DARET, Jacques

Jacques Daret was a pupil of Robert Campin (the Master of Fl�malle) and is documented as his apprentice from 1427 to 1432. In around 1435 he was working in the Abbey of San Vaast, near Arras, on an altarpiece of the Nativity cycle, of which this present panel was a part.

The similarity between this painting and a Nativity by the Master of Fl�malle makes it seem likely that Daret based his work on the earlier painting. The two paintings use very similar compositions, of a type which would later become widespread in Flemish painting. The main scene with the manger and the figures takes place in the foreground, while on the right is an open space with a landscape which extends into the background. While Daret’s painting simplifies the composition by using fewer figures, making the narrative easier to comprehend, it includes the two midwives (Zelomi and Salome), the figure of Joseph holding a cloth, and the small angels flying over the stable - all of which appear in both versions.

The principal patron of Daret over a period of twenty years was the abbot of St Vaart, Jean de Clercq.

Out of all of Daret’s works that are recorded in Jean de Clercq’s account books, only four panels have survived to the present day. They come from an Altarpiece of the Virgin (St Vaast Altarpiece) painted for the abbot between 1433 and 1435. Two of them, the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi, are in the State Collections in Berlin; the third, the Nativity, is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, and the fourth, the Presentation in the Temple, is in the Petit Palais museum, in Paris.

One of these four panels, The Visitation is reminiscent in its composition of paintings by Rogier Van der Weyden on the same theme. But the three others are closer - strikingly close to the art of Robert Campin, especially the Nativity which should be compared with Campin’s Nativity in Dijon. The two compositions are essentially analogous: the Virgin kneels before the Infant who is lying on the ground, while Joseph holds up a lighted candle. They also share the small group of angels and the scene of the two midwives taken from an apocryphal Gospel, which Daret treats as a separate episode. Daret is less inventive than Campin, and his ambition seems limited to creating a simple tranquil atmosphere. The clothes worn by the midwives are less exotic, and the angels are holding a single phylactery. Above all, Daret’s Nativity has been substantially simplified: it has fewer characters, and materials and textures are rendered with less attention than in Campin’s. One has only to look at the ageing skeleton of the stable to measure the distance that separates the two artists. Certain elements have also been modified, so that, for instance, the ass and the ox in Daret’s picture face towards the scene of the Birth, rather than turning their backs on it.

The other three panels show that Daret was a talented painter of the human figure and a sensitive landscape artist.

The principal patron of Daret over a period of twenty years was the abbot of St Vaart, Jean de Clercq.

Out of all of Daret’s works that are recorded in Jean de Clercq’s account books, only four panels have survived to the present day. They come from an Altarpiece of the Virgin (St Vaast Altarpiece) painted for the abbot between 1433 and 1435. Two of them, the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi, are in the State Collections in Berlin; the third, the Nativity, is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, and the fourth, the Presentation in the Temple, is in the Petit Palais museum, in Paris.

One of these four panels, The Visitation is reminiscent in its composition of paintings by Rogier Van der Weyden on the same theme. But the three others are closer - strikingly close to the art of Robert Campin, especially the Nativity which should be compared with Campin’s Nativity in Dijon. The two compositions are essentially analogous: the Virgin kneels before the Infant who is lying on the ground, while Joseph holds up a lighted candle. They also share the small group of angels and the scene of the two midwives taken from an apocryphal Gospel, which Daret treats as a separate episode. Daret is less inventive than Campin, and his ambition seems limited to creating a simple tranquil atmosphere. The clothes worn by the midwives are less exotic, and the angels are holding a single phylactery. Above all, Daret’s Nativity has been substantially simplified: it has fewer characters, and materials and textures are rendered with less attention than in Campin’s. One has only to look at the ageing skeleton of the stable to measure the distance that separates the two artists. Certain elements have also been modified, so that, for instance, the ass and the ox in Daret’s picture face towards the scene of the Birth, rather than turning their backs on it.

The other three panels show that Daret was a talented painter of the human figure and a sensitive landscape artist.

Robert Campin, who is generally identified as the Master of Fl�malle, had a workshop in Tournai from 1406 at the latest, and, as we know from several documents, it received many commissions from the city, various institutions, and private individuals. According to a document (which is a copy of old records of the painters’ guild, dating from around 1482, that is to say some 50 years later) a certain Jacques Daret was an “apprentice” in the workshop at about the same time as Rogier van der Weyden; he joined it on 12 April 1427 and became a master on 18 October 1432. We do know, however, that Daret had already been working with Campin for over ten years, so he must have learned his trade as a painter long before 1427; the description “apprenticeship” cannot therefore be correct for him at this period. We may assume that both Daret and Van der Weyden completed their real apprenticeship earlier and they must have worked together in Campin’s workshop around 1430 as trained painters.

Four paintings executed by Campin’s pupil Jacques Daret in 1434-35 for Jean du Clercq, abbot of St. Vaast in Arras, are extant and are unusually well documented. They originally ornamented the wings of an altar shrine decorated with alabaster sculptures. In these panels Daret shows himself a capable if not particularly innovative or sensitive artist, very closely related to Rogier and in particular to the Master of Fl�malle. Daret’s Visitation of Mary is so similar to Rogier’s painting of the same subject (Museum der Bildende K�nste, Leipzig)), which is certainly later, that we have to assume they had a common model. And Daret follows one picture from the “Fl�malle group” so closely, the Nativity now in Dijon Museum, that it can almost be called a free copy.

This kind of painting, which now appears mediocre in comparison with the works of masters such as Rogier van der Weyden, was still so new and unusual in its time that a chronicler tells us how the donor, Jean de Clercq, seen here kneeling on the left with his abbot’s insignia, proudly showed this altarpiece wing to the participants in the peace conference negotiating the Treaty of Arras in 1435.