Artist: Jan Provoost
Date: 1510
Size: 76 x 64 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
The Virgin is enthroned beneath a canopy on the left. The Christ Child on her lap is leafing through a book with his right hand while reaching out with his other hand, in which he has a rosary, towards the donor, a Carthusian monk, who is kneeling in prayer and being presented to the Virgin and Child by John the Baptist accompanied by the Lamb of God (John 1:29). In the centre St Jerome stands in front of a window with a view of a building, possibly a monastery. Standing in the right background is a figure in an enclosed garden, which is a symbol of chastity and Mary’s virginity.5 The Carthusian order combines communal life within a monastery with the solitary life of a hermit.6 Carthusian spirituality, which is directed towards the inner world and is marked by silence and solitude, is reflected in the iconography of this painting. John the Baptist lived as a hermit in the desert, as did St Jerome, who followed the life of an ascetic.7 There is a related iconography in the Altarpiece with St Anne, the Virgin and the Christ Child by the Master of Frankfurt and the Master of Delft, which originally came from a Carthusian monastery outside Delft.8 The left inner wing shows John the Baptist presenting the donor Dirk van Beesd and his four sons, one of whom, also called Dirk, was a Carthusian. A penitent St Jerome is seen on the outer wings, half-naked in the desert, with a crucifix and beating his breast with a stone. When acting as a patron saint, however, St Jerome was usually depicted as a father of the church wearing cardinal’s robes.9 In the Amsterdam painting Provoost opted for a rather unusual combination of the two types. The saint is holding a crucifix in his left hand and holds the stone by his chest with his right hand. Instead of the more common red cloak he has a blue cappa.10 The panel was attributed to Jan Provoost in 1902 by Hulin de Loo. Both he and Friedländer cited parallels with Provoost’s Adoration of the Magi in Berlin as regards the Virgin and the tall figures with elongated heads that heighten the vertical effect of the panel.11 Both authors also drew attention to Provoost’s love of gardens with flowerbeds, hedgerows and fencing, as in the background of the Amsterdam painting.12 However, Spronk pointed out that the underdrawing was made in a way that does not match Provoost’s method. This is insufficient reason to reject the attribution, but it does make it a little shaky.13 The composition with the Virgin and Child on the left of the scene is unusual. It is probably based in part on the exterior of Gerard David’s Triptych with the Baptism of Christ with the Virgin and Child on the left wing. The right wing shows Magdalena Cordier, Jan de Trompes’s second wife, and her daughter being presented by Mary Magdalen (fig. a). Since those paintings extend over the outsides of two wings, David was forced to move the Virgin and Child from the centre of the composition. Their poses and gestures are remarkably similar to those in the Amsterdam panel. The wings of the triptych were probably executed in 1507 or 1508, which provides a possible terminus post quem for the painting attributed to Jan Provoost. This is reasonably close to Friedländer’s suggested date of c. 1505 and the results of the dendrochronology.14 (V. Hoogland)
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