Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)
NG 2790 
The Adoration of the Kings

Lorne Campbell, 2014

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings before 1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2014).

Oil on oak panel, 179.8 × 163.2 cm,
painted surface approximately 177.2 × 161.8 cm¹

Signatures

NG 2790 is signed in two places: once on the collar of the black king’s black attendant, IENNIN GOSS… (fig. 2); a second time on the black king’s hat, IENNI/ GOSSART: DEMABV… (fig. 3: the A in GOSSART is unlike the other A; the reason is not obvious).

Inscriptions

On the black king’s hat: BALTAZAR (fig. 4).

Near the hem of the scarf held by the black king:

SALV[E]/ REGINA/ MIS[ERICORDIAE]/ V:IT[A DULCEDO ET SPES NOSTRA] (‘Hail, Queen of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope’) (fig. 5).

On the scroll held by the second angel from the left: Gloria:in:excelcis:deo: (‘Glory to God in the highest’) (fig. 6).

On the object at the Virgin’s feet, which is the lid of the chalice presented by the eldest king:

[L]E ROII IASPAR (‘the king Caspar’) (fig. 7).

Provenance

No reference to NG 2790 has been found before 1600, when it was in a chapel dedicated to the Virgin in the church of the Benedictine Abbey of Geraardsbergen (Grammont) in East Flanders, south of Ghent and west of Brussels (fig. 1). In August 1600 Albert and Isabella, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, returning from Oudenaarde to Brussels, visited the abbey, saw the painting and asked to have it.² On 5 April 1601 Albert authorised a payment of £2,100 to the abbot for its purchase³ and on 18 May 1601 it was recorded that the painter Gijsbrecht van Veen, residing in Brussels, had been sent to Geraardsbergen to buy from the abbey of ‘St Andrew’ the painting in oil on panel of the Adoration of the Three Kings or Magi, 2¾ ells high by 2 ells wide, with its plain frame. It was to be placed on the high altar of the chapel of the palace in Brussels.⁴ The picture was reframed and installed in the chapel in 1603.⁵ It was mentioned in several sources of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.⁶

Three descriptions are particularly informative: that by François‐Nicolas Baudot, sieur du Buisson et d’Aubenay ( c. 1590–1652), commonly called Dubuisson‐Aubenay, a Frenchman who visited the Low Countries several times between 1623 and 1627;⁷ that by Chifflet (1650);⁸ and that by Losano, who was employed in the palace chapel between 1692 and 1712.⁹ The framing elements were of gilded wood. There were two fluted columns with a ‘frontispiece’ above, surmounted by a cross and, at a lower level, by two angels. On a raised oval on the tympanum was the dedicatory inscription ‘Deo Opt. Max. D.D. MDCIII’ (‘Given and dedicated to the best and greatest God, 1603’) and on an architrave above the picture was a polygonal plaque bearing a Latin inscription in gold letters on a blue ground: ‘Aurum, Myrrham, Thus regique hominique deoque dona ferunt’ (‘They bring as gifts to the king and the man and the God gold, myrrh and frankincense’). During Lent and Advent the painting was replaced or covered by another, in grisaille, of the Crucifixion.

The Adoration remained on the altar until the fire of February 1731 which destroyed the palace but spared the chapel.¹⁰ It was subsequently put back in the chapel¹¹ and remained there for some time. The building was demolished in the 1770s but the picture had been removed by Charles of Lorraine (1712–1780), Governor of the Austrian Netherlands from 1744. In the inventory taken after his death it was listed as ‘A picture representing the Adoration of the Magi, painted by Halbert Dur [i.e. Albrecht Dürer], on panel, 5½ by 5 feet’.¹² It was included in the sale of Charles’s effects in Brussels on 21 May–27 June 1781. According to undated notes made by François Mols (1722–1791),¹³ it passed into the possession of ‘Mr. Le Cock, Conseiller‐Pensionnaire‐Adjoint des Etats de Brabant’: Emmanuel‐Marie de Cock (1742–1796), who was from 1776 Pensionary of Brussels and Greffier‐Pensionary of the Estates of Brabant.¹⁴ He died in exile at Brno; meanwhile NG 2790 was said to have been owned by M. van Fulens at The Hague, about whom nothing has been discovered.

NG 2790 is thought to have been the ‘tableau unique’ which in May 1787 was exhibited in the house in Leicester Square, London, of the auctioneer John Greenwood ( c. 1729–1792). ‘A Foreign Gentleman has brought into England a picture that astonishes every person who has seen it … It is to be viewed … from ten in the morning till six in the evening, at one shilling per person.’¹⁵ On 26 April 1788 it was auctioned by Greenwood, in his rooms in Leicester Square, with a ‘Select Collection of Cabinet Pictures, Just consigned from Abroad, the Property of M. VAN FULENS, late of the Hague’. Billed as ‘a superb picture by J. de Mabuse … which merits a place in the first Cabinet in Europe’, it was the subject of a ‘description … which lays on the table’.¹⁶ This Description was a printed sheet which was perhaps prepared for the exhibition of 1787 and in which the history of the painting was set out, [page 353][page 354]with much scholarly detail.¹⁷ The buyer’s name has not been discovered. By 1795 NG 2790 was in the possession of the dealer and writer Michael Bryan (1757–1821). It was no. 180 in the ‘superlatively capital assemblage of Valuable Pictures … to be sold by private contract at Bryan’s Gallery, Savile Row, 27 April 1795 (& subsequently)’.¹⁸ On 16 March 1796 Bryan acknowledged having received from the Earl of Carlisle a picture by Poussin, valued at 200 guineas (£210), ‘in part payment for a Picture sold to his Lordship by John de Mabuse representing the Wiseman’s offering, for the sum of Four Hundred Guineas’ (£420). On 28 June 1796, he issued a receipt for an additional 300 guineas (£315) for the same picture.¹⁹ Farington reported in his diary on 20 March 1796 that, at Bryan’s Gallery, ‘Lord Carlisle has bought the large high finished picture by [Gossart]’.²⁰

