Rogier van der Weyden, 'The Magdalen Reading', before 1438.
London, The National Gallery.

Rogier van der Weyden in the National Gallery

18 March - 4 July 1999
Room 1

Supported by The George Beaumont Group

A celebration of the sixth centenary of the birth of the Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden (c.1399 - 1464).

Rogier van der Weyden is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen and painters of all time. He was possibly the most influential artist of the 15th century, his fame echoing throughout Europe in the words of his contemporaries as 'the greatest' and 'the most noble' of painters. Only about twenty or so of his paintings survive, scattered across Europe and America, most being too fragile to travel. However this small display, featuring nine panels, reunited the three surviving fragments of one of his most ambitious altarpieces, 'The Virgin and Child with Six Saints', as well as two panels from his great series 'The Life of Saint Hubert'. The exhibition centred on the Gallery's own five paintings attributed to Rogier van der Weyden and his workshop and included two major loans from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and two important pictures from the Getty Museum in California. The display also featured discoveries made during the preparation of the new Gallery catalogue of 'The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools'.

One of the Gallery's best-loved pictures, van der Weyden's 'The Magdalen Reading' is in fact one surviving fragment of the lost altarpiece. For the first time it was brought together with the two other surviving fragments, the heads of 'Saint Catherine(?)' and 'Saint Joseph' from Lisbon, and displayed with a modern drawing (based on a 15th-century drawn copy) reconstructing the lost altarpiece. The Lisbon 'Saint Joseph' fitted exactly onto the Magdalen fragment to complete the image of the elderly Joseph against the rest of the window, with the treetops and a tower in the distance. 'Saint Catherine(?)', with flowing hair and rich jewelled robes, was from the opposite side of the altarpiece.

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