Petrus Christus

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The Annunciation, c. 1450, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Petrus Christus (Dutch:

manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him.[1] The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl
(c. 1470); both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.

For the period between the death of Jan van Eyck in 1441 and Hans Memling establishing himself in the city in the mid-1460s, Christus was the leading painter in Bruges, which was then the leading Netherlandish centre of painting.[2]

Christus was an anonymous figure for centuries, his importance not established until the work of modern art historians. Giorgio Vasari barely mentions him in his biographies of painters, written in the Renaissance, and near contemporary records merely list him amongst many others. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Gustav Waagen (who identified him French-style as "Pierre Christophsen") and Johann David Passavant were important in establishing Christus's biographical details and in attributing works to him.[3]

Life

Isabel of Portugal with St. Elizabeth, 1457–60. Groeningemuseum, Bruges

Christus was born in

Dirk Bouts, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden.

Portrait of a Young Girl, c. 1470. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

It is unknown whether Christus visited Italy, and brought style and technical accomplishments of the Northern European painters directly to Antonello da Messina and other Italian artists, but it is known that his paintings were purchased by Italians from the large community of foreign merchants in Bruges. Indeed, nearly half of his paintings were commissioned by Italians, or have a provenance from Italy or Spain, or were soon copied in those countries.[7]

A document testifying to the presence of a "Piero da Bruggia" (Petrus from Bruges?) in Milan may suggest that he visited that city at the same time as Antonello, and the two artists may even have met. This might account for the remarkable similarities between the Portrait of a Man attributed to Christus in the

linear perspective. Antonello, along with Giovanni Bellini
, was one of the first Italian painters to use oil paint like his Netherlandish contemporaries. Further, Christus' Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Francis and Jerome in Frankfurt, seemingly dated 1457 (the third digit is illegible), is the first known Northern picture to demonstrate accurate linear perspective.

In 1462, Christus and his wife, Gaudicine, enrolled at the Confraternity of the Dry Tree,[8] from which his Madonna of the Dry Tree may derive its name.[9] He was made a member of the Guild of Saint Luke and made dean of the guild in 1471. Bruges listed him dead in 1473,[8][10] though the Metropolitan Museum of Art says he died in 1475 or 1476.[1]

Hans Memling succeeded Christus as the next great painter in Bruges.

Works

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1449), the so-called "Berlin Altar Wings" with the Annunciation, Nativity, and Last Judgment (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1452), and the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Jerome and Francis (Städel, Frankfurt am Main, 1457?). In addition, a pair of panels in the Groeningemuseum
in Bruges (showing the Annunciation and Nativity) bears a date of 1452, but its authenticity is suspect.

The composition of a Lamentation, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seems so closely inspired a marble relief by Antonello Gagini in the cathedral at Palermo that it has been suggested that the picture may have been painted for an Italian client.[11] The Metropolitan Museum of Art has five of the thirty paintings usually attributed to him.[1]

A late work, the reserved Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 1470, Berlin) belongs among the masterworks of Early Netherlandish painting, marking a new development in Netherlandish portraiture. It no longer shows the sitter in front of a neutral background, but in a concrete space defined by the background wall panels. Christus had already perfected this format in his two portraits of 1446. The unknown woman, whose exquisite clothing suggests that she might come from France, radiates an aura of discretion and of nobility, while appearing slightly unreal in the elegant stylization of her form.[12]

The Portrait of a Carthusian is the earliest known example of panel painting with a trompe-l'œil fly. [13]

Gallery

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "Petrus Christus (active by 1444, died 1475/76)". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 9 March 2014
  2. ^ Ainsworth, 33–34
  3. ^ Upton (1990), 2
  4. ^ Davies, Martin. "Netherlandish Primitives: Petrus Christus". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Volume 70, No. 408, 1937. 138–39, 143
  5. ^ Martens (1990), 5
  6. ^ Martens (1990), 5–6
  7. ^ Ainsworth, 34
  8. ^
    OCLC 2163980
    .
  9. ^ Borobia, Mar. "The Virgin of the dry Treeca. 1465". Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Retrieved 2 August 2020
  10. ^ "Petrus Christus | Netherlandish painter". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  11. ^ The Lamentation Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved October 24, 2014.
  12. ^ Kemperdick (2006), 23
  13. ^ Kandice Rawlings, Painted Paradoxes: The Trompe-L’Oeil Fly in the Renaissance, Athanor, vol. 26, 2008, pp. 7-13

References

Further reading

External links

Media related to Paintings by Petrus Christus at Wikimedia Commons

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