Lord Carlisle was the great collector Frederick Howard (1748–1825), 5th Earl of Carlisle. He took NG 2790 to his country seat, Castle Howard in Yorkshire, where by August 1796 it was placed, with other sixteenth‐century pictures, in a small room. ‘The better to ensure its safe preservance, a covering of green silk fitted into a wooden frame, guards it from danger; – it is constantly locked‐up, unless when opened for the inspection of visitors.’²¹ No. 17 in the Castle Howard catalogues of 1805 and 1814,²² it passed to the Earl’s son George (1778–1848), 6th Earl of Carlisle, his son George William Frederick (1802–1864), 7th Earl, and his brother William George (1808–1889), 8th Earl. In 1884 it was being restored by (William) Morrill in London.²³ Moved in 1885 from Castle Howard to Naworth Castle in Cumberland,²⁴ it was inherited by the 8th Earl’s nephew, George James Howard (1843–1911), 9th Earl of Carlisle. Shortly before his death, the 9th Earl, who was an amateur painter and who had been for more than thirty years an influential Trustee of the National Gallery, had agreed to offer the Adoration to the Gallery at a price much below its market value. His widow, Rosalind Frances (née Stanley, 1845–1921), immediately put his wishes into effect by offering the picture for £40,000.²⁵ The Earl’s will was proved on 14 June 1911; the Dowager Countess then sent the painting to the Gallery, where it remained on loan, though not on public exhibition, until the money was raised for its purchase.²⁶ Lady Carlisle’s offer was accepted on 3 August²⁷ and, though the purchase was not completed until 8 January 1912, an official announcement of the acquisition was made on 1 September 1911, when the picture was placed on exhibition.²⁸ The government made a special grant of £15,000, plus the legacy and estate duties (£2,776) payable by Lady Carlisle in respect of the picture, on the understanding that the annual purchase grant of £5,000 should be suspended for the year 1912–13. (The Lords of the Treasury had attempted to suspend the purchase grant for four years but the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, wrote from Downing Street on 24 August 1911 to curb their parsimony.²⁹) The Gallery raised £13,000: £10,020 from the Temple‐West Fund, £2,380 from the Loan Exhibition Fund, and £600 from the Grant‐in‐Aid account. Alfred Charles de Rothschild (1848–1918) contributed £500; Edward Priaulx Tennant (1859–1920), first Baron Glenconner, gave £500; Edward Cecil Guinness (1847–1927), first Earl of Iveagh, donated £1,000. The remaining £10,000 came from the National Art Collections Fund and included subscriptions of £500 from George Nathaniel Curzon (1859–1925), Earl Curzon of Kedleston, and £50 from Messrs Sully.³⁰ The Chairman and Honorary Secretaries of the Fund wrote on 31 August 1911:The satisfaction of the Committee of the National Art‐Collections Fund in being able to give decisive help towards so notable an acquisition has been increased by their sense of the extremely favourable terms upon which the picture has been offered to the nation by the Dowager Countess of Carlisle, acting in accordance with the known wishes of her late husband, and without the intervention of agent or middle‐man. There was no picture in England better worth preserving for the nation: none which should be a more splendid or more popular addition to the Gallery…³¹

To celebrate the acquisition, a book was published: The ‘Adoration of the Magi’ by Jan Mabuse Formerly in the Collection of the Earl of Carlisle. The text was by Maurice W. Brockwell (1869–1958), who was employed between 1907 and 1911 by Sir Charles Holroyd, the Director of the Gallery, to revise the catalogues. Brockwell’s book was privately printed by The Athenaeum Press. This seems to have been the first occasion on which the acquisition of an important painting for the Gallery was commemorated by the publication of a monographic study.

Exhibitions

Possibly London 1787 (at Greenwood’s, Leicester Square: see above); London BI 1851 (1); Manchester 1857 (provisional catalogue 517; definitive catalogue 436); London RA 1885 (230); NG 1945–6 (9); NG 2000¹ (31); NG 2011 (8).

Copies

Many copies are known, all of which appear to be seventeenth century or later.

1

Sir Charles Turner (deceased) sale, Berlin (Lepke), 17 November 1908 (30), painted on copper, 80 × 74 cm.

2

Private collection, Belgium (photographs at the NG ).

3

Formerly in the church of Our Lady of the Zavel, Brussels: seen there in the 1620s by Dubuisson‐Aubenay.³²

4

Formerly in the Cremer collection, Dortmund, on canvas, 217 × 165 cm.³³

5

Formerly at Geraardsbergen, abbey church of St Adrian, a copy, replacing the original, was still there at the end of the eighteenth century.³⁴

6

Mexico City, Museo de San Carlos, panel, 80 × 73 cm.³⁵

7

Wittelsbacher Ausgleichfonds, Munich, WAF 163, on panel, 119 × 87 cm, stated to be dated 1601.³⁶[page 355]

8

Parish church of St John the Baptist, Nethen (south of Leuven, north‐east of Wavre), 154 × 150 cm.³⁷

9

National Gallery, Prague (O 10488), on canvas, 100 × 73.5 cm, monogrammed IF (? for Joseph Führich, 1800–1876), acquired in 1949 from the National Restoration Fund, Prague.³⁸

10

Tula Art Museum, Tula (south of Moscow), panel, 131.5 × 98 cm, stated to be dated 1601.³⁹

George Scharf’s copies, made at the exhibitions of 1857 and 1885, are in his sketchbooks at the National Portrait Gallery: SSB 47, pp. 41–2; SSB 111, fols 9v–14. The picture was photographed in 1857: see Photographs of ‘Gems of the Art Treasures Exhibition’, Manchester 1857 by Signori Caldesi and Montecchi, London and Manchester 1858, Ancient Series, no. 12.

Version

An Adoration of the Kings, formerly in the Ashburnham collection and now in the Maternuskapelle of Cologne Cathedral (painted on oak, 125 × 225 cm: fig. 8), may be classified as a free version.⁴⁰

Technical Notes

In the 1780s, François Mols noted that NG 2790, though it had at times suffered from neglect, was remarkably well preserved: ‘it is still as fresh as when it came from the artist’s brush.’⁴¹ The author of the Description of 1788 stated that the panel ‘is as firm, as if just taken from the Hands of the Joiner’.⁴² At the sale of 1788, the picture was reported to be ‘in perfect preservation’.⁴³ Even the most hostile critics, for example Louis Simond in 1811, conceded that it was ‘in a wonderful state of preservation’.⁴⁴ In 1884, William Morrill thinned the panel⁴⁵ and then, presumably, applied the cradle, which, however, does not bear a stamp. In 1918, 1939, 1940–1 and 1957 minor repairs were carried out. In 1974–5 a split in the panel was mended and the painted surface was cleaned. Both the panel and the paint are in excellent condition. There are one or two small damages in the architecture and the sky above the Virgin’s head and in the drapery of the flying angel fifth from the left; there are other small losses along some of the joins in the panel and along the lower edge. In some areas the paint has become slightly transparent and the underdrawing is visible. Some of the yellow and red lake pigments have probably faded.⁴⁶

The panel, which measures 179.8 × 163.2 cm, is made up of six oak boards, laid vertically, vertical in grain and radially cut. The butt joins were reinforced with dowels. The widths of the boards are: at the top edge, 30.25, 28.15, 25.7, 32.3, 25.1 and 21.7 cm; at the lower edge, 29.2, 28.5, 27.9, 30.2, 25.5 and 21.2 cm. The back has been planed and the thickness varies between 0.7 and 0.8 cm; a cradle has been applied which consists of 20 vertical and 16 horizontal members. When the panel was thinned, the dowels were exposed and removed. Only six dowel‐holes are now visible but many more must be concealed under the cradle. The panel has a slight convex warp and there is a little woodworm damage at the right edge. There are no labels, inscriptions or other marks on the reverse. No dendrochronological investigation has been attempted.

The painted surface measures approximately 177.2 × 161.8 cm and there are unpainted edges on all four sides. As they vary in width from about 1 cm at the top to about 0.1 cm at the lower left, they have obviously been trimmed. Along the unpainted edges at the top and bottom are irregularly spaced holes, countersunk on the obverse (16 along the top edge, 17 along the lower edge); in some places small areas of paint and ground have been lost because of the countersinking. These holes were presumably drilled in order to secure the panel into a frame. The unpainted edges imply that the ground was applied when a framing structure was in place. In some areas there are barbes, indicating that ground and paint were applied while the panel was framed, but in other areas, for example the head of the attendant on the extreme right (fig. 29), original paint extends beyond the ground onto the bare wood of the unpainted edges.

