Jan Provo(o)st, Netherlandish painter. He was born at Mons and worked in Valenciennes and briefly in Antwerp before settling in Bruges in 1494. His style was fairly close to Gerard David, then the leading painter in Bruges, but Provost, although clumsier, was more inventive. In 1521 Provost met and entertained Dürer, who is reputed to have drawn his portrait.
The painting is perhaps a fragment of an altarpiece. Its attribution is doubtful, it is perhaps from a Mannerist painter of the Antwerp school.
Jan Provost belongs to the first generation of 16th-century Netherlandish artists, but his style nevertheless remains firmly indebted to the Flemish tradition of the 15th century. While the 1500s saw the spread of Italian classicism and the Mannerist style throughout Europe, the strength of the Flemish legacy meant that it survived and developed along a different path to classicism and that the two trends coexisted.
This allegory represents the Cosmos in the hand of God in the presence of Christ and the Church (or the Virgin Mary).
In 1971, the Crucifixion from the village church at Koolkerke entered the collection of the Groeninge Museum as a permanent loan. The existence of this large panel had hitherto been unknown, its very anonymity helping to preserve what turned out to be a masterpiece of Provost. The painting shows a dramatic, almost filmic, panorama of the scene at Golgotha. This work was produced in the mature period of the artist.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 22 minutes):
Guillaume Dufay: Hymns
The narrow painting of the Crucifixion was probably done no later than around 1500. The style remains very sedate and the broad folds of the drapery and saturation of the colours still owe a great deal to the Flemish Primitives.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 22 minutes):
Guillaume Dufay: Hymns
These panels were on the reverse side of the donor panels which belonged to a triptych from the former Dominican monastery in Bruges. They were detached from the donor panels and are exhibited separately. Entitled Death and the Miser, it is an allegory of vanity; the precise import of which is no longer known.
These panels in their original frame belonged to a triptych from the former Dominican monastery in Bruges. The central panel of the triptych has been lost.
If Isenbrant and Benson were not always very original, the same cannot be said of Jan Provost (1465-1529) or Lanceloot Blondeel (1498-1561). Both painters introduced their own, new spirit to their respective generations in Bruges. Rather than basing their art on a few poorly understood and arbitrarily selected Italian features, they opted for a more ingenious thematic and decorative approach and for their own special modernity. They were complex personalities, who also worked as cartographers, engineers and architects, making them early exponents of the universal artistry that typified the age of Humanism.
The Last Judgment, the only painting whose attribution to Provost is confirmed by documentary evidence, comes from the Town Hall for which it was painted in 1525. Its carved frame, still partly original and possibly designed by Blondeel, is an example of the ingenious ornamentation that flourished around these Bruges artists. The iconography of the jjudgment scenes differs significantly from what was traditional at the time. The symbolic relationship between Jesus and Mary, the carrying of the blessed across the water and the hellish pageant of friars and nuns, reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, are expressive of a lively imagination.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 10 minutes):
Giuseppe Verdi: Requiem, Dies irae (excerpt)
This Portrait of a Female Donor very possibly formed part of a triptych, comprising a central panel devoted to a religious subject and two wings bearing the portraits of the donors, who were probably husband and wife.
The painting was executed for the St Donatius Church in Bruges. Originally it was attributed to Quentin Massys. On the left of the picture Emperor Augustus, on the right King David playing the harp can be seen. On both side of the Virgin angels playing musical instruments are depicted.
This altarpiece is filled with figures and objects that form a complex network of biblical allusions. The figures are conventional, but the landscape is painted in perspective. Depth is permitted only in the earthly part, while the heavens remain symbolically flat.
Jan Provost’s Martyrdom of Saint Catherine - the pendant of St Catherine Disputing with the Emperor and the Fifty Philosophers in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam - is a colourful mixture of tradition and innovation. Provost was a painter, cartographer and architect, who met Albrecht D�rer in Antwerp in 1520.
This panel depicts the Virgin and Child in a niche, an extensive landscape beyond. Mary gently cradles her son, whilst standing in front of a simple hanging, which frames her and reinforces the focus of the viewer onto the Virgin, rather than the extensive landscape which is visible on either side.
This work was copied from a lost Memling composition. The painting is actually much bigger than the original and is rounded off at the top. The landscape has disappeared, too, and the Virgin has an aureole round her head. The Child sits on a wall over which hangs an oriental carpet. This motif is certainly typical of Memling, but we do not know whether it was present in the original.
The attribution to Provost is not generally accepted, Michel Sittow is also suggested as author of this painting.
