Rogier van der Weyden and Workshop
NG 783 
The Exhumation of Saint Hubert

Lorne Campbell, 1998

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

Oil with some egg tempera on oak panel, 89.9 × 81.2 cm, painted surface 88.2 × 81.2 cm

Provenance

NG 783 and its companion, the Dream of Pope Sergius, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angleles Angeles (72.PB.20; panel, 89 × 80 cm; fig. 13), probably formed parts of a series of paintings of the life of Saint Hubert and were evidently commissioned for the chapel of St Hubert in the Collegiate Church of St Gudula in Brussels (now the Cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudula).¹ In the 1620s the two pictures, then apparently joined as a diptych, were seen in the chapel and described by François‐Nicolas Baudot, sieur du Buisson et d’Aubenay ( c. 1590–1652), commonly called Dubuisson‐Aubenay, a Frenchman who visited the Low Countries on several occasions between 1623 and 1627.² It is not known when the two pictures left the church but at the end of the eighteenth century both were in the collection of the Earls of Bessborough. Probably by 1781 and certainly by 1792, the Exhumation was at Roehampton in the possession of William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704–93);³ the Dream was put up for sale by the Bessborough family at Christie’s on 7 May 1796 (no. 34), but was bought in and remained in the Bessborough collection until 1850.⁴ The Exhumation was among pictures belonging to the ‘late’, that is the 2nd, Earl of Bessborough which were sold at Christie’s on 7 February 1801, when, as lot 73, it was bought by Foxhall for William Beckford (1760–1844). He placed it in an apartment of curiosities in the small octagon tower at Fonthill.⁵ It was catalogued for sale at Fonthill on 15 October 1822 (no. 80), but the sale did not take place. Sold at Fonthill on 10 October 1823 (no. 80), and bought by Bentley, it passed to Edward Harman ( c. 1776–1860) of Clay Hill, Enfield. When he went bankrupt, his collection was dispersed at Christie’s on 27–9 May 1847. The Exhumation lot 397 of the third day’s sale, was bought by the dealer John Smith, who in the same year sold it to Charles Eastlake.⁶ Lady Eastlake recalled that ‘Sir Cha^s gave £100 in money & 20 choice Italian sketches in oil for it’.⁷ Eastlake died in 1865; the picture was purchased from his widow in 1868.

Exhibition

It was reunited with the Dream of Pope Sergius at the exhibition ‘Rogier van der Weyden’, Musée communal, Brussels, 1979 , no. 2.

Copies and Versions

A pen drawing in Rotterdam (N.8; paper, 221 × 192 mm), with colour notes in French (and perhaps also in Dutch), is a faithful copy and is thought to have been made in the early sixteenth century.⁸ A copy of the figures of Bishop Walcaud and his attendant, drawn in graphite and ink, is in the Louvre (RF 11.609; paper, 297 × 228 mm) and is perhaps nineteenth century.⁹ Versions and possible versions are discussed below, pp. 420–1.

Technical Notes

NG 783 is known to have undergone two major restorations: the first probably between 1847 and 1857; the second at the National Gallery in 1953–4. Though there are many damages, including some large paint losses, by great good fortune the losses do not seriously affect the principal parts of the picture (fig. 1). The worst damages are along the central and right joins in the panel; in the architecture, near the centre of the top edge, above the spectators on the extreme left and the woman on the right and in and around the lower right section of the tabernacle; in the figure of the crucified Christ on the altarpiece; in the reliquary, to the left of the enthroned figure of Saint Hubert; in the antependium; and in the floor between Walcaud and Saint Hubert. The head of the man on the right of the altar has suffered considerably and there are losses in the right armpit of Walcaud’s attendant, the left wrist of the dead Saint Hubert and the head of the monk beside Adelbald. Otherwise the principal figures are well preserved.

The panel, which measures 89.9 × 81.2 cm, is made up of four vertical elements, vertical in grain, and approximately 21.6, 18.1, 19.0 and 22.5 cm wide at the top edge. Peter Klein has established that the wood is oak from the Baltic region; the measured rings of the four boards were formed between 1314 and 1406, 1316 and 1415, 1317 and 1408 and 1344 and 1413. The latest ring was therefore formed in 1415.¹⁰ There is a vertical split along the whole height of the third board. The support has been planed to a thickness of about 6 mm and cradled. The central and perhaps the other two joins have been broken and remade. The second and third boards were rejoined out of alignment, the third board having been set about 1 mm higher than the second board. On the lowest horizontal member of the cradle is the stamp ‘F. Leedham’. Francis Leedham, described as a ‘picture cleaner’ and later as a ‘picture liner’, ran a business in Soho in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s; his business was taken over in 1857–8 by George Morrill.¹¹ Eastlake was a client of both Leedham and Morrill¹² and it was probably when NG 783 was in Eastlake’s possession, that is, after 1847, that Leedham restored and cradled the panel. There are, inevitably, damages along all the joins but, by accident or perhaps by design, only one of the principal heads crosses a join: that of the monk next to Adelbald. There are losses in his forehead and right eye. When the picture was cleaned in 1953–4, the left hand and lower arm of the youth on the right, previously overpainted, were once more revealed. Parts of the unpainted edges survive at the top, the lower right corner and the bottom. The left edge is much retouched but it is unlikely that any of the original painted surface has been cut away.