The ground is chalk in animal glue and is covered by a thin priming layer of lead white mixed with a little lead‐tin yellow. Infrared reflectograms⁴⁷ reveal considerable amounts of underdrawing, which appears to be in a liquid medium and is applied on top of the priming, and a great many changes (see below) made at all stages of the drawing and painting processes.⁴⁸ The main lines of the architecture are ruled but the rest of the drawing is freehand. There are no indications that any mechanical methods of transfer have been used. The drawing is detailed, with areas of diagonal hatching to indicate shadowed areas in the draperies and with curving lines as well as diagonal hatching to suggest shadows in flesh areas (figs 9, 12). Often, for example in Caspar’s nose, the artist has drawn several lines in his search for the definitive contour (fig. 9). Details such as knuckles and fingernails are drawn: the knuckles of the youth on the extreme left, for example, are indicated in a summary way by a series of rapidly underdrawn arcs; wrinkles in the hose of Melchior and his attendants are underdrawn; and decorative elements such as the pattern on Balthasar’s robe have underdrawn outlines (fig. 10). Many adjustments have been made to the contours during painting: for example in the foremost three angels and their wings (fig. 12) and in the dog in the lower right corner.

The Virgin once wore a chemise with a higher neck, which was painted, but, in a complex series of alterations, Gossart has changed it for the front‐opening chemise that is now visible (fig. 40).⁴⁹ The Child’s head was at first underdrawn inclined towards Caspar’s gift. It was then redrawn and a reserve left to the right of its present position, which is the result of a final adjustment in paint of its place and scale. At first, the Child did not hold a coin but touched the edge of Caspar’s goblet; the goblet itself, with the Virgin’s left hand and mantle, has been altered more than once (see fig. 9). The fall of the Virgin’s draperies across the broken floor was also changed as painting progressed and probably after Gossart [page 359]decided to include Caspar’s sceptre (fig. 11). The attendant on Melchior’s right is underdrawn with half‐closed eyes but painted with wide‐open eyes. The group of attendants behind Melchior is much altered (fig. 13). The head of the attendant immediately behind Balthasar is painted on top of an underdrawing and a reserve for a different head in a different position: a man with a very broad nose facing towards our right (fig. 10). The top parts of the turban of Balthasar’s black attendant and of Balthasar’s crown have been painted over the largely finished walls of the building behind them, and the inscribed ends of Balthasar’s scarf with its fringes have been added at a late stage in the course of painting.

Almost all the architectural elements were altered after the painting was nearly finished. Both the central arches were painted as broken; they were made entire only at a fairly late stage (fig. 14). Certain figures, animals and objects are neither underdrawn nor reserved but have been added at a late stage and are painted directly on top of whatever is behind them. These include: the two figures at the window on our left; the two shepherds behind the ass, and the two shepherds in the distance immediately on our right of them (see fig. 9); the ox; the ass; Joseph’s stick; the sash of the angel in the upper left corner (fig. 12); Caspar’s sceptre; the lid of his goblet and the stone supporting it (see fig. 11). The broken tiles of the floor and the plants in the foreground were all added after the grid of the floor, itself laid out only after the main figures had been blocked in.

The underdrawing and all the changes appear to be the work of one artist, Jean Gossart; there are no obvious interventions by assistants.

Natural ultramarine occurs in the Virgin’s robes; different grades of azurite and red lakes that vary in hue have been used; the haloes of the Virgin and Child are painted in shellgold. Lead‐tin yellow and yellow earth have been mixed into the flesh paint of the heads of the man on the extreme right and the angel in green in the upper left corner – and probably also the heads of the Virgin, the foremost shepherd and other protagonists. The medium is linseed oil; some resin, probably pine resin, has been detected in a sample from the red glaze on the crimson edge of an angel’s wing. There is no evidence that the oil has been heat‐bodied.⁵⁰

In order to extend his range of colour and tone, Gossart has mixed and layered his pigments in unusually complex ways.⁵¹ Some of his blues, greens and reds are undermodelled in different tones of grey (lead white and black). The Virgin’s dress, for example, is undermodelled in grey beneath the blue, whereas her mantle, of a different, more intense blue, is not [page 361][page 362]over grey (see fig. 9). The green robe of the angel second from our left (see p. 26, fig. 1) is undermodelled in grey. The green layer on top, which is mainly of verdigris, is thicker in the shadows, while in the lighter areas the verdigris is mixed with small amounts of lead‐tin yellow and lead white. This contrasts with the green drapery of the small angel behind the ox, where the grey undermodelling lies under a thinner, more translucent layer of verdigris and the modelling is all in the grey underpaint. Caspar’s robe is underpainted in a uniform, very dark grey, over which is a modelling layer of mixtures of red lake and lead white. The darker red pattern is rendered in red lake and the whole mantle has received a final glaze of the same red lake. The dyestuff from which this red lake is derived is probably from a scale insect source, perhaps the kermes insect. Different mixtures of red and blue are used to create various shades of purple: from the pale mauve of Balthasar’s sash (red lake, azurite and lead white) to the deeper purple of the Virgin’s underdress (ultramarine and red lake).

The hair and beards are often rendered using sgraffito, for example the beards of Balthasar and the horseman on the right and the hair of the attendant on the extreme right. In certain places, for instance the green areas of the doublet of the attendant on the left, the glazes are spotted, because they have been blotted with cloths. A fingerprint in the green glaze on the robe of the angel behind the ox spreads onto the bricks on our right and shows that Gossart has blotted the glaze with his finger. In the head of the attendant directly behind Balthasar, the parts painted over the reserve for a different head are rather thin, whereas the parts painted over the architecture are thicker and contain much more lead white. The transitions are not at all obtrusive. On occasion, the paint is impasted to cast real shadows that play some part in creating illusions of form. Frequently the paint is worked wet‐in‐wet, for example in the eye of the dog in the lower right corner [page 363](fig. 16); the wet paint is often dragged or feathered, for example in Melchior’s ermine and in the fur of the shepherd holding the pipe.

Especially in the foreground, there are virtuoso passages of detail: for instance the hairs sprouting from the wart on Caspar’s cheek (fig. 17), the decoration of Caspar’s hat (fig. 18) and the fringes on Balthasar’s stole (see fig. 5). From each of the pearls on Melchior’s hat protrudes a tiny yellow spot to indicate the golden pin that holds it in place. By contrast, some extraordinary details are rendered with surprising economy of effort. The pearls edging Melchior’s doublet are strips of grey, worked over quickly with white highlights, pale blue secondary lights and dark grey shadows that define the shapes of the pearls (fig. 19). The pearls on Caspar’s hat, however, which are more readily visible, are more carefully executed. They are roundels of grey, painted on top of the red of the hat and thin enough to reveal the red in some places, as if it were reflected in the pearls. On the shadow sides are black crescents and bright orange reflected lights, while on the lit sides are tall dashes of azurite and white and, on top of that, dots of pure white (fig. 18).

Description

The Adoration of the Kings is mentioned in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, 2:11.

The palatial buildings are in ruins. The stones and bricks are chipped and broken and are overgrown with creepers, small trees and other plants. It seems impossible to make much sense of the architecture but the round arches and the marble columns are in the Roman style. The frieze above the Virgin bears a relief of naked dancing babies (fig. 21). Four capitals are decorated with naked babies: at the top left, above the head of the first angel (fig. 22); at the top right, above the head of the angel in pink (fig. 23); on the left, between the scroll and the left wing of the angel in green; and on the right, between the angel in white and the praying hands of the angel in pink. On the capital above the eldest king is a relief of the Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:9–13). Abraham seems to be nude, which is very unusual; the angel stays his right hand; Isaac, who is kneeling, is dressed in a long robe; the ram, which should be behind Abraham, appears in front of Isaac (fig. 20). The floor is made up of slabs of coloured stone arranged in geometrical patterns but again chipped and broken. Weeds and wild flowers have sprung up between the stones: plants of the hawkweed genus, thistles and, in the centre, [page 364]white dead‐nettles. The two dogs have been adapted from prints. The dog on the left is taken, in reverse, from Schongauer’s Adoration of the Kings ( B. 6: fig. 24); the dog on the right is from Dürer’s Saint Eustace ( B. 57: see fig. 25).

