Hans Memling
NG 6275 
The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors (The Donne Triptych)

Lorne Campbell, 1998

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

Oil on oak panels, centre 72.3 × 71.6 cm, wings 72 × 31.1 cm, painted surfaces, centre 71 × 70.3 cm, wings (fronts and backs), 71 × 30.5 cm

Provenance

The triptych was first recorded in 1744, when it was at Chiswick House in the collection of Richard Boyle (1694–1753), 3rd Earl of Burlington.¹ His daughter and heiress Charlotte Elizabeth (1731–54) married in 1748 William Cavendish, afterwards (1755) 4th Duke of Devonshire, and the triptych remained at Chiswick in the possession of their descendants the Dukes of Devonshire until 1892, when it was moved to Chatsworth.² It was acquired in 1957 from the Duke of Devonshire’s collection at Chatsworth under the terms of the Finance Act of 1956.

Exhibitions

First Special Exhibition of National Portraits, South Kensington Museum, London 1866 (18); RA 1876 (172); Brighton Art Loan Exhibition, Royal Pavilion, Brighton 1884 (141); London 1892 (20); Bruges 1902 (56); London 1906 (21); ‘Early English Portraiture’, BFAC 1909 (22); on loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1909; London 1927 (47); ‘Pictures from the Devonshire Collection’, Agnew’s, London 1948 (33); on loan at the NG , 1948–52; London 1953–4 (27); London 1963 (6275); London 1975 (149).

Copy

An old copy of the heads of the donors (painted on oak, 28.6 × 36.5 cm; fig. 17) was engraved in 1793 ‘From an ancient Picture on Board in the Possession of John Thane’ (fig. 18). John Thane (1748–1818), who himself published the engraving on 10 March 1793, was an antiquarian and collector. After his death, the copy was sold at Christie’s on 2 March 1820 (no. 65). By November 1913 it was in the possession of John Jackson, Leigh‐on‐Sea (Essex);³ it was later owned by Elizabeth Watkinson Holbrooke (1868–1938), widow of Francis George Seymour Holbrooke (died 1937), Bladon Castle, Newton Solney, Derbyshire. Sold by her executor at Christie’s, 17 February 1939 (no. 66), to Knoedler, it was evidently restored shortly afterwards. According to Knoedler’s records, it was in December 1943 ‘Located in Occupied Territory’; it appears not to have been recovered after the Second World War.⁴

Technical Notes

The triptych was cleaned in 1957–8 and is, in general, very well preserved, though there are damages across the Virgin’s left cheek and eye and in the cloth of honour immediately above her head. Some of the ultramarine‐containing paint has become greyish and small areas of vermilion have blackened. The exterior is less well preserved than the interior.

The centre panel, which measures 72.3 × 71.6 cm, is made up of three boards of oak laid vertically and vertical in grain. They were joined with dowels and are 24.0 cm, 25.5 cm and 22.1 cm wide at the bottom edge. The component boards ‘had come apart at some time and had been badly glued together again at both joins, so that their surfaces were not properly aligned’.⁵ They were therefore once more separated and rejoined during panel treatment in 1957, when the joins were reinforced with strips of oak applied to the reverse. The panel is approximately 12 mm thick in the centre, rebated at the back to 6 mm at the edges. The rebates are not original but the top and bottom edges may have been bevelled. The reverse is inscribed ‘IOHANES VAN EYCK’. Mistakenly described by Vertue as ‘burnt in’,⁶ this inscription is in black paint. The wing panels are single planks of oak, vertical in grain; they measure 72.0 × 31.1 cm and are approximately 6 mm thick. The frames, made in 1957–8, replaced nineteenth(?)‐century frames; nothing is known about the original frames.

There are chalk grounds. Infra‐red photographs and reflectograms reveal a considerable amount of underdrawing, apparently in a dry material. Some use has been made of lines incised into the ground – observed, for example, in the columns above the angel with the viol, in Saint Catherine’s sword and in the floor; and lines lightly indented into an underpainting – observed, for example, in the carpet and the Virgin’s cloth of honour. The pattern here has been reproduced from a tracing (see below). An extremely thin, mainly lead‐white, priming has been applied, apparently over the underdrawing. The streaks visible in some of the reflectograms are in the priming (fig. 2). No unusual pigments have been identified. Natural ultramarine is present in the blues of Saint Catherine’s mantle, the Virgin’s dress and the peacock and in the purples of Lady Donne’s dress, the edges of the Virgin’s cloth of honour and the darker areas of the Baptist’s mantle. The paint medium is linseed oil and a very small amount of resin had been found with the oil in the red glaze of the Virgin’s mantle. As there are no visible traces of mordant under the gilding of the haloes, it is possible that these are painted in shell gold, but, because the gilding is not perfectly preserved, it is impossible to be certain.