There is a chalk ground. Ruled incised lines delimit many of the architectural elements; some of the lines of the vaulting are incised with compasses or dividers; lines incised freehand indicate the tracery of the windows. Infra‐red reflectograms reveal much underdrawing, done in a liquid medium (figs 2, 6, 8). Over the underdrawing is a thin off‐white priming, consisting of lead white tinted with a small amount of black. Natural ultramarine is present, over azurite, in the cope of Adelbald, the drapery beneath Saint Hubert and the robe of Louis the Pious. The red lake pigment in the robe of the old man on the extreme left is made from a vegetable dyestuff, probably madder. The medium is linseed oil. In a sample from a brown area of masonry, the oil seems to show signs of heat‐bodying. Results from another sample, from a white window‐pane, suggest that there is an egg tempera underlayer beneath the oil layer.

The reflectograms (figs 2, 6, 8) and X‐radiographs (figs 1, 5, 9) show many alterations. It seems that the complicated architectural setting and the principal figures were conceived first. The main protagonists – Saint Hubert and his two acolytes, Walcaud and his attendant, Louis the Pious and his bearded attendant, Adelbald and the monk beside him and the young man in the lower right corner – are fairly carefully underdrawn. There are varying amounts of hatching in their draperies and relatively few changes, though the faces of Walcaud and, particularly, Adelbald are smaller in the underdrawing and there are alterations in some of the hands. The top of Walcaud’s mitre is extended across the figures behind. The main shapes of the setting are established in the underdrawing, though the two brass columns next to the altarpiece, with the surmounting angels, are drawn nearer the centre and on a larger scale (fig. 6). The altar and altarpiece were less wide. The statues of the apostles and the canopies above them were an afterthought, painted on top of the arches and the ribs of the vaulting. In the underdrawing, the top of the screen is decorated with finials.

The secondary figures, in contrast, are less carefully underdrawn and very much changed. The praying man on the extreme left seems to be underdrawn as a veiled woman whose praying hands are larger and in a slightly different position (fig. 2). The woman beside him is drawn and painted [page [412]] [page 413] [page 414]higher on the panel and has then been moved down to her present place. In the row behind, the man on the left is drawn smaller; the man second from the left is painted on top of a drawn and painted head of another man, who wears a cap and whose left eye coincides with the visible man’s mouth; and the man third from the left is painted on top of an extraordinary drawing of a grimacing head and a painting of yet another head. The man fourth from the left is painted partly over the screen and partly over what seems to be a reserve for a different head, placed closer to the left edge. Beneath the paint of the column above these two heads, the top of a painted crozier is visible in the X‐radiograph (fig. 5). An underdrawn hand is laid on the shoulder of the emperor’s attendant, while the two boys behind the emperor are added at a late stage and are without reserves or perceptible underdrawing. On the right (figs 8, 9), the man next to the altar, though painted on top of the screen, the brass column and the faces of the crowd behind him, seems to replace a smaller underdrawn figure whose left hand is drawn and laid in above the visible hand. The woman is painted over an underdrawing and reserve for a head of a young man with downcast eyes and curly hair. He is on a larger scale than the woman and his eyes are lower than hers. The cleric on her right is underdrawn with a smaller head; he held a crozier in his left hand and the hand was at least laid in in paint. The canon’s almuce, which he carries over his left arm, seems to have been added when the hand was suppressed. The man on the extreme right is painted over an underdrawn head of a person in profile(?) with downcast eye – at the level of the visible man’s mouth – and is also over a drawn(?) and painted head of a man in three‐quarters view, whose eyes are on about the same level as those of the visible man. His robe is painted over what appears to be a raised left hand. The underdrawing for the figures behind the screen is very rapid indeed. There are numerous changes and the reserves often fail to match the painted heads.

There are considerable variations in the styles of underdrawing and in the quality of both underdrawing and painting, where passages of great technical skill alternate with areas of lesser competence. The disparities in style and the many alterations are discussed further below, pp. 422–5.

Description

Saint Hubert, Bishop of Maastricht and Liège, died in 727 and was buried in the crypt of the church of St Peter at Liège. He was exhumed twice: on the first occasion, in 743, he was reinterred in front of the high altar of the same church; on the second occasion, in 825, his body was taken from Liège to the Benedictine abbey of Andage, known thereafter as Saint‐Hubert‐en‐Ardenne. The second exhumation is represented here. It took place under the supervision of Walcaud, Bishop of Liège between c. 811 and 831 and the founder of the abbey at Andage. He had obtained permission from his metropolitan Adelbald or Hadebald, Archbishop of Cologne between 819 and 841, and from Louis the Pious (778–840), Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks.¹³

Though Saint Hubert has been dead for ninety‐eight years, his body is uncorrupted and that is proof of his sainthood. The bishop on the left, swinging a censer from which smoke escapes, is presumably Walcaud. On the orphreys of his cope are embroidered figures of saints: near the morse is Saint John the Evangelist, blessing a chalice; the next saint has no identifying attribute; below him the saint holding a book and a large curved knife is probably Bartholomew; below him is a saint holding a book; below him is another saint holding a large knife; below him is an unidentified saint. On Walcaud’s morse is a standing figure, possibly Christ. Behind Walcaud, the bearded man holding a hat incorporating a closed imperial crown surrounded with fleurs‐de‐lis is the Emperor and King Louis the Pious. His robe is decorated with the dimidiated arms of the Empire and France (ancient): the same arms were assigned to his father Charlemagne, who was often represented wearing a similar hat and crown.¹⁴ On the opposite side is Archbishop Adelbald, on whose morse is represented God the Father, or Christ, enthroned. Beside him, the monk in black is a Benedictine, probably Altveus, Abbot of Andage.¹⁵ Behind Adelbald is a canon carrying his fur almuce over his left arm. Apart from Louis the Pious and the courtier behind him, whose beards indicate that they are figures from the remote past, the secular persons are in contemporary dress. Some of them may be donors or members of the donors’ families.¹⁶ The women wear linen caps to which neck‐veils are pinned and over which upper veils are folded into ridges and ‘horns’. These headdresses may reflect a specifically Brabantine fashion. The young man on the right, expensively dressed in cloth of gold, has made his neck look longer by shaving the back of his head and by dropping his neckline into a V. The very neat and regular folds of his robe must be stitched at waist level; his low‐slung belt would not keep them in place. His skirt is slit to give more material for the folds. His hat is draped over his right shoulder and both its patte and its cornette are elaborately dagged.¹⁷

