Gerard David, 'The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor', probably 1510

The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor

Gerard David

Not on display

About the work

Overview

The Virgin and Child are enthroned in a walled garden with three saints. Saint Mary Magdalene holds her pot of oil, while the richly dressed Saint Barbara has a tower – her attribute, or emblem – in her headdress. The wheel on which Saint Catherine was tortured is visible behind her, and Christ places a ring on her finger, an allusion to her ‘mystic marriage’ (a way of visualising her spiritual union with Christ).

On the left is Richard de Visch van der Capelle, canon of Saint Donatian’s in Bruges. This painting was probably the altarpiece of his family chapel there, and might have been painted towards the end of his life or perhaps even after his death in 1511. The style is very close to David’s 1509 altarpiece (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen) and Richard’s head does not seem to have been painted from life. Perhaps he was too old or infirm, or perhaps David, who would have known Richard, was working from memory.

In-depth

The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are enthroned in a walled garden – a metaphor for Mary’s virginity – with three female saints. Small details tell us who they are. On the right, Saint Mary Magdalene holds the pot of oil with which she anointed Christ’s feet, while Saint Barbara, who was imprisoned in a tower by her father, has a tower in her headdress. On the left is Saint Catherine, dressed as a princess. The wheel on which Catherine was tortured for her faith is just visible leaning on the marble pillar behind her, and she is being given a ring by the Christ Child – an allusion to her ‘mystic marriage’ with Christ (a way of visualising her spiritual union with him him).

On the far left is the donor, Richard de Visch van der Capelle, canon and cantor of the Collegiate Church of Saint Donatian in Bruges (and friend of Bernardijn Salviati, commissioner of David’s Canon Bernardijn Salviati and Three Saints). The greyhound lying on the tiled floor in front of him has his family’s coat of arms on its collar. This painting probably once sat on the altar of Richard’s family chapel in Saint Donatian’s. Although the chapel was dedicated to Saint Anthony – who peers out from under a vine-covered walkway behind Saint Barbara – the altar was dedicated to Saint Catherine, to whom Richard was deeply devoted. The angel picking grapes immediately behind Richard could be an allusion to the wine of the Mass.

Born in the 1420s, Richard was one of three illegitimate children of the younger son of a noble family with long-standing connections with the Collegiate Church of Saint Donatian. His father was a priest and an important official there, a path which Richard followed, becoming Cantor in 1463, at the same time as pursuing a successful career at the Burgundian court. In spite of his illegitimacy, Richard was very concerned for his family’s prestige. In the 1480s he wrote a will setting out his plans to be buried in the family chapel, to re-glaze the windows with his family’s coat of arms and to decorate it with statues of saints and a new altarpiece. Not all of these seem to have been in place when he died, aged well over 80, in 1511.

Richard would have known Gerard David personally, for both were members of the same confraternity. He must have been aware of the altarpiece David painted for his friend Salviati in 1501, and of the one he gave to the convent of Our Lady of Sion at Bruges in 1509 (Musėe des Beaux-Arts, Rouen).

The style of this painting is very close to that of the Rouen altarpiece – the head of Saint Barbara and the Virgin’s draperies are almost identical – and to a Virgin and Child painted in 1506 (Palazzo Bianco, Genoa).The underdrawing for Christ in this picture resembles how he is shown in the Rouen and Genoa works, though the final painted version is less similar. David evidently liked recycling ideas and it seems clear that this painting and the Rouen and Genoa panels were all produced in the same workshop in the same period.

Curiously the portrait of Richard does not seem to have been painted from life. He may have been too old or ill to sit for it, or it may have been done after his death. Could one of Salviati’s tasks as his executor have been commissioning this painting in accordance with his friend’s will?

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor
Artist: Gerard David
Artist dates: active 1484; died 1523
Date made: probably 1510
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 105.8 × 144.4 cm
Inscription summary: Inscribed
Acquisition credit: Bequeathed by Mrs Lyne Stephens, 1895
Inventory number: NG1432
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 17th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