The underdrawing is rather sketchy and untidy; forms are outlined and folds indicated but there is virtually no hatching. The underdrawings for the portrait heads (figs 1, 2) are minimal but more careful and the underdrawings for the grisailles of the exterior are a little more detailed and less free than those for the interior scenes. Few major changes are detectable, except in the landscapes of the centre panel where, on the left, the rapidly underdrawn castle, bridge and mill are rather different from those painted. There are adjustments in the donor’s head (see below) and in the left hand of the angel with the viol and many small alterations in the drapery folds, in the other hands and in the architecture. The left hand and chalice of Saint John the Evangelist have been drawn in several positions and were finally painted in yet another position (fig. 11).

The small figures and the animals in the backgrounds, including the peacock, are not underdrawn or reserved and are painted on top of the landscapes. The bystander in the [page 375][page 376] [page 377] left wing is not underdrawn and though his hat, face and neck are reserved, the rest of his body is not. The reserve for the donor’s collar of suns and roses was narrower than the painted collar and the pendant has no reserve. X‐radiographs reveal changes made during the course of painting in the head of Lady Donne and in her and her daughter’s headdresses, which at first showed their ears (fig. 3). Many of the trees, for example on the right of the centre panel, have been laid in as trunks and bare branches which have then been entirely covered in green foliage.

The transparent cloth at Lady Donne’s neck is rendered not by using white paint but by exploiting the ground: an absence of white highlights makes the distinction in texture between fabric and skin (fig. 3). In certain areas, for example the donor’s head and the red draperies of the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, the paint is applied in short parallel brushstrokes which give a hatched effect. This and other aspects of Memling’s technique are discussed below, pp. 387–8.

Description

In the centre panel, the Virgin and Child are enthroned beneath a canopy and in front of a cloth of honour. At the Virgin’s feet is an Anatolian carpet.⁷ On the left an angel, [page 378] [page 379] [page 380] dressed in a dalmatic and holding a viol, offers an apple to Christ; on the right a second angel, dressed in an alb, plays a portative organ. Saint Catherine, who wears the ‘robe royale’ of a princess, holds in her right hand the sword of her martyrdom, its blade decorated with the wheels of her attempted execution. She stands upon another wheel and presents the donor, identifiable as Sir John Donne. Opposite them Saint Barbara, who holds in her right hand the tower which is her emblem, presents a donatrix, identifiable as Lady Donne. She is very richly attired in a purple velvet robe trimmed with ermine; her belt is of a brown, damask‐like, patterned fabric. Behind her kneels a little girl, clearly her daughter, who is dressed in brown watered silk (fig. 15). Both the donor and the donatrix wear Yorkist collars of suns and roses; the pendant lions are white, presumably enamelled, with golden tongues, and hold up rubies in their right fore‐paws. The donor’s lion (fig. 9) has golden eyes but the donatrix’s does not. The figures are in a sort of loggia with richly coloured marble columns. The capitals are carved and gilded: that on the left is decorated with hazelnuts, the second from the right with acorns. Fixed to the capitals are various shields: those above Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara are undecorated but those above the angel with the viol show the arms of Donne and those above the other angel show the arms of Donne impaling Hastings. A central column must be concealed behind the Virgin’s cloth of honour. The loggia gives onto a landscape where there are a castle, a bridge and a water‐mill. A man carrying a pole(?) crosses the bridge; the miller or his servant unloads a sack from a donkey’s back; on the right a cow grazes while a fashionably attired horseman with long white hair rides off on a white horse with blue trappings.

The loggia continues into the wing panels. In the left wing stands Saint John the Baptist, wearing a hair shirt and holding his emblem, the lamb. Behind him the bystander in contemporary dress is clearly a portrait. The capital is ornamented with strawberries. In the right wing Saint John the Evangelist holds a chalice from which a serpent escapes. According to the apocryphal Acts of John, the saint was made to drink poison but survived.⁸ The serpent symbolises the poison. In the stained‐glass panels of the window on the right are once again the arms of Donne. The capital is ornamented with figs and fig‐leaves. In the courtyard beyond the loggia a peacock perches on a ruined wall, which presumably forms part of the same structure that appears in the centre panel behind Saint Barbara’s head. Its significance, like that of the peacock, is obscure. All the saints on the interior of the triptych have haloes of two concentric circles of gold. On the reverses of the wings are shown, in grisaille, Saint Christopher, carrying the Christ Child on his back and a flowering staff in his right hand, and Saint Anthony Abbot, with his emblems the bell and pig.