The Virgin and Child have blue eyes and gilded haloes (fig. 38). The eldest king, Caspar, who has greenish‐grey eyes and a wart on his left cheek (see fig. 17), has offered his gift of gold coins in a golden goblet. The Child takes one of the coins in his left hand. The cover of the goblet, inscribed with the king’s name, [L]E ROII IASPAR, lies at the feet of the Virgin, the goblet itself is ornamented with columns, lions and roundels of men’s heads. In front of Caspar are his hat (the fleurs‐de‐lis around the crown look black but are in fact azurite) and his sceptre, which incorporates two naked babies holding looped ropes and a figure of Moses holding the Tables of the Law (see fig. 26). The second king, Melchior, who has brown eyes, stands behind Caspar and wears a doublet of green patterned in silver beneath a coat of cloth of gold patterned in azurite and lined with ermine (fig. 28). He carries his frankincense in an elaborate golden vessel ornamented with figures of (?)prophets (see fig. 15). Behind him are four attendants, the second of whom carries a sword and mantle and the fourth of whom, on the extreme right, is wearing sandals in the Roman fashion. The third king, Balthasar, approaches from our left. His elaborate hat, which incorporates a crown, is inscribed with his name, BALTAZAR, and with the artist’s signature (see figs 3, 4). Balthasar’s mantle is lined with striped and spotted lynx fur and his boots are made of leather so thin that his toes and toenails can de distinguished (fig. 27). Around his neck he wears a fringed stole inscribed with the opening words of the Salve regina misericordiae, a prayer or hymn to the Virgin (see fig. 5). His gift of myrrh is contained in an elaborate golden vessel ornamented at the top with three figures of naked babies. Behind him are three attendants: the foremost, dressed in rich textiles paned together, seems to have red pimples on his chin; the second, who is black, wears a silver collar inscribed with the painter’s name (fig. 2). Through the window on our left are seen two men in exotic clothes, evidently attendants of the kings. On the far right, the horseman wearing a turban and holding a heavy ornamented hammer is another of their retinue; other mounted attendants appear in the distance (fig. 29).

Between Balthasar and the Virgin, Saint Joseph leans on his staff. Behind him, the head of the ox appears through a doorway in which stands an angel, his right hand on his breast. His robe is green, his wing light yellow and pinkish red (fig. 30). The ass, between the Virgin and Caspar, is eating weeds (fig. 31). Directly behind Caspar are two shepherds. The one on our left carries a musical instrument similar to a recorder; the other holds a straw hat and an houlette, a trowel‐like implement used in herding sheep. Hanging from his neck on a twisted cord is a small horn (fig. 32). The four men between the shepherd with the houlette and the Virgin are evidently also shepherds, and behind them other shepherds are receiving the news of Christ’s birth in fields outside a town where there are many large buildings in exotic styles (fig. 31).

Above, nine angels are hovering or flying. The two on the left (see p. 26, fig. 1), but not the others, wear jewelled headbands and the second holds a scroll inscribed ‘Gloria in excelcis [sic] deo’ (Luke 2:14). The foremost angels on the left and right wear robes made of shot fabrics: yellow shot with blue, and pink shot with yellow.⁵² At the top edge of the picture blazes the star that guided the kings. Below the star hovers the dove, representing the Holy Ghost.

Attribution

NG 2790 is signed by Gossart in two places. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, those who did not notice the signatures associated the picture with Dürer. In 1682 Claude du Molinet thought that it was ‘in the style of Dürer’; in the inventory of the collection of Charles of Lorraine, taken after his death in 1780, it was attributed to Dürer.⁵³ Subsequent authorities have noticed Gossart’s signatures and all except Ainsworth (see below) have concluded that the painting is by Gossart. Those who have examined it closely have agreed that it is very consistent in style and technique and have been unable to discern any significant interventions by assistants.

The Theory of a ‘Prestige Collaboration’ between Gossart and Gerard David

In 2010, Ainsworth suggested that the London Adoration was the product of a ‘prestige collaboration’ between David and Gossart. She argued that the Virgin and Child, though underdrawn and perhaps laid in by Gossart, were in fact by Gerard David.⁵⁴ She felt that the ‘oval‐faced Virgin with typically downcast eyes and prominent dimpled chin; the widely spaced placement of her legs, like two columns, supporting the erect Christ Child on her lap; the neatly arranged, cascading draperies, spilling out onto the floor in tightly composed, angular folds – these are all characteristic of David’s paintings of the Virgin and Child.’⁵⁵ The same description could be applied to the Virgin of the Monforte altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes – though there the Child is not sitting up ‘erect’ – as well as to other compositions by Gossart’s predecessors; and Gossart based the composition of NG 2790 on the Monforte altarpiece (see fig. 33). Ainsworth, however, implied that Gossart was taking ideas from David’s Adoration of the Kings, also in the National Gallery (NG 1079, fig. 34), whereas the present writer believes that David’s Adoration, very different in composition from other paintings of the same subject that are assigned to him (fig. 35), is in fact a response by David to the novelty of Gossart’s reinterpretation of Hugo’s creation.⁵⁶

Ainsworth observed that ‘the Virgin and Child types in Gossart’s Adoration are distinctly different from those in the Prague Saint Luke drawing the Virgin of about 1515’.⁵⁷ The Prague picture is signed, on Saint Luke’s belt, GOSSAR…. It is true that the types are different; but it is less evident that the heads differ ‘stylistically as well as in terms of painting technique’.⁵⁸ In fact, reproductions of details from the two pictures show very remarkable similarities in style and technique (figs 37, 38).⁵⁹

In the Prague picture, Gossart is aiming at historical accuracy by portraying the Virgin as a beauty of Roman antiquity, which is in keeping with the palace in which she sits, built in a classical style and decorated with sculpture representing antique as well as biblical subjects. The Virgin is in type a sister of Gossart’s Amphitrite in his Neptune and Amphitrite of 1516, his Deianira in his Hercules and Deianira of 1517, his Venus in his Venus and Cupid of 1521 and his Danaë of 1527.⁶⁰ The Virgin in the London Adoration, on the other hand, is Gossart’s variation on the ideally beautiful Virgin of van der Goes’s Monforte altarpiece; and Gossart continues to develop this ideal of beauty in his half‐length compositions of the Virgin and Child such as those in a private collection (at present on loan to the National Gallery; L 650), in Berlin, in the Prado and in Cleveland.⁶¹ Gossart of course selects appropriate figure types, just as he chooses different architectural settings. In the London and Prague paintings, he is making very deliberate decisions to envisage the Virgin in very distinctive ways. The resemblances in treatment, however, are many and striking. The hair and mouths correspond closely, as do the high upper eyelids and the slender lower eyelids, emphasised by narrow dark shadows below lit areas representing the linings as well as the surfaces of the lower lids. The noses are broad and long, though they terminate in neat points, and are stressed by wide highlights. There are bright lights on the ends of the noses, on the channels in the upper lips and at the far sides of the lower lips, where deep shadows accent the far corners of the mouths. The reflected lights on the chins and the incipient and slight double chins are very similar indeed.