The donor is Richard de Visch van der Capelle, Canon and Cantor of the Collegiate Church of St Donatian in Bruges. He endowed a chapel there; NG 1432 may have been placed in the chapel. It is not established with absolute certainty that the painting was ever in the church, which was plundered in 1578 and demolished in 1799–1800. NG 1432 was first recorded in a sale at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 18 January 1877 (no. 12). In the catalogue it was claimed to have been painted by Hugo van der Goes in Italy ‘for the chapel of the marchesi Giustiniani, where it has remained until this day’. The marchesi Giustiniani were perhaps the heirs of the collector Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637), a Genoese nobleman who settled in Rome and who was created a marchese in 1605. His heir the Marchese Pantaleo Giustiniani succeeded to the Roman property in 1857 and died in Genoa in 1867; his son Alessandro between 1882 and 1896 fought and lost a lawsuit with other members of the Giustiniani family and retired to Genoa. According to an article published in 1877, the painting had left its altar only to be sent directly from Italy to Etienne Le Roy: the celebrated Belgian restorer Etienne-Victor Le Roy (1808–78), then in his declining years. According to Weale, however, it had remained in St Donatian’s at Bruges until 1793 and ‘has never travelled further south than Paris’. At the sale of 1877 it was bought by a dealer who sold it soon afterwards to Lebrun. By 1878 it belonged to Etienne-Edmond Martin (1825–1906), second Baron de Beurnonville. Lot 287 at the Beurnonville sale in Paris on 14–16 May 1881, it had passed by 1888 into the possession of Yolande Marie Louise Duvernay (1813–94), widow of Stephens Lyne-Stephens. Known as Pauline Duvernay, she had been a dancer at the Paris Opéra and in London but had retired in 1845 to marry a banker said to have been the richest commoner in England. She had residences at Roehampton, in Norfolk and in Paris, where she kept NG 1432. In Paris on 23 June 1888 she made a will bequeathing this and two other pictures to the National Gallery. Her bequest was received in 1895.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Lorne Campbell, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools’, London 1998; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2021

The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist

The National Gallery (London)

20 November 2021 - 27 February 2022

Bibliography

1665

Catalogue de 32 tableaux anciens composant en partie la collection de M. Edward O…, Paris 1665
1665

B. de Monconys, Journal des voyages de monsieur de Monconys, 3 vols, Lyon 1665
1731

J.F. Foppens and J. Beernaerts, Compendium chronologicum episcoporum brugensium, Bruges 1731
1861

J. Gailliard, Inscriptions funéraires et monumentales de la Flandre occidentale avec des données historiques et généalogiques: Arrondissements de Bruges, Bruges 1861
1863

W.H.J. Weale, 'Gerard David', Le Beffroi, I, 1863, pp. 223-34
1863

W.H.J. Weale, 'Inventaire du trésor de la collégiale de Saint Donatien à Bruges 1347-1539', Le Beffroi, I, 1863, pp. 323-37
1866

W.H.J. Weale, 'Le couvent des sœurs Notre-Dame dit de Sion à Bruges', Le Beffroi, III, 1866, pp. 334-70
1877

F. Gonse, 'Un nouveau tableau de Gerard David', Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité, 1877, pp. 19-20
1877

'Chronique de l'Hôtel Drouot', L'Art, VIII, 1877
1878

W.H.J. Weale, 'Loan Exhibition of Pictures at the Tuileries', The Academy, XIV, 1878
1878

F. Reiset, Notice des dessins, cartons, pastels, miniatures et emaux exposés dans la salle du 1er et du 2e étage au Musée National du Louvre, Paris 1878
1881

Hôtel Drouot, Catalogue des tableaux anciens de toutes les écoles composant la très importante collection de M. le Bon. de Beurnonville, Paris, 9 May 1881 - 16 May 1881
1886

G.B. di Crollalanza, Dizionario storico-blasonico delle famiglie nobili e notabili italiane, estinte e fiorenti, Pisa 1886
1890

H. Hymans, '"Le Roy" (Etienne Victor)', in Biographie Nationale. Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels 1890
1891

L. Gilliodts-van Severen, Coutumes des pays et comté de Flandre: Quartier de Bruges: Coutumes des petites villes et seigneuries enclavées, Brussels 1891
1895

W.H.J. Weale, Gerard David: Painter and Illuminator, London 1895
1897

Baron Béthune, Épitaphes et monuments des églises de la Flandre au XVIme siècle, d'après les manuscrits de Corneille Gailliard et d'autres auteurs, Bruges 1897
1898

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, with Biographical Notes of the Painters: Foreign Schools, 78th edn, London 1898
1898

J.-T. de Raadt, Sceaux armoriés des Pays-Bas et des pays avoisinants, Bruxelles 1898
1901

F. Boase, Modern English Biography, Truro 1901
1905

S. Reinach, Répertoire de peintres du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance (1250-1580), 4 vols, Paris 1905
1907

