Artist: Master Of Delft
Date: 1510
Size: 87 x 69 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
The centre panel of this triptych shows the Virgin and Child seated on a lawn studded with flowers within a walled hortus conclusus - a reference to Mary’s virginity.8 On the rear corners of the wall, with stretches of water behind them, are three musician angels on the left and Joseph on the right. Ringbom identified the two sumptuously attired women in the foreground as sibyls, prophetesses from classical antiquity, who are foretelling the coming of Christ, but other authors believe that the right to be in the enclosed garden was reserved for female saints. The woman with the book on the left is hard to identify as a specific saint. According to Ringbom she is the Cumaean Sibyl or the Cimmerian Sibyl, who is drawing the Child’s attention to the vision in the sky above. The woman on the right offering the Virgin a flower from her basket could be St Dorothy.9 The nude Christ Child standing on Mary’s lap has turned his head to look up at the vision in an aureole in the heavens, which foretells his Passion. It shows two angels who have pulled aside the curtains in front of a tabernacle to reveal the many instruments of the Passion, the arma Christi, consisting of the crown of thorns, the flagellation post, the lance and the ladder, and busts of Pilate (with the jug of water and bowl), the priest Caiaphas (with a mitre), Peter (with the cockerel), and the maidservant who recognised him as one of Christ’s disciples. Seated at the table, on which there are nails, a hammer, pincers and a scourge, is God the Father, who is pointing at a rush basket. The heavenly tabernacle is described in St Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, 9:11, with Christ as the high priest, chosen by God, who will reconcile mankind with God through his sacrificial death on the cross.10 Although there are no direct models for the iconography of the centre panel, the structure of the composition is closely related to the eponymous panel by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines (SK-A-501) in which the group of people is also depicted in a ‘hortus conclusus’. The wings of the Rijksmuseum triptych, with the two donors and their patron saints, match the centre panel both spatially and with their architecture. There are no clues as to the identity of the donors, who each kneel at a prie-dieu. The saint on the left is probably Martin of Tours, who was also the patron saint of the city of Utrecht.11 It has been suggested in the past that he has the features of Bishop David of Burgundy, who died in 1496.12 The female saint is probably Cunera, for she is wearing a crown and has the scarf with which she was murdered looped around her neck.13 In 1934, shortly after the triptych was donated to the Rijksmuseum, the wings were sawn through, with the separated fronts and backs being transferred to fresh supports and the outer wings being given new frames so that they could be exhibited separately. After the restoration of the inner wings in 2006, the outer wings were reattached to them, returning the triptych to its original form. Until 1934 the original frame of the central panel (fig. a) had the biblical inscription ‘Dolor meus inconspectu meo sempre’ (My sorrow is continually before me), meaning that Christ had been aware of his fate from an early age.14 That inscription, which disappeared when the frame was stripped (probably in 1934), was in all likelihood a later copy of an original inscription.15 The Annunciation on the outer wings is set in a cramped interior in a way that appears to be entirely original, as far as is known. The angel is climbing up a short flight of stairs, and the Virgin is seated beneath a baldachin. The figures are painted in grisaille, with a few pink, soft blue and yellow touches of colour in the costumes of the Virgin and the angel. The inner wings have bolder colours. It is true that the clothing is in fairly light pastel colours, but this will be due partly to wear and the fading of the sensitive pigments and lakes. The underdrawing, which is typical of the Master of Delft, was done with the brush. The paint for it was applied more thinly on the centre panel, and the only extensive hatching is in the drapery folds (fig. b). The underdrawing on the wings is more clearly visible and appears to be more detailed, particularly in the architecture. The underdrawing on the outer wings was done with broader brushstrokes. Quite a few changes were made to the design of the inner wings in the paint layer, with the architecture being moved downwards and the bishop’s crosier being shortened (fig. c). Despite the differences in the amount of detailing, the underdrawing in the various parts of the triptych displays sufficient points of resemblance to suggest that it is the work of the same hand. The underdrawing as a whole is closely related to that of the Triptych with Scenes from the Passion of Christ by the Master of Delft in London.16 In 1913 Friedländer attributed the Rijksmuseum triptych to a painter working in Delft at the beginning of ../..
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