The apple which the angel offers to the Christ Child and which appears in many paintings in the Memling group refers to the Fall of Man: Christ is the Second Adam and Redeemer.⁹ The choice of saints is not in any way remarkable. All six were widely revered, both in the British Isles and in the Low Countries. The two saints John were the patrons of the donor. Catherine was the protectress of the dying, Barbara of those in danger of sudden death. Anthony was invoked as a healer while Christopher was not only the patron of travellers but also a protector against sudden death. Some believed that those who looked at an image of Saint Christopher would not die that day.¹⁰

The water‐wheel behind Saint Catherine may allude to the wheel of her martyrdom (fig. 12); but it may be pointed out that similar water‐wheels occur in other paintings by or attributed to Memling where Saint Catherine is not present, for example pictures of the Virgin and Child in the Uffizi and in Berlin (529) and the Vanity in Strasbourg.¹¹

The Identity of the Donors

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the donors were described as ‘Lord Clifford and his family, painted in 1444 by John Van Eyk’.¹² Thomas Clifford, Lord Clifford (1414–55), married in 1424 Joan Dacre. In 1840, Nichols correctly identified the donors as Sir John Donne and his wife Elizabeth Hastings.¹³

The coats of arms attached to the capitals in the centre panel are those of Donne (Azure a wolf salient argent langued gules) and Donne impaling Hastings (Argent a maunch sable). The Donne arms reappear in the stained‐glass windows of the right wing. On the left side of the centre panel the Donne wolves are reversed, turned to face the Virgin and Child; this is in accordance with the conventions of the period. The arms are those given for Sir John Donne in a manuscript of the time.¹⁴ The donors are dressed in the fashion of the 1470s.¹⁵ Both wear collars of suns and roses, with Lions of March as pendants – a Yorkist livery associated with Edward IV (reigned 1461–83).¹⁶ They are therefore Sir John Donne and his wife Elizabeth Hastings and the girl behind Lady Donne must be the eldest of their children.

Sir John Donne’s parents were Gruffydd Dwnn or Griffith Donne, who came of a distinguished Kidwelly family,¹⁷ and Joan Scudamore, whose father Sir John Scudamore had married Alice, daughter of Owen Glendower.¹⁸ John Donne, [page 382] the third son of Griffith, was in the service of Richard, Duke of York,¹⁹ and, when Richard’s son became king as Edward IV in 1461, Donne was made an Usher of the Chamber and began to accumulate lands and offices in England as well as in Wales. Between 1465 and 1469 he was an Esquire of the Body and he was knighted on the field of battle at Tewkesbury in 1471.²⁰ In 1480 he purchased the estates in Buckinghamshire where he was to set up his principal residence.²¹ After the death of Edward IV in 1483 he managed to retain his lands and titles under Richard III and Henry VII;²² he made his will on 23 January 1503, died before 13 February 1503 and was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.²³

Sir John Donne owned Netherlandish manuscripts, three of which are now in the British Library.²⁴ The Donne arms are found in MS Royal 16 F. v, which contains the Livre de Sydrac followed by a treatise on the sins, and MS Royal 20 B. ii, which contains De l’assumpcion Nostre Dame selon les dits de Ysedore and other texts. The Donne arms have been erased from MS Royal 15 D. iv, a copy of Quintus Curtius Rufus’ Faiz du grant Alexandre, translated by Vasco de Lucena: this had belonged to Guillaume de la Baume, who was in the service of Margaret of York, and carries the inscriptions ‘For yet not har that ys on of yor treu frendes Margarete of Yorke’ (Forget not her that is one of your true friends, Margaret of York) and ‘Prenez moy ajames pour v[ost] [?]re bonne amie Marie D. de bourg^ne.’ (Take me for ever for your good friend, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy). Donne probably received the book as a gift during an embassy to the Netherlands in 1477. He also owned the ‘Louthe’ Hours (Louvain‐la‐Neuve, Université Catholique de Louvain, MS A.2), one of the outstanding Netherlandish manuscripts from the period around 1480. The first owner of the book, represented with his coat of arms on fols 13 and 100v (figs 13, 14), has been wrongly identified as Thomas Louthe ( c. 1447–1533) of Sawtrey Beaumys in Huntingdon‐shire:²⁵ but Louthe cannot be associated either with the arms – Sable a wolf salient argent – or with the crest, seen on fol. 100v, of five snakes coiled in a massive knot. The coat of arms has been overpainted. The field was originally blue and the arms are those of Donne (Azure a wolf salient argent). No reference to the crest used by Sir John has been found but his son Edward Donne used a knot of five snakes, which is the crest seen on fol. 100v.²⁶ Edward must have inherited this curious crest from his father; the first owner of the manuscript must have been Sir John Donne and not Thomas Louthe. The two portraits in the Hours are not incompatible with Memling’s portrait of Donne.

