The Lamentation of Christ

The Artist: Simon Marmion was an artist who worked across media, including, primarily, as a manuscript illuminator and as a panel painter. He was born in about 1425 to a family of painters in Amiens and later moved to Valenciennes, by 1458, to set up his workshop. An examination of his technique on panel suggests that his initial training was as an illuminator. Marmion received commissions from patrons within the Burgundian nobility, including Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, his son Charles the Bold, also Duke of Burgundy, and Charles's wife Margaret of York. Marmion does not appear in Valenciennes documents between 1475 and 1478, leading some scholars to propose that during this period he traveled to the Netherlands. Stylistic connections to Dieric Bouts (active in Louvain) and Hugo van der Goes (active in Ghent) add weight to this hypothesis. His painted corpus, based on stylistic comparisons to the extant panels from the Saint Bertin altarpiece (now divided between the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and National Gallery, London), remains contested as no work is fully authenticated.


The Painting: Christ, lifeless, lies across his mother's lap, his head lolling on his right shoulder. Joseph of Arimathea cups his hands under Christ's armpits, his flesh separated from the dead savior by a sheer white cloth. At right, Nicodemus's gesture emphasizes the limpness of Jesus's limbs. The youthful Saint John the Evangelist kneeling in silent prayer behind the Virgin gazes solemnly forward, his eyes, like those of the others surrounding Christ, red from tears. The figure of Mary Magdalen, dressed in a shimmering translucent white mantle over a green garment, and a female companion complete the foreground group. In the background, at left, the two thieves remain on their crosses. Two figures move along a pathway towards those surrounding Christ. A cityscape populates the right background, the road leading to its gate traversed by several people, one on horseback.


The Lamentation, depicted here as a Pietà, is not a subject detailed in the Gospels.[1] This treatment derives, in all likelihood, from devotional texts, like Ludolf of Saxony’s Vita Christi.[2] Although many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century such texts encourage an empathic response to the sufferings of Christ and his Mother by underscoring their torment and grief, here the scene appears quiet, serene. The drooping poppy in the foreground is a subtle reminder to the viewer of sleep and death, which it symbolizes.[3] The mourning of the protagonists around Jesus is reserved, personal, perhaps intended to stimulate a similar response in the viewer.


Attribution and Dating: Only a few scholars questioned the painting's attribution to Simon Marmion.[4] Although purchased by Robert Lehman as a painting by Dieric Bouts, Max J. Friedlander quickly - and correctly - identified Marmion as the work's author.[5] In technique, the Lamentation corresponds with Marmion's widely accepted panels of the St. Bertin altarpiece. Indeed, the 'disengaged' brushstrokes reflect a manuscript illuminator's training rather than those of a painter steeped in the oil medium tradition.[6] Furthermore, the underdrawing, shown to be characteristic of Marmion, reveals the use and adaptation of a model drawing that is also attributable to the artist’s close circle, if not Marmion himself.[7] The early attribution to Dieric Bouts underscores the picture's compositional and stylistic links to the Louvain-based artist. As Ainsworth notes, the Lamentation is particularly comparable to the figures of Abraham and Melchizedek in the Altarpiece of the Last Supper by Bouts.[8]


The argument that the painting was commissioned in 1468 upon Margaret of York's marriage to Duke Charles the Bold is less convincing than the oft-proposed hypothesis that the work derives from around 1473, the year that Margaret and Charles attended a meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Valenciennes.[9] It was here that Simon Marmion, already involved in preparing festive decorations for the gathering, probably received the commission from Margaret. Indeed, a relationship between Marmion, Charles, and Margaret already existed: Charles commanded Marmion's services in the completion of a breviary; Margaret ordered several illuminated books from the celebrated artist.[10]


　

Nenagh Hathaway, 2019


　

[1] See Refs., Sterling and Ainsworth, 1998, p. 4.

[2] The popularity of this scene for French artists, as well as its sources, is discussed by Sterling and Ainsworth in their 1998 entry on the Lamentation. Ibid.

[3] See Refs., Ainsworth, 2003, p. 108.

[4] Friedländer, Ring, Hoffman, and Châtelet all supported the attribution to Marmion. Sterling (1941 and 1957) and Baetjer (1977) both voiced reservations about giving the work to Marmion, but both were ultimately convinced. See Refs., Sterling and Ainsworth, 1998, p. 4 and n. 6.

