Juan de Flandes
NG 1280 
Christ appearing to the Virgin with the Redeemed of the Old Testament

Lorne Campbell, 1998

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (London: National Gallery Publications and Yale University Press, 1998).

Oil on oak panel, 21.4 × 16 cm, painted surface 21.2 × 15.4 cm

Inscriptions

On the scroll near Christ’s mouth: Mater. mea: dulcissima ego. sum. resurexi:/ ad huc:/ (sum tecum?): em… /… /… oser… (My sweetest mother, it is I.I have risen and still am with you …).

On the scroll proceeding from the Virgin’s hands: Gaud (ete ga?) udebo et exultabo: in te deo. et/ Jh [es] [?]u. meo: (Rejoice, I will rejoice and exult in thee my God and Jesus).

On the scroll next to the Baptist: G … de: r… redempti/ … (preti?)oso s(an?)guin/ … / … (tui?): (… redeemed … with precious blood…).

These inscriptions are discussed below, p. 262.

Provenance

The painting belonged to Isabella of Castile (1451–1504), Queen of Spain, and was listed, with forty‐six companion panels, in an inventory of part of her estate taken on 25 February 1505 at the castle of Toro.¹ It was next recorded in the possession of Henry Attwell (1834–1901), educationalist, translator and author of, among other books, The Italian Masters, with Special Reference to the Italian Pictures in the National Gallery London (1888). In the 1850s he taught at Leiden University but by 1859 he had settled at Barnes in Surrey.² In 1889 he offered his picture, then attributed to Memling, to the National Gallery: it was purchased out of the Walker Fund.³

Technical Notes

In 1889 a ‘crack’ was repaired and the picture was cleaned.⁴ It was cleaned again in 1968, when black paint was removed from the reverse to reveal remains of marbling. The paint on the obverse is worn in places, the worst preserved heads being those of the Baptist and the woman behind the bed. There are very small losses, especially along the splits in the panel, and the inscriptions are so worn as to be in parts illegible. The arch, which may once have been decorated with an inscription, is much retouched.

The panel is one board of oak, vertical in grain;⁵ it measures 21.4 × 16.0 cm and is about 4 mm thick. Two vertical splits run 6.7 cm and 7.8 cm from the left edge and have been closed with two butterflies set into the reverse. A chalk ground has been laid across the obverse and has been covered with a whitish priming. The artist then painted the picture but left margins on all four sides. Once the picture was finished, they were covered in an orange‐brown oil mordant, which was gilded. Yellow lines applied over the gilding define the right and lower edges of the picture. The gilded edges must have been damaged and regilded; the regilding was removed during cleaning in 1968.

Infra‐red photographs reveal a great deal of underdrawing (fig. 1). A drawn line has been ruled down the right margin, while an incised line marks the right painted contour of Christ’s cross. The sky is painted with azurite of high quality and strong colour, while the Virgin’s robes and the drapery over Christ’s stool are ultramarine, possibly mixed with a little azurite. In a sample taken from the green paint of a plant at the lower edge, the medium is heat‐bodied linseed oil with some pine resin; there is, however, no indication that the pigment is ‘copper resinate’.

On the reverse, the ground is not chalk but true gesso (calcium sulphate). The marbling is in green on red; the red is mainly red earth while the green is a mixture of azurite and yellow earth. The medium is linseed oil. Paint and ground continue to the lower and lateral edges of the panel but have been removed from the upper part. It is safe to assume that they once covered the entire reverse.

The underdrawing is detailed and there are areas of hatching and cross‐hatching. Christ’s cross is drawn to the right of its painted position, the tester and the Virgin’s cushion are drawn higher and her scroll is drawn in a continuous curve. The drapery over Christ’s knees has been rearranged. The inscription is also drawn and the underdrawn words Jhũ•meo are clearly visible on the section of the scroll that is drawn but not painted.

