MetPublications

The great Bruges painter Gerard David (ca. 1455–1523) has traditionally been regarded by eminent art historians as the last celebrated master of the Flemish tradition, although scholars have recently acknowledged his innovative spirit and pivotal position in the transitional period between Late Medieval and Renaissance art. This study is the first, however, to examine the motivating forces behind startling developments in David's work, such as shifting devotional practices, changing art markets, the accommodation of foreign clients, and the evolving secular nature of paintings demanded by the newly wealthy middle class in the early years of the sixteenth century. David is reconsidered here as a savvy entrepreneur with a new self-awareness as an artist, beyond the station of a simple craftsman. In order to define more clearly Davids contribution to the history of early Netherlandish painting, Maryan W. Ainsworth has studied more than one hundred works assigned to the artist and his close followers, not simply to solve problems of attribution and dating but also to analyze his working procedures and the ways in which he responded to the changing artistic environment of his time. Each work has undergone close physical examination, often by such technical means as X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and dendrochronology, so that informed conclusions could be drawn about standard practices of the day and innovative methods of production. The first two chapters introduce David's workshop techniques in his drawings and documented works. Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which owns the worlds largest collection of individual panels by David and his followers, serve to introduce the main issues presented in each of the four following chapters, where abundant comparative material, such as drawings and workshop copies, is included to help clarify the place of the major paintings within the larger context of his career. The virtue of this approach lies in the combination of technical investigations, stylistic analysis, iconographic interpretation, and socioeconomic factors to evaluate each work in its totality. The large number of issues discussed in this important book range from the specific relationship of David's drawings to his paintings, the poles of his style represented by his documented works, the question of his origins and early development, his varied approaches to commissions produced for export to Italy and Spain, and his innovations in landscape painting, to his methods of streamlined production to supply the increasing demand of the open art market. The interdisciplinary approach of this book aims not only to provide a fresh look at the artistic production of Gerard David but also to launch a method of examination that may encourage others to ask new questions in the ongoing study of early Netherlandish painters and their development.

This study is an important new account of the life and work of the Flemish master Petrus Christus. It is the first volume to focus specifically on the physical characteristics of his works as criteria for judging attribution, dating, and the extent to which he was indebted to Jan van Eyck and other artists for the development of his technique and style. The author's aim is to examine how certain works were made in order to solve some rather traditional questions of connoisseurship. Recent technical and archival investigations, the result of which are published here together for the first time, form the basis of a sophisticated reassessment of Christus. His relationship with van Eyck's workshop is explored. There is a careful description of his working methods, including his use of underdrawings and his exploration perspective. The results of dendrochronological analyses of many of his panels are also given. As important as this technical and art-historical evaluation is the social and biographical background that is provided. Christus is placed in the context of fifteenth-century Bruges, a wealthy and powerful city under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy. Its status as a ducal seat fostered a lively cultural life, and patrons for artistic undertakings were also found in the relatively large number of well-to-do citizens and foreign merchants who lived there. The economic, social, and political forces that affected Bruges are described, as is their impact on the city's community of artists, which included Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling. Throughout, the authors draw on archival documents relating to citizenship, public celebrations, contracts, and confraternities to describe artistic activity in Bruges and to construct Christus's cultural biography. This publication accompanies the most important exhibition of early Netherlandish paintings in the United States in more than three decades. Each of the twenty-seven works is discussed in an extended entry with a complete provenance, and a selected bibliography is provided. The authors of this major study of Petrus Christus are Maryan W. Ainsworth, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Paintings Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, Associate Professor, History of Medieval Art, University of Groningen.

This book reports the most significant results of a scientific study of thirty-nine paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The works under investigation are by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists, mainly Rembrandt and his school. Art and Autoradiography publishes for the first time data obtained by the use of a new technique, neutron activation autoradiography. Through this method, it is now possible to study the substructure of paintings, their genesis, and their condition in far greater detail than had been possible with the conventional techniques or X-ray radiography and infrared photography. As a result, an artist's creative process can now be studied very closely. Autoradiography provides significant information for resolving questions about an artist's oeuvre and about workshop variations, attribution, dating, and even doubted authenticity. For example, Rembrandt's preliminary sketching on the canvas, the authenticity of some of his paintings, and previous restorations of others have now been established or clarified; a self-portrait of Van Dyck was discovered under his own painting. In addition, the material presented here represents an interdisciplinary approach. The collaboration of two art historians (Maryan Wynn Ainsworth and Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann), a paintings conservator (John Brealey), a physical scientist (Pieter Meyers), and their colleagues has resulted in a full and rich interpretation of the autoradiographs.