Sir John’s wife Elizabeth was a sister of William, Lord Hastings, who was executed in 1483. She was married before or in 1465.²⁷ Mentioned in 1481 in the will of her brother Lord Hastings,²⁸ she made her own will on 29 November 1507 and died before 15 February 1508.²⁹

Sir John Donne had two sons. The elder Edward was first mentioned in 1489, married in 1500 and was probably still under age when his father made his will on 23 January 1503: he may have been born in or shortly after 1482.³⁰ The younger son was Griffith, to whom, according to a sixteenth‐century source, Sir John made a grant of lands in about 1488.³¹ Sir John’s daughters are very much less well documented. His widow referred in her will, dated 29 November 1507, to her ‘daughters’ Elizabeth Reed, Mary Reed and Margaret.³² The Welsh genealogist Lewys Dwnn ( c. 1550– c. 1616), who was distantly related to Sir John Donne, stated in 1597 that Sir John had had two daughters.³³ Samuel Rush Meyrick, publishing Lewys Dwnn’s manuscript in 1846, misread this passage and created a third daughter, Katherine, who has been listed by subsequent genealogists.³⁴ In fact Lewys Dwnn, not mentioning any Katherine, wrote that the elder of the two daughters was ‘Jan’, wife of Sir William Trussell; the other was ‘Joan’, wife of Sir Richard ‘Ryd’. According to an English manuscript of about 1600, ‘Margarett d. of S^r John Dunne knighte’ married Edward Trussell, son of Sir William Trussell,³⁵ and according to an English manuscript of about 1634, ‘Ann. d. of Sr John doon knight’ was the first wife of Sir William Rede of Boarstall (Buckinghamshire) and was the mother of his children Leonard, Thomas, Anne, Elizabeth, Edward, Giles and Mary.³⁶ Lady Rede is not named in any contemporary source. It would appear that Sir John Donne had two daughters, Margaret Trussell and (Anne?) Rede, and that the ‘daughters’ mentioned in Lady Donne’s will were her grand‐daughters Elizabeth and Mary Rede and her daughter Margaret Trussell.

Margaret’s husband Edward Trussell, the heir to great estates, had been the ward of Lord Hastings, who had bequeathed to Sir John Donne a preferential option on the purchase of his wardship and marriage.³⁷ Edward Trussell was born in about 1478 and had not attained his majority when he died in 1499. He and Margaret had two children: Elizabeth, born in 1496, and John, who was born in 1497–8 and died in 1499.³⁸ Margaret subsequently, in about 1510, married Thomas Cardigan and disappeared into total obscurity.³⁹ She seems to have had at least one more child, the ‘H … Cardigan’ mentioned in June 1533 as ‘my nephew’ in the household accounts of Edward Donne.⁴⁰ William Rede was born in about 1467 and died in 1526.⁴¹ He married a second wife in about 1510⁴² and it seems clear that the first Lady Rede was dead by 1507, when two of her daughters, but not Lady Rede herself, were named as legatees in the will of Lady Donne. Lady Rede’s eldest son Leonard was born in 1496–7;⁴³ her youngest son Giles was born in about 1501;⁴⁴ and her daughter Elizabeth was married in 1515.⁴⁵

Margaret Trussell and Lady Rede therefore produced their first children at precisely the same time, in 1496–7. Margaret’s husband Edward Trussell was certainly at least ten years younger than Lady Rede’s husband but Margaret was not necessarily younger than Lady Rede. Edward Trussell was wealthier than Sir William Rede⁴⁶ and Sir John Donne may have wanted his elder daughter to marry his rich young ward. Lewys Dwnn was evidently certain that Lady Rede was the younger sister and his evidence cannot be totally disregarded.

It is consequently impossible to determine which of Sir John Donne’s daughters was the elder or to estimate their dates of birth. The child represented in the triptych may be Margaret Trussell or Lady Rede but she may very well be an unrecorded older daughter who died unmarried and who was forgotten by the genealogists.⁴⁷

The spectator in the left wing was identified as Memling himself by Conway and others; Davies wondered whether he might be ‘a trusted servant of Donne’s’.⁴⁸ There are no indications of his identity.