Description

The resurrected Christ, carrying a golden cross on a silvery shaft, greets the Virgin in her chamber. His mouth is open, his tongue is visible and he is evidently speaking the words written on his scroll. He is accompanied by the multitude whom he has brought from Limbo. Behind him are Adam and Eve, while on his left is John the Baptist; behind the bed, the elderly man and woman are perhaps the Virgin’s parents Joachim and Anne. In the lower right corner a grey and a white dove feed or drink from a hollow formed by the removal of a tile from the floor. The inscription on Christ’s scroll is adapted from the Meditations on the Life of Christ of Pseudo‐Bonaventura: Mater mea dulcissima, ego sum, resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum.⁶ That on the Virgin’s scroll is adapted from Habakkuk 3: 18: Ego autem in Dominum gaudebo: et exsultabo in Deo Jesu meo. Only part of the damaged inscription on the Baptist’s scroll can be deciphered but it is perhaps adapted from the First Epistle of Peter 1: 18–19: Scientes quod non corruptibilibus argento vel auro redempti estis … sed pretioso sanguine quasi agni incontaminati et inmaculati Christi (Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold … But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot). The painter may have followed the account of the meeting between the resurrected Christ and the Virgin written by Sor Isabel de Villena (1430–90) in her Catalan Vita Christi. Sor Isabel, who was related to both Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was abbess of the Franciscan convent of the Sanctíssima Trinitat at Valencia and her book, printed in 1497, seven years after her death, was dedicated to Queen Isabella, who may well have recommended it to those who advised the artists of her painted Life of Christ. In Sor Isabel’s text, Adam, Eve, the Baptist and Joachim are all mentioned and Christ greets his mother by saying Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum. In other respects, however, Sor Isabel’s account, which gives prominence to the archangels Gabriel and Michael, is not used. The same subject occurs in pictures apparently painted in the Low Countries, where Sor Isabel’s text is unlikely to have been widely known.⁷ The broad purple stripe on the bed‐curtains has not been explained and the significance of the doves and the missing tile is mysterious, though similar doves occur in other panels from the series.⁸

Attribution and Date

In 1889 Henry Attwell offered the picture to the National Gallery as a Memling; it was catalogued as ‘Flemish School’.⁹ It seems to have been Justi who, in 1908, recognised that it belonged to Queen Isabella’s series and attributed it to Juan de Flandes.¹⁰ In 1929 it was catalogued as by Juan. Though some art historians believe that all the surviving panels from the series are by Sittow ( c. 1468–1525/6) or Juan de Flandes, others have assigned certain panels in the Juan de Flandes group to one or more assistants. In 1952 MacLaren catalogued NG 1280 as from the workshop of Juan de Flandes. Braham and Davies agreed with his attribution.¹¹

Queen Isabella died at Medina del Campo in November 1504. Her executors were directed to sell most of her belongings in order to pay her legacies and on 25 February 1505 at the castle of Toro officials preparing the inventory of her estate listed forty‐seven little panels, all of which were the same size and which were in an armario or cupboard. Forty‐five were scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin while the other two depicted saints. They were valued at between 2½ and 6 ducats; one was sold to the Alcaide de los Donceles or Governor of the Pages; eight(?) were bought by the Marchioness of Denia. On 13 March 1505 thirty‐two others were [page 263][page 264] sold to Diego Flores.¹² No record has been discovered of the sale of the remaining six(?) panels, which included NG 1280 and a Christ appearing alone to the Virgin. The thirty‐two panels purchased by Diego Flores passed to his employer Margaret of Austria, who kept them in a wooden box. Before 1516, two had been removed and framed as a diptych.¹³ By 1523–4 only twenty‐two remained in the box and before 31 December 1527 twenty of these had been made into a ‘picture’ in a silver‐gilt setting.¹⁴ This passed to Margaret’s nephew the Emperor Charles V,¹⁵ who gave it to his wife,¹⁶ and it was later owned by their son Philip II of Spain.¹⁷ Fifteen of the twenty are still in the Spanish royal collection, in the Palacio Real in Madrid.¹⁸ Twelve panels which are the same size – the painted surfaces measuring about 21 × 15.5 cm – and in the same styles have been associated with the fifteen in Madrid.¹⁹ As their subjects correspond to those given for twelve of the panels described in the 1505 inventory, they are demonstrably from the same set of forty‐seven. NG 1280 is the Quando [Christo] aparesçió a nuestro [sic, for nuestra] Señora con los santos padres: çinco ducados (‘When [Christ] appeared to Our Lady with the holy fathers: five ducats’); Cómo aparesció a nuestro Señoro [sic, for nuestra Señora] sola en la manana: tres ducados (‘How Christ appeared to Our Lady alone in the morning: three ducats’) is a picture now in Berlin (fig. 2).²⁰ The inclusion there of the coat of arms of Ferdinand and Isabella, like the arms of Castile and Leon in the Christ on the Sea of Galilee (Madrid), provides further proof that the panels belonged to Isabella.

