Dirk Bouts
NG 664 
The Entombment

Lorne Campbell, 1998

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

Glue tempera on linen, painted surface approximately 87.5 × 73.6 cm

Provenance

Eastlake noted in 1858 that NG 664 and three companion paintings ‘originally in the possession of the Foscari family, found their way to Vienna, where Guizzardi, envoy from Milan, purchased them early in the present century’.¹ ‘Guizzardi’ was Diego Guicciardi (1756–1837), who in 1814 was said to have been brought up in Vienna² and who himself stated in 1816 that he had been on five occasions Valtelline envoy to the court of Vienna.³ His missions were in 1786,⁴ 1787,⁵ 1791,⁶ 1793⁷ and from September 1814 to April 1815.⁸ Guicciardi settled in Milan and died there.⁹ Eastlake saw the Entombment in Milan in 1858 and 1860;¹⁰ it was purchased in 1860 from representatives of the Guicciardi family and its safe arrival from Milan was reported to the Trustees on 21 January 1861.¹¹

Exhibitions

‘Picture of the Month’, NG 3 March‐6 April 1940 (not catalogued); London 1975 (138).

Versions

1

A crude, simplified version (on panel, 64 × 44 cm) was in the von Bolin et al. sale, Munich, 14–15 December 1934 (no. 300), when it was classified as ‘Flemish or Dutch School’.¹²

2

A free, simplified version (on oak, 123 × 89.5 cm) is in the Kisters collection at Kreuzlingen, and is attributed to a follower of Bouts.¹³

Technical Notes

Paintings in glue tempera on cloth, sometimes called Tüchlein, are notoriously delicate.¹⁴ Though vast numbers were produced in the fifteenth century, few have survived and very few indeed have escaped serious damage. NG 664 is one of the very few: for a painting in this technique, it is in remarkably good condition. Before it came to the National Gallery, it had been skilfully lined and restretched and, since 1858 at the latest, it has been protected by glass.¹⁵ Its appearance has altered; all the colours would originally have been rather brighter. The generally thin paint has been abraded, to reveal the linen threads of the support, and they themselves have discoloured. A grey film of dirt, which, because of the delicacy of the paint, cannot be removed, covers the entire surface, though a strip along the top edge, which has been protected by a frame, is less affected than the rest. The Virgin’s mantle is blue but the lighter areas now appear brownish; Joseph of Arimathea’s pale blue tabard now appears green. The indigo [page 39][page 40] used in the landscape has faded; Nicodemus’ collar, which contains azurite, has darkened.

The support is of fine linen: the threads are Z‐spun and tabby woven. Because no selvedge has been found, it is impossible to distinguish warp from weft but there are 20 to 22 vertical threads per centimetre and 19 to 20 horizontal threads per centimetre. The linen has been lined onto fine linen of similar weave and mounted on a stretcher measuring 89.9 × 74.2 cm. An original brown border, painted after the picture was finished, is not completely visible as parts have been turned over the sides of the stretcher and the extreme edges are concealed by paper tape. Rust‐stained tack holes are inside the border at the lower edge but well below the border at the top edge, where a strip of sky is brighter blue because it has been protected by an old frame. The difference in colour is probably due to a combination of factors: less surface dirt; less abrasion(?); and a less marked discoloration of the linen. Coloured borders are often found on paintings on linen, which seem not to have been mounted on stretchers. It is thought that the linen cloths were stretched on temporary supports before they were painted and that, once finished, they were cut along the outer edges of the coloured borders. Some were then mounted on coarser fabrics and hung like tapestries, so that the painted borders functioned in the same way as the woven borders of tapestries. Others were attached to panels, which were the same size as, or slightly larger than, the cloths themselves. Frames were then laid on top of the painted borders and pegs and nails were driven through the frames and the linen into the panels. The pegs and nails not only fixed the frames to the panels but held the linen cloths in place. The painter of NG 664 may have intended that it should hang unframed; more probably he wanted it to have a frame larger than the one that it received when it was first laid down on panel. The visible tacking holes may have been made when it was first laid down and framed, perhaps soon after it was painted. When it was lined, probably in the mid‐nineteenth century, the restorer responsible uncovered the strip of sky which had been concealed by the previous frame.¹⁶

No conventional ground is present but the linen has been sized with glue which may contain small quantities of an umber pigment. Infra‐red photographs and reflectograms reveal little or no underdrawing but charcoal found in a sample taken from the green mantle of the woman on our left has been interpreted as a trace of a charcoal underdrawing.¹⁷ Lines made visible in ultra‐violet fluorescence photographs, less distinctly visible in normal photographs but invisible in infra‐red photographs, are particularly noticeable in the Virgin’s hands, Christ’s left hand, his right thigh and the Magdalen’s left shoulder and hand. They appear to be from an underdrawing in a different material, possibly an ink, which has left brownish stains on the linen threads but which has not yet been identified.¹⁸ Several changes were made during the course of execution. Nicodemus’ left shoulder and arm have been made smaller; the woman on our left of the Virgin has been shifted slightly to our left; the contours of Joseph of Arimathea’s back and right foot have been repositioned; and the Magdalen’s face has been extended over the Virgin’s mantle. The green of the woman’s dress on the left is painted over blue. Because the blue plays no part in the final colouring, this is presumably a complete, though original, alteration.