The patterned velvet antependium is closely similar to the textile beneath the Virgin in the Annunciation of Rogier’s Columba Triptych (Munich) and the underskirt of the Mary supporting the Virgin in his Prado Descent from the Cross.¹⁸ On the altar is a large golden reliquary set with jewels and [page [415]][page 416] decorated with reliefs. The central figure is Saint Hubert, crowned and enthroned, his hunting horn in his right hand and his crozier in his left. At his feet are the stag of his vision, a cross between its antlers, and a large dog. He is surrounded by twelve haloed saints, none of whom has an identifying attribute. The shrine bears some resemblance to reliquaries made in and near the Low Countries in the thirteenth century.¹⁹ The altarpiece behind appears to be embroidered. In the central compartment are the Crucified Christ, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, the sun and the moon; on the left are Saint Catherine, holding a sword and wearing a crown, and Saint Peter, holding a key; on the right are Saint Matthias(?), holding a halberd, and Saint Gudula, holding a martyr’s palm and a lantern to which a devil clings.²⁰ On top of the altarpiece is a tabernacle containing a gilded statue of Saint Peter, holding a key and a book. The eight painted wing panels which, if closed, would form a sort of cupboard around the image, are decorated with thirty‐two small scenes, probably from the life of Saint Peter. The subjects cannot be distinguished except in the compartment second from our left of Saint Peter’s head (fig. 10). There, three people in a rowing boat presumably refer to an episode from his career as a fisherman. In the lowest register on our left, Saint Peter is perhaps curing a sick woman. Similar tabernacles exist: another is represented above the altarpiece on the high altar in Rogier’s Seven Sacraments (Antwerp).²¹ Surrounding the altar are four brass columns on each of which is a brass angel holding an empty candlestick.²² The columns are supported and connected with one another, except at the back, by metal rods which are attached to the columns of the church.²³

On the capitals above are ten stone statues of apostles. The third from the left is Saint John the Evangelist, with a chalice; the next on the right is Saint Andrew, with a saltire cross; in the centre are Saint Peter, with a key, and Saint Paul, with a sword; the next, holding a large knife, is probably Saint Bartholomew. They are strikingly similar to the wooden statues of apostles in the Retablo de Belén in the church of Santa María de la Asunción at Laredo on the northern coast of Spain. They are thought to have been carved in Brussels in about 1440 and it has been proposed that they and the apostles in the Exhumation must follow common models.²⁴ A wooden screen separates the choir from the ambulatory and the chapels of the apse. In the windows are representations in stained glass of the Virgin and Child, in the chapel on the left, Saint Paul(?) and Saint Peter in the central chapel, and, in the chapel on the right, a crowned female saint holding a baton(?). Below her, a blank shield is supported by a bearded man, conceivably a wild man. The church is meant for St Peter’s at Liège but is not an accurate representation of that building, which was founded in 714 by Saint Hubert, destroyed by fire in 1185, rebuilt in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and demolished in 1811.²⁵ The painted structure is imaginary but its parts relate to fifteenth‐century Brabantine architecture.²⁶

The picture was called the exhumation of Saint Lambert by Dubuisson‐Aubenay, who referred to an inscription which must have been misleading, and the entombing of a cardinal or a bishop in sources of the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.²⁷ Mrs Jameson correctly identified the subject.²⁸ The representation of Saint Hubert as the central figure on the reliquary placed on the altar strongly suggests that the exhumed saint is Hubert. The prominence of Saint Peter, in the altarpiece, the tabernacle above the altarpiece, the stained glass and the series of statues of the apostles indicates that the church is dedicated to Saint Peter. Between 743 and 825 Saint Hubert’s body was buried in front of the high altar of St Peter’s at Liège. The presence of two bishops, an emperor and a Benedictine monk is in keeping with what is known about the second exhumation in 825. The companion panel, the Dream of Pope Sergius (fig. 13), represents an episode in the legend of Saint Hubert. An angel appears to the sleeping Pope Sergius, tells him that [page 418]Saint Lambert, Bishop of Maastricht, has been murdered, brings him his crozier and instructs him to give charge of the diocese to a pilgrim named Hubert, who is visiting Rome. Awakening, Sergius sees the crozier and has scarcely arrived at the doors of St Peter’s when the pilgrim arrives and is recognised.²⁹

It has not been possible to discover which of the available lives of Saint Hubert was followed. Neither Louis the Pious nor, apparently, Adelbald was actually present at the exhumation; but, in a chronicle written at Saint‐Hubert in about 1100, it was claimed that Louis, who was a benefactor of the monastery, came to Liège for the occasion.³⁰ In 1459, when Hubert le Prevost decided to gather materials for his life of Saint Hubert, he consulted texts at Saint‐Hubert, Tienen, Brussels and Bruges.³¹ The Brussels manuscripts would be of particular relevance here, for the Exhumation and Dream come from the chapel of Saint Hubert in the church of St Gudula in Brussels.

