Simon Marmion
NG 1302  
The Soul of Saint Bertin carried up to God  
NG 1303  
A Choir of Angels

Lorne Campbell, 1998

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

Provenance

The two paintings are the projecting upper parts of the wing panels of an altarpiece in precious metals placed in 1459 on the high altar of the abbey church of St Bertin at St‐Omer.¹ The altarpiece and its shutters remained there until 1783, when they were moved to the ambulatory.² They were still there in 1791³ but the central section was destroyed soon after and the wings passed to a baker of St‐Omer and from him to a ‘local art‐lover’.⁴ He was perhaps the painter Louis Francia (1772–1839), who was born in Calais. Francia certainly owned the panels in 1822, when he brought them to London, offered them to the Royal Academy and exhibited them for sale at 27 Leicester Square.⁵ Shortly afterwards they were exhibited for sale at the Hôtel Bullion in Paris.⁶ They passed to the dealer Lambert‐Jean Nieuwenhuys (1777–1862), who separated NG 1302 and NG 1303 from the main parts of the shutters,⁷ which he sold on 1 October 1823 to the Prince of Orange, later Willem II, King of the Netherlands.⁸ NG 1302 and NG 1303 remained with the Nieuwenhuys family, from whom, in or shortly before 1847, they were acquired by the Parisian collector Edmond Beaucousin (1806–66).⁹ Purchased with the rest of the Beaucousin collection in 1860, they were among the pictures ‘which, in the judgement of the trustees, are not required for the National Gallery’.¹⁰ They were not put on exhibition and in 1862 they were sent to the South Kensington Museum,¹¹ where they remained, in the storeroom of the Circulation Department, until 1889.¹² Exhibited for a brief period at South Kensington in 1889,¹³ they were returned to the National Gallery in November 1889, restored, accessioned and finally put on exhibition.¹⁴

Technical Notes

Both pictures were cleaned, repaired and varnished in 1889. The obverses and the reverses were cleaned in 1967. On the reverses, the pink‐brown backgrounds and the dark brown shadows cast onto the backgrounds are the work of an early nineteenth‐century(?) restorer. Otherwise the paintings are well preserved.

The panels are single boards of oak, vertical in grain. NG 1302 measures 59.9 × 22.7 cm and is about 8 mm thick at the lower edge, thinned to 5 mm at the other three edges. NG 1303 measures 59.9 × 23.2 cm; it is about 5 mm thick throughout, noticeably thinner than NG 1302. Unpainted edges are present on all four sides of both faces of both panels. These are original at the tops and sides; but at the lower edges the unpainted strips have been created by scraping away paint and ground.

There are chalk grounds. On the obverse of NG 1302, an isolating layer seems to be present between the ground and a grey priming layer of charcoal black and lead white. On the reverse of NG 1302, the priming layer is a warm grey containing traces of lead‐tin yellow. No samples have been taken from NG 1303, where the layer structures are almost certainly the same. The architectural elements on both the reverses have been transferred by means of pouncing from the same pricked cartoon: the dots are visible in infra‐red reflectography and, for reasons which remain mysterious, are more easily detected in the reflectograms of NG 1302 (figs 3, 4). Infra‐red photographs and reflectograms of the obverses reveal considerable amounts of underdrawing, in a liquid medium (figs 5–7). The circular aureole around God the Father in NG 1302 has been drawn with a compass; the hole made by the compass point is visible in the middle of his draperies. The horizontal lines of the slates are incised.

Ultramarine underpainted with azurite has been found in the sky in NG 1302. Though no samples were taken from NG 1303, examination under the stereomicroscope showed that the sky there also contains ultramarine and that the transparent yellow glaze on the robe of the second angel from the top probably contains yellow lake. The green robes of the third angel are underpainted in mixtures of blue and white; a green layer has been stippled(?) over the underpaint and glazed, perhaps with yellow lake. Vermilion appears to have been employed rather sparingly. Much use has been made of dark and light lines in the modelling of the draperies and the [page 305] hatched brushwork, particulary noticeable in the heads, seems unusual. The medium used on both faces of NG 1302 is linseed oil; no medium samples have been taken from NG 1303.

