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拍品专文
This masterly depiction of the Crucifixion is a significant addition to the work of the anonymous Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, who, alongside Hans Memling and the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, was one of the most important painters working in Bruges in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Named by Friedländer after a series of panels depicting the life of that saint in the Sint-Jacobskerk in Bruges, dated to 1480, the Master appears to have been a highly popular artist in the city and to have run a thriving workshop. Having produced paintings for local patrons like Donaes de Moor (who held a number of important civic positions in Bruges), as well as for international export to Italy, Spain and the Hanseatic region, the Portuguese provenance of this panel may indicate that it was also made for an Iberian patron.
Dr. Valentine Hendricks and Dr. Sacha Zdanov, to whom we are grateful, recognised in this work all of the hallmarks of the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy’s distinctive style (private correspondence, June 2021). The Virgin’s features, for example, find clear parallels in the Master’s Virgo inter Virgines (fig. 1; Detroit, Institute of Arts) and in the panels depicting the life of Saint Lucy from which the painter derived his name (Bruges, Sint- Jacobskerk). Likewise, the features of Saint John the Evangelist are entirely consistent with other works by the Master, for instance in the altarpiece painted for the Brotherhood of the Blackheads in Tallinn, a confraternity of unmarried merchants and foreign traders living in the city (Tallinn, Eesti Kunstimuuseum). The landscape, so typical of the Master’s work, employs the ‘plateau-landscape’ that had been popularised by Jan van Eyck in Bruges in the early-fifteenth century, with the viewer positioned on Mount Calvary directly before the Crucified Christ. Beyond, the landscape drops away, revealing a panoramic vista. The city of Jerusalem is shown for the most part as a vernacular Flemish town, employing, however, the bulb-shaped dome on the prominent building in the centre of the city to evoke the Temple.
The prominence of Mary Magdalene in the panel is striking. Dressed in a pale over gown, with elaborate undersleeves of red and gold brocade visible at her wrists, she is shown embracing the foot of the Cross, her purple and green mantle falling from her shoulders. This position was a highly significant one in the late Middle Ages, intended to show the saint’s profound compassion for the suffering of Christ and to inspire viewers to follow her example. Pseudo-Bonaventure’s widely read Meditations on the Life of Christ, for example, exhorted its readers to ‘Watch her [the Magdalene] carefully and meditate particularly on her devotion’ (I. Ragusa & R.B. Green, eds., Princeton, 1977, p. 172). As a penitent sinner, the Magdalene represented an attainable model for emulation, guiding the emotional and affective responses of those joining her, spiritually, at the foot of the Cross in mourning Christ and atoning for their sins.
Infrared imaging of the panel has revealed subtle changes in the composition between the underdrawing and the paint layers (Tager Stonor Richardson, October 2021, available upon request), most notably in the figure of Saint John the Evangelist. Here the saint's head in the underdrawing was originally positioned looking down towards the Magdalane, rather than being raised to look up at Christ on the Cross, in a similar composition to that seen in The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk painted in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in circa 1460 (Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art). In a similarly Rogierian fashion, Christ's loincloth in the underdrawing was arranged to allow the ends to flutter outwards at the side of the Cross. This, however, was removed in the paint layer to allow for the city of Jerusalem to be seen and depicted more clearly.
We are grateful to Dr. Valentine Hendricks and Dr. Sacha Zdanov for proposing the attribution to the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy. We are also grateful for Dr. Zdanov for his assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
Dr. Valentine Hendricks and Dr. Sacha Zdanov, to whom we are grateful, recognised in this work all of the hallmarks of the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy’s distinctive style (private correspondence, June 2021). The Virgin’s features, for example, find clear parallels in the Master’s Virgo inter Virgines (fig. 1; Detroit, Institute of Arts) and in the panels depicting the life of Saint Lucy from which the painter derived his name (Bruges, Sint- Jacobskerk). Likewise, the features of Saint John the Evangelist are entirely consistent with other works by the Master, for instance in the altarpiece painted for the Brotherhood of the Blackheads in Tallinn, a confraternity of unmarried merchants and foreign traders living in the city (Tallinn, Eesti Kunstimuuseum). The landscape, so typical of the Master’s work, employs the ‘plateau-landscape’ that had been popularised by Jan van Eyck in Bruges in the early-fifteenth century, with the viewer positioned on Mount Calvary directly before the Crucified Christ. Beyond, the landscape drops away, revealing a panoramic vista. The city of Jerusalem is shown for the most part as a vernacular Flemish town, employing, however, the bulb-shaped dome on the prominent building in the centre of the city to evoke the Temple.
The prominence of Mary Magdalene in the panel is striking. Dressed in a pale over gown, with elaborate undersleeves of red and gold brocade visible at her wrists, she is shown embracing the foot of the Cross, her purple and green mantle falling from her shoulders. This position was a highly significant one in the late Middle Ages, intended to show the saint’s profound compassion for the suffering of Christ and to inspire viewers to follow her example. Pseudo-Bonaventure’s widely read Meditations on the Life of Christ, for example, exhorted its readers to ‘Watch her [the Magdalene] carefully and meditate particularly on her devotion’ (I. Ragusa & R.B. Green, eds., Princeton, 1977, p. 172). As a penitent sinner, the Magdalene represented an attainable model for emulation, guiding the emotional and affective responses of those joining her, spiritually, at the foot of the Cross in mourning Christ and atoning for their sins.
Infrared imaging of the panel has revealed subtle changes in the composition between the underdrawing and the paint layers (Tager Stonor Richardson, October 2021, available upon request), most notably in the figure of Saint John the Evangelist. Here the saint's head in the underdrawing was originally positioned looking down towards the Magdalane, rather than being raised to look up at Christ on the Cross, in a similar composition to that seen in The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk painted in the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in circa 1460 (Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art). In a similarly Rogierian fashion, Christ's loincloth in the underdrawing was arranged to allow the ends to flutter outwards at the side of the Cross. This, however, was removed in the paint layer to allow for the city of Jerusalem to be seen and depicted more clearly.
We are grateful to Dr. Valentine Hendricks and Dr. Sacha Zdanov for proposing the attribution to the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy. We are also grateful for Dr. Zdanov for his assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.