Original Location and Function

The presence of Saint Gudula in the altarpiece depicted in the Exhumation suggests a connection but the vital evidence is provided by Dubuisson‐Aubenay’s account of the chapel, written in the 1620s. It is so important that it should be quoted in full: Item dans l’Eglise S^te Goudele Un petit tableau a deux tables – que L’on croit estre de St Hubert Evesque de liege, Longeur de 4 pieds – hauteur de 3. Est en la chapelle de N[ot]re dame de fleurs au bas de L’eglise a main gauche En Entrant. A Ste Goudele … tout au – bas de la nef a main gauche le tableau dont est parlé cy dessus, est estimé de la main de ce roger dont est parlé p.56 en L’histoire d’Erkenbaldus. Est divisé en – deux, au costé droit au regard de lautre La section contient La leuation – et transla[ti]on du corps de St Lambert co[mm]e porte La subscription: – Il est a demi leué du sarcueil en habit Ep[iscop]al, p[rê]tres et clergé alentour et Carloman tenant sa coronne de la main gauche, la teste nuë. Plus outre est une p[er]spectiue avec ballustres a trauers desquelles regarde un peuple infini. – a L’autre section du tableau qui est a la main droite a nostre regard est le pape sergius co[mm]e porte la souscription a qui extasié L’ange apporte une crosse et mitre luy disant qu’il eust a en inuestir Hubert qui estoit un homme qu’il trouveroit ad limina d[omini]. petri. La se voyent quelques bastiments et apparences de Rome, un Cardinal et force Gents qui vont et viennent.³² The chapel indicated, ‘la chapelle de N[ot]re dame de fleurs au bas de L’eglise a main gauche En Entrant’, is in fact the chapel of Saint Hubert, on the north side of the nave (fig. 14). It is the second chapel from the west end and the seventh from the transept and housed an image of the Virgin among Roses, which explains why it was known both as the chapel of Our Lady of the Flowers and as the chapel of Saint Hubert.³³ Its walls were decorated with alternating red and sea‐green ‘compartments’.³⁴ Much the same shape and size as the other chapels in the nave, it is rather less than 6 m long and about 3 m deep.³⁵ By about 1700 the altar, like the altars in the other chapels, was on the east wall,³⁶ which contains a recessed space about 1.7 m wide where the altar table presumably stood. If the two panels seen by Dubuisson‐Aubenay were on the altar, they would have occupied its entire width.

It is not, however, conceivable that the Exhumation and the Dream constituted the whole of an altarpiece made for the chapel. Dubuisson‐Aubenay saw a diptych, with the Exhumation placed on the left of the Dream: this makes no narrative sense, as the exhumation took place in 825, almost a century after Saint Hubert’s death, while the Dream depicts events of 705 or 706, during the early part of his career. An altarpiece of the life of Saint Hubert would certainly have shown other, more familiar and more significant episodes from his life and they would have been arranged in a logical and probably chronological order. The two paintings seen by Dubuisson‐Aubenay were perhaps all that remained of a cycle illustrating the life of Saint Hubert. The others would have been destroyed or dispersed in 1579, when the church was pillaged by soldiers and townspeople, or subsequently, during the Calvinist régime of 1579–85.³⁷

The two surviving panels are almost the same height as the wing panels of Dirk Bouts’s Sacraments altarpiece, painted in 1464–8 for the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Louvain.³⁸ The Exhumation and the Dream could have come from a similar structure of five panels: but such a structure, which would have measured over 3.5 m across, could not have fitted into the east end of the chapel. It could, however, have been displayed on the north wall, not necessarily as an altarpiece. Alternatively, the two panels are not from an altarpiece or polyptych but are from a series of pictures of the life of Saint Hubert which decorated the chapel; they might have formed a frieze. They are rather smaller than the panels of the series of the Legend of Saint Rumold, painted in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries for the church, now the cathedral, of St Rumold at Mechlin.³⁹

The other scenes represented might have included the Vision of Saint Hubert, the Consecration by Pope Sergius of Saint Hubert as Bishop of Maastricht and perhaps the Translation of the Relics of Saint Hubert from Liège to Saint‐Hubert. Some of the lost pictures might have served as models for miniatures of the same or similar subjects in the Life of Saint Hubert copied for Philip the Good by David Aubert at Bruges in 1463 (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 76 F 10; figs 15, 16). The thirteen miniatures, by Loyset Liédet and his workshop, were doubtless painted in or shortly after 1463. All are to some extent Rogierian in style and at least three derive from the Exhumation and the Dream.⁴⁰

