Panofsky's 'Early Netherlandish Painting'-I

Author(s): Otto Pächt

Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 98, No. 637 (Apr., 1956), pp. 110+112-116
Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
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 THE RIJKSMUSEUM 'INCREDULITY'
1624. Priv. Coll. Dublin Singing Lute Player, Crefeld Violinist and Woman
drinking,Oxford BagpipePlayer, Cologne Bagpipe Player.
c.1624. Algiers Singing Lute Player, Bordeaux SingingLute Player, London art
market SingingLutePlayer.
c. 624-6. Pen Violinist with glass, Ex-Beckmann Lute Player and woman with
glass, Vienna WomantuningLute, Nicolson WomantuningLute.
1625. Hampton Court Bass Viol Player with glass, Oberlin St Sebastian,
Utrecht Lazarus.
1626. New York art market Boy Violinist.
c.1626. Priv. Coll. Vienna (1929-3o) Boy Violinist, Stockholm Boy Lute
Player,40Stockholm Girl with tankardand glass.40
c.1625-8. Utrecht Man with tankardandfish, Gothenburg Singer, Priv. Coll.
Sweden MercenaryLove.
40 I have not mentioned these two problematical paintings in the text, since
I propose to discuss them in detail in a later article. It is enough to say here
that I now regard them as partly by Terbrugghen himself.
OTTO
Panofsky's 'Early Netherlandish
IN Panofsky's Early NetherlandishPainting' we have the great
critical synopsisof all relevant studiesin this field undertaken
by one who has for the last twenty-fiveyears been himself one
of the driving forces in the study of the formation and evolu-
tion of modern painting north of the Alps. Being fortunately
equipped for the task through his acquaintance with practi-
cally the whole material scattered across the Old and the
New World, and commanding an unrivalled erudition and
an almost encyclopedic knowledge, the author has been able
to combine the comprehensivenessof a superiorkind of hand-
book - which has been justly likened to a medieval Summa2