Chalk has been used as a white pigment in the under‐painting of some light areas and, mixed with varying quantities of lead white, in the Magdalen’s mantle, her veil, the veil of the woman on the left and Christ’s shroud. The Virgin’s veil is mainly chalk, with lead white highlights, but her chin‐cloth contains a good deal of lead white. Four different blues are present: azurite, in the sky, Nicodemus’ collar and Joseph of Arimathea’s tabard; azurite mixed with ultramarine and smalt, over an underpainting in azurite and lead white, in the Virgin’s dress and Joseph’s robe; and indigo, principally in the landscape, where it is mixed with lead‐tin yellow, and in the underlayer of the green dress of the woman on our left. Though the greens in the landscape are mainly mixtures of blue and yellow, malachite, apparently mixed with a little yellow earth, is used in the draperies of the woman on the left. The blacks are bone black, mixed with a little red lake to give a slightly brown colour. The shadow of Joseph of Arimathea’s right foot, for example, contains bone black, red lake and chalk. The medium is glue, apparently animal glue.

Description

Christ’s body, wrapped in a white shroud, is being lowered into a stone tomb which extends across almost the entire width of the painting. The Virgin, in a dark blue dress and a blue (now mainly brownish) mantle, takes his left wrist in her hands and is supported by Saint John the Evangelist. The man supporting Christ’s head is probably Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee;¹⁹ his beard and dress are similar to those of Simon the Pharisee in the Christ in the House of Simon (Berlin), attributed to Bouts.²⁰ The man supporting Christ’s feet would therefore be Joseph of Arimathea, a rich disciple who obtained the body of Christ from Pilate and laid it in a new tomb.²¹ The woman in the foreground is apparently the Magdalen; the two women behind the Virgin are the other Maries, Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome. ²²

Attribution

NG 664 was attributed in the Guicciardi collection to Lucas van Leyden, by Eastlake to Rogier van der Weyden,²³ by Crowe and Cavalcaselle in 1872 to a ‘German imitator’ of Rogier²⁴ and by Conway in 1887 to Dirk Bouts.²⁵ From 1861 it was catalogued as by van der Weyden; in 1911 this was changed to Dirk Bouts. The attribution to Bouts has been universally accepted, for example by Friedländer, Schöne and Davies, and the painting is usually dated around 1450–5.²⁶ As Davies observed, the composition resembles that of the Entombment relief in the framing arch of the Pietà of Rogier’s Miraflores Triptych (Berlin, fig. 1).²⁷ It seems very likely that Bouts took a design by Rogier as the basis for his painting.

Reconstruction

When Eastlake first saw NG 664 in Milan in 1858, he remarked that there were three companion pictures which were not for sale. Evidently he did not see them but he was told that they were an Adoration of the Kings, a Presentation and an Annunciation. In 1860, he saw the Adoration, which he described as ‘not so good (not so well preserved) – The other two are said to be the Crucifixion & the Annunciation’.²⁸ The three pictures are in fact an Annunciation, acquired in 1985 by the Getty Museum (fig. 2);²⁹ an Adoration of the Kings, unpublished and now in private hands (a drawn version is in the Uffizi, fig. 3);³⁰ and a Resurrection acquired in 1980 for the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (fig. 4).³¹ All three had been exhibited in 1872 at the Brera in Milan, lent by three descendants of Diego Guicciardi;³² the paintings had then disappeared into total obscurity. The Annunciation and the Resurrection, and probably also the Adoration, are the same size as the Entombment and are painted on similar fine linen³³ in the same glue tempera technique and with the same pigments.³⁴ Because the lining canvases, stretchers and paper tapes of the Annunciation and Resurrection are more or less identical to those of the Entombment, all three pictures must have been lined and restretched by the same restorer at the same time: before 1860, when the Entombment was bought for the National Gallery.³⁵ The tacking holes in the linen are similar but, whereas in the Annunciation the holes are all in the painted borders, in the Resurrection there are holes in the upper part of the painting itself, along a less discoloured band directly comparable to the brighter blue strip along the top of the Entombment. It seems clear that all four pictures were painted as a series, by the same artist, Dirk Bouts, and at the same time, and that they remained together until 1860. The Entombment and the Resurrection must have received their first frames from the same craftsman, who put them into frames rather smaller than those envisaged by the painter.