Generally the underdrawing of the obverses is relatively free. In NG 1302 (fig. 6), God the Father’s tiara is larger in the underdrawing and there are minor alterations in the throne, the figure of Saint Bertin and the angels’ draperies. The underdrawn roof terminates to our left of the painted roof and an underdrawn finial is to our left of the middle painted finial (fig. 7). In NG 1303 the changes are clearer and probably more numerous. The instrument of the angel at the top is drawn with a wider bell; the second angel’s instrument is shorter in the underdrawing; the third angel’s left wing is fully outlined in the drawing and he is drawn playing, not upon a trumpet‐shaped pipe, but upon a shorter pipe with a snare drum (fig. 5).¹⁵ The heads, wings and draperies of the two angels holding the scroll have been much changed. The heads of both are drawn higher and to our left.

Other alterations were made during the course of painting. In NG 1302, parts of God the Father’s throne are painted on top of the pink glory. In NG 1303, the end of the scroll on our left was at first painted in a higher position and the finial was painted slightly to our left of its present place. The right hand of the second angel from the top is painted on top of his instrument and its mouthpiece is painted on top of his mouth. Slight alterations, made at both the drawing and the painting stages, are detectable in both reverses.

Reconstruction and Description

The main parts of the two wing panels are in Berlin (figs 8–11). Each measures 59 × 147 cm.¹⁶ On the interior faces are a representation of the donor, Guillaume Fillastre, and nine scenes from the life of Saint Bertin, beginning with his birth and ending with his death, which occurred in or about 698.¹⁷ On the outside of the left wing are depicted in grisaille Saint Mark, Micah, Saint John the Evangelist, Solomon and the Archangel Gabriel. On the outside of the right wing are the Virgin Annunciate, David, Saint Matthew, Isaiah and Saint Luke. The central section, known only from written descriptions, was in the shape of an inverted T and was made of gold, gilded silver and copper, rock crystal, diamonds and other precious stones. It was divided into seven compartments, which enclosed another figure of the donor Fillastre(?); another Annunciation; a Visitation; a Crucifixion (in the taller middle compartment); a Noli Me Tangere; a Christ and Doubting Thomas; and a kneeling figure of Saint Bertin. All the figures were gilded but their faces and hands were ‘painted’ in flesh colours. Above the raised central compartment was a gilded Tree of Life, which was surrounded by angels and at the top of which was a pelican feeding her young. From the Tree hung a golden dove, in which the Host was kept. On the ‘base’ of the altarpiece was an inscription: GVILELMVS PRAESES TVLLENSIS ET ISTIVS ABBAS
CONVENTVS OPVS HOC TIBI TRINO SANXIT ET VNI (Guillaume, Bishop of Toul and abbot of this convent, consecrated this work to Thee, Three in One). The letters underlined were painted in red and formed a chronogram: [page 307] MCCLLLLXVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIII =1459. The central section was about 330 cm wide; the Crucifixion was about 120 cm high.¹⁸

NG 1303 is from the left side of the left wing, above the portrait of Fillastre; the finial is from the gable of the building in which he is praying. NG 1302 is from the right side of the right wing, above the Death of Saint Bertin; the roof covers the building in which the saint has died. When the wings were closed, the stone canopies on the reverses of the two panels covered the top part of the central Crucifixion and appeared to project above the niche enclosing the grisaille Annunciation.¹⁹