Attribution and Date

On the reverse of the centre panel is the inscription ‘IOHANES VAN EYCK’. This may have been followed by the date 1444, mentioned in 1761,⁴⁹ but the surface of the reverse in the area following the inscription has been altered during later attempts to reinforce a join in the panel and no trace of the date remains. It is difficult to say how old the inscription is, or to attach any significance to the date; in the [page 384] eighteenth century, the date of Jan van Eyck’s death was not generally known. The attribution to Jan van Eyck, accepted by Vertue and others,⁵⁰ was challenged by Waagen in 1837. His suggestion that the triptych is by Memling has been universally accepted.⁵¹ When Nichols in 1840 correctly identified the donors as Sir John and Lady Donne, he referred to an apparently reliable record that ‘John Done of Kydwelle’ had been killed at the Battle of Edgecote in 1469.⁵² Later authors therefore dated the triptych before 1469 until McFarlane and Davies showed that Sir John survived into the sixteenth century and argued that the triptych was painted in the late 1470s.⁵³

The triptych is so similar to the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John, inscribed with Memling’s name and dated 1479 (fig. 16), that it must be by the same painter and from much the same period. All the figures – except, of course, the donors – and many of the objects in the Donne Triptych recur in other pictures by Memling or from his workshop: the Virgin and Child in the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John, The Virgin and Child with an Angel, Saint George and a Donor (NG 686), the Louvre Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors,⁵⁴ and elsewhere; Saints Catherine and Barbara in the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John and the variant compositions in New York of the Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels;⁵⁵ the angel with the viol in the Vienna triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor and in two Virgins, in the Uffizi and in Washington;⁵⁶ the angel with the organ in the Antwerp panels of Musician Angels and on the Saint Ursula Shrine;⁵⁷ the Baptist in the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John, the wing panels of the Pagagnotti Triptych (NG 747), the Lübeck polyptych of 1491 and at least five other paintings attributed to Memling;⁵⁸ Saint John the Evangelist in the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John and the Vienna triptych; his chalice, on the reverse of the Saint Veronica in Washington;⁵⁹ the peacock behind him, in reverse, in the Turin Passion of Christ ( c. 1470);⁶⁰ the floor in the Altarpiece of the Two Saints John and at least six other pictures attributed to Memling;⁶¹ the textile behind the Virgin in three other Virgins, in New York, in Washington and NG 686. On the reverses of the wings, the Saint Christopher has affinities with both the panel in Cincinnati and the Moreel Triptych of 1484;⁶² while the Saint Anthony is very similar to the figure of the same saint in the Ottawa Virgin and Child with Saint Anthony and a Donor (1472).⁶³ The carpet and the landscapes are similar to those in other Memling paintings but are never repeated in exactly the same forms. Memling appears to have managed a large collection of workshop patterns with skill and efficiency. The cloths of honour in this and the three other pictures listed appear to have been reproduced from the same tracings, as the repeats are to a millimetre the same size.⁶⁴

Attempts to date the triptych have usually proceeded from an investigation of the lives of Sir John Donne and his family. Once it had been established that Sir John was not killed in 1469 and that he survived until 1503, it became important to try to establish when he and his wife were born, when they were married, when their children were born and when he was most likely to have come into contact with Memling.

Sir John Donne was ‘born in the parts of Picardy’; his two older brothers were also born in France.⁶⁵ Their father Griffith Donne fought in the French wars: he was supposedly present at Agincourt in 1415, was about to proceed to France in May 1421, was lieutenant of Cherbourg in 1424 but appears to have been based in Wales between 1424 and 1435. Between 1437 and 1445 he was again fighting in France.⁶⁶ John Donne himself served Richard, Duke of York, in England, France and Ireland.⁶⁷ As the Duke of York did not fight in France after 1446, John Donne can hardly have been born after 1430. What is known of his father’s career indicates that John was probably born in the early 1420s. Memling’s donor, whose face is lined and whose hair is thin, could be a man in his fifties.

