FROMENT, Nicolas

The persons represented on the diptych are Ren�, Duke of Anjou and his second wife, Joanne of Laval.

This work of Froment’s maturity, which is indeed an epitome of his whole oeuvre, was commissioned by King Ren� of Provence. This central panel of the triptych represents Moses before the Burning Bush; the figures kneeling in prayer on the wing are the donor and his wife, Jeanne de Laval, accompanied by saints (not reproduced here). In this work the painter has abandoned the occasional crudities of The Raising of Lazarus; only in the countenance of Moses are there reminiscences of the more rigid portraiture of the earlier altarpiece. Moses is struck with astonishment at the vision before him and the appearance of the angel. The vision occupies the upper centre of the picture: amidst a great circle of flaming rose bushes the Madonna appears in a richly draped mantle, holding the Child. Christ holds a mirror in his hand, in which both of them are reflected. The picture contains a number of emblematical representations. The combination of a number of unusual elements side by side is characteristic of mediaeval symbolism. It is evidence of the extraordinary cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages that it is she who appears before Moses, and not God, as in the Old Testament.

The picture is mainly Gothic in concept and in its copious use of symbol as well as the choice of vision as the principal theme. The second half of the fifteenth century was already a period of transition, in which the new style began to make itself increasingly felt particularly in the works of any painter influenced by a visit to Italy. A closer look at the background behind the Burning Bush reveals a typically Tuscan landscape. The buildings, the trees, the meandering roads, together with the use of the perspective are all similar to those of contemporary Florentine painters; it is nonetheless much more probable that the decisive impact was not due to the study of Tuscan works of art but to actual walks taken among the Tuscan hills.

There are two existing works by Froment accepted as authentic; the triptych, The Raising of Lazarus which was made some fifteen years earlier than the The Virgin in the Burning Bush. The style is cruder, more Gothic, and the composition more congested. The crowd watching the miracle performed by Christ in the central panel have been placed before a pattern of ogee arches giving on a decorated gold background. The faces are formalized, almost identical; only in the group on the right has the artist chosen to give the figures individual characters, verging on caricature. Lazarus is already sitting upright in the coffin placed in the foreground (St John, 11, 44). On the left, Lazarus’s sisters, Martha and Mary, react with emotion. The young man looking at us from the upper left-hand corner of the panel is supposed to be a self portrait of the artist himself. The two panels which form part of the triptych represent St Mary Magdalen anointing Christ’s feet and Martha announcing to Christ the death of Lazarus.

This is the only other authentic work of Froment beside The Burning Bush. The central panel depicts The Raising of Lazarus, the other scenes on the side panels are Magdalen Anoints the Feet of Christ (right wing), Martha at the Feet of Christ (left wing), The Donors (outer face of right wing), The Madonna and Child (outer face of left wing).

The tradition that the triptych was painted for Cosimo il Vecchio is rendered improbable by the fact that the donor is in clerical dress. The painting of the exterior faces, which bears the signature, is of a quality superior to that of the interior ones. It is assumed that the man looking out of the picture at the upper left corner of the central panel is a self-portrait.