The Virgin and Child enthroned, with Sts Jerome and John the Baptist and a kneeling Carthusian monk

Bruges, c. 1510

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 76 cm × width 64.2 cm
sight size: height 73.5 cm × width 62 cm
frame: height 109.2 cm × width 92.3 cm

Technical notes

The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (38.2 cm and 26 cm), 0.4-0.9 cm thick. The panel is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1484. The panel could have been ready for use by 1495, but a date in or after 1509 is more likely. The unpainted edges (1-1.3 cm) and the presence of a barbe indicate that the panel was painted in the frame (painted surface: 73.5 x 62.2 cm). The white ground is visible at the edges. An underdrawing in a dry medium was detected with infrared reflectography. Parts of the underdrawing are also visible to the naked eye in the lips of the Virgin and the hands of the monk. The paint layers were applied thickly and the glazed areas are therefore opaque. The Virgin’s halo was probably painted with lead-tin yellow, and the shadows in John the Baptist’s robe with black. The painted brocade pattern on the Virgin’s robe follows the folds in the fabric. There are 'pentimenti' in her face, the Child’s right leg, John the Baptist’s right hand and the monk’s right sleeve.

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 1434:4-33, 12 May 1992
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 2004
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 16 November 2005
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG397, 10 May 2006

Condition

Good. The flesh colours and lighter areas have a strong craquelure pattern as well as minor abrasion. There is raised paint along the grain in the blue of the Virgin’s robe. The red and green glazes have discoloured somewhat, and the varnish has yellowed.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1914: loose paint consolidated; revarnished
Castelli - Breuer (Mauritshuis) , C., 1986: complete restoration

Provenance

…; collection Stephen Gooden, London, by 1892;¹ …; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague, before 1902;² from whom on loan to the museum (inv. no. SK-C-871), 1907-11; donated to the museum from Hoogendijk’s estate, 1912; on loan to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1948-97; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 2003

Object number: SK-A-2569

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Jan Provoost (Mons c. 1465 - Bruges 1529), attributed to

Jan Provoost was probably born around 1465 in Mons, Hainaut, as the son of the painter Jan Provoost the Elder. He married Jeanne de Quaroube, the widow of Simon Marmion, before 1491 in Valenciennes. On 10 February 1494 he acquired citizenship of Bruges, where his wife died in 1506. He then married Magdalena Zwaef (d. 1509), the daughter of the saddler Adriaen de Zwaef, and Katharina Beaureins, who died in 1528. Adriaen, a son by his second wife, was also a painter. A son from his third marriage, Thomas, became a glass painter. Provoost died in January 1529 and was buried in the St Gilliskerk in Bruges.

He was probably first taught by his father, and since he married the widow of Simon Marmion it is assumed that he completed his training with this famous painter and book illuminator in Valenciennes. He enrolled as a free master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1493. In Bruges he was a member of the guild of image-makers and saddlers, to which panel painters also belonged, becoming its second warden in 1501, first warden (1507, 1509, 1514), governor (1511) and dean (1519, 1525). Maximiliaen Frans is listed as his pupil in the guild ledger for 1506.

In the autumn of 1520 he met Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp, who drew his portrait. In April 1521 he travelled to Bruges with Dürer, who lodged with him there for a while. In 1523 Provoost was a member of the Brotherhood of Jerusalem Pilgrims, of which he became a regent in 1527. A condition of membership was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which Provoost may have made between 1498 and 1501, or 1502 and 1505.

There are no signed paintings by Jan Provoost. He received commissions for decorative work for the knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece (1509), the Bruges city authorities (1513), as well as for Emperor Charles V’s joyous entry into the city in 1520. The Virgin in the Clouds of 1524,³ which was intended for an altar in the St Donaaskerk in Bruges, and The Last Judgement,⁴ which he painted for the council chamber of Bruges Town Hall, are the only works that can be attributed to him on the basis of documentary evidence. Those late paintings are the key to a reconstruction of his oeuvre, which now runs to more than a hundred works, three of which are dated. It consists mainly of altarpieces and smaller panels with the Virgin or scenes from the life of Christ. There is a relatively large proportion of altarpiece wings with donor portraits which illustrate his skill as a portraitist.

In his early period, when he made many scenes of the Virgin, Provoost painted in the style of the Flemish Primitives. He was, however, an inventive and innovative artist who constantly introduced variations in his work. He combined the traditional Bruges manner with Renaissance influences, which he absorbed mainly from Quinten Massijs in Antwerp.

References
Dürer 1520 (1995), pp. 52-53, 77-78; Weale 1872; Hulin de Loo 1902; Friedländer IX, 1931, pp. 74-92; Friedländer in Thieme/Becker XXVII, 1933, p. 429; Parmentier 1941; ENP IXb, 1973, pp. 85-94; Vermandere in Turner 1996, XXI, pp. 352-57; Spronk in Bruges 1998, I, pp. 94-96

(V. Hoogland)

Entry

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)

Literature

Hulin de Loo 1902, pp. 19-20 (as Provoost); Friedländer IX, 1931, pp. 89, 150, no. 178 (as Provoost); ENP IXb, 1973, pp. 89, 116, no. 178 (as Provoost); Spronk 1993, pp. 133-51; Zuidema 2004, p. 268 (as Provoost); Van Wegen 2005, pp. 38-39

Download Bibliography (PDF)

Collection catalogues

1907, p. 398, no. 1923a; 1934, p. 230, no. 1923a; 1976, p. 457, no. A 2569

Citation

V. Hoogland, 2010, 'attributed to Jan Provoost, The Virgin and Child enthroned, with Sts Jerome and John the Baptist and a kneeling Carthusian monk, Bruges, c. 1510', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7854

(accessed 23 November 2024 00:07:21).

Figures

fig. a Gerard David, the outer wings of an altarpiece with *The Baptism of Christ*, c. 1507-08. Oil on panel, 132 x 43.1 cm (left wing); 132.2 x 42.5 cm (right wing). Bruges, Groeningemuseum (Photo Bridgeman Images)