Full title | Donatrix: Right Hand Shutter |
---|---|
Artist | Workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aalst |
Artist dates | 1502 - 1550 |
Series | The Crucifixion Triptych |
Date made | probably 1527-30 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas, transferred from oak |
Dimensions | 76.2 x 43.2 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bequeathed by Mrs Joseph H. Green, 1880 |
Inventory number | NG1088.3 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
A woman kneels at prayer desk. We don't know who she is; she was once identified by a coat of arms – of which little now remains – on the side of her prayer desk. The painting is on the front of the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Her husband, possibly a member of the Bollis family of Sint-Truiden, faces her from the left wing.
In the landscape behind her, Christ rises into the sky. Below him, in a rocky landscape, are three of the soldiers who guarded his tomb: two recoil in terror, while the third sleeps. This is the Resurrection, a continuation of the narrative from the Crucifixion in the central panel.
The style of the triptych links it with the work of Bernaert van Orley and his pupil Pieter Coecke van Aalst – both also included secondary narratives in the backgrounds of their paintings – though its artist was much less gifted than them.
A woman with blue eyes and brown hair kneels at a prayer desk on which is an open book. She wears a black dress, trimmed and lined with brown fur. Her purplish underdress shows at the neckline and is ornamented with a round brooch; under that she wears a transparent chemise decorated in black. Her sleeves and underskirt are pinkish red. She wears rings, and a string of beads hangs from her belt.
We don‘t know who she is, but she is on the front of the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Her clothes are in the style of the mid-1520s, and she was once identified by a coat of arms – of which little now remains – on the side of her prayer desk. Her husband faces her from the left wing. He was possibly a member of the Bollis family of Sint-Truiden.
In the landscape behind her, Christ rises into the sky. Below him, in a rocky landscape, are three of the soldiers who guarded his tomb: two recoil in terror, while the third sleeps. This is the Resurrection, a continuation of the narrative from the Crucifixion in the central panel.
The style of the triptych links it with the work of Bernaert van Orley and his pupil Pieter Coecke van Aalst, both of whom also included secondary narratives in the backgrounds of their paintings. The painting on the inner wings is comparable to that of a triptych of the Lamentation painted by van Orley during the 1520s for Philippe Haneton (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels), and with Coecke’s triptych for Paul Robyns, apparently painted in the 1530s. The artist of our painting was much less gifted than van Orley or Coecke, however: the donors’ faces are badly foreshortened, and their hands are too large, inelegantly posed and inaccurately drawn.
Technical analysis has revealed extensive underdrawing in the wings, and where the paint has become thin this is visible to the naked eye. The underdrawing is confident, rapid and sketchy, and has been quite carefully followed for the donor figures. It gives only an approximation of the landscape and the prayer desks, however. The underdrawing of the background is so sketchy that is it impossible to tell whether the narrative scenes were suggested at all. The Resurrection was painted on top of the landscape.
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Donatrix: Right Hand Shutter
The Crucifixion Triptych
Two donors – husband and wife – kneel in the wings of this triptych (a painting in three parts) and gaze at the Crucifixion in the central panel. The Annunciation – the moment the Virgin Mary was told she would bear a child – was originally painted in shades of grey on the outside of the wings, but the fronts and backs are now physically separate.
The style of the painting associates it with the work of Bernaert van Orley and especially his pupil, Pieter Coecke van Aalst. Coecke seems to have run a large workshop and several artists of limited ability seem to have been involved in this painting. This image of the Crucifixion was evidently a popular composition: several versions of it survive.
Two donors – husband and wife – kneel in the wings of this triptych, gazing at the Crucifixion in the central panel. The Annunciation was originally painted in grisaille on the outside of the left and right wings, but the fronts and backs are now physically separate.
The style of the painting links it with the work of Bernaert van Orley, and especially with that of his pupil Pieter Coecke van Aalst. Like the figures in the central Crucifixion, Coecke’s compositions are self-consciously staged, as if his people are being directed by choreographers. This was evidently a popular composition: a triptych with different donors was in a St Petersburg collection in the nineteenth century, and three versions of the centre panel survive in European collections. All parts of the triptych were probably made shortly after Coecke became a master of the Antwerp Guild in 1527–8.
We don't know who the donors are, although coats of arms hang on the sides of their prayer desks (the woman’s is completely erased). The man might a member of the Bollis family, possibly Willem Bollis, who in 1519 was a member of the court of the Prince-Bishop of Liège at Sint-Truiden. Coecke’s workshop certainly produced paintings for patrons in Sint-Truiden. They worked for two abbots of St Trudo, the great Benedictine monastery there, painting an Annunciation (Hasselt, Bisdom) for Willem van Brussel, abbot from 1516 to 1532, and producing a series of painted panels to complete a carved altarpiece of the Life and Passion of Christ for his successor, Joris Sarens, in 1534.
The centre panel and the fronts of the wings were transferred to canvas in the nineteenth century. The Annunciation is still on the original oak boards, thinned where they were sawn from the fronts.





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