Hugo van der Goes
Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440-1482) was a Flemish
painter.
Life
Born in Ghent,
he entered the artists' guild in 1467.
He was later elected dean of the guild. Suffering from a mental illness, he
retired to the Red Cloister near Brussels around 1478
in the hopes that living in the monastery would help him overcome his
depression. He was considered a lay member of the cloister. Van der Goes
attempted suicide in 1480, and died two years later.
Works
His most famous work is the Portinari Triptych (c. 1475, Uffizi, Florence),
an altarpiece
commissioned for the church of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence
by Tommaso Portinari, the representative of the Medici family in Bruges.
Portinari Triptych
Portinari
Altarpiece
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Hugo van der Goes, ca. 1475 |
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oil on wood, 253 × 588 cm |
The Portinary Triptych (c. 1475) is an oil on wood
painting by the Flemish
painter Hugo van der Goes representing the Adoration of the shepherds.
The work was commissioned for the church of hospital of Santa Maria Nuova
in Florence
by the Italian
banker Tommaso Portinari, who lived for more than
forty years in Bruges,
as a representative for the Medici
family. Portinari himself is depicted on the left panel with his two sons
Antonio and Pigello; his wife Maria di Francesco Baroncelli is shown on the
right panel with their daughter Margarita. All, except Pigello, are accompanied
by their patron saints: Saint Thomas (with the spear), Saint Anthony
(with the bell), Mary Magdalen (with the pot of ointment) and Saint Margaret
(with the book and the dragon).
On the central panel, three shepherds fall on their knees for the child Jesus. Van der Goes
painted these rustic characters very realistically. Kneeling angels surround
the Virgin and the Child, which is not in a crib, but lies directly on the
ground, surrounded by an aureole of golden rays. This unusual representation of the
adoration of Jesus is probably based on one of the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden.
In the background, van der Goes painted scenes related to the main subject:
on the left panel, Joseph fleeing to Egypt
with his pregnant wife; on the central panel (to the right), the shepherds
visited by the angel; on the left panel, the Three Magi
on the road to Bethlehem.
The lovely still life in the foreground, with the two vases of flowers
and the sheaf of corn, probably allude to the Eucharist and the Passion. The
corn refers to the Last Supper, where Christ broke the bread. The orange lilies symbolize the
Passion and the white irises purity, while the purple irises and the columbine
stalks represent the seven sorrows of the Virgin. Thus, this scene of the birth
of Jesus prefigures the Salvation by his death.
When the work arrived in Florence in 1483, it was deeply
admired by the Italian artists who saw it, many of whom sought to emulate it. A
good example is the Adoration of the shepherds (1485) which Domenico Ghirlandaio painted in the Sassetti
chapel in the Santa Trinità in Florence. However, the naturalistic depiction of
the shepherds is already present in Andrea Mantegna's
Adoration of the shepherds (Metropolitan Museum, New York),
which dates from around 1450.
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Source
Portinari Triptych
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portinari_Triptych"
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This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The
description on its description page there is shown below. |
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Description |
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Source |
The Yorck Project: 10.000
Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202.
Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. |
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Date |
1476-1478 |
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Author |
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The
work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is
part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The entire collection is
copyrighted by The Yorck Project and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
