Gerard David
Gerard David | |
---|---|
Netherlandish | |
Known for | Painting |
Movement | Early Netherlandish painting |
Gerard David (c. 1460 – 13 August 1523) was an
Life
He was born in
Ambrosius Benson served his apprenticeship with David, but they came into dispute around 1519 over a number of paintings and drawings Benson had collected from other artists. Because of a large debt owed to him by Benson,[9] David had refused to return the material. Benson pursued the matter legally and won, leading to David serving time in prison.[10][11]
He died on 13 August 1523 and was buried in the Church of Our Lady at Bruges.[12]
Style
David's surviving work mainly consists of religious scenes. They are characterised by an atmospheric, timeless, and almost dream like serenity, achieved through soft, warm and subtle colourisation, and masterful handling of light and shadow.[13] He is innovative in his recasting of traditional themes and in his approach to landscape, which was then only an emerging genre in northern European painting.[3] His ability with landscape can be seen in the detailed foliage of his Triptych of the Baptism and the forest scene in the New York Nativity.[13]
Many of the art historians of the early 20th century, including Erwin Panofsky and Max Jakob Friedländer saw him as a painter who did little but distill the style of others and painted in an archaic and unimaginative style. However today most view him as a master colourist, and a painter who according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, worked in a "progressive, even enterprising, mode, casting off his late medieval heritage and proceeding with a certain purity of vision in an age of transition."[14]
In his early work David followed Haarlem artists such as
He visited Antwerp in 1515 and was impressed with the work of Quentin Matsys,[3] who had introduced a greater vitality and intimacy in the conception of sacred themes. Together they worked to preserve the traditions of the Bruges school against influences of the Italian Renaissance.[4]
Works
The works for which David is best known are the
Only a few of his works have remained in Bruges:
The rest were scattered around the world, and to this may be due the oblivion into which his very name had fallen; this, and the fact that, some believed that for all the beauty and the soulfulness of his work, he had nothing innovative to add to the history of art.[14][15]
Even in his best work he had only given newer variations of the art of his predecessors and contemporaries. His rank among the masters was renewed, however, when a number of his paintings were assembled at the seminal 1902 Gruuthusemuseum, Bruges exhibition of early Flemish painters.[15]
He also worked closely with the leading
Less known but also of high quality are the works of David found in Spanish public collections. The Prado Museum in Madrid owns a table "Rest on the flight into Egypt" resembling the one in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The Prado also holds another two Works by the painter, one of them only attributed.[20] Another one of the Spanish capital's Museums, The Thyssen-Bornemisza holds a "Crucifixión"[21] from 1475.
Legacy
At the time of David's death, the glory of Bruges and its painters was on the wane: Antwerp had become the leader in art as well as in political and commercial importance. Of David's pupils in Bruges, only
David's name had been completely forgotten when in 1866
Gallery
-
The Nativity, c. 1490, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum
-
National Gallery, London, UK
-
The Judgment of Cambyses, 1498.Groeninge Museum, Bruges. Center panel
-
Triptych of Jean des Trompes, 1505. Groeninge Museum, Bruges. Center panel
-
Triptych of Jean des Trompes, 1505. Groeninge Museum, Bruges. Side panels
-
The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine 1505–1510, National Gallery, London
-
Altarpiece of St Michael c. 1510. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
-
Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1510–1515. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
-
Agony in the Garden, c. 1510–1520.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, France
-
Madonna and Child with the Milk Soup, c. 1510–1515.
-
Transfiguration of Christ. Church of Our Lady, Bruges
-
Adoration of the Kings, 1515–1523, National Gallery, London
-
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Gerard David, 16th century, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
-
Joos van der Burch and Saint Simon of Jerusalem, c. 1493, Fogg Museum at the Harvard Art Museums
References
Notes
- ^ "The Virgin Among The Virgins". Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen. 29 May 2013. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014.
- ^ Campbell, 116
- ^ a b c Hand, 63
- ^ OCLC 2163980.
- ^ Ainsworth (1998), 93
- ^ Ainsworth (1998), 2
- ^ Cuttler, Charles D. "Northern painting from Pucelle to Bruegel". Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. 190
- ^ Additional documents were presented by Hans J. van Miegroet, "New Documents Concerning Gerard David" The Art Bulletin 69.1 (March 1987:33–44).
- ^ Harbison, 73
- ^ Nash, 168, 193
- ^ Scheller, Robert W. Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (c. 900 – c. 1470). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995. p. 79.
- ^ "Gerard David :: Biography". Virtual Uffizi Gallery. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
- ^ a b Ridderbo et al., 157
- ^ a b c "Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523)". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 February 2013
- ^ a b c d e f Konody 1911.
- ^ "Flemish and German masterpieces from the National Gallery". National Gallery, London, 1920. 169
- ^ Campbell, 20
- ^ "Release Announcement". Christie's. Archived from the original on 13 December 2013.
- ISBN 1-903973-28-7
- ^ "David, Gérard – Colección – Museo Nacional del Prado". www.museodelprado.es. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
- ^ "The Crucifixion". Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
- ^ Weale, Gerard David, Painter and Illuminator 1895; the Virgo inter Virgines appears in a 1527 inventory of the Carmelite convent of Sion at Bruges.
Sources
- Ainsworth, Maryan Wynn. Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition. NY: ISBN 0-87099-877-3
- Ainsworth, Maryan Wynn; Christiansen, Keith. From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: ISBN 0-87099-870-6
- ISBN 0-300-07701-7
- ISBN 1-78067-027-3
- public domain: Konody, Paul George (1911). "David, Gerard". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 861. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Nash, Susie. Northern Renaissance art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-19-284269-2
- Ridderbos, Bernhard; Van Buren, Anne; Van Veen, Henk. Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-89236-816-0
External links
Media related to Gerard David at Wikimedia Commons
External videos | |
---|---|
David's The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, Smarthistory ("David's The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved 13 February 2013.) |
- "The Virgin Among The Virgins". Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen. 29 May 2013. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014.
- Gerard David | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Gerard David at Artcyclopedia
- Fifteenth- to eighteenth-century European paintings: France, Central Europe, the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain, a collection catalog fully available online as a PDF, which contains material on Gerard David (cat. no. 20-22)
- Gerard David : purity of vision in an age of transition, a collection catalog fully available online as a PDF
- Gerard David Foundation (Dutch)