A.-C. de Schrevel, 'Richard de Capelle', in BNB (Biographie Nationale. Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique), Brussels 1907, vol. 19, pp. cols. 249-250
1910

C.A. Bertini, La storia delle Famiglie Romane di Teodoro Amayden, Rome 1910
1924

M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, 14 vols, Berlin 1924
1929

F. Dülberg, Niederländische Malerei der Spätgotik und Renaissance, Berlin 1929
1935

C.W. Beaumont, Three French Dancers of the 19th Century, London 1935
1938

R.A. Parmentier, Indices op de Brugsche Poorterboeken, 2 vols, Bruges 1938
1945

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, London 1945
1953

M. Davies, The National Gallery, London, Les Primitifs flamands. I, Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pay-Bas méridionaux au quinzième siècle 3, 2 vols, Antwerp 1953
1953

E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, Cambridge 1953
1955

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1955
1959

R. Herlequin, 'Les Beurnonville', Cahiers Haut-Marnais, LVII, 1959, pp. 66-78
1960

L. Salerno, 'The Picture Gallery of Vincenzo Giustiniani', The Burlington Magazine, CII, 1960, pp. 21-7, 93-104, 135-48
1965

S.J. Gudlaugsson, 'Gerard David', in G. Bazin et al., Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, Zürich 1965, pp. 34-7
1967

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, eds N. Veronée-Verhaegen and H. Pauwels, trans. H. Norden, 14 vols, Leiden 1967
1968

C.D. Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, New York 1968
1970

P. Philippot, Pittura fiamminga e Rinascimento italiano, Turin 1970
1973

The National Gallery, The National Gallery: January 1971 - December 1972, London 1973
1975

D.G. Scillia, Gerard David and Manuscript Illumination in the Lowlands, Phd Thesis, Case Western Reserve University 1975
1976

E. Heller, Das altniederländische Stiferbild, Tuduv Studien, Reihe Kulturwisenschaftend, Phd Thesis, Munich 1976
1979

J. Mills and R. White, 'Analyses of Paint Media', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, III, 1979, pp. 66-7
1979

M. Wyld, A. Roy and A. Smith, 'Gerard David's "The Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor"', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, III, 1979, pp. 51-65
1980

A.J.M. Kerckhoffs-De Heij, De Grote Raad en zijn functionarissen, 1477-1531, Amsterdam 1980
1980

E.J. Mundy, Gerard David Studies, Princeton 1980
1981

E. Wartop, Rijksarchief te Mortrijk. Inventaris van het fonds d'Ennetieres, Brussels 1981
1981

A. Janssens de Bisthoven, Stedelijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Groeningenmuseum) Brugge, Vlaamse Primitieven. 1. Corpus van de Vijftiende-eeuwse Schilderkunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. 1, Brussels 1981
1982

C.J. Mundy, Gerard David Studies, Ann Arbor 1982
1982

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1986

R. Genaille, 'Le paysage flamand et wallon au XVIe siècle', Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1986
1987

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Early Netherlandish School, 3rd edn, London 1987
1987

D. de Vos, 'Gerard David', in Nationaal biografisch woordenboek, Brussels 1987, vol. 12
1990

K. Clark, 100 Details from Pictures in the National Gallery, 2nd edn, London 1990
1991

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1991

J.C. Wilson, 'Connoisseurship and Copies: The Case of the Rouen Grouping', Gazette des beaux-arts, CXVII, 1994, pp. 191-206
1996

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1997

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1997

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1998

Campbell, Lorne, National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings, London 1998
1998

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2001

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2021

P. van den Brink (ed.), Dürer's war hier: eine Reise wird Legende (exh. cat., Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen), Aachen 2021

Frame

The cassetta frame was crafted in poplar wood in seventeenth-century Italy. This type of frame is known as a Marche frame, named after its place of origin in Italy. The style is renowned for its painted tortoiseshell and incised water-gilt panels on the frieze centre and corners. The surrounding ebonised mouldings are highlighted with gold leaf.

The frame was purchased from the framemaker Arthur Field in 1930 and was given to the framemaker F. Draper for alterations and conversion to a glazing door.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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A well-dressed woman, hands folded in prayer, kneels in what was once the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Behind her is Saint Paul. The other wing, also in the National Gallery’s collection, shows her husband kneeling with Saint Peter. The central panel is missing, but it wa...

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You've viewed 6 of 8 works

Gerard David, 'The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor', probably 1510

About the work

Overview

In-depth

Key facts

Details

Provenance

Additional information

Source

Exhibition history

Bibliography

Frame

About this record

Images

More works by Gerard David