Ainsworth thought the Prague Virgin and Child types ‘rather homely’ and contrasted ‘David’s hallmark sweet Virgin and Child models’.⁶² The Virgin in NG 2790, she observed, ‘shows … David’s characteristic smooth modeling of the face and refined drawing of the features in paint’.⁶³ Indeed, if we compare the Virgin’s face in NG 2790 with the Virgin’s head in The Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor (NG 1432), attributed to David (fig. 42),⁶⁴ we find similarities in the painting of the eyes, nose, mouth and chin, but David’s tonal contrasts are more sudden, less controlled and less delicate; the reflected lights and the highlights on the hair and eyelids are less sensitively modulated. Ainsworth perceived in the male heads of NG 2790 ‘somewhat rougher brushwork and more densely applied paint’. But the heads of the three kings (figs 3, 17, 28), those of their attendants, even those of the foremost shepherds are just as beautifully painted as the Virgin’s head, with passages of virtuoso detail that match the extraordinary precision and subtlety in the rendering of the textiles and metalwork (figs 19, 39). Even the dogs, though copied from German prints (fig. 47), and the ass (fig. 31) are extraordinarily sympathetic studies of animals. There is nothing in Gerard David to equal Gossart’s sensitivity to detail and the accomplished economy of his technique, which allowed him to record all his observations with astonishing skill.

Although Ainsworth admired Gossart’s ‘very sophisticated understanding of light’ in his early paintings, she saw as typical of his technique during his early period a ‘rather thick application of paint in discrete, unblended brushstrokes’ and a ‘less than subtle modeling of forms’.⁶⁵ ‘Not yet adept at depicting the human body’, Gossart is ‘somewhat maladroit’ in ‘anatomical description, for example in the awkward foreshortening of arms’.⁶⁶ She found confirmation of her attribution to David of the Virgin’s head in the London Adoration in her observations that his brushwork ended ‘abruptly at the altered neckline of the dress, even though the light underpainting is visible beyond it. There is also a gap between the reserve left for the head and the painted layers at the right contours. This suggests that someone else executed the head of the Virgin and did not bother to blend it fully into the existing form.’⁶⁷ In fact, Ainsworth may have misinterpreted the complex changes in this area, where Gossart was altering the necklines of the Virgin’s chemise and dress (fig. 40).

In the Child’s head (fig. 38), Ainsworth discovered ‘David’s more opaque treatment of flesh tones (rather than the slightly eerie opalescence of Gossart’s), as well as David’s emphasis of the Child’s almond‐shaped eyes with a continuous stroke of white paint on the lower lid’.⁶⁸ Though Ainsworth did not define further Gossart’s ‘slightly eerie opalescence’, she may have been thinking of the faces underpainted in grey in later pictures in the style of Gossart, such as the Mauritshuis Virgin and Child and the Antwerp Portrait of a Man.⁶⁹ Alternatively, she could have been referring to Gossart’s own Children of Christian II of Denmark, probably painted in 1526, where the red lakes in the flesh have faded and where some (charcoal?) black is mixed into even the palest areas of the faces. Neither grey underpainting nor such admixtures of black can be found in any of the heads of the London Adoration (though grey undermodelling is found beneath several of the textiles). In this, as in many other respects, the Virgin’s head, the Child’s face and the heads of the other male figures are completely consistent in treatment.

Ainsworth considered that ‘David may also have reworked the [Virgin’s] draperies, and in particular his typically angular folds at the base of the cloak, which differ in configuration from the broader, looser ones planned in the underdrawing and the first paint stages’.⁷⁰ The changes seem to respond to Gossart’s addition of Caspar’s sceptre, which is painted, apparently without underdrawing and certainly without a reserve, on top of the paint of the altered mantle (fig. 11).

Ainsworth’s suggestion that Gossart, returning from Rome in 1509, left his regular employment with Philip of Burgundy to spend some time in Bruges before returning around 1515–16 to Philip’s service also seems unlikely.⁷¹ Geldenhouwer’s near‐contemporary account made it clear that Gossart remained with Philip; during the period between 1509 and 1516, he produced the Adoration for one of Philip’s closest associates, Daniel van Boechout.⁷² As will be demonstrated below,⁷³ the complexity and ingenuity of its composition, as well as the extreme sophistication of its technique, are without parallels in David’s work.

The Genesis of the Composition

Gossart’s most important source is the Monforte altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes (Berlin: fig. 33). It is not known where this very influential painting, which is now cut at the top, was in Gossart’s time. The original composition can be partially reconstructed from reversed versions attributed to the Master of Frankfurt (fig. 36).⁷⁴ Many very obvious parallels may be made between NG 2790 and the reconstructed Monforte Adoration, with its magnificently attired kings and attendants, the bystanders in the middle ground, the broken architecture and the flying angels. Gossart has adapted his figures of the Virgin and Child from Hugo’s panel, while his Balthasar and his Melchior were inspired by Hugo’s Balthasar. Fascinated by Hugo’s views through ruined buildings to distant landscapes, Gossart extended the vista and, more daring even than Hugo, opened up at the centre of his painting a vast recession towards mountains seen across an enormous distance.

There is one obvious borrowing from Dürer: the dog on the right in NG 2790 is taken from Dürer’s engraving of Saint Eustace (figs 46, 47). The other dog comes, in reverse, from Schongauer’s engraving of the Adoration of the Kings; and it seems that Caspar’s hat and the men behind Melchior are inspired by the same print (figs 18, 24). In NG 2790, the young man at the right carrying the sword and mantle, the man laying his left hand on the left shoulder of the former, the horseman wearing a turban and the rocky landscape behind them find their counterparts in the print (fig. 29). There are, moreover, points of resemblance between the two Virgins and the two children. In the engraving the attendant on the right appears to be carrying the youngest king’s cloak, whereas the mantle carried by Gossart’s young man does not seem to belong to Melchior. Gossart’s underdrawn horseman is more like Schongauer’s than his painted figure (fig. 13). There are probably further borrowings from another Schongauer print in the same series, the Nativity ( B. 5: fig. 43), where the figures of Saint Joseph, the shepherds and the angels holding the scroll are not dissimilar, and where the broken stones in the foreground, the plants growing among them and the creepers climbing over the ruined arch may very well have influenced Gossart’s ideas. Gossart’s Child is not unlike the Child in Schongauer’s engraving of the Virgin with the Parrot ( B. 29, fig. 44).

The steep perspective in which the ruined buildings are seen and parts of the ruins themselves are reminiscent of Dürer’s engraving of the Nativity, dated 1504 ( B. 2). The angels [page 375]are all to some extent similar to Dürer’s angels and may be compared with those in the woodcuts of his Apocalypse and Life of the Virgin series. The pose of the second angel from the left may have been inspired by Dürer. It recalls the pose of the woman on the right in Dürer’s engraving of the Four Witches ( B. 75), dated 1497 (fig. 45). The many figures of babies, on the capitals, on the frieze, on Balthasar’s gift and on Caspar’s sceptre, are influenced by classical precedent and may be based on antique sources, on Italian prints or, more probably, on designs by Dürer (compare his engraving of the Three Putti, B. 66).

Although making use of van der Goes, Schongauer, Dürer and very likely other sources, Gossart has created a composition that is entirely his own and completely characteristic. Even if some of the heads of the subsidiary figures are hastily painted, there are no fundamental differences in technique between them and the other heads and there is no reason to believe that Gossart delegated any significant part of the painting to assistants. The story that he laboured on NG 2790 for seven or eight years seems to have been invented at the end of the eighteenth century but he must have expended a great deal of time and effort on this picture.⁷⁵

Invention and Imitation

The dog in the lower right corner (fig. 47) is accurately copied from Dürer’s engraving of Saint Eustace (fig. 46); only the tail has been altered, to keep it within the panel. Gossart’s dog, however, has an almost quivering alertness that is not taken from Dürer. Gossart’s unsurpassed command of the oil technique, and his attendant mastery of light, allowed him to make the dog’s eye appear to sparkle (fig. 16) and its nose and whiskers seem to twitch. Even when Gossart is copying literally, he transforms the models that he imitates.