The Chapel of Saint Hubert

The history of the chapel and chaplaincy of Saint Hubert is rather obscure. According to the ‘Liber Capellaniarum’ of St Gudula, compiled between 1466 and 1474 by canon Pieter van der Heyden, the chapel was founded by Jan Coels and Jan Vrientschap; the canon left a blank for the date of foundation. By apostolic authority, the founders reserved to themselves and their heirs, in perpetuity, the patronage of the chaplaincy. The chaplain was to celebrate three masses every week.⁴¹ The deed of foundation has not been discovered and seems not to have been copied into any of the other cartularies of St Gudula.⁴² According to the records of a lawsuit of 1730, ‘in 1432 Jan Vrientschap obtained from Rome permission to found the chapel of Saint Hubert in the collegiate church of St Gudula and founded the chapel in 1437’.⁴³ On 23 October 1437, Jan Coels assigned an annual rent ‘ad opus capellanie Beati Huberti in ecclesia Beate Gudule Bruxellensis per dictum Johannem Coels fundande …’.⁴⁴ The chapel was then fundanda, in the course of foundation, but by 30 May 1439 it was fundata, or founded, and the first chaplain was admitted.⁴⁵ He was Gillis Coels and was presented by Jan Coels, to whom he must have been related. Gillis, who also held a minor canonry, died shortly afterwards⁴⁶ and on 11 January 1440 Jan Zoetack, presented by Jan Coels, was admitted ‘ad capellaniam sancti huberti in novo opere ecclesie’. It was noted that the chaplaincy had been founded by Jan Coels and the deceased Jan Vrientschap, who had obtained privileges from Pope Eugenius IV (1431–47).⁴⁷ Jan Zoetack died in April 1461 and was buried in front of the altar of the chapel.⁴⁸ His successor, admitted on 9 May 1461, was presented by Jan Vrientschap, son of the co‐founder of the chapel.⁴⁹ Subsequent chaplains were presented by the Vrientschaps and their heirs.⁵⁰

Jan Vrientschap, the co‐founder of the chapel, came of a prosperous and well‐connected Brussels family. His parents were Willem Vrientschap and Goedele (Gudula) van Steen‐huffel;⁵¹ his wife was Catharina, daughter of the merchant Jacob Obrechts alias de Vos,⁵² and her brother, another Jacob Obrechts, married in 1419 an illegitimate daughter of Jan de Picquigny, Canon of St Gudula and almoner and principal chaplain to John IV, Duke of Brabant.⁵³ Jan Vrientschap owned a considerable amount of property in Brussels, some of which he sold to Philip the Good in 1431 and 1433.⁵⁴ Philip was acquiring land in order to extend the park of the ducal palace which he had recently inherited.⁵⁵ Vrientschap was a mercer and Dean of the Mercers’ Guild in 1423.⁵⁶ He was a town‐councillor of Brussels in 1428–9 and 1433–4 and died before 28 December 1437.⁵⁷

Jan Vrientschap’s sister Catharina married before 16 February 1409 Jan Coels, campsor (money‐changer),⁵⁸ who was clearly the other co‐founder of the chapel. Jan Coels, son of Hendrik, was called campsor in order to distinguish him from another Jan Coels whose father’s name was also Hendrik [page 420] and who was often styled ‘of Dworp’, a village south of Brussels.⁵⁹ Jan Coels campsor was clearly the Jan Coels who was receiver of the ducal domains in Brussels between 1429 and 1441⁶⁰ and who in the 1430s played a leading part in buying up the properties needed to extend the ducal park.⁶¹ In 1420 he purchased the property at Eizeringen⁶² from which in 1437 he endowed the chapel of Saint Hubert and he may have died in 1441.⁶³ He seems to have had no legitimate children, though his bastard son Hendrik in 1422 received settlements from him and from his mother.⁶⁴

Jan Vrientschap, however, had several children. The eldest surviving son Jan, who inherited the patronage of the chapel and who died between 1478 and 1481,⁶⁵ married Christine Pipenpoy, who came of one of the leading Brussels families and whose father Lucas had often been an alderman.⁶⁶ The other sons were Paul (died between 1438 and 1441),⁶⁷ Willem (alive in 1472),⁶⁸ Pieter (died between 1441 and 1444),⁶⁹ and Roeland (still under tutelage in 1447).⁷⁰ Daughters named Catharina and Goedele were mentioned in 1437.⁷¹

It is possible that Vrientschap, Coels and their wives are represented as donors in the Exhumation. Jan Vrientschap and Catharina Obrechts could be the older couple on the left, with their three eldest sons behind them and their two youngest sons in front of them and behind Louis the Pious. Jan Coels and Catharina Vrientschap could be the couple on the right of the altar; Jan’s bastard son Hendrik Coels could conceivably be the man on the extreme right. The priest standing between him and the couple is underdrawn as an acolyte holding a crozier but has been transformed into a canon carrying an almuce over his left arm. He may be Gillis Coels, the first chaplain of the foundation, who was one of the Minor Canons of St Gudula.