John seems to have been unmarried in 1462 but Elizabeth his wife was mentioned on 11 March 1465.⁶⁸ No evidence bears directly on her date of birth, but her brother Lord Hastings was born in about 1431 and two of her sisters married in 1448 and 1453.⁶⁹ By 1466–7 Elizabeth Donne was one of the queen’s damicellae, with an annual fee of £10, and is unlikely to have been very young.⁷⁰ In 1467–8, the Donnes clearly had no son.⁷¹ While their eldest surviving son appears to have been born in or after 1482, it seems impossible to establish the dates of birth of their two married daughters.⁷² There were probably several or many other children who died young. In the triptych, only one child, a daughter, is depicted. It is assumed, though not proved, that, if any child is represented, all the children living when the commission was placed would have been included. It seems likely that, when the Donnes commissioned the triptych they had only one surviving child, a daughter. Her identity cannot be more exactly established and she could have been born at any time after her parents’ marriage. The absence of her brother Edward indicates that the triptych was commissioned before about 1482, apparently the earliest possible date for Edward’s birth.

John Donne, described as ‘of the town of Calais’ on 23 March 1468,⁷³ was almost certainly the ‘maistre Jehan Don’ who was at Bruges later that year when Charles the Bold of Burgundy married Margaret of York.⁷⁴ As an Esquire of the Body, he may have been with Edward IV during his exile in the Low Countries in 1470–1. His brother‐in‐law Lord Hastings certainly was.⁷⁵ A member of the Calais Council in 1471,⁷⁶ he was involved in negotiations concerning the Pale of Calais in 1472 and was at Calais on 8 June 1475.⁷⁷ In February 1477 he and John Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal, went as ambassadors to the court of France and returned loaded with gifts;⁷⁸ in May 1477 Donne and two others were sent to negotiate with the imperial ambassadors in the Burgundian Netherlands.⁷⁹ Thereafter he was frequently abroad on embassies or in Calais, where by 1483 he held the office of Deputy of the Tower of Risban, one of the outlying fortresses.⁸⁰ He was later, before 1497, lieutenant of the castle of Calais.⁸¹

When Louis of Gruuthuse arrived at Windsor Castle in September 1472, he was received by Lord Hastings, Sir John Parr and Sir John Donne,⁸² who presumably already knew [page 385] him. Donne was in Calais in 1475 and was probably present when Edward IV was visited there by Margaret of York and Charles the Bold. Donne was certainly in attendance when in 1480 the widowed Margaret of York returned to England to negotiate with her brother Edward IV; he was ‘at Syon whan king Edward brought thider the lady Margaret duches of Burgon’.⁸³ It is not, perhaps, coincidental that he was present on these occasions: his importance in Anglo‐Burgundian relations may have been considerable. It has not, however, proved possible to discover, by studying the diplomatic history of the period, when he is most likely to have commissioned the triptych.

Memling’s donors are very grandly attired, Lady Donne’s purple velvet dress trimmed with ermine is especially imposing and though Sir John was exempted from the sumptuary legislation of 1482,⁸⁴ it is not certain that his wife would ever have worn so rich a garment. Memling may have based her costume on contemporary fashions at the Burgundian court. The changes which he made to her face and to her and her daughter’s headdresses are of some interest. Lady Donne at first appeared as a young woman similar in feature to the idealised Saint Barbara behind her but has become older, thin lipped and sharp nosed. It seems that Memling, not knowing anything about Lady Donne’s appearance, painted an idealised [page 386] head and that he afterwards had to alter it when he met Elizabeth herself or when he obtained further information on her appearance. Lady Donne’s hat at first exposed her ear: the black veil or frontlet was added later and covers not only areas of Lady Donne’s forehead and her ear but also parts of the angel and Saint Barbara. Comparable changes are visible in Memling’s portrait of Maria Portinari of about 1471 (New York), whose ear was once exposed but who wears a similar frontlet.⁸⁵ The point of Sir John’s nose has been slightly enlarged. The donors’ clothes are similar to those worn by Tommaso Portinari and his family in the Portinari Triptych by Hugo van der Goes (Uffizi). There the donor’s head was evidently painted before 1477 but his body, his wife and his children were probably painted in 1477–8.⁸⁶ Sir John Donne may have attempted to follow fashion more assiduously or overtly than Tommaso Portinari. Despite his thinning hair, he is attempting to achieve a modish, shaggy hairstyle suitable only for younger men and his tight doublet, open gown and slit sleeves are further indications of his anxiety to be up to date.⁸⁷

The collars worn by Sir John and Lady Donne are the personal livery of Edward IV: a similar collar is described in a document of 1466 as ‘A collar of gold with 34 roses and suns set on a corse of black silk with a hanger of gold garnished with a sapphire’,⁸⁸ but the ‘hangers’ on the Donnes’ collars are golden lions enamelled white and clutching rubies. Representations of such collars are found on effigies and brasses. They are not likely to have been publicly worn after Edward’s death in 1483.⁸⁹