Gossart divides his painting into two horizontal registers: the celestial zone of the star, the dove and the angels; and the terrestrial zone of the Virgin and Child, the kings and their attendants, and the shepherds. Admittedly, one angel is present in the terrestrial region, hidden in the doorway above the ox (fig. 30). The reasons for his presence there are obscure. Otherwise, the celestial and terrestrial beings stay within the boundaries of their two registers. They never overlap but meet where the top of Balthasar’s hat touches the lower contour of the angel on our left. In the terrestrial zone, the poor – the Virgin and Child and Saint Joseph, the shepherds and the ox – are isolated from the rich kings and their attendants. The Virgin’s mantle, however, interlocks with Caspar’s; and his sceptre and the lid of his chalice intrude slightly across her draperies, while the contour of his head intersects three of the shepherds.

The celestial and terrestrial zones are united by the strong verticals of the architecture, stressed by rather sudden contrasts of light and shade. No structural sense can be made of the buildings, which have been created as a decorative foil as well as a narrative context for the figures. The verticals are frequently aligned with verticals in the figures of the lower zone: Balthasar’s gift and the ends of his fringed scarf line up with a section of wall behind; the folds of Joseph’s skirts and his stick echo and continue verticals of the architecture, as does the strongly lit fold hanging from the Virgin’s right knee. Melchior’s gift and the stripes and contours of his clothes again accord with some of the verticals in the buildings behind him. There are also echoes or visual rhymes between celestial and terrestrial figures: Caspar’s pose is not unlike that of the angel in pink in the top right corner; while his and the angel’s shapes are echoed in the dog in the lower right corner. The solemn Child has counterparts in the boisterous dancing children on the frieze far above his head (fig. 21) and in the playing, perhaps even fighting, children whose legs can just be seen on the two capitals at the upper edge (figs 22, 23).

In the Monforte altarpiece, van der Goes placed his principal figures in a relatively shallow frieze against a rapidly receding landscape. Gossart groups his figures in a very much deeper space and their positions can be plotted in relation to the squares of the floor. The foremost figure is Balthasar, whose feet are on the fifth and sixth tiles from the lower edge. Joseph’s foot is on the twenty‐third tile, the Virgin’s foot is on the ninth and Caspar is in the same area, while Melchior’s feet are on the twelfth and thirteenth rows of tiles. The strong diagonal recession between the figures of Balthasar and Melchior is emphasised by the facts that the pose of one reflects [page 376]and reverses the pose of the other, and that the colours of their vestments are in some sort of counterpoint. Another receding diagonal leads from the dog in the lower right corner to Caspar, the Virgin and Joseph. In the celestial zone, the angels on the right fly on diagonal courses from the top right corner towards the Virgin and Child.

The composition is closed on the left and at the lower edge, while the top and right edges interrupt angels’ wings and the figures of attendants. There is a greater sense of movement here, though the predominant impression is of a stately and slow progress towards the Virgin and Child. The ceremonious motion takes its rhythm from the long vertical lines in the figures and the architecture. The Virgin’s shoulders, hair and veil make protective arches over the Child; and these arches are echoed many times in the buildings behind her. The soaring verticals, moreover, give a sense of exaltation.

The mathematical centre of the composition is in the Virgin’s face, near the line of her jaw; the vanishing points of the perspectival systems are to the right of the Virgin’s head, near the shepherd who stands directly behind the ass (fig. 31). His hat was at first a brilliant red; Gossart covered the red with a dull green‐brown, presumably to make the hat, the figure and the vanishing area less obtrusive. It may not be accidental that Gossart has placed a shepherd at this focal point; and it cannot be coincidental that he wrote his signatures on the two Africans, Balthasar and his black attendant. Whatever his reasons were, they are now elusive. The acne on the face of Balthasar’s principal attendant and the hairy wart on Caspar’s face (fig. 17) may be reminders that imperfections can afflict even the most prosperous. The ease with which Balthasar, the Virgin and Melchior hold the undoubtedly exceedingly heavy gifts may merely indicate that these people are not ordinary mortals. The kings’ clothes, furs and jewellery and Balthasar’s boots, of the thinnest and softest leather (fig. 27), are all marks of unimaginable riches; but the intense blues and scarlets of the Virgin’s and Joseph’s clothes allow them to maintain their dignity and presence among all the splendour of cloths of gold, velvets, jewels, pearls and ermine. The Child, of course, is naked: the Word made flesh.

Gossart has asserted the divisions between celestial and terrestrial, between rich and poor, but has also with consummate skill integrated them in a ceremonious representation of the Incarnation. Developing upon Hugo’s Monforte altarpiece, Gossart has used successions of long verticals to imply solemn, stately movements. His skill in manipulating space, more ambitious than Hugo’s, allows him to deploy and order his composition along receding diagonals and to distribute his figures with extraordinary intelligence. A surface pattern radiates from a vanishing area slightly above and right of centre and imposes a wheel‐like discipline, in which the grid of the floor, because it is broken and overgrown and because its colours are not violently contrasted, cannot command too much attention. The same circle that describes the wheel and its spokes also encloses a sphere, the radii of which mark some of the main stresses of the composition in depth: the flights of angels; the processions of Balthasar, Melchior and their attendants. Gossart uses geometrical pattern in both two and three dimensions with immense discretion to enhance the narrative and to induce apposite emotional responses.

The Patron

NG 2790 was by 1600 in the abbey church of St Adrian at Geraardsbergen and it is usually assumed that it was painted for the abbey.⁷⁶ François Mols, however, writing in the 1780s, claimed that it had come from ‘the effects of David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, in whose service Jean de Mabuse worked for a long time’, and the author of the Description of 1788 stated that it had been ‘carried to Holland, and during the Troubles in the Low Countries, it escaped the Iconoclastes’.⁷⁷ David of Burgundy was Bishop of Utrecht from 1456 until his death in 1496. It was his half‐brother, Philip of Burgundy, bishop between 1517 and 1524, who employed Gossart. These confused reports are clearly unreliable. In 2010, the present writer argued that the Adoration was commissioned by Philip’s close associate Daniel van Boechout, Lord of Boelare.⁷⁸

Little is known about the history of the abbey of St Adrian (fig. 1). The buildings were sold in 1797 and afterwards most of them were demolished; the archives have been dispersed or destroyed. The choir and towers of the church seem to have been knocked down in 1799.⁷⁹ According to Ruteau, writing in 1637, other paintings by Gossart were in the abbey in his time: a Last Judgement, in the chapel of Saint Natalia (Saint Adrian’s wife); a Crucifixion, on the ‘autel privilegé’; and other, unspecified paintings.⁸⁰ The Last Judgement was mentioned in an inventory taken in 1791, when it was still on the same altar.⁸¹ If these paintings were in truth by Gossart, then it would appear that he was employed at the abbey. It seems very likely that he painted NG 2790 for the abbey and that he may have executed other commissions for Geraardsbergen at much the same time.

