| Died on 18 June 1464:
Rogier de la Pasture van der Weyden, Flemish Northern
Renaissance painter born in 1399 or 1400. — BIOGRAPHY Extensive coverage with commentaries and links to reproductions, in whole and in many details, of: — Deposition — Saint Luke Madonna — Annunciation Triptych — Miraflores Altarpiece — Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (here) — Crucifixion Altarpiece — Bladelin Triptych — Last Judgment Polyptych — Braque Family Triptych — Saint Columba Altarpiece — Saint John Altarpiece — Other altarpieces — Other Crucifixions — Portraits — Other paintings ^ == Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1448) It was commissioned by Jean Chevrot, Bishop of Tournai (1436-1460), one of the most important advisers of Duke Philip the Good. This powerful man is himself portrayed in the figure of the bishop performing the sacrament of confirmation to the left of the picture, and here looks very similar to his portrait in a miniature of 1448. Judging by the male fashions it shows, the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece may have been painted at about the same time. Rogier's task was to show both the seven sacraments and also the Crucifixion, the fundamental act of redemption. — Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1448, 200x97cm central panel, 119x63cm each side panel) _ Of the Christian sacraments - acts conferring grace - Protestants generally recognize two, Baptism and Communion, and the Catholics seven, which comprise, in addition, Confirmation, Penance (Confession), Extreme Unction, Holy Orders and Matrimony, the last two still being mutually exclusive. They are seen on medieval fonts and as altarpiece cycles in early Netherlandish painting, where the subject seems to have had greater appeal, at least until the 17th century. The triptych of Rogier van der Weyden is a good example of these altarpieces. We see an acuteness of observation in the Altar of the Sacraments. The Calvary sequence takes place in the interior of a light, spacious church, whose carefully executed details immediately catch the viewer's eye. The seven sacraments are presented around the central crucifixion group accompanied by an angel with a banderole. The importance of the action in the central panel is emphasized by the size of the depicted personages compared to the figures in the side panels. The emotion of the central characters - Saint John and the three Marys - who are overcome with grief, is a characteristic feature of Van der Weyden's art. It is thought that the triptych was commissioned in 1441 by the Bishop of Tournai, Jean Chevrot, for the altar of his private chapel. Van der Weyden portrays him on the left of the painting, as the bishop administering Confirmation. Van der Weyden was probably helped by his assistants during the execution of the Altar of the Sacraments. — left wing: Baptism, Confirmation, Confession. The sacrament of confirmation can be administered only by a bishop and here it is being performed by the donor, Jean Chevrot himself. Several heads, obviously also portraits, were executed on small pieces of metallic foil or parchment, then stuck to the picture; they are, however, original. Possibly these portraits were done somewhere else, then sent to the Brussels workshop to be added to the altarpiece. _ detail — central panel (200x97cm) _ Rogier's task was to show both the seven sacraments and also the Crucifixion, the fundamental act of redemption. He solved the problem by representing the separate actions in a basilica with three naves. The side aisles provide room for the sacraments, shown simultaneously; only the most important sacrament, the Eucharist, is taking place in the central section at the rood screen altar, which means that it is directly related to the sacrificial death of Christ. While the actions of the sacraments are accommodated in a church with some degree of plausibility - though a dying man's bed would not, of course, have been moved to a chapel for extreme unction - the Crucifixion group belongs to a different plane of reality, as is made abundantly clear by its much larger proportions, suitable to its significance. At the same time, the artist tries not to make the difference seem disruptive, and with that end in view confines the large figures mainly to the central panel. If we look past them to the priest at the altar in the background, the difference of scale could be taken as perspective reduction. It is only to the left, where the cloak of the large figure of a female saint almost touches the priest performing the sacrament of baptism, that the problem seems not to have been entirely solved. The church building with the sacraments here represents the church as an institution, but in its architectural details it echoes Saint Gudule's, Brussels' main church. The idea for the view into the depths at the back, seen at a slight angle through the central nave, came from a work by Jan van Eyck, his Church Madonna, probably painted around 1440 and now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Working from this model, Rogier produced one of the most lofty and convincing church interiors of Early Netherlandish painting. With its view into the main nave and side aisles, its great depth, and the more or less appropriate proportions of the smaller figures, it was the inspiration behind countless later Netherlandish church interiors, in particular those painted around 1600 in Antwerp. In dividing up the areas of the painting, Rogier - again following Jan van Eyck, in this case his Madonna Triptych now in Dresden used the triptych formula, but made some unusual changes to it: the lower side panels can no longer be folded over the central panel, and instead the outline of the entire altarpiece matches the building it portrays, with the inverted T shape also echoing a common feature of Netherlandish altarpieces, the raised center panel. Perhaps this idea came from carved retables, which are frequently raised in the middle and employ motifs of sacral architecture in their structural design. _ detail 1: The Virgin Mary, Saint John and the rood screen altar. The rood screen divides the nave from the liturgical choir of a church, to which only the clerics had access. A priest is celebrating mass at the richly furnished altar; he has just raised the host, performing the rite known as the elevation which immediately precedes the consecration, when the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. The retable of the altar here consists of a gilded shrine with carved figures, on which (as very often in the Netherlands) a shrine with the figure of the Virgin and with painted doors is placed. _ detail 2 in the background, the Eucharist. _ detail 3 — right wing: Holy Orders, Matrimony, Extreme Unction. _ detail The sacraments are arranged from the first to be performed in life, baptism, in the foreground of the left panel, until the last, seen here in the foreground. While the dying man receives extreme unction, his wife stands beside the bed with a candle to place it in his hand at the moment of death. |