The old copy which was owned by John Thane was engraved for him in 1793 as a portrait of ‘George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury & his first Countess, Anne, Daughter of Will. Lord Hastings Chamberlain to Edw. IV’ (figs 17, 18). Painted on oak, it appears to have been a faithful and old, perhaps sixteenth‐century, copy, partially overpainted in the eighteenth century so that the heads were framed in ovals. The three coats of arms were those of Donne, Donne impaling Hastings and Hastings. John Thane, attempting to identify the couple, must have examined the histories of the Hastings family. Since those histories available to him did not mention Lady Donne,⁹⁰ he must have concluded that the wolf in the Donne coat of arms was in fact a talbot, or dog, and that the couple were therefore George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury (1468–1538), and his first wife Anne Hastings. His mistaken conclusion was without any heraldic justification, for the Talbots, though they have used the talbot as a device, have never borne one in their coat of arms.

The date 1478 which appears on the engraving (fig. 18) was inscribed on the painted copy, though it is not visible in the photograph of 1913. Misread as ‘1618’ in 1820, it ‘came away’ during restoration in or shortly after 1939.⁹¹ It was not added to support Thane’s misidentification of the couple, for George Talbot and Anne Hastings were children in 1478: they were married, but had not consummated the marriage, when Anne’s father Lord Hastings made his will in 1481.⁹² In the engraving, the forms of the numbers 1 and 7 are curious but similar to those in the dates 1487 on Memling’s diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove (fig. 19) and his portrait of Benedetto Portinari.⁹³ It seems that the date on the engraving was taken from the date on the painted copy; the date on the painted copy was probably taken from the lost original frame of the triptych. The engraved date 1478 would therefore be a copy after a copy of the date inscribed by Memling on the frame of his triptych.

The triptych, then, was probably painted in 1478, when Sir John Donne was perhaps in his mid‐fifties and when Lady Donne may have been in her thirties. They and their daughter are dressed in the fashions of the mid‐ or late 1470s, when Sir John was often at Calais and when he was much involved in Anglo‐Burgundian diplomatic relations. It was apparently at about the same time that he acquired his Netherlandish manuscripts. The closely related Triptych of the Two Saints John is dated 1479 but may have been begun before 1475.⁹⁴ It is possible that Donne saw this triptych in an unfinished state, that he wanted and commissioned something similar and that the Donne Triptych, though begun after the larger Triptych of the Two Saints John, was finished before it.

The Original Location and Function

The triptych was not necessarily commissioned for any specific church or chapel. In 1443 Sir John Donne’s parents obtained a papal indult enabling them to have a portable altar⁹⁵ and it is possible that Sir John himself had altars in his residences. He had a house in Calais but his principal seat seems to have been at Horsenden in Buckinghamshire.⁹⁶ Though his elder son Edward Donne and his wife were buried in the parish church of St Michael at Horsenden, Sir John was buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. His widow desired to be buried beside him ‘upon the North side of the said church’ and directed her executors to ‘purches as muche land as shal be sufficient for a chauntry there perpetually to be founded to maynten a preest there contynually for evermore to pray for the soules of my forsaid husbond sr John Donne and myn w^t an yerely obite …’⁹⁷ Her son Edward Donne does not seem to have made an endowment but in the 1510s, 1520s and 1530s paid at least one priest to sing for his parents’ souls ‘where theyre bones lyes at Wyndezore’.⁹⁸ The obits took place on Saint Paul’s day (25 January) or at Candlemas (2 February).⁹⁹ In 1527 Geoffrey Wren, one of the canons of Windsor, wished to be buried in St George’s Chapel ‘afore Sir John dons Chapell’ and he was indeed buried at St George’s ‘Under the 6th arch near the North Window’.¹⁰⁰ In 1532 a herald noted that on the north side of the choir were buried Edward IV, Lord Hastings and ‘S^r John Doon Knyght’.¹⁰¹ The Donne chapel was therefore near the Hastings chapel and the tomb of Edward IV but no reference to it can be found among the muniments of St George’s Chapel.¹⁰² It is just possible that, when Sir John commissioned the triptych, he had formed an intention of founding a chapel at St George’s, which was under construction from 1475,¹⁰³ and that he planned to leave the triptych to the chapel. It seems more likely, however, that he commissioned the triptych for his private use.