Since both the Dream and the Exhumation were frequently imitated, they were clearly accessible and very well known. There are versions by Netherlandish and by German artists. The follower of van der Weyden who painted the Miracle of the Rod and the Marriage of the Virgin (Antwerp Cathedral)⁷² took as his basis Campin’s composition of the same subjects (Madrid, Prado), set the miracle in the nave of the church of St Gudula, adapted the outside wall, the gable over the side door and perhaps also parts of the landscape from the Dream and included, with other Rogierian figures, a reversed version of the fashionably dressed youth in the foreground of the Exhumation. The same youth, this time not reversed, reappears in the lower right corner of the ‘Celestial Court’, one of the miniatures of the Turin‐Milan Hours assigned to ‘Hand K’ and usually dated around 1445 (fig. 17).⁷³ The illuminators of the ‘Girart de Roussillon’ ( ÖNB , Cod. 2549), working in about 1450, borrowed the gesture of the cleric who holds Walcaud’s cope over his right shoulder for the group of the bishop and his attendant in the Burial of Girart at Pothières (fol. 181); and in the Exhumation of Girart (fol. 179) the spectators peering through the screen may have been inspired by the figures in the background of the Exhumation of Saint Hubert.⁷⁴ Loyset Liédet and his assistants, illuminating the ‘Vie de Saint‐Hubert’ for Philip the Good in or shortly after 1463 (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 76 F 10), show spectators looking through a screen in the Consecration of Saint Hubert (fol. 14) and their Exhumation of Saint Lambert (fol. 22; fig. 15) is in some respects a simplified version of the [page 421] Exhumation of Saint Hubert. In the Angel announcing to Saint Hubert that he is about to die (fol. 33v; fig. 16), the sleeping Saint Hubert is copied from the figure of Sergius in the Dream.⁷⁵ The setting of Ouwater’s Raising of Lazarus (Berlin) is so similar to the Exhumation, and there are so many links between the two compositions, that Ouwater must have had some knowledge of the Exhumation.⁷⁶ In the Adoration of the Sacrament (Antwerp), by a Brussels painter of the later fifteenth century, the composition is again similar and the censing angel on the left is probably an adaptation of the figure of Walcaud.⁷⁷ Walcaud and his attendant were freely copied by the Master of the Polling Altarpiece in his Tassilo raises the Crosses of Polling (Munich), painted in Bavaria in about 1450 (fig. 18).⁷⁸ The Dream was known to the Master of the Legend of Saint Ulrich, working at Augsburg in the mid‐fifteenth century (fig. 20),⁷⁹ and was copied by Brussels artists of the second half of the century. The view of Old St Peter’s is repeated in a wing panel of Saint Helena discovering the True Cross (Madrid, private collection; fig. 19)⁸⁰ and, less exactly, in the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (Escorial),⁸¹ both from the workshop of the Master of the Prado Redemption; while a reversed copy of the angel ministers to Elijah in the right wing of the triptych of the Last Supper (Bruges, Seminary) by the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine.⁸² There are connections, too, between the Dream and the Visitation from the Job altarpiece by the same Master.⁸³

Attribution and Date

In the 1620s, Dubuisson‐Aubenay recorded that the Exhumation and the Dream were considered to be by Rogier (‘estimé de la main de ce roger …’).⁸⁴ He was probably repeating what he had been told in the church and echoing a reliable or even authoritative tradition. By the late eighteenth century, both pictures were attributed to Jan van Eyck.⁸⁵ The Exhumation was ascribed to Justus of Ghent by Passavant, followed by Waagen, who associated it with the Dream.⁸⁶ He afterwards assigned the Exhumation to Dirk Bouts⁸⁷ and it entered the National Gallery in 1868 as a Bouts. Between 1889 and 1929, it was catalogued as ‘Flemish School’; between 1945 and 1968, as by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden.

Some art historians, for example Friedländer and Hulin,⁸⁸ have attributed the Exhumation and the Dream to Rogier himself, while others, for example Winkler and Schöne,⁸⁹ have ascribed them to a follower, sometimes called the ‘Master of the Exhumation of Saint Hubert’. Davies thought that the Exhumation was by ‘an independent follower; or … a studio production, possibly with intervention by Rogier himself in the principal group in the centre’.⁹⁰ Terner argued that the pictures seen by Dubuisson‐Aubenay were lost and that the Exhumation and Dream were copies made after 1478.⁹¹ Van Miegroet, taking up some of Terner’s theories, proposed that the Dream was painted in the 1490s.⁹²

The buildings in the background of the Dream have given rise to much confusion. One is Old St Peter’s, represented with reasonable accuracy; another is the Castel Sant’Angelo, so schematically rendered that it is recognisable only from the statue on its roof. The river must be intended to be the Tiber. The whole background has been rather incautiously described as a ‘view of Rome’, though it merely incorporates a fairly reliable representation of Old St Peter’s and some very basic information on Roman topography. To call it a view of Rome from the south is misguided; the claim by Terner and Van Miegroet that views of Rome from the south were not available until 1478 seems in itself implausible and they were unwise to argue that the Dream, because it includes such a view, must have been painted after 1478. The arches between Old St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo presumably evoke the ruins of ancient Rome. Bushes and plants grow among them. Van Miegroet, however, made the unacceptable suggestion that they represented the buildings that were demolished in the 1490s to make way for the Via Alessandrina. The depiction of Old St Peter’s is over an underdrawing of a completely different church, in the Romanesque style of the Low Countries.⁹³ When the Dream was being painted, a view of Old St Peter’s must have become available. In about 1440 van der Weyden included Trajan’s Column in the second of his lost Scenes of Justice.⁹⁴ Representations of Roman monuments could be obtained in Brussels. Some were obviously more reliable than others.

The infra‐red reflectograms of both the Dream and the Exhumation make clear that they are originals and not copies.⁹⁵ The results of the dendrochronological examination of the Exhumation show that the latest ring in the wood of the panel was formed in 1415 and suggest that the panel may have been made in about 1440.⁹⁶ The earliest datable versions of both pictures are from about 1450.⁹⁷ In the Exhumation, the costumes of the lay persons are in the fashions of about 1440.⁹⁸ The two panels come from a chapel which was founded in the 1430s and which was in use by May 1439.⁹⁹ It seems clear that they were painted in the late 1430s for the founders of the chapel, Jan Vrientschap and Jan Coels. The latter would have been in contact with Rogier in 1436, when he was receiver of the ducal domains in Brussels and when Rogier was buying annuities payable from the revenues administered by Coels.¹⁰⁰ Coels, moreover, was closely associated, throughout the 1430s, with Barthélemy Alatruye, whose portrait had been painted by Campin. From 1431, Alatruye, an intimate of Philip the Good, was in charge of works at the palace and park of Brussels, which Philip was extending.¹⁰¹ Coels paid the expenses, rendered the accounts and dealt with the expropriated landowners – one of whom was his brother‐in‐law Jan Vrientschap. He was a town councillor of Brussels in 1433–4, when the appointment of Rogier as town painter and the idea of commissioning the Scenes of Justice must have been at least under consideration. It would surely have been surprising if Coels and Vrientschap, who had every opportunity to know Rogier, had chosen a follower to execute an important commission for the chapel which they were founding in the principal church in Brussels. It is indeed doubtful whether, in the late 1430s, an independent follower of Rogier could have been established in Brussels. The historical evidence, then, is very strongly in favour of attributing the Exhumation and the Dream to Rogier.

