THE CHARTERHOUSE OF BRUGES JA N VA N E YC K , PETRUS CHRISTUS, AND JAN VOS
Emma Capron with Maryan Ainsworth and Till-Holger Borchert
The Frick Collection, New York in association with D Giles Limited, London
This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos on view at The Frick Collection from September 18, 2018, to January 13, 2019. Major funding for the exhibition is provided by Howard S. Marks and Nancy Marks and an anonymous gift in memory of Melvin R. Seiden. Additional support is generously provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the General Delegation of the Government of Flanders to the USA, Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Horvitz, Margot and Jerry Bogert, Harlan M. Stone, an anonymous donor, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and Nicholas Hall. The catalogue is partially underwritten by the Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands, Musea Brugge. Copyright Š 2018 The Frick Collection. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Frick Collection. Published in 2018 by The Frick Collection 1 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 www.frick.org Michaelyn Mitchell, Editor in Chief Hilary Becker, Associate Editor In association with GILES An imprint of D Giles Limited 4 Crescent Stables, London, SW15 2TN, U.K. www.gilesltd.com Designed by Alfonso Iacurci Typeset in Freight Pro Printed and bound in Hong Kong Front cover and p. 12, cat. 2 details; back cover, cat. 1; frontispiece, cat. 4 detail; this page, fig. 71 darkened detail; p. 70, fig. 35 detail; p. 90, fig. 62 detail; p. 106, fig. 68 detail.
First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ainsworth, Maryan W., author. | Borchert, Till, author. | Capron, Emma, author. | Eyck, Jan van, 1390-1440. Paintings. Selections. | Christus, Petrus, approximately 1410-1472 or 1473. Paintings. Selections. | Frick Collection, issuing body, host institution. Title: The Charterhouse of Bruges : Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan vos / Maryan Ainsworth, Till-Holger Borchert, and Emma Capron. Description: First edition. | New York : The Frick Collection ; London : D Giles Limited, [2018] | "This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos on view at The Frick Collection from September 18, 2018, to January 13, 2019." | Includes bibliography and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018000150| ISBN 9781911282198 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780912114729 (softcover) Subjects: LCSH: Eyck, Jan van, 1390-1440. Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth and Jan Vos-Exhibitions. | Christus, Petrus, approximately 1410-1472 or 1473. Exeter Madonna--Exhibitions. | Vos, Jan, -1462-Art patronage--Exhibitions. | Art patronage--Belgium-Bruges--History--15th century--Exhibitions. | Painting, Flemish--Belgium--Bruges--15th century--Exhibitions. | Christian art and symbolism--Belgium--Bruges--Medieval, 500-1500--Exhibitions. Classification: LCC ND673.E9 A4 2018 | DDC 759.9493--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000150
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DIR ECTOR’ S FOR E WOR D 8
ACK NOW LEDG M EN TS 12
PA I N T I N G S , P R A Y E R S , A N D S A LVA T I O N : T H E JA N VOS V IRGI NS I N CON T E X T
Emma Capron 70
AT T R IBU T ION M YST ER IE S OF THE V IRGIN A N D CHILD W ITH S T. B A R B A R A , S T. E L I Z A B E T H , A N D J A N V O S
Maryan W. Ainsworth 90
B E I N G T H E R E : J A N VA N E Y C K A N D PETRUS CHR ISTUS IN BRUGES
Till-Holger Borchert 106
C O L L E C T I N G J A N VA N E Y C K F R O M EU ROPE TO A MER ICA
Emma Capron 134
C ATA LOGU E OF T H E E X H IBI T ION 136
A PPEN DICE S 146
M A P O F T H E B U R G U N D I A N N E T H E R L A N D S , C A . 14 41 147
BIBLIOGR A PH Y INDEX PHOTO CR EDITS
PAINTINGS, PRAYERS, AND SALVATION: THE JAN VOS VIRGINS IN CONTEXT Emma Capron In order to put an end to the untimely concerns my new office burdens me with, I shall rid the Church of a bad priest, and go and take refuge under an assumed name in some charterhouse. —Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839
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n Stendhal’s masterpiece The Charterhouse of Parma, the adventurous hero Fabrizio del Dongo, crushed by the deaths of his beloved Clelia and their illegitimate child Sandrino, gives up his office as archbishop of Parma and retires to the eponymous charterhouse, where soon thereafter he too meets an early death. In the nineteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, a charterhouse—a monastery of the Carthusian Order—was a place one went to renounce the world. But whereas Fabrizio joined the Carthusian Order to drown the sorrow of an unhappy love and “rid the Church from a bad priest,” the motivation was certainly quite different for the late medieval Carthusian Jan Vos, the patron of The Frick Collection’s Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos (fig. 1) and The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos from Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie (see fig. 41 and facing page). Far from “bad priests,” Carthusians