BROEDERLAM, Melchior

The picture shows the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The most distinctive aspect of the Dijon Altarpiece is the arrangement of the sacred architectural settings which occupy virtually all of two out of the four scenes. At the moment of the Annunciation, Mary is sitting in a small pavilion attached to a much larger and much grander building behind. The slender rib vaults, the two windows surmounted by clover-leaf tracery, and the rectangular paving mark the style as Gothic. But the relationship between the pavilion and the surrounding space is unusual, as is the way the room is opened out on two sides in order to afford an unimpeded view of the Virgin.

The same is true of the temple in the Presentation of Christ. The Holy Family, St Simeon and a servant girl, who carries a candle in her right hand and a basket with two doves in her left, all gather round the Christ Child. Again, the building in which they stand is open onto the world outside, as if the painter were trying to show us both interior and exterior simultaneously. This apparent contradiction is a convention which Broederlam has borrowed from the paintings of the Italian Trecento, where similar buildings are to be found in the works of Giotto and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, among others.

Towards 1400 the court of Burgundy was an important centre of art. Commissioned by Philippe the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Melchior Broederlam, a native of Ypres - who, from 1384 onwards, served the Duke as “peintre et valet de chambre” - undertook the paintings on the lavishly decorated altar of the Carthusian monastery of Champmol. Left of centre the Virgin, seated at a lectern in a Gothic porch with traceried windows placed diagonally across the picture and leading to an elaborately designed building set behind it, listens to the words of the angel. This type of long, narrow building, supported on fragile columns, is to be found in the Italian paintings of Giotto’s successors. The harmony connecting the natural and architectural background and the human figures, the contrast between the rigid lines of the building on the one hand, and the more picturesque curves of the mountainous landscape on the other, and the lyric beauty of the figures makes the altarpiece one of the masterpieces of Burgundian art.

The picture shows a detail of the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The lily with four flowers, which stands between Mary and the angel Gabriel in the foreground is a well-established symbol of virginity. Commentators have drawn attention to the angel bowing before Mary, with his curly hair and elegant figure, as if he were a heavenly troubadour pledging allegiance to his lady. Mary’s ultramarine cloak and her brocade dress of blue and gold, with its details picked out in red, are of the style which was favoured at that time by ladies of the Burgundian court. It would seem that even the cut of his figure’s clothes, Broederlam may have been following instructions from his patron, Philip the Bold.

The picture shows a detail of the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The lily with four flowers, which stands between Mary and the angel Gabriel in the foreground is a well-established symbol of virginity.

The picture shows a detail of the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

A golden ray originates from the mouth of God the Father and runs from the upper left corner to the Virgin of the Annunciation.

At the moment of the Annunciation, Mary is sitting in a small pavilion attached to a much larger and much grander building behind. The slender rib vaults, the two windows surmounted by clover-leaf tracery, and the rectangular paving mark the style as Gothic.

The picture shows the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The unusual shape of this picture is due to the fact that it formed the side-panel of a triptych, and as such it had to fit the shape of the central shrine containing groups of sculptures. Broederlam endeavoured to fill all empty spaces with a more or less even distribution of painted forms. However, the spectator sees not only the central motif set out on a decoratively arranged plane, but can also look beyond into the depths of both the architectural and landscape aspects of the background.

The Virgin receives the angel in a Gothic hall which is open on both sides; nearby there is a building with a circular ground-plan. Associated with this building we can see a hall running parallel with the plane of the picture, and ending at a two-storeyed building which is Italian in character. The architectural ensemble is rather loosely organized, because the painter wanted to express intricate symbolic ideas with the component shapes. (The somewhat oriental, vaulted church, for example, stands for the Old Testament and the Gothic hall for the New Testament, etc.) On the right-hand side of the panel Mary and Elizabeth meet in front of a bare, rocky, mountainous landscape. The background fills up the surface of the picture and adapts to the irregular lines of the frame, but, at the same time, it extends into depth too.

The painter has imposed a unity on the surroundings of the two scenes in a variety of ways. One of these is the decision to depict the angel in an open-air setting. He contrasts the brownish, grassy ground outside the group of buildings with the gorgeous flower garden (hortus conclusus) on the left-hand side of the picture, but in this way natural surroundings are integrated with the stone buildings. The two parts of the composition are also ingeniously connected, the smooth plateau of the mountain fitting into the ledges of the round edifice. The Virgin is the static figure on each side, while the Archangel Gabriel and Elizabeth, corresponding in their colours, approach her from opposite directions. The course of their movements is emphasized by the structure of the building with the obliquely placed hall, and by the semicircular line of the precipice in the foreground of the landscape.

But further devices, too, contribute to the unity of the composition: the clever use of the complicated form of the frame. Just as the golden ray, which originates from the mouth of God the Father and runs to the Virgin of the Annunciation, the slanting line of the frame leads to the Virgin of the Visitation. (If, in our imagination, we lengthen the divine beam of light upwards, it runs to the peak of the frame.) The upper right and bottom left corners are united by another diagonal line: the imaginary one that connects Gabriel, the Virgin and the angel, and there are additional echoes in the colours of the apparel of all the figures.

At the request of Philip the Bold, Broederlam painted both the outer panels and inner polychrome decoration of at least two altarpieces sculpted by Jacques de Baerze, that were intended for the chartreuse de Champmol. Of these two altarpieces, only that in the Mus�e des Beaux-Arts in Dijon still features its painted outer panels. They represent four biblical scenes: on the left, The Annunciation and The Visitation; on the right, The Presentation of Christ and The Flight into Egypt.