The two National Gallery paintings were detached from the Berlin panels in 1822–3 because they formed projections which would have been ‘disagreeable’ when the wings were placed in a picture gallery.²⁰ The paint and ground were scraped away from the lower edges of the London pictures and the upper edges of the Berlin pictures so that all four fragments appeared to have continuous unpainted edges on all four sides. Little or none of the wood of the panels has been lost and no framing structure can have intervened between the London and Berlin compositions.²¹ The overpaint on the reverses of the London panels is not present on the reverses of the Berlin panels. Beneath the overpaint on the reverse of NG 1302 is a thin red lake glaze over a brownish‐grey layer of lead white, charcoal black and a little lead‐tin yellow. The brownish backgrounds behind the grisaille figures of the Berlin panels are presumably similar in layer structure. If the lost areas of paint between the Berlin Annunciation and the London canopies had been preserved, it would have been possible to see exactly how the arch over the Annunciation terminated and how the canopies related to the rest of the [page 308] painted architecture. The backgrounds behind the canopies were presumably the same colour and in the same plane as the back walls of the niches enclosing the grisaille figures. The rather narrow shadows cast by the canopies are overpainting; the original shadows would have been more in keeping with the shadows cast by the grisaille figures.

In NG 1303, the music and writing on the scroll held by the two angels are fictive and were never intended to be read. The three angels above are playing on instruments shaped like shawms but made, not of wood, but of brass – or possibly gold. Perhaps the artist thought that heavenly beings should have elegant, golden shawms. In NG 1302, God is enthroned within a circle of six‐winged praying seraphim (compare Isaiah 6:2), who take their colours from the coloured glories around them. Saint Bertin’s soul is depicted as a naked figure kneeling in a sort of hammock supported by two angels.

Attribution and Date

The altarpiece was commissioned by Guillaume Fillastre. Favoured by both Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, he was Bishop of Verdun from 1437 to 1448, Bishop of Toul from 1448 to 1460 and Bishop of Tournai from 1460 until his death in 1473. In 1447 he became Abbot of the important Benedictine abbey of St Bertin and he was an active patron of the arts.²² Many of the records of the abbey have been lost but in accounts for the years 1455–6, 1456–7 and 1457–8 there are payments for the ‘silver tabula for the high altar’ and in the account for 1458–9 is a final payment for the same tabula. The total cost was 1895 livres 9 sous of Artois²³, an enormous sum, especially as the precious metals and gems were supplied from the treasury of the abbey.²⁴ It seems that the four payments covered the painting of the wing panels. Dom Charles‐Joseph Dewitte (1725–1807), who became the abbey librarian in 1754 and was the last archivist of St Bertin, was a scrupulous historian and had access to records subsequently destroyed; he stated that: ‘In 1459, on the eve of Saint John the Baptist’s day [i.e. on 23 June], Guillaume Fillastre caused to be placed in the sanctuary of the abbey church the very rich and superb altarpiece, enriched with an infinite number of precious stones, which he had had made at Valenciennes …’²⁵ Valenciennes is not particularly near St‐Omer, which is closer to Bruges. It is thought that the wing panels were also made at Valenciennes, where Marmion was the most prominent painter. He had moved there from Amiens between 1454 and 1458.²⁶

The wing panels were attributed in 1695 to Dürer,²⁷ in 1721 to Jan van Eyck²⁸ and in 1769 to Memling.²⁹ In the nineteenth century the attribution to Memling found many supporters and NG 1302 and 1303 were acquired as his work. Michiels in 1866 seems to have been the first to suggest that they were by Marmion;³⁰ Dehaisnes in 1892 produced strong arguments in favour of this attribution;³¹ and the London panels, when they were first catalogued in 1892, were listed under Marmion’s name. The idea that the Berlin and London panels are by Marmion has been accepted by Winkler, Friedländer, Hulin, Sterling, Grosshans, Ainsworth and others;³² it is treated with caution by Davies;³³ and rejected by Hénault and Hoffman.³⁴ The circumstantial evidence is increasingly strongly in its favour.

General References

Davies 1968, pp. 85–7; Davies 1970, pp. 18–26.

Notes