layers. The painting has suffered from a past overcleaning, and damaged passages were subsequently addressed in a heavy-handed campaign of repainting and strengthening. This old restoration lies under a thick and discolored varnish layer that further masks the condition. In several areas, particularly the fleshtones, the craquelure was artificially darkened with ink, likely to distract attention from extensive repainting that covered original craquelure. In addition, there are several relatively recent instances of retouching that lie on top of the varnish and can be identified with little or no magnification. For example, passages in the angels’ faces or in the foliage to the left of the Virgin and Child were retouched using paint that was thick and slightly milky compared to the translucent glazes of the original and even the old restoration.

In general, the upper register has suffered the most damage, and the sky and the angels are largely restored. It appears that the sky was locally repainted in the triangular expanse below the knees of the angels. These cracks have a different appearance from the crack patterns elsewhere in the painting; they are wider and more rounded as opposed to the vertical cracks related to the wood grain. This area appears slightly less radio-opaque in the x-radiograph, perhaps indicative of a scraping down and repainting (see fig. 6 above).

What repainting exists in the fleshtones was done skillfully. This repainting, combined with the thick discolored varnish, makes it difficult to truly assess the original painting technique. In a few places restoration can be identified: the proper left cheek of the Virgin has been abraded and reworked and the Child’s foot has been strengthened. It is clear that the hair of both figures has been damaged and the contours strengthened.

The modeling in the Virgin and Child appears to have been quite subtly painted originally, with careful blending. The sides of the Virgin’s face were defined with black contour lines in a manner reminiscent of manuscript illumination. In the x-radiograph, all of the fleshtones appear surprisingly opaque, suggesting that they were prepared with a lead-white rich layer, or that a good deal of white was mixed throughout the flesh. This is not typical of early Netherlandish technique in which artists took advantage of the luminous white of the chalk ground to impart brightness to the fleshtones and then applied warm glazes for modeling, resulting in nearly radio-transparent passages in x-radiographs. It is also possible, however, that the extensive restoration throughout the painting could be impacting the appearance of the x-radiograph. The degree of restoration is unusual, though possibly explained by the many condition issues. No evidence was found that the painting is not of the purported time period and place that the stylistic analysis suggests (see Catalogue Entry).

Sophie Scully 2023

[1] Infrared reflectography completed with a Merlin Indigo InGaAs near infrared camera with a StingRay macro lens customized for the wavelengths covered by the camera, 0.9 to 1.7 microns, 2014.

Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz von Anhalt–Dessau, Gotisches Haus, Wörlitz (until d. 1817); Friederich I, Duke of Anhalt, Gotisches Haus, Wörlitz (by 1863–d. 1904); Friedrich II, Duke of Anhalt, Gothisches Haus, Wörlitz; until 1915, moved to Ducal Palace, Dessau (1904–1927; sold privately, art market, Berlin); Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Lehman, New York (by 1929–d. 1936); Mrs. Arthur Lehman, New York (1936–d. 1965); [M. Knoedler, New York, 1965–66; sold on February 1, 1966 for $66,300 to Payson]; Joan Whitney Payson, New York and Manhasset (1966–d. 1975)

Bruges. Palais du Gouvernement. "Exposition des primitifs flamands et d'art ancien," June 15–September 15, 1902, no. 92 (as by Jan van Eyck, lent by the Duke of Anhalt, Wörlitz).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 22, 1998–February 21, 1999, no. 18.

G. Parthey. Deutscher Bildersaal. Vol. 1, A–K. Berlin, 1863, p. 415, no. 17, lists this picture with the works of Jan van Eyck and locates it in Gotisches Haus, Wörlitz.

Wilhelm Hosäus. Wörlitz: Ein Handbuch für die Besucher des Wörlitzer Gartens und der Wörlitzer Kunstsammlungen. Dessau, 1883, p. 40, no. 1325, lists it as by Jan van Eyck, in the duke's bedroom [see Ref. Virch 1965].

Franz Dülberg. "Altholland in Wörlitz." Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, n.s., 10 (1898–99), p. 275, ill., as in the manner of Geertgen tot Sint Jans by a somewhat older contemporary of Engebrechtsz.

Georges H. de Loo Palais du Gouvernement, Bruges. Exposition de tableaux flamands des XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles: catalogue critique précédé d'une introduction sur l'identité de certains maîtres anonymes. Ghent, 1902, p. 22, no. 98, catalogues it as by an unknown artist active in the first half of the 16th century and suggests that it may be a youthful work of Jan van Eeckele.

Alfred von Wurzbach. Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon. Vol. 1, Vienna, 1906, p. 481, as ascribed to Jan van Eeckle.

Max J. Friedländer. Die altniederländische Malerei. Vol. 9, Joos van Cleve, Jan Provost, Joachim Patenier. Berlin, 1931, pp. 86, 149, no. 165, pl. 75, ascribes it to Jan Provost, noting that it appears to be an early work.

M. J. Friedländer in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Hans Vollmer. Vol. 27, Leipzig, 1933, p. 429.

Grete Ring. "Additions to the work of Jan Provost and Quentin Massys—I." Burlington Magazine 79 (November 1941), p. 160, places it in Provost's early years, before 1500, and tentatively suggests that it was part of a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin, five of which she publishes and illustrates.

Friedrich Winkler. Das Werk des Hugo van der Goes. Berlin, 1964, p. 172, fig. 132, believes that our panel, the central panel of the altarpiece by the Master of Evora [Museu Regional, Evora, Portugal], and a panel of the Virgin Enthroned by the Master of 1499 (Virignia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond) are all based on the same lost work by Hugo; sees a common source in the suspended angels in these works and in the group of angels represented in Cofferman's Adoration of the Shepherds (MMA 17.190.3).

Claus Virch. The Adele and Arthur Lehman Collection. New York, 1965, pp. 36–37, ill.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. European Art in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: A Catalogue. Richmond, 1966, p. 26.

Max J. Friedländer et al. Early Netherlandish Painting. Vol. 9, part 2, Joos van Cleve, Jan Provost, Joachim Patenier. New York, 1973, pp. 90–91, 115, no. 165, pl. 177.

E. Bénézit. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. new ed. Paris, 1976, vol. 8, p. 508.

Katharine Baetjer. "Pleasures and Problems of Early French Painting." Apollo 106 (November 1977), pp.342, 345, 349 n. 9, fig. 5, sees the influence of Marmion and believes the picture ultimately depends on an Eyckian composition.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 262, ill. p. 263.

Véronique Sintobin in From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, pp. 134–36, no. 18, ill. (color), dates it about 1495–1500.

Reindert L. Falkenburg. "The Household of the Soul: Conformity in the 'Merode Triptych'." Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth. New York, 2001, pp. 9, 11, fig. 2.