Artist: Jan Joest Van Calcar
Date: 1520
Size: 70 x 37 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
Christ is depicted full length standing on clouds, making a sign of benediction with his right hand. He is wearing a white gown and cloak held together at the neck by an oval clasp. He is surrounded by a bright yellow light with dark clouds around it. Behind his head is a star-shaped golden halo. The panel is probably a fragment of a larger Transfiguration of Christ.4 The event is described in Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13 and Luke 9:28-36. On Mount Tabor in Galilee Christ revealed his divine nature to the apostles Peter, James the Greater and John. His face shone like the sun and his clothes became a dazzling white. The transfiguration is depicted in different ways in painting. In addition to standing on the mountain Christ can be shown floating in the air, as in the Ascension.5 Jan Joest’s Transfiguration on one of the wings of the Kalkar Altarpiece is a good example of the second variant. The three apostles are in the foreground, and Christ is flanked by Moses with one of the tables of the law and Elijah (fig. a). One suspects that the Rijksmuseum painting was originally the top half of the central plank of a fairly large panel, possibly measuring approximately 160-180 x 100 cm, with Moses and Elijah on either side of Christ and the apostles below him in the lower half of the panel. The figure of God the Father with the Holy Ghost found in some transfiguration scenes were probably omitted from this one. Since scenes of the transfiguration were often part of retables depicting the life and Passion of Christ it is conceivable that the panel of which this is a remnant was part of such an ensemble. The back of the fairly thick panel is unpainted, so this was not a double-sided wing as in the Kalkar Altarpiece and various Antwerp retables with The Transfiguration.6 There is also the possibility that it was an autonomous work, like Gerard David’s Transfiguration in Bruges.7 The Rijksmuseum panel was labelled ‘Flemish school, c. 1530’ when the museum acquired it as part of the Cornelis Hoogendijk donation in 1912. It was first associated with Jan Joest in the 1976 collection catalogue, where it as described as being ‘in the manner of Jan Joest’.8 The transfigured Christ has affinities with the one in the Kalkar Altarpiece (fig. a), while the gesture he is making with his right hand with the remarkably long, slender fingers is comparable to the right hand of Christ in The Raising of Lazarus in the same altarpiece.9 What is strange, though, is that the two different facial types of Christ in that altarpiece do not correspond to that of the figure in this panel. As Friedländer said, the features of Christ and other figures there have fairly large noses, prominent cheekbones and wavy hair.10 In the Rijksmuseum painting Christ has a small nose, delicate features (without prominent cheekbones) and an oval face. The hair and beard were brushed out with a dry brush. The figure can be compared with the work of Jan Joest’s assistants on the Kalkar Altarpiece, Joos van Cleve and Bartholomeus Bruyn. In 1997 Wolff-Thomsen attributed the Amsterdam panel to the latter.11 However, too little is known about the share that the assistants had in the altarpiece and about the early work of the very young Bartholomeus Bruyn (b. 1493) to arrive at a firm attribution, so the term ‘manner of Jan Joest’ seems to be the best for the time being. (Micha Leeflang/Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
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