were described as “athletes” of God by their founder Bruno of Cologne, and throughout the Middle Ages they were highly revered for their commitment to a life of solitude, silence, austerity, and contemplation.1 In apparent contradiction of this asceticism, however, their monasteries became remarkably rich repositories of works of art, ranging from sculptures to painted panels and manuscripts, from funerary monuments to altarpieces and small devotional objects. This material accumulation has often been attributed to lay interventions within the monastic enclosure.2 However, this explanation overlooks the complex and numerous ways in which the Carthusians themselves commissioned and used images for their daily devotion and liturgy and also, crucially, for their own commemoration and salvation. 13
Paintings, Prayers, and Salvation: The Jan Vos Virgins in Context
The story of Jan Vos and the two paintings he commissioned from Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus in the 1440s, during his tenure as prior of the Bruges charterhouse, affords us valuable insights into the patronage of a leading monastic figure in the fifteenth century. As a memorial painting with an attached indulgence (that is, a grant that promised viewers a remission of time served in purgatory in exchange for prayers said in front of the panel), the Frick Virgin offers an even rarer window onto the funerary strategy of a late medieval Carthusian monk. This essay brings the Frick and Berlin Virgins into dialogue in the broader context of objects connected to the Bruges charterhouse, and to the Carthusian Order in general. In doing so, and by leaving questions of attribution aside to focus on the works’ function, reception, and use, we can better understand the various roles images played in shaping monastic life and preparing for the afterlife in fifteenth-century Netherlands. Jan Vos’s Career and Patronage In the first days of April 1441, the Carthusian monk Jan Vos was elected prior of the Charterhouse of Bruges, known as Val-de-Grâce in French or Genadedal in Flemish. Little is known of Jan Vos’s life.3 Born in Delft, he began his career as a member of the Teutonic Knights, a military religious order with its origins in the Third Crusade, founded with the goals of providing medical care to Christians and defending the Holy Land.4 By the fifteenth century, Teutonic houses in western Europe were much busier operating hospitals than waging holy war. Their members, called knights or brothers, had sworn vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and most of them were also priests. Despite regulations specifying that nobility was a requirement for entry into the order, in practice Jan Vos’s social extraction remains unclear.5 He is first documented in 1431 at the bailiwick (the Teutonic provincial seat) of Utrecht in the northern Netherlands, where he served as procurator, an important administrative position tasked with the management of the house assets and finances.6 Soon after, he joined the Carthusian Order, taking his vows at the Charterhouse of Nieuwlicht, just outside Utrecht, about 1432. This coincided with an important moment for this charterhouse: that year, its monks retook possession of their monastery, which they had abandoned for five years due to political and religious strife in Utrecht.7 By 1437, Jan Vos had ascended to the position of procurator at Nieuwlicht.8 In 1441, following the death of the prior Gerard de Hammone 14
on March 30, Jan Vos was called to Bruges to become the prior of the Charterhouse of Genadedal.9 Not much is known about his tenure there except that in 1444 he secured a tax exemption for the monastery from Philip the Good—probably an important achievement of his priorate—which also indicates that he had contacts with the ducal court.10 Jan Vos headed the Bruges charterhouse until 1450, when he was called back to Utrecht to serve as prior of Nieuwlicht.11 He spent eight years at the helm of the Utrecht charterhouse, where his stewardship was remembered as “wise and commendable” in a later chronicle of the monastery.12 Due to ill health and age, he asked to be relieved of his charge in 1458; he died at Nieuwlicht four years later, on February 15, 1462.13 According to Carthusian practice, he was buried in the monastery’s large cloister.14 From documents and extant works, Jan Vos can be associated with at least four works of art during his lifetime. The two paintings that survive are the Frick Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos (see fig. 1) and the Berlin Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos, known as the Exeter Virgin after the British private collection in which it was first recorded (see fig. 41). In 1938, the Dutch scholar Hendrick Scholtens connected the Frick Virgin to a crucial document: a letter dated September 3, 1443, in which the suffragan (or
Fig. 1
Jan van Eyck and workshop, The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos, ca. 1441–43. Oil on Masonite, transferred from panel, 18 5/8 × 24 1/8 in. (47.3 × 61.3 cm). The Frick Collection, New York (cat. 1)
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