No reference to the triptych has been found before 1744, when it was in the possession of the Earl of Burlington at Chiswick. Then described as ‘the picture of the Lord Clifford kneeling. & his Lady’,¹⁰⁴ it was known for the next century as the painting of ‘Lord Clifford and his family’.¹⁰⁵ This may imply that Lord Burlington had inherited the triptych from his Clifford ancestors, one of whom, Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland (1559–1641), had married Grisold Hughes (1559–1613), a descendant of Sir John Donne.¹⁰⁶ Though Grisold was a daughter of the only daughter of Griffith Donne, Sir John’s younger son, she was not Sir John’s heir of line: besides her own brothers, there were numerous descendants of Sir John’s elder son Edward Donne.¹⁰⁷ Grisold, however, collected paintings, for in 1610 she sent two pictures to Henry, Prince of Wales.¹⁰⁸ It is conceivable that she acquired the triptych from one of her relatives and possible that the copy of the donors’ heads was made in her time. Though no mention of the triptych has been found in the Clifford inventories,¹⁰⁹ the triptych may have descended from the Donnes to Grisold Hughes, from her to the Cliffords and from them to the first recorded owner, the 3rd Earl of Burlington. If it passed by descent, it was perhaps retained by the Donne family for domestic worship; or alternatively it may have been placed in a church or chapel to be withdrawn and returned to the family when, during the Reformation, images became a subject of controversy.

A younger son of a Welsh soldier, Sir John Donne owed his rise to fame and fortune to Edward IV. His wife was a sister of Edward’s favourite and Chamberlain Lord Hastings; both Edward and Lord Hastings were important patrons of Netherlandish artists and in Edward’s service Donne came into contact with his ‘true friend’ Margaret of York, his ‘bonne amie’ Mary of Burgundy, his acquaintance Louis of Gruuthuse and Margaret’s official Guillaume de la Baume – four of the most significant patrons in the Low Countries.¹¹⁰ No doubt Donne was emulating them in acquiring Netherlandish works of art. He must have been one of Memling’s best‐connected clients. Commissioning his triptych, he may have expressed a wish to have something similar to the Triptych of the Two Saints John, on which Memling must have been working in the later 1470s and which he was to finish in 1479. Memling was clearly a good businessman who ran an efficient workshop. When the commission was negotiated, Memling presumably produced for Donne’s approval a fairly elaborate preliminary design, where he adapted the composition of the Triptych of the Two Saints John and where he recycled and recombined many of his workshop patterns. Though the composition seems pleasingly symmetrical, the Virgin and her throne are not centred but are displaced towards our right. So are the columns. The central column is concealed, while the cloth of honour is nearer the columns on our left than those on our right. With wonderful subtlety, Memling has avoided the rigidity of an absolutely symmetrical composition.

As there are few major alterations, the underdrawing probably follows accurately the approved preliminary design, except in the landscapes of the centre panel, which are more freely drawn and which may not have been detailed in the design. Memling’s skill and economy of effort are also seen in the execution, for example in his use of tracings in the patterned cloth behind the Virgin, in his exploitation of the ground, rather than white paint, to indicate the difference in texture between Lady Donne’s flesh and the transparent fabric covering her neck and in his application of deep red glazes in fairly thick brushstrokes rather than in superimpositions of [page 388] thin layers. The major changes in Lady Donne’s head and headdress may have been made when she herself saw the triptych and when Memling saw her. Both would then have realised that his first attempt at her portrait was unsatisfactory. Alternatively, Sir John may have intervened and advised on necessary changes. Memling may never have seen Lady Donne. In Sir John’s head, however, the tonal contrasts are much bolder. With the change in the drawing of his nose and the hatched brushstrokes in the shadows and stubble, his head gives the appearance of having been painted rapidly and [page 389]from life. Evidently Donne watched carefully over the progress of his triptych. Memling doubtless exerted himself to please an important patron. The Donne Triptych is one of his most successful variations on a favoured and successful theme.

General References

Friedländer , vol. VI, no. 10; Davies 1968, pp. 125–8; Davies 1970, pp. 38–51; McFarlane 1971, pp. 1–15, 52–7; De Vos 1994, pp. 180–3

Notes

For help in the preparation of this entry, I am most grateful to Maryan Ainsworth, Françoise d’Arras d’Haudrecy‐Mirguet, Janet Backhouse, R.J. Chamberlaine‐Brothers, Anne Curry, R.R. Davies, Peter Day, Melissa De Medeiros, Antoine de Schryver, Hugh Dunthorne, Mari Griffith, Ralph A. Griffiths, John Hand, H.A. Hanley, D.A.L. Morgan, Eileen Scarff, R.T. Spence, Roger Van Schoute, Hélène Verougstraete and Robert Yorke.