According to van Waesberghe (1627) and Ruteau (1637), NG 2790 came from the ‘chapel of the Virgin’ at St Adrian’s.⁸² According to Ruteau, Jan de Broedere, abbot from 1504 until 1526, ‘restored the crypt behind the choir and built there a fine chapel dedicated to the Virgin’.⁸³ Historians have taken this statement rather literally and concluded that de Broedere paid for the building. The chapel, visible in some views and plans of the abbey,⁸⁴ seems to have been about 13 metres long. The crypt had been the burial place of several abbots, many monks and some noblemen of the district, whose tombs appear to have remained after the crypt was reconstructed as a chapel.⁸⁵ Jan de Broedere himself was buried there under a plain ‘blue’ stone.⁸⁶ In the will dated 12 April 1518 of Daniel van Boechout, lord of Boelare near Geraardsbergen, it was recorded that the abbot Jan de Broedere had agreed that Daniel and his wife should be buried in the chapel of the Virgin behind the choir.⁸⁷ Their tomb was indeed erected there.⁸⁸ When their daughter died in 1563, she was buried in the abbey church ‘in her father’s chapel’.⁸⁹ It seems clear that Daniel van Boechout may have contributed towards the cost of the chapel of the Virgin and that it was for a time known as his chapel.

Gossart would appear to have painted the Adoration between about 1510 and about 1515.⁹⁰ By 1508 and until 1524, he was in the service of Philip of Burgundy. Though the exact [page 377]terms on which Philip employed Gossart are not known, it seems unlikely that Gossart could have worked for other patrons without Philip’s consent. It therefore appears logical to look for connections between Philip and the possible patrons of NG 2790, Jan de Broedere and Daniel van Boechout.

Very little is known about Jan de Broedere, alias van Coppenhole, also called Johannes de Cruce.⁹¹ He was consecrated at Valenciennes on 25 November 1506. His abbacy was a period of great prosperity and he died in 1526. A missal, sold at Christie’s in 2002, is decorated with his coat of arms and was presumably commissioned by him.⁹² The miniatures, which are of indifferent quality, hardly substantiate the idea that de Broedere was a discerning patron. There is at least one indication that he had connections with the court of Margaret of Austria. On 9 April 1511 Margaret summoned to Ghent both Jan de Broedere and Jan Clercx, Abbot of Ninove; they were to celebrate divine service on the eve of Palm Sunday (12 April), on Palm Sunday itself, and on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.⁹³ It is possible that, at Margaret’s court, de Broedere might have made the acquaintance of Gossart’s patron Philip of Burgundy.

Daniel van Boechout, on the other hand, is relatively well documented and was closely associated with Philip of Burgundy. Daniel inherited through his father the lordship of Boelare near Geraardsbergen;⁹⁴ and from his mother the lordship of Beverweerd, about seven miles south‐east of Utrecht.⁹⁵ On 27 July 1487, David of Burgundy certified that, in his presence, Daniel’s widowed mother had made over to Daniel all her landed property.⁹⁶ At the time of David’s death in 1496, Daniel was his castellan at Ter Horst near Rhenen.⁹⁷ At an unspecified date, Daniel was one of the chamberlains at the court of Philip the Handsome.⁹⁸ By 1517, when Philip of Burgundy became Bishop of Utrecht, Daniel was well established in his favour. When Philip made his ceremonial entry into Utrecht in May 1517, Daniel took a prominent place in his entourage and the town of Utrecht made him generous gifts of wine.⁹⁹ Philip appointed him to his council; during Philip’s absences from the Nedersticht (the area around Utrecht), Daniel was his stadhouder or representative there; and he was castellan of Philip’s principal residence at Duurstede.¹⁰⁰ Philip died in 1524. Daniel was one of the four executors of his will.¹⁰¹

Daniel may have got to know Philip of Burgundy when both were involved in the civil strife that afflicted Flanders in the early 1490s,¹⁰² or afterwards when they were at the court of Philip the Handsome. They must certainly have met when both were in the service of David of Burgundy. Daniel was his castellan at Ter Horst while Philip was his castellan at Duurstede; Philip was asked to protect Ter Horst when it was under threat.¹⁰³ Gossart was in Philip’s service by the winter of 1508–9, when he accompanied Philip on his embassy to [page 378]Rome, and, as Gossart seems to have had lodgings in Philip’s residences,¹⁰⁴ it is more than likely that Daniel van Boechout had met Gossart in or before 1508 and that the two men knew each other well.

Daniel van Boechout, Philip of Burgundy and Gossart appear to have shared a taste for erotic images. Among the items which Daniel had from the estate of Philip of Burgundy were ‘two precious little panels of fornication (de boelschap), well done, with a cover or case (custodie) for one of them’.¹⁰⁵ These were two paintings of explicitly erotic subjects; they may very well have been by Gossart. Daniel and his wife, who predeceased him, were buried in ‘a beautiful … tomb in the Italian style’:¹⁰⁶ if it was made in Daniel’s lifetime, the tomb gives another indication of his aesthetic tastes. Daniel van Boechout provides the obvious link between Gossart and the abbey at Geraardsbergen and it was probably Daniel who secured the permission of Gossart’s employer Philip of Burgundy to commission him to paint not only the great Adoration but also his other paintings which once adorned the abbey church.

Daniel van Boechout

Daniel van Boechout was a very well‐connected nobleman. His mother, Johanna van Vianen, and his father’s brother, Daniel van Boechout, Viscount and castellan of Brussels, were the leading members of a noble company that went in 1440–1 to the Town Hall of Brussels to inspect ‘the town’s painting’, evidently one or more of the Scenes of Justice painted by Rogier van der Weyden for the ‘Golden Chamber’ there.¹⁰⁷ The van Boechouts were closely related to many of the great families of Brabant and Liège; and the van Vianens to the van Borselens and many of the other great families of the northern provinces.

Perhaps born in about 1455,¹⁰⁸ Daniel was probably brought up on his mother’s estates near Utrecht. He may have been the ‘Daniel de Bouchoute of the diocese of Utrecht’ who matriculated in 1476 at the University of Leuven.¹⁰⁹ Only in about 1480 did the van Boechout family come into their Flemish inheritance.¹¹⁰ When Daniel’s elder brother Jan decided to enter the Church,¹¹¹ Daniel became his parents’ heir and seems to have divided his time between his estates in the northern provinces and his lands in Flanders. In 1487, Daniel married Marie de Luxembourg, daughter of Jacques de Luxembourg (died 1487), Lord of Fiennes, a Knight of the Golden Fleece,¹¹² and sister of Philippe de Luxembourg (died 1519), Bishop of Le Mans (1476) and Cardinal (1498). It was Philippe who commissioned the great jubé in the cathedral of Le Mans, now known from a large and elaborate preliminary drawing.¹¹³ Daniel’s elder daughter and heir, Marie van Boechout, married in 1512 as her first husband Hugues de Lannoy, Lord of Rollencourt, who died in 1528; their granddaughter and heir was Anne of Egmont (1533–1558), the first wife of William the Silent, Prince of Orange. Daniel’s second daughter, Françoise, married in 1527 Richard de Merode, Lord of Frentzen.¹¹⁴

The prolonged lawsuits (1482–1517) over the family estates in Brabant¹¹⁵ would have been expensive and Daniel’s Flemish estates were ravaged during the civil wars. Between 1517 and 1524, Daniel probably lived mainly at Duurstede, which was Philip of Burgundy’s principal residence and where Daniel was his castellan. He had stabling there for his horses and a room in the great tower, which, in 1533, was still known as ‘the lord of Boelare’s chamber’.¹¹⁶ In his will of 1518, however, Daniel expressed his desire to be buried at Geraardsbergen; on 6 May 1518 he was present there;¹¹⁷ and on 6 October 1523 he was in Aalst to arrange the division of his property between his two daughters.¹¹⁸ Philip of Burgundy died on 7 April 1524. On 13 May, Daniel – one of Philip’s executors – and some colleagues were diligently compiling inventories of Philip’s goods at Duurstede.¹¹⁹ Daniel was still there on 13 November 1524 but died between 26 September 1525 and 23 July 1527.¹²⁰ He was buried in the chapel of the Virgin in the abbey church of St Adrian at Geraardsbergen.