On 25 February 1505 Isabella’s forty‐seven pictures were in a cupboard in the castle of Toro. Isabella had not visited Toro since 1497 when, after an absence of twenty‐one years, she had spent a day there.²¹ Clearly she did not keep her paintings at Toro and it seems that they were brought to the castle, with many of her other possessions, merely to be valued and sold. Ferdinand went to Toro on 12 December 1504; the Cortes met there in January 1505; he remained based at Toro until the end of April and supervised the settlement of Isabella’s estate.²² The forty‐seven pictures were delivered up by ‘Violante’,²³ Violante de Albion, who was Isabella’s Camarera, who had in her charge vast numbers of Isabella’s possessions, including many pictures, and who was in her service when she died at Medina del Campo.²⁴ On 14 December 1504 Ferdinand wrote from Toro to order Violante to deliver all the objects under her care to Juan Velázquez, who was responsible for making the inventory.²⁵ The forty‐seven pictures, and their cupboard, were presumably brought to Toro from Medina del Campo. Other objects arrived at Toro in locked chests, boxes and cupboards.²⁶

In February 1505 the forty‐seven panels were not arranged in any logical order and they were apparently out of order when they were taken from their cupboard. Though there was no Resurrection, they formed a fairly complete cycle, with emphasis on the Passion and the appearances of the resurrected Christ. There is no reason to believe that the series was unfinished or that NG 1280 was rejected and replaced by the Berlin Christ appearing to the Virgin.²⁷ The panels had been delivered to Isabella and were legally hers, for her executors to sell. It seems improbable that she acquired them in instalments. Forty‐seven, however, is an awkward number and the lack of a Resurrection is disturbing. It is possible that one or more pictures from the set went missing before the inventory was taken at Toro.²⁸

Isabella may have kept her forty‐seven panels in a cupboard or they may have been put into the cupboard in order to be transported to Toro. They were valued and sold singly. Margaret of Austria kept the thirty‐two which she acquired in a box, though she finally framed two as a diptych and another twenty as a ‘picture’, which was in fact also a diptych.²⁹

NG 1280 had a gilded border. Traces of gilded borders are visible on several of the other panels³⁰ and it seems likely that all had similar borders which would have served as fictive frames. They were probably intended to remain unframed and to be used singly, or in small groups, as aids to private devotion. Margaret of Austria, who certainly thought highly of her ‘exquisite little pictures’, must have understood their function when she put them into a wooden box, just as Queen Isabella may have kept them in a cupboard.³¹ If they were not designed to be seen all together, that would explain why the scale of the figures varies and why NG 1280 and the Berlin Christ appearing to the Virgin (fig. 2) do not correspond particularly well. The two interiors are completely different, though both contain pink beds; the Berlin Virgin wears a pale blue mantle whereas the Virgin in NG 1280 is in bright blue; the [page 265] Berlin inscription is lettered in yellow Roman capitals across the background, while the inscriptions in NG 1280 are in red and black Gothic letters on floating scrolls and are unlike any of the other inscriptions on the surviving panels of the series.³² In both the Berlin picture and in NG 1280, however, Christ utters the same words; in both cases resurrexi is misspelled resurexi.

The marbling on the reverse of NG 1280 is on a gypsum ground, whereas the painting on the obverse is on a chalk ground. None of the other panels from the series appears to have a marbled reverse. It was perhaps after NG 1280 was separated from the rest that the reverse was painted and no conclusions on its original function should be drawn from the marbling.