Though it is less easy to interpret the stylistic evidence, the Dream and the Exhumation are manifestly Rogierian in style. The Dream resembles various Annunciations by Rogier or from his workshop; the petitioners in the middle ground are similar to the men in the Scupstoel drawing, certainly from his workshop (New York).¹⁰² The Exhumation looks rather like the free copy in tapestry of the Pope Gregory the Great examining Trajan’s Skull, one of the lost Scenes of Justice.¹⁰³ Individual figures and details may be paralleled in pictures attributed with confidence to Rogier. Louis the Pious, for example, is reminiscent of Nicodemus in the Prado Descent from the Cross. The young man on the right, possibly repeated in the Pope Gregory the Great examining Trajan’s Skull, recurs in the left wing of the ‘Bladelin’ Triptych (Berlin), in the left wing of the Seven Sacraments (reversed, in the scene of Baptism) and, as the youngest king, in the centre panel of the Columba Triptych (Munich).¹⁰⁴ The pattern on the altar‐cloth is found again in the Prado Descent and the Columba Triptych.¹⁰⁵ The parallels between the statues of the apostles in the Exhumation and the carved apostles of the Laredo altarpiece may be suggestive, for the Laredo figures may be by Jean Delemer, a sculptor who worked in association with both Campin and van der Weyden.¹⁰⁶

There are, however, anomalies which suggest that Rogier was here working at speed and in collaboration with several assistants. The commission may have been one that he could [page [423]][page 424] not refuse. Never particularly interested in straightforward narrative painting, he may not have found the subjects very sympathetic. The Dream would have been especially problematic because of the need to include references to Rome and to distribute several episodes across the composition. Probably overburdened with work on the huge Scenes of Justice as well as other projects, he would have been in want of collaborators but, as he had only recently settled in Brussels, he would not have had time to train many pupils. Before acquiring his large residence near the Cantersteen in 1443–4, he may not have been able to organise his workshop or deploy his collaborators as efficiently as he was to do in the latter part of his career.¹⁰⁷

The anomalies are of many different kinds. It is easy to believe that the complex architectural setting of the Exhumation was conceived by Rogier, who was afterwards to create the even more ambitious setting of the Seven Sacraments. But the architecture of the Dream, where the perspective is inconsistent and the detailing very much less convincing, seems to have been created by others. In the Exhumation, Louis the Pious is much too large and is out of scale with all the surrounding figures, and they do not diminish sufficiently as they recede in space. Though Rogier used hierarchies of scale in altarpieces such as the Seven Sacraments and the Beaune Last Judgement, he did so with purpose and the results are contrived so that they are not jarring. In the Exhumation, the discrepancies in scale cannot be deliberate. The man and woman on our right of the altar are lit from the right. All the other figures are lit from the left and, as there is no reason why one couple should be differently lit, this must have happened by mistake. In both paintings there are, alongside beautifully drawn figures and objects, passages of dreadfully bad drawing, for example the peacocks in the Dream and the right hand of Louis’s attendant in the Exhumation. Certain details are painted with wonderful skill, for instance the jewels in Saint Hubert’s mitre; whereas others are done with a less inspired dexterity, for example the pearls in the mitre of Adelbald, which reflect adjacent colours but which are rather mechanically rendered.

It would appear that Rogier made a preliminary design for the Exhumation and four detailed and separate studies for the principal parts: the group of Saint Hubert and the two acolytes supporting his body; the group of Walcaud and his attendant; the figure of Louis the Pious; and the young man on the right. These groups and figures are elegantly drawn and can be rationalised into patterns of simple, interconnecting and expressive geometric shapes: which is characteristic of Rogier.¹⁰⁸ He would then have given his designs to his assistants and told them to proceed with the underdrawing. It was presumably they who introduced the mistakes in scale by assembling the detailed studies without sufficient care and who carelessly moved the emperor’s ear into an impossibly high position so that it would not be overlapped by the brass column. They worked up some areas more elaborately than others: certain draperies, for example the robes of Walcaud and his attendant, are fairly extensively hatched. The degree of finish may reflect in some respects the amount of detail in the preliminary studies. Different techniques of notation are used for details such as eyebrows and eyelids. The underdrawn eyes and eyebrows of Louis’s attendant and Walcaud’s attendant, for instance, follow entirely different systems of notation and must be by two different draughtsmen (fig. 2). Once his assistants had completed the underdrawing, Rogier may have intervened to correct it. It was perhaps he who enlarged the heads of Walcaud and Adelbald and who very rapidly sketched in the heads behind the screen.¹⁰⁹

By studying under the microscope the ways in which the heads and hands are painted, it is possible to discover many different techniques for rendering details such as the lips, the stubble of shaved chins and heads and the catchlights, lashes and tear‐ducts of the eyes. The flesh is painted in mixtures of white, black, vermilion, red lake and lead‐tin yellow; in some heads, for example that of Saint Hubert, azurite and earth colours are also present. The lines used to define facial contours or finger‐nails vary considerably in colour. The paint is applied with differing levels of competence. In certain passages, it is worked wet‐in‐wet and dragged with great dexterity to suggest texture or detail; in other areas the brushwork is very much less skilful. When more pictures in the van der Weyden group have been examined, it may prove possible to distinguish contributions by particular assistants. Until then, any conclusions must be tentative.