A beautiful but ruined Crucifixion, acquired in 1973 by the Brussels museum, is painted on similar fine linen in a comparable technique and style. Its (modern) stretcher measures 181 × 153.5 cm, and it is therefore almost exactly twice the height and twice the width of the Entombment and its three companions.³⁶ It seems possible that the Crucifixion was the centre of a polyptych, that the Annunciation and Adoration of the Kings formed the left wing and that the Entombment and the Resurrection formed the right wing (fig. 5). The polyptych would have been similar in structure to, and exactly the same size as, Bouts’s altarpiece of the Sacraments.³⁷

It has been suggested that the Brussels picture is the Crucifixion mentioned by Eastlake in 1860; but the painting mentioned to Eastlake, which he did not see, must in fact have been the Resurrection. The Brussels Crucifixion, nevertheless, may have come from Italy. It was sold at Christie’s on 8 June 1928 (no. 95), by the Benedictine nuns of St Mary’s Abbey at Colwich in Staffordshire. No record can be found of its acquisition by the convent; but in 1958 one of the nuns discovered evidence that most of the large paintings in the convent had been given by Dr O’Meara.³⁸ This was William [page [43]][page 44] Aloysius O’Meara, an Irish Franciscan who was Confessor to the nuns when they moved to Colwich in 1836, and who died there in 1848.³⁹ He had travelled in Italy. In 1815 he left Ireland for Rome and did not return until August 1818;⁴⁰ he was again in Rome in November 1832 and was in Florence on 7 February 1833.⁴¹ It is possible that he acquired the Crucifixion in Italy and that he took it to Colwich; but it has not yet emerged whether he was ever in contact with Diego Guicciardi, the owner of the four other pictures.

Patron and Date

According to Eastlake, the pictures purchased by Guicciardi in Vienna were ‘originally in the possession of the Foscari family’.⁴² The Foscari were one of the great Venetian families. Byron’s play, The Two Foscari, which is about Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice from 1423 to 1457, had brought them to the attention of the English‐speaking public and it is of course possible that the story of a Foscari provenance was invented to impress a prospective English buyer. On the other hand, there was no need to refer to Vienna and the story may well be true: Foscari pictures could well have found their way to Vienna, for the Doge’s descendant Francesco Foscari (1704–90) was Venetian ambassador to Vienna in 1765,⁴³ and his son Federico or Ferigo Foscari (1732–1811) was Venetian ambassador to St Petersburg between 1783 and 1790 but spent some of that time in Vienna.⁴⁴ He squandered a fortune⁴⁵ and could well have sold family pictures in Vienna.

It is therefore probable that the Entombment and the associated paintings came from the Foscari collection in Venice, and possible that they may have been painted for a Venetian patron. Though painted cloths were exported from the Low Countries in great quantities, polyptychs painted on linen were unusual.⁴⁶ A polyptych on linen would have been very much easier to transport over a long distance than a polyptych on panel, since painted cloths could have been packed in bales and mounted on panels after they had reached their destination. If the Entombment was stretched and framed not by its painter but by a foreign craftsman, that might explain the line of tacking holes across the sky. It was certainly mounted on a panel smaller than the one envisaged by its painter.

Bouts’s pictures are extremely difficult to date. In the Entombment and its companion paintings, the perspective is mismanaged, whereas, in Bouts’s datable pictures of the 1460s and early 1470s, he shows a remarkable command of linear perspective. It cannot be established how or when he learned about unified vanishing points but it was certainly before 1464.⁴⁷ The Entombment and the Resurrection are strongly influenced by van der Weyden’s paintings, particularly the Miraflores Triptych (Berlin), probably of the 1430s, and the Prado Descent from the Cross, finished by 1443.⁴⁸ The polyptych from which the Entombment comes may therefore be dated between c. 1440 and 1464; it was probably painted in the 1450s.

If Bouts’s polyptych was taken to Venice soon after it was finished, it could have been admired and studied there by Giovanni Bellini and Mantegna. The distant landscape on the left of Bellini’s Transfiguration, perhaps of about 1460 (Venice, Museo Correr), may have been inspired by the landscapes of the Entombment and the Resurrection, for the whole structure of the landscape, and such details as the winding path, the meandering river and the tree and the tower, breaking the horizon line, are very much in Bouts’s manner.⁴⁹ The sunrise in Bellini’s Agony in the Garden (NG 726), of about 1465, may well have been inspired by the sunrise in Bouts’s Resurrection. Mantegna, who himself often painted on linen, may perhaps have borrowed from Bouts’s Crucifixion and Resurrection in the predella panels of his San Zeno Altarpiece of 1456–9.⁵⁰ The possible impact of Bouts’s paintings on the artists of the Veneto, and the implications for the study of his chronology, should be further investigated.

General References

Friedländer , vol. III, no. 3; Schöne 1938, pp. 82–4; Davies 1953, pp. 24–7; Davies 1968, pp. 15–16; Bomford, Roy and Smith 1986.

Notes