CHRISTUS, Petrus

This panel and another representing the wife of the donator originally were the lateral wings of a triptych the central panel of which is lost.

Petrus Christus belonged to the same generation as Van der Weyden, but was perhaps a little younger. He came to Bruges from North Brabant, possibly after completing his initial training in Haarlem. His style is strongly modelled on that of Van Eyck and so there is good reason for suspecting he was Jan’s apprentice, even though he did not purchase free citizenship of Bruges until three years after his putative master’s death.

The two panels by Christus, the Annunciation and the Nativity were quite badly worn, but painstakingly restored. Both of them are signed and dated (1452) and were probably painted as part of a triptych or polyptych. They reveal Christus as a precise designer of space and moulder of volumes. The figures in the Annunciation resemble statues arranged in a geometrically constructed show-case. It is the first painting in the Netherlands with a correct central perspective.

The panel was a wing of a triptych. Another wing, The Last Judgment, is also in the Berlin museum.

The painting was probably the central panel of a triptych.

This is the left wing of a triptych. The original triptych with the Mater Dolorosa in the central panel and St Catherine in the right wing was part of the collection of Margaret of Austria. The small triptych was probably commissioned by Isabel of Portugal who ordered the triptych at the time of her retirement to a Franciscan convent in Nieppe, France, in 1457. It later entered Margaret of Austria’s collection. The panel shows Isabel of Portugal with Saint Elizabeth and features the typical, finely chiseled and almost doll-like style of this introverted minor master whose work is not devoid of originality.

We know very little about the life of Petrus Christus, though it is certain that in 1444 he obtained the citizenship of Bruges, then the richest town in Flanders and its main artistic centre. He may have been the pupil of Jan van Eyck, and in his surviving panel paintings we can see that his solutions to problems of composition and his figure types are similar to those of his predecessor. Indeed Christus’s delicately wrought and brilliantly coloured works served to popularise the technique and manner of Van Eyck.

Some fifteen to twenty works by Christus are known, one of which is The Virgin and Child, probably the surviving part of a triptych for home devotion. Framed by a semi-circular arch resting on slender columns and with a pleasant landscape in the background, the Virgin looks tenderly down at the naked Infant supported on her arm. Every detail has been painted with meticulous care - the minute wrinkles on the Infant’s face, the foliage of the trees in the distance and the statuette of Adam and Eve on the columns at the sides, which, in alluding to the Fall, emphasize the coming Redemption through Christ. Other versions and copies have survived, indicating the popularity of this picture over the years, but unfortunately none of them give any clue as to when it was painted or who commissioned it.

The Madonna and Child (the Exeter Madonna) are depicted with St Barbara and a Carthusian monk.

The two panels by Christus, the Annunciation and the Nativity were quite badly worn, but painstakingly restored. Both of them are signed and dated (1452) and were probably painted as part of a triptych or polyptych. They reveal Christus as a precise designer of space and moulder of volumes. The figures in the Annunciation resemble statues arranged in a geometrically constructed show-case. It is the first painting in the Netherlands with a correct central perspective.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 6 minutes):

Josquin Desprez: Benedicta es coelorum Regina, motet

Christus’s most personal works are his portraits, notably this portrait in which he abandons the dark backgrounds of van Eyck and van der Weyden and places his sitter in a clearly defined interior. The portrait of Edward Grimston is one of the two earliest signed and dated works by Petrus Christus.

Edward Grimston was a diplomat in the service of Henry VI, King of England. He had been sent to the Netherlands in 1445-46, during which time Christus executed his portrait. The bust of the sitter appears in the corner of a room that is illuminated by light shining through an oculus window.

Although this is a preparatory drawing, the artist added many secondary details, devoting as much attention to the room as to the man. The shelves are filled with books, writing materials and a pitcher. The beams of the ceiling and the wooden panelling of the back wall are sketched in.

Although the general quality of Petrus Christus’s work is in doubt, a single painting, generally dated from the end of his active life, is convincing. It is the Portrait of a Young Girl in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. The surface has the brilliance of porcelain and the purity of the overall effect looks forward to Vermeer. The lively expression of the girl and her oblique glance, suggesting that something or someone just outside the frame has caught her attention, contrasts with the frontal composition. The pink of her cheeks and lips introduces some warmth into the face, while the pure white and brown-black of the eyes echo the underlying tones of the wall behind her. Petrus Christus’s portraits were once condescendingly described as rough-hewn and stilted. Yet this young girl is surely closer to Upton’s description of her: “a polished pearl, almost opalescent, lying on a cushion of black velvet”.

The painting is probably the left wing of a triptych.

After a long period in oblivion, Christus is today regarded as Jan van Eyck’s successor. He was probably van Eyck’s pupil, and on his death took over the workshop and completed van Eyck’s unfinished work. His significance today lies in his further development of the art of perspective. He was the first painter in the North who arrived empirically at the law of linear perspective and who applied it. His significant portraits are marked by their concentration on just a few characteristic details. He was also the first Dutch master to place the sitter not before a neutral background but in front of a recognisable interior. After he was made master and burgher of Bruges in 1444, van Eyck’s influence waned and was replaced by his interest in van der Weyden and Campin. His representation of background, often in the form of landscapes in a mood of quiet harmony, influenced later Netherlandish painters, in particular Bouts, Ouwater and Geertgen. There was no further development in his later work, of which only six signed and dated pictures survive.

In 1444, three years after the death of Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus left his homeland in the northern Netherlands to settle in Bruges. This portrait, one of Christus’s earliest signed and dated works, shows van Eyck’s influence in the technical virtuosity of the trompe-l’oeil fly and the carved inscription. The sitter, once transformed into a saint by the addition of a halo, is an unknown lay brother of the Carthusian order. The fly is a symbol of decay, a reminder of man’s mortality, but it also greatly enhances the fiction of a real person gazing at us from behind a stone ledge in which Christus’s signature appears as an incised inscription.

