Triptych with the Lamentation (centre panel), the Donor with St Peter (inner left wing), the Donor’s Wife with St Paul (inner right wing) and the Donors’ Coats of Arms (outer wings)

Entry

The centre panel with The Lamentation is a reduced and slightly modified variant of the painting of the same name executed by Geertgen tot Sint Jans around 1485, which is now in Vienna (fig. a).¹⁰ The wings, with their continuation of the landscape in the centre panel, show the kneeling donor with St Peter on the left, and the donatrix with St Paul on the right. The donors’ coats of arms on the outer wings were probably added later in the 16th century.

The Vienna painting shows the removal of the two thieves from the cross in the left background and the tomb on the right, the one in the Rijksmuseum has Jerusalem in the background and the tomb on the right wing. Although the donor’s portrait behind Joseph of Arimathaea in the Vienna painting is missing here, the group of figures is otherwise broadly the same, as are the colours of the clothing. The weeping Mary on the right, though, has been given a brocade dress, and the hat in the hand of the kneeling Nicodemus is smaller. There are, however, major differences from the model in the pictorial quality and the amount of detail. Like the landscape running across all three panels, the figures in the centre were painted rather flatly, thinly and sketchily, without any finishing touches in the details. This is in marked contrast to the far greater care, detail and refinement with which the donors and their patron saints were depicted.

This indicates that the figures on the wings were painted by a far better artist. The refinement in the rendering of the faces and hands, with delicate brown contours and subtle white highlights, confirms the traditional attribution to Jan Mostaert. They are directly comparable to the donors and their patron saints on the wings of a triptych in Brussels of which the centre panel is lost, datable between 1520 and 1525, showing Albrecht Adriaensz van Adrichem and his third wife, Elisabeth van Dorp, who are also accompanied by Sts Peter and Paul (fig. b). ¹¹

The difference in quality between the figures on the centre panel and the wings can also be seen in the underdrawing. On the wings the modelling with the brush in the clothing is painstaking, and is subtle in the faces, whereas the centre panel was prepared sketchily with just a few lines. Only the underdrawing of John’s clothing could be revealed (fig. c). It takes the form of a few lines for the contours and straight parallel hatching for the shadows, and is vaguely similar to the underdrawing of The Holy Kinship attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans (SK-A-500).¹² The detailed underdrawing in the wings for the clothing of Sts Peter and Paul (fig. d, fig. e), with two layers of short parallel hatchings in and on top of the folds, and the modelling of their hands and faces, are very similar to that in the Brussels wings mentioned earlier (fig. f). The background of the centre panel is indicated with a few sketchy chalk lines (fig. g), and in the wings with broad brushed lines, while the hills with the castle on the left panel were broadly drawn with a brush (fig. d).

Dendrochronology has revealed that the centre panel may have been painted before the wings. The ground and paint layers on the centre panel extend right to the edges, which is evidence that this panel was not painted while it was in its frame, as was customary at the time. The wings, which have unpainted edges and must thus have been painted in their frames, may have been added to a centre panel that was executed earlier, which would explain the later dendrochronology. On the other hand, the landscape running across all three panels and the tomb on the right wing do make the triptych a single iconographic and stylistic ensemble. The broadly painted landscape in all three panels also appears to have been executed in the same style, with reserves being left for the figures on the wings, which must have been underdrawn and painted by Jan Mostaert. The stylistic similarities between these figures and those in the Brussels panels, which were probably executed a little later, point to a date of c. 1515-20 for the Rijksmuseum painting. Although the triptych has been attributed to Mostaert since its purchase in 1903, there have long been doubts about the attribution of the centre panel. Up until now the wings have been regarded as relatively early works by Mostaert, with a dating of 1500-10.¹³

Going by the dating of the wings to the second decade of the 16th century, the woman is wearing rather old-fashioned attire, which could indicate that she was quite old. The fairly broad lappets of her headdress, with the sides hanging to below her chin, were fashionable around 1510. She is wearing a black gown lined with grey fur. Her skirt is tucked into her belt at the back, revealing a coloured underskirt. The cuffs of the wide sleeves are not turned back to the shoulder in the modern manner. She is wearing a black partlet over her shoulders. Her husband has black pattens over yellowish leather shoes, a black fur-lined gown and holds a bonnet.¹⁴

Unfortunately, the identity of the donors has not yet been established with any certainty. The coats of arms on the outer wings were probably added later in the 16th century, together with the date ‘15[7?]7’. Snyder interpreted them as being of the 17th-century Amsterdam family Speyart van Woerden. Alleged ties to that family led to the dubious identification of the donors as the Haarlem burgomaster Willem Pietersz, who died in 1541, and his first wife, Bella Borwoutsdr, who died in 1509.¹⁵

Jan Piet Filedt Kok