Rogier van der Weyden

Rogier van der Weyden (born 1399/1400, Tournai [Belgium]—died June 18, 1464, Brussels) was a Northern Renaissance painter who, with the possible exception of Jan van Eyck, was the most influential northern European artist of his time. Though most of his work was religious, he produced secular paintings (now lost) and some sensitive portraits.

Rogier was the son of a master cutler, and his childhood must have been spent in the comfortable surroundings of the rising class of merchants and craftsmen. He may even have acquired a university education, for in 1426 he was honoured by the city as “Maistre (Master) Rogier de la Pasture” and began his painting career only the next year at the rather advanced age of 27. It was then, on March 5, 1427, that Rogier enrolled as an apprentice in the workshop of Robert Campin, the foremost painter in Tournai and dean of the painters’ guild. (Campin is also believed to have been the painter long identified only as the Master of Flémalle.) Rogier remained in Campin’s atelier for five years, becoming an independent master of the guild on August 1, 1432. From Campin, Rogier learned the ponderous, detailed realism that characterizes his earliest paintings, and so alike, in fact, are the styles of these two masters that connoisseurs still do not agree on the attribution of certain works. But the theory that the entire sequence of paintings credited to Campin (who, like Rogier, did not sign his panels) are actually from the brush of the young Rogier cannot be maintained. Careful study of secure works by Rogier and by his colleague in Campin’s workshop, Jacques Daret, permit scholars to reestablish a basic series of works by the older master and to distinguish the style of these from that of Rogier.

Campin was not the only source of inspiration in Rogier’s art. Jan van Eyck, the great painter from Bruges, also profoundly affected the developing artist, introducing elegance and subtle visual refinements into the bolder, Campinesque components of such early paintings by Rogier as St. Luke Drawing the Virgin. Although as an apprentice Rogier must certainly have met Jan van Eyck when the latter visited Tournai in 1427, it was more likely in Bruges, where Rogier may have resided between 1432 and 1435, that he became thoroughly acquainted with van Eyck’s style.

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By 1435, Rogier, now a mature master, settled in Brussels, the native city of his wife, Elizabeth Goffaert, whom he had married in 1426. The next year he was appointed city painter; and it was from this time that he began to use the Flemish translation of his name (van der Weyden). Rogier remained in Brussels the rest of his life, although he never completely severed his ties with Tournai. He was commissioned to paint a mural (now destroyed) for the town hall of Brussels showing famous historical examples of the administration of justice. During this same period, about 1435–40, he completed the celebrated panel of the Descent from the Cross for the chapel of the Archers’ Guild of Louvain. In this deposition there is evident a tendency to reduce the setting of a scene to a shallow, shrinelike enclosure and to orchestrate a rich diversity of emotions. These devotional qualities are even more striking in Rogier’s works of the 1440s such as the twin Granada-Miraflores altarpieces and the Last Judgment polyptych in Beaune, France (Hôtel-Dieu). In these the settings are stark, the figures are delicate Gothic types, and the action, though stilled, is exquisitely expressive. The removal of Rogier’s art from concern with outward appearances and his return to medieval conventions is surprising; for it was during this decade that Rogier’s international reputation was secured and commissions increased from noblemen such as Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and his powerful chancellor, Nicolas Rolin. Rogier may well have also been influenced by the writings of Thomas à Kempis, the most popular theologian of the era, whose “practical mysticism,” like Rogier’s painting, stressed empathetic response to episodes from the lives of Mary, Christ, and the saints.

Perhaps as an extension of a journey to install the Last Judgment altarpiece in Rolin’s chapel at Beaune or possibly to obtain a plenary indulgence for his daughter Margaret, one of Rogier’s four children, who had died that year, the renowned painter visited Rome during the Jubilee of 1450. He was warmly received in Italy. Praise from the humanist Bartolomeo Fazio (Facio) and the eminent theologian Nicholas of Cusa is recorded; Rogier also received commissions from the powerful Este family of Ferrara and the Medici of Florence. He painted a portrait of Francesco d’Este (originally thought to be Leonello d’Este), and his painting of the Madonna and Child that still remains in Florence (Uffizi) bears the arms and patron saints of the Medici.

While on his pilgrimage, Rogier apparently tutored Italian masters in painting with oils, a technique in which Flemish painters of the time were particularly adept. He also seems to have learned a great deal from what he viewed. Although he was primarily attracted to the conservative painters Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico, whose medievalizing styles paralleled his own, Rogier was also acquainted with more progressive trends. In the St. John altarpiece and the Seven Sacraments triptych, executed between 1451 and 1455, shortly after Rogier’s return north, his characteristic austerity is tempered by his recollection of the more robust Italian styles; and, in both, the panels are unified from a single point of view. Despite this enrichment, however, Rogier’s conceptions remained essentially iconic: he pushed the figures into the foreground and isolated them from their surroundings as subjects for devotion.

The last 15 years of his life brought Rogier the rewards due an internationally famous painter and exemplary citizen. He received numerous commissions, which he carried out with the assistance of a large workshop that included his own son Peter and his successor as city painter, Vranck van der Stockt, a mediocre imitator. Even before his death, however, Rogier’s impact extended far beyond his immediate associates. The influence of his expressive but technically less intricate style eclipsed that of both Campin and van Eyck. Every Flemish painter of the succeeding generation—Petrus Christus, Dieric Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling (who may have studied in Rogier’s atelier)—depended on his formulations; and, during the 16th century, Rogierian ideas were transformed and revitalized by Quentin Massys and Bernard van Orley. Rogier’s art was also a vehicle for transporting the Flemish style throughout Europe, and during the second half of the 15th century his influence dominated painting in France, Germany, and Spain.

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Nevertheless, the fame of Rogier van der Weyden quickly waned, and no painting by him had been signed or dated. By the end of the 16th century the biographer Carel van Mander had referred mistakenly to two Rogiers in Het Schilderboek (1603; “Book of Painters”), and by the middle of the 19th century his fame and art had all but been forgotten. Only through a meticulous evaluation of the documents were scholars able to reconstruct Rogier’s work and to restore the reputation of one of the 15th century’s leading masters.