Before 1516 Margaret of Austria isolated from the panels that she owned the two ‘by the hand of Michiel’ (Sittow): the Ascension (now in the collection of the Earl of Yarborough) and the Assumption of the Virgin (now in Washington).³³ The implication is that Margaret’s other thirty panels were not by Sittow; but he may have painted some of the remaining fifteen panels which Margaret did not own. None of the early sources gives another artist’s name in connection with the series and it was Crowe and Cavalcaselle in 1857 and Justi in 1887 who first suggested that the Madrid panels might be by Juan de Flandes.³⁴ There is now fairly general agreement that Sittow painted two of the surviving twenty‐seven panels and that the other twenty‐five are to be associated with Juan de Flandes. They are indeed close in style to his documented paintings from Miraflores, Salamanca and Palencia; and Juan de Flandes was in the service of Queen Isabella from 1496 until her death in 1504. He was therefore Sittow’s colleague and in 1500 and 1501 they were paid by the same treasurer.³⁵ On the reverses of the Raising of Lazarus and the Mocking of Christ (both in Madrid) are sixteenth(?)‐century inscriptions: Juan Astrat and Ju° Astrat. They could be early references to Juan de Flandes, whose surname may have been van der Straet.³⁶ It is entirely plausible to associate the twenty‐five panels, including NG 1280, with Juan de Flandes and to date them between 1496 and 1504, when he was working for Queen Isabella.

The panels are not, however, entirely consistent in style and technique. Infra‐red photographs of NG 1280 reveal (fig. 1) an elaborately hatched and cross‐hatched underdrawing which, given the great difference in scale, is similar in style to the underdrawings of the documented panels in Palencia.³⁷ An apparent idiosyncrasy in NG 1280 is a tendency to suggest narrow shadows by drawing a series of short, parallel lines perpendicular to the axis of the shadow, for example in Christ’s torso and in the bed‐curtains to our right of the Virgin. The underdrawing resembles closely that seen in reflectograms of the Thyssen Lamentation, attributed to Juan de Flandes.³⁸ In some of the other panels from Queen Isabella’s series, for example the Temptation (Washington), the Christ on the Sea of Galilee, the Entry into Jerusalem (both in Madrid), the Last Supper (Apsley House), the Betrayal, the Christ before Pilate and the Mocking of Christ (all in Madrid), reflectograms reveal no underdrawing at all; but the underdrawings visible in normal light in the Nailing to the Cross (Vienna), the Descent into Limbo and the Pentecost (both in Madrid), and in reflectograms of the Christ in the House of Simon, the Three Maries at the Sepulchre and the Supper at Emmaus (all in Madrid) may be similar to the underdrawing of NG 1280.³⁹

The undamaged parts of NG 1280, for example Christ’s face, his cross and his wounds, are painted with very great care and skill. The variations in colour are remarkably sensitive: the minute catchlights in the Virgin’s eyes, for instance, differ in colour. Under strong magnification, the heads in NG 1280 and the Last Supper (Apsley House) may be seen to be perfectly consistent in handling. The drapery style, with highlights painted in fairly broad and continuous bands along the crests of the folds, is similar in both pictures, which are, nevertheless, superficially different, for the Last Supper is much darker and richer in colour. This, and the fact that the Last Supper has no discernible underdrawing while NG 1280 has a clear and finished underdrawing, do not necessarily indicate that the two panels are by different artists. The Last Supper may have an underdrawing which infra‐red reflectography cannot make visible; or, for some reason yet to be discovered, a detailed underdrawing was considered necessary in NG 1280 but not in the Last Supper. What does seem clear is that both panels were painted by the same artist and that he was Juan de Flandes, whose documented pictures, though on a very much larger scale, demonstrate a similar degree of painterly skill.⁴⁰

Until a detailed physical study has been made of all the surviving panels, it will not be possible to explain such anomalies. Juan de Flandes, who may not have arrived in Spain much before 1496, may have been experimenting with different techniques. As there is no evidence that he ever had any highly skilled assistants, it appears sensible to attribute to Juan himself all twenty‐five of the panels from Queen Isabella’s series and to suppose that the variations detected there result from his efforts to match his contribution with Sittow’s and from his own rapid stylistic development.⁴¹

Dürer, examining in 1521 Margaret of Austria’s panels from the same series, wrote that he had never seen anything like them ‘for precision and excellence’.⁴² If he had come across NG 1280, he might well have been equally impressed.

General References

Davies 1970, pp. 4–17; MacLaren and Braham 1970, pp. 41–7.

Notes