Saint Hubert’s face is comparable to the head of Christ in the Pietà of the Miraflores Triptych, while the jewels in his mitre are painted wet‐in‐wet with the same prodigious skill that is shown in the Magdalen Reading (NG 654). This head is probably by Rogier himself. The head of the acolyte in profile resembles the profile heads in the wings of Rogier’s ‘Bladelin’ Triptych. The head of the other acolyte, seen from above and ambitiously foreshortened, is impressively painted but more difficult to parallel. Rogier may have preferred not to repeat this not entirely successful experiment but some of the foreshortened heads, seen from below, in the Beaune Last Judgement are to some extent similar.¹¹⁰ The head of Walcaud is once again close to the Miraflores Pietà. The lost profile of the youth on the right and his foreshortened ear can be compared with the famous falling female nude of the Last Judgement, whose ear is strikingly like his.¹¹¹ These four heads can be ascribed to two or more gifted assistants working faithfully under Rogier’s directions. The other heads of the first campaign of painting, including those of Louis the Pious and Adelbald, are less accomplished. Louis the Pious and his attendant resemble in style some of the secondary figures in the Last Judgement in that they have rather high craniums, their eyelids, noses and the furrows of the cheeks have heavy, dark outlines and their wrinkles and the highlighted strands of their hair make slightly undisciplined patterns. They may be by a less competent assistant.

Many of the figures in the middle ground have been radically altered, probably as the result of a decision to include portrait heads or to increase their number. The couple on the right of the altar, who are lit from the wrong angle, are by a painter who was unable to understand fully the receding planes of the human face, who drew noses in a distinctive way, with pendulous tips, and who seems not to have made any other contributions to the picture. Meanwhile Rogier himself [page 425] may have intervened again. The two heads that have been twice altered, the spectators third from the left and on the extreme right, are perhaps by him and painted in a final bid to satisfy the patrons. The eyes of the former are not quite in line, which may be a sign of the haste in which the final changes were made. The two boys are almost certainly his work. They are painted at speed and with tremendous skill and confidence on top of the red robe of Louis’s attendant and the architecture behind. There is no discernible drawing and they are executed directly on the red. Parts of the painting beneath are left uncovered to make the red undersleeves and perhaps also the dimple of the younger boy. Azurite is mixed into the flesh paint to indicate the shaved areas above their temples and there is great variety of colour in the flesh, particularly in the hand of the younger boy, which is very freely painted. They may be compared with the children in the Confirmation scene in the Seven Sacraments.

The Dream differs from the Exhumation in that Rogier seems to have made less detailed designs. The figure of Sergius may have been planned, drawn and painted by Rogier himself (the head is unfortunately a little damaged) and the angel is an adaptation of the angel in the Annunciation group at Tournai which was carved by Jean Delemer and polychromed by Campin between 1426 and 1428.¹¹² The petitioners in the background are so like the figures in the Scupstoel drawing, certainly from Rogier’s workshop, that they may be by the same hand. The Scupstoel is often associated with another pen drawing of a Procession (British Museum), where there are several figures who resemble Walcaud’s attendant in the Exhumation.¹¹³

It is now possible to reconstruct in some detail the history of the Exhumation of Saint Hubert. One of two surviving panels from a series of the life of Saint Hubert, it was painted for the chapel of Saint Hubert in the church of St Gudula in Brussels. Probably commissioned when the chapel was founded in the 1430s, the series was executed by Rogier van der Weyden and his assistants. The Exhumation includes portraits of the founders and members of their families and was clearly the panel where portraits could be most easily and appropriately included. The decision to include them, however, appears to have been made at a late stage and involved a radical reorganisation of the figures in the middle ground. The painting was designed and in part executed by Rogier but he was apparently too busy to give it his full attention and delegated much of the execution to his assistants. Two of the many assistants may be tentatively identified, as the master of the Scupstoel drawing and as one of the collaborators who contributed to the Beaune Last Judgement. If Rogier had not yet had time to train fully and to discipline his team of assistants, if the patrons changed their plans and insisted at a late stage on the inclusion of portraits, if the picture was designed and painted in haste, that would explain why, in some respects, the composition is unsatisfactory and the execution uneven. It presents an interesting contrast to NG 654, the Magdalen Reading, to which Rogier gave his undivided attention and on which he worked with extraordinary care. Despite its shortcomings, the Exhumation was a well‐known and influential painting.

General References

Friedländer , vol. II, no. 18; Davies 1954, pp. 179–93; Davies 1968, pp. 173–6; Davies 1972, pp. 219–21; Campbell 1994, pp. 16–20; Billinge et al. 1997, pp. 68–86.

Notes

For help in the preparation of this entry, I am grateful to Christiane Van den Bergen‐Pantens, Anne van Buren, Stephan Kemperdick, Anne Korteweg, Mark Leonard, Paul De Ridder and Arlette Smolar‐Meynart.