Iconography

On 2 October 1519, the Abbot Jan de Broedere wrote a description of the relics then in the abbey church at Geraardsbergen. The fourteenth item in a list of thirty‐three was ‘a piece of the clothing of one of the Three Kings’.¹²¹ In NG 2790 the unusual emphasis on the splendour of the kings’ robes may have some connection with the veneration of this relic.

On the capital above Caspar’s head is a representation of the Sacrifice of Isaac (fig. 20), which prefigures the Crucifixion;¹²² it is perhaps contrasted with the frieze of dancing putti, who probably represent the pleasures of innocence (fig. 21). Though there are nine angels in the upper half of the painting, nothing suggests that they represent the Nine Orders of angels. No specific reason has been found for the inclusion of a tenth angel, in the doorway behind the ox (fig. 30). He has been identified as a self portrait by Gossart¹²³ but it is most unlikely that Gossart would have represented himself as an angel. Many of the heads are so strongly individualised that there have been frequent attempts to find portraits. The author of the Description of 1788 claimed to have discovered likenesses of Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Gossart; the author of the sale catalogue of 1795 found in addition a portrait of ‘John Duke of Brabant’. There is no reason to think that any individual was intended to be recognised, though Gossart may well have worked from models. The theory that the young man directly behind Melchior is Saint Adrian is, again, without any foundation (fig. 29).¹²⁴

The star has been thought to symbolise God;¹²⁵ but, according to the Golden Legend, the star might represent the Holy Ghost, or the angel that appeared to the shepherds, or a newly created body which ‘returned to the underlying matter after its mission was accomplished’.¹²⁶ Because in NG 2790 the shepherds in the distance appear to be looking towards the star rather than at any of the angels, Gossart seems to favour the idea that the star is the angel, especially as the dove is also present, as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost appeared at the Baptism which, again according to the Golden Legend, took place on the same day, 6 January, as the Adoration of the Kings (and the Marriage at Cana and the Feeding of the Five Thousand).¹²⁷ The presence of the dove in NG 2790 is not necessarily surprising. The dove appears above the Virgin and Child in the triptych of the Holy Family (Lisbon), once [page 379]believed to be an early work by Gossart, and in several other Antwerp pictures of the early sixteenth century. In all these instances, however, God is also included.¹²⁸

The gifts of the kings may be interpreted in various ways. Saint Bernard suggested that the gold was to relieve the Virgin’s poverty; the frankincense was to dispel the unpleasant smell of the stable; and the myrrh was to strengthen the Child’s limbs and to drive out harmful worms. Alternatively, gold was for tribute, frankincense for sacrifice and myrrh for burying the dead, and the three gifts denoted Christ’s powers as king, God and man.¹²⁹ The last interpretation gives the sense of the inscription placed on the frame of NG 2790 at the beginning of the seventeenth century.¹³⁰

Date

Brockwell, misinterpreting the inscription on Balthasar’s scarf as MDVII, proposed that NG 2790 was dated 1507 (fig. 5).¹³¹ In fact the letters form part of a longer inscription from the Salve Regina and the picture is not dated. It is presumed to have been painted for the chapel of the Virgin in the abbey church of St Adrian’s at Geraardsbergen: the chapel is said to have been built when Jan de Broedere was abbot, therefore between 1506 and 1526. By 1516, Gossart was signing MALBODIVS and seems thereafter always to have used that form of his name when he signed his paintings, though he continued to sign documents with his full name, Jean Gossart. As NG 2790 is signed GOSSART, it may be dated before 1516. The latest of the visual sources used by Gossart in his Adoration are Dürer’s Saint Eustace, of about 1500, and – possibly – his Nativity engraving of 1504. The earliest derivative composition is perhaps the Adoration now in Cologne Cathedral, by an unidentified follower of Gossart (fig. 8).¹³² It was in 1646 on an altar in the church of the Franciscan convent at Mézières¹³³ and it was probably painted for the convent, founded in 1489 by Philip of Burgundy, Bastard of Nevers; the donors are his wife Marie de Roye, whom he married in 1480 and who died in 1484 or 1488, their daughter Françoise and Philip himself, who became a Franciscan after his wife’s death and survived until 1525.¹³⁴ The portrait of Marie is certainly posthumous. Françoise appears to be about ten (her age in the mid‐1490s) and unmarried but the costume of both women is in the fashion of about 1515, the likely date of the painting.¹³⁵ On all these grounds, NG 2790 may be dated between 1506 and 1516.

Such a dating is also plausible for stylistic reasons but the precise chronology of Gossart’s early paintings is problematic. Waagen found in NG 2790 ‘a most splendid confirmation of my conjecture that this artist, before he went to Italy [in 1508–9], must have executed important works in the pure Flemish style of the school of Van Eyck’;¹³⁶ and many have agreed that in NG 2790 there is little indication that Gossart had seen works of art in the classical and contemporary Roman styles. Others, including Friedländer, have argued that it was painted after 1509.¹³⁷ Friedländer thought it very similar to the Malvagna triptych (Palermo)¹³⁸ and wondered whether Gossart would have been ‘able to paint a picture with so many figures and with such perfect illusion of space before he went to Italy’. In fact the rules of perspective are not consistently applied and Gossart must have decided against having a single vanishing point. Presumably he flouted the laws of mathematical perspective because he considered that here they would have produced aesthetically displeasing and disruptive effects.

The Virgin and Child in NG 2790 are very similar indeed to the Virgin and Child in the much smaller Malvagna triptych, where the figures of Adam and Eve on the exterior are adapted, in reverse, from Dürer’s Temptation ( B. 17), probably of 1510, from his Small Woodcut Passion, first issued in 1511. The triptych must have been painted in or after 1511. NG 2790 was probably also painted at the beginning of the 1510s, before the Saint Luke drawing the Virgin (Prague), which it resembles in many ways but where Gossart affects a more self‐conscious desire to evoke antiquity.

Gossart’s signed drawing of the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Copenhagen) is reckoned to precede another signed drawing of Augustus and the Sibyl (Berlin), which, inscribed ANWER, is thought to have been done in Antwerp, before his journey to Rome.¹³⁹ Both drawings include putti in the antique style, very similar to the babies who swarm across parts of NG 2790 and to the cherubs of the Malvagna triptych. Both drawings seem a little less disciplined in technique than the four drawings associated with the Roman journey; but this is scarcely surprising, since the Roman drawings are copies and Gossart had been taken to Rome in order to reproduce the monuments of antiquity. It is difficult to make constructive comparisons between drawings and a painting on the scale of NG 2790.

There is no necessity to believe that Gossart’s stay in Rome would have affected very profoundly the development of his style. He was interested in contrasts of tone and colour, in dramatic effects of recession, in distortions of perspective and in exotic ornament. He had more in common with Dürer than with his Roman contemporaries.

Notes

Infrared reflectography was carried out using OSIRIS (InGaAs digital sensor). For further details see p. 18, note 23.