The most significant of the four scenes of the Dijon Altarpiece is that representing the Flight into Egypt. The Gospel according to St Matthew relates this episode in a few succinct words: “And Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt.” With only this brief indication from the original text, painters have always had to draw on other sources in order to add flesh to their image.

In the Dijon altarpiece, the Virgin is seen in profile, riding side-saddle on a small donkey. She holds the baby Jesus pressed to her cheek. He is wrapped in swaddling bands, and she has drawn her large cloak up around him. The child and his mother are looking at each other. St Joseph is leading the donkey by the halter, while he pours drink into his mouth from a small keg. He carries a stick over his left shoulder, from which his coat and a small pot with a ladle have been hung. He is wearing a hood and a surcoat held in by a leather belt at the waist. He has slipped his purse under the belt, and his leather boots seem to have been worn out by the long journey he has made on foot. He has a hooked nose, a curly beard and bushy eyebrows. The Holy Family have turned out of a sunken road running alongside a stream, and are about to climb a twisting path that leads away to the right across an arid mountainside. In the foreground, the water that wells up out of the rock is collected in a small rectangular basin, from which it pours out through a spout to low away freely once again. At the foot of the mountain stands a small statue of a warrior, armed with a lance. The statue has been broken in two, an allusion to the end of idolatry. A castle is perched high up on the peak of the mountain, well above the scene.

The heads of the Virgin and Child, unlike that of Joseph, are both surrounded by a golden halo. Indeed, Joseph hardly corresponds to the conventional idea of a saint at all. Broederlam has portrayed him as a rough working man, a tired labourer weighed down by his heavy clothes. Some have even called him a tramp, and suggested that that it may not be water which he is slaking his thirst, but something stronger. Perhaps such stern jjudgments are themselves merely one reflection of the ambivalent cult that grew up around the figure of Joseph towards the end of the Middle Ages, for it was that time that he began to be openly caricatures, and depicted as a peasant who deserved to be ridiculed rather than revered. What really distinguished Broederlam’s Joseph however is the fact that he is the only ordinary man in the whole altarpiece. He marks the first appearance in painting of an irremediably earthbound reality. From then on, from the Van Eyck brothers to Quentin Massys, this reality would be a constant theme of Flemish artists, even though their work was essentially religious in inspiration. Henceforth, there would be a continuous and growing emphasis on the physicality of the figures depicted, and the details of their appearance, as artist sought to capture their individuality by endowing them with a tangible presence. It is in this sense that Broederlam’s Joseph signals the beginning of one of the most significant revolutions in the history of the visual arts.

The most significant of the four scenes of the Dijon Altarpiece is that representing the Flight into Egypt. The Gospel according to St Matthew relates this episode in a few succinct words: “And Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt.” With only this brief indication from the original text, painters have always had to draw on other sources in order to add flesh to their image.

The picture shows a detail of the Flight into Egypt on the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The Virgin is seen in profile, riding side-saddle on a small donkey. She holds the baby Jesus pressed to her cheek. He is wrapped in swaddling bands, and she has drawn her large cloak up around him. The child and his mother are looking at each other. The heads of the Virgin and Child, unlike that of Joseph, are both surrounded by a golden halo.

The picture shows a detail of the Flight into Egypt on the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

St Joseph is leading the donkey by the halter, while he pours drink into his mouth from a small keg. He carries a stick over his left shoulder, from which his coat and a small pot with a ladle have been hung. He is wearing a hood and a surcoat held in by a leather belt at the waist. He has slipped his purse under the belt, and his leather boots seem to have been worn out by the long journey he has made on foot. He has a hooked nose, a curly beard and bushy eyebrows.

Joseph hardly corresponds to the conventional idea of a saint at all. Broederlam has portrayed him as a rough working man, a tired labourer weighed down by his heavy clothes. Some have even called him a tramp, and suggested that that it may not be water which he is slaking his thirst, but something stronger. Perhaps such stern jjudgments are themselves merely one reflection of the ambivalent cult that grew up around the figure of Joseph towards the end of the Middle Ages, for it was that time that he began to be openly caricatures, and depicted as a peasant who deserved to be ridiculed rather than revered. What really distinguished Broederlam’s Joseph however is the fact that he is the only ordinary man in the whole altarpiece. He marks the first appearance in painting of an irremediably earthbound reality.

The picture shows a detail of the Flight into Egypt on the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

At the foot of the mountain stands a small statue of a warrior, armed with a lance. The statue has been broken in two, an allusion to the end of idolatry.

The picture shows a detail of the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The Holy Family, St Simeon and a servant girl, who carries a candle in her right hand and a basket with two doves in her left, all gather round the Christ Child.

The picture shows a detail of the right wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The picture shows a detail of the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece.

The Visitation is not a literal rendering of the Bible story. Broederlam gives us the essence of St Luke’s text: Mary, already pregnant with the Infant Jesus, meets her cousin Elizabeth who, although supposedly barren, is now by the grace of God expecting a child in her old age. In the painting, the two women are depicted side by side. Mary wears a large blue cloak which she gathers round herself with one hand, while with her free hand she gestures towards Elizabeth. The older woman is dressed in red and green, her head veiled in a fine white material. Although the painter has followed the Scriptures by setting the scene in a mountainous landscape, according to the Gospel the two women meet inside Zacharias’s house and not as here, outdoors, in the shadow of a steep rocky cliff.

A pair of angels are flying at the top of the two wings.