St Eligius, who was born c. 590 in Limousin, notably in the making of reliquaries has become one of the most popular saints of the Christian West. Ancient tradition credits him with extraordinary talent as a goldsmith.

St Eligius in His Workshop remains to this day the best-known and best-loved painting of Petrus Christus. It shows two young fianc�s who have brought the patron saint of goldsmiths a quantity of precious metal to be melted down and fashioned into rings as token of their love. Christus gives us an extremely detailed representation of the goldsmith’s shop. Not only are there all the instruments of the trade, but also many liturgical objects, carefully arranged on shelves. There is also a convex circular mirror on the right-hand side of St Eligius’s table, in an obvious allusion to the Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyk. In it we can see the reflection of a square, with a couple of passers-by.

Although the presence of the saint gives the work a religious dimension, this remains essentially a genre painting: that is, a representation of secular and commercial activities, a scene from everyday life.

There is also a convex circular mirror on the right-hand side of St Eligius’s table, in an obvious allusion to the Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyk. In it we can see the reflection of a square, with a couple of passers-by. The function of this mirror, however, is very different from that in Van Eyck’s painting. Whereas, on one level, it can be interpreted as a symbol of vanity or a protective talisman, it is above all an anti-theft device, which the goldsmith would have used to keep an eye on his clients, just as in present-day bank or jewellers.

The Lamentation is one of the few large-scale works ascribed to Petrus Christus. Both the style and the growth rings of the oak boards suggest a date of around 1455-60. The painting shows the extent to which the Bruges master, who initially imitated the style of Jan van Eyck, came increasingly in his later career under the influence of Rogier van der Weyden. The main figures clearly reflect the central figures in Van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross in the Prado in Madrid. At the same time, however, the Lamentation illustrates the limitations of this influence. The sense of drama of the Spanish model is totally missing: the figures appear withdrawn in introspection and contemplation. This effect of serenity may be explained in part by the increasing simplification that characterises the artist’s later work. The penchant of Petrus Christus’s patron for Stoic ideas may also have played a role here. The large and unusual format, the use of expensive paints and the time-consuming painting techniques all indicate that the panel was not intended for the free market.

Compared with Van der Weyden’s Lamentation, we notice that more figures are depicted: Mary Magdalen, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary and her two eponymous sisters, John the Evangelist, Christ’s dead body, Nicodemus, and a difficult to identify shaven-headed person in the right hand background. One author interprets this figure as the portrait of the purported patron, but there is little concrete evidence to support his view. Maybe he is the husband of one of Mary’s sisters, or simply an anonymous bystander. In any event, Petrus Christus appears to have copied this figure in every respect from a Descent from the Cross by the Master of Fl�malle, which once hung in the Sint-Jakobskerk in Bruges, and which is known from a free copy kept in Liverpool. In front, on the rocky ground, we can see Mary Magdalen’s pot of ointment. Also present are the hammer and pincers used in the descent, and the three nails with which Christ was nailed fast according to the pictorial tradition. Under the cross lies the customary skull. The tableau is placed in front of a wide landscape, at the back of which the biblical Jerusalem is depicted in the shape of a late medieval Flemish city.

The panel was a wing of a triptych. Another wing, depicting the Annunciation and the Nativity, is also in the Berlin museum.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem K 626: Dies irae

This Man of Sorrows with the angels of the Last Judgment is a direct precursor of the Man of Sorrows (after 1490, Christian Museum, Esztergom). A stereoscopic effect is created in both works by the figure of Christ appearing in front of the angels who push aside the curtain.

The painter, a follower of Jan van Eyck, here illustrates the Biblical theme in terms of contemporary life in his native city of Bruges. Joseph, for example, is shown as a Flemish peasant who, realizing he is on holy ground, has removed his wooden clogs. Under the influence of Rogier van der Weyden, Christus has framed the scene with a sculptured archway, typical of late Gothic churches in Flanders. These simulated sculpture groups, depicting the stories in Genesis of man and his sin, illustrate the historical reason for the subject of the painting, the coming of Christ as the Redeemer.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 22 minutes):

Thomas Tallis: Mass (Puer natus est)

The archivolt consists of six small scenes carved out of white stone, which portray sin and disobedience to God in ancient times, before the Law of Moses was established. They portray Adam and Eve banished from Paradise and their labour afterwards, the sacrifice of Cain and Abel, the murder of Abel, the disobedience of Cain and his subsequent expulsion to the land of Nod. The archivolt is supported on both sides by the first human couple, inspired by the Adam and Eve in the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck. Above, in the spandrels, the age of discord and revenge is depicted in the form of two warriors charging each other.

The architectural framework is lit by a low light source from the left, so that the contrasting shadows make the relief stand out. In the background the city of Jerusalem is nestled.

This small panel is a puzzling composition which conceals a complex symbolism. The painting is a late work by Christus, who from 1462 was a member of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Dry Tree. The dry and thorny branches could be a prefiguration of the Crown of Thorns, but the painting has also been interpreted as an early representation of the Immaculate Conception. The hanging letter A’s symbolize fifteen Ave Marias.

Clarity of space and soft tonalities characterize this painting of the Virgin and Child in a Chamber. Laid out with a precise perspective, the room telescopes in well-marked boxes: the furthest, with St Joseph entering through an open court, is flooded with light; in the lofty foreground bedchamber, where Mary and the Child appear resting before an open window, the light is modulated in soft tones of brown and gray, giving it a simple cubistic appearance uncluttered by objects and details in bright local colour.

This panel and another representing the donator originally were the lateral wings of a triptych the central panel of which is lost.