This Bulletin discusses Lucas Cranach's Saint Maurice and the importance of this saint during the stormy period of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Anticipating the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, this Bulletin draws on the work of donor Mrs. Eva S. Kollsman and connects this image of Saint Maurice to sculptural relics belonging to Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, the most powerful Roman Catholic prelate at the time.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition From Van Eyck to Bruegel this book presents an overview of one of the great epochs of Western art as seen through the extensive collection of the Metropolitan Museum. The period covered, sometimes referred to as the northern Renaissance, encompasses a century and a quarter of unparalleled artistic innovation and achievement realized in the geographic area of modern Belgium and the Netherlands. It opens about 1425 with the legendary inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck, and concludes with one of the most original geniuses of European art, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Virtually every major master active during this era is represented, including Van Eyck, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Dieric Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Gerard David, Joos van Cleve, Quentin Massys, Jan Gossart, Bernard van Orley, Joachim Patinir, and Bruegel. Early Netherlandish artists pioneered a realistic style that redefined the nature of painting and the way contemporary viewers related to pictures. Through the use of a newly perfected oil technique, painters embraced the vastness and variety of the world and suggested the actuality of everyday life. The viewer becomes an active participant in the images these artists created, in which the sacred and the profane, the real and the imagined intermesh. The volume is arranged thematically to emphasize the ways artists employed realism as a strategy. Introductory essays illuminate aspects of early Netherlandish painting: the history of its critical fortunes and scholarship; its acquisition by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century patrons; its relationship to Italian Renaissance painting; and the building of the Museum's collection in this area. Shorter essays that precede chapters of entries on individual pictures address religious painting, portraiture, and workshop practice and the art market, as well as the Bruges painter Gerard David and Bruegel's role in the development of modern landscape painting. The texts are lavishly supported by illustrations of works in the Museum's collection as well as comparative material. This is the first catalogue to bring together all the Metropolitan's holdings of Netherlandish art—the largest such collection in the Western hemisphere. Written by a team of staff experts, it is a major contribution to the understanding and study of early Netherlandish painting. A map, provenances, references, biographies of the artists, an illustrated appendix of un-catalogued paintings in the collection, a glossary of terms, an extensive bibliography, and an index are provided.

In conjunction with the grand reopening in May 2013 of the newly renovated European Paintings galleries, the Museum is pleased to present this comprehensive catalogue of our early German paintings. The collection has not been examined in its entirety since 1947, when (at half its current size) it was included in A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and Germany Paintings by Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta M. Salinger. Our seventy-two paintings constitute the largest, most diverse collection of its kind in America and include examples by the foremost German artists of the period: three by Dürer, eighteen from the Cranach group, eleven by Holbein and his workshop, and remarkable works by Hans Baldung, Hans Süss von Kulmbach, and Hans Schäufelein. Rigorous review of current knowledge, fresh consideration of previously unresolved questions, and full technical examination with the most up-to-date methods have resulted in invaluable reassessments of attribution and dating. As a result, each painting is situated more accurately within the context of the history of German art. Beyond these time-honored issues of connoisseurship, however, the volume offers a rich understanding of an era that stretched from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance. It provides both a record of the devotional practices of the time and a deeper look at the secular themes that began to emerge. It brings to life the favored mythological subjects that so captivated the dukes of Saxony and their courtiers. Taking us back to the turbulent times of the Reformation, it discusses the spiritual, educational, and propagandistic aims of such key personalities as Martin Luther, Erasmus, and Albrecht of Brandenburg. In its many portraits, it reflects the increased awareness of the individual in the age of humanism. Above all, the catalogue encourages a closer look at the paintings themselves, now seen in a new light, both here an in our galleries.

The nine papers collected in this publication—which comprises the third and latest addition to the symposium volumes inaugurated by The Metropolitan Museum of Art with Attila to Charlemagne—were first presented in conjunction with the Museum's exhibition of Early Netherlandish painting culled from its own holdings, "From Van Eyck to Bruegel," in 1998. The essays, by an international roster of leading specialists, together uncover the circumstances underlying the creation of works of art and shed new light on their meaning, in the context of the growing interdisciplinary activity and burgeoning scholarship in the field. The importance of archival research into the socioeconomic factors that existed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is emphasized—especially, the impact of art markets on the production of paintings as well as sculpture. Much new material has surfaced as a result of advances in the technical investigation of works of art, underscoring the premise that the clues to the meaning of a work are often found not only in its method of manufacture but also in the specific audience for which it was intended and in the function that it originally served for that audience. The topics of inquiry addressed here concern the relationship of text and image, archival work, economic/art market developments, and technical examinations. Each of these areas is considered in two parts: The first summarizes the history of the approach thus far, along with suggested guidelines for current research, and the second consists of the respondent's comments on the proposal presented and the charting of unexplored territory for future study. The aim is to stimulate further discussion on existing methodologies in the field, with a view toward developing new directions for subsequent discoveries by scholars of Early Netherlandish painting.