[5] Friedländer gives this attribution on the back of a postcard dated 6 September 1922. See Robert Lehman Collection curatorial file.

[6] The presence of clearly distinguishable brushstrokes lends credence to Ainsworth's suggestion that a tempera medium may have been used alongside oil in this picture. The identification of the correspondence between the pastel hues of the Lamentation and the pale tones of the St Bertin altarpiece as well as the similarities in descriptions of form between the two artworks reinforce the link to Marmion. See Refs., Ainsworth, 1992, pp. 246-248 and Sterling and Ainsworth, 1998, p. 4.

[7] A metalpoint drawing, given to Marmion’s workshop by the Harvard Art Museums (Object no. 1941.343) where it is conserved, shows the Virgin with the dead Christ in her lap. It is this drawing that Sterling and Ainsworth identify as the studio drawing that served as the model for Marmion and his assistants’ various depictions of the subject. See Refs., Sterling and Ainsworth, p. 4-5.

[8] Sterling and Ainsworth propose that, because the Lamentation does not reveal the influence of Hugo van der Goes, an artist whose works Marmion may have seen during an alleged trip to the Netherlands between 1475 and 1478, the picture must predate 1475. See Refs., Sterling and Ainsworth, p. 6.

[9] 1468, the date of Margaret and Charles’s marriage, does provide a post quem for the creation of the Lamentation. This is already noted by Max J. Friedländer, see Refs., Friedländer, 1923, p. 169. The significance of the Lamentation as one of Marmion’s two more securely datable works is highlighted by Sterling and Ainsworth, Refs., 1998, p. 5-6.

[10] See Refs., Ainsworth in Kren and McKendrick, 2003, p. 107.


References:


Max J. Friedlander. "Einige Tafelbilder Simon Marmions." Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 1923, pp. 168-169, figs. 6, 11.


Édouard Michel. "À propos de Simon Marmion." Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 5, 16 (1927): pp. 142, 152, ill. p. 145


Robert Lehman.　The Philip Lehman Collection, New York: Paintings. Paris, 1928,　no. 91.


August L. Mayer. "Die Sammlung Philip Lehman." Pantheon 5 (1930): pp. 116, 118.


Charles Sterling [as Charles Jacques (pseud.)] La peinture française: Les peintres du Moyen Âge. Paris, 1941, p. 48, nos. 124, 125.


Grete Ring. A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500. London, 1949, p. 221, no. 188.


Theodore Allen Heinrich. "The Lehman Collection." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12 (April, 1954): p. 222.


Edith Warren Hoffman. "Simon Marmion." Ph.D. dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1958.


New York. Great Master Drawings of Seven Centuries. M. Knoedler and Co., 13 October – 7 November, 1959, p. 27, under no. 20.


Robert Lehman. The Robert Lehman Collection. [1964], p. 17.


George Szabó.　The Robert Lehman Collection: A Guide. New York, 1975, p. 84, pl. 66.


Katharine Baetjer. "Pleasures and Problems of Early French Painting." Apollo 106 (1977): pp. 341-42, 344, fig. 4.


Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born in or before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1980, p. 115, ill. p. 471.


Charles Sterling. "Un nouveau tableau de Simon Marmion." Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 8, 1981 p. 12, n. 28.


Maryan W. Ainsworth. "New Observations on the Working Technique in Simon Marmion’s Panel Paintings." in Kren, 1992, pp. 246-48, figs. 237-40, 242.


Rainer Grosshans. "Simon Marmion and the Saint Bertin Altarpiece: Notes on the Genesis of the Painting." in Kren, ed. Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and The Visions of Tondal: Papers Delivered at a Symposium Organized by the Department of Manuscripts of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Collaboration with the Huntington Library and Art Collections, June 21-24, 1990. 1992, p. 242, n. 15.


Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 254, ill.


Albert Châtelet. "Simon Marmion." in Valenciennes aux XIVe et XVe siècles ed. Ludovic Nys and Alain Salamagne, 1996, pp. 164-65.


Maryan Ainsworth 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. 109-111, ill.


Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick.　Illuminating The Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe. Exh. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, 2003,　p. 107-108, no.11, ill.


Susan Marti, Till-Holger Borchert and Gabriele Keck, eds. Splendour of the Burgundian court: Charles the Bold (1433-1477). 2009, p. 251, ill. (fig. 102).


William W. Robinson. Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums. 2016, pp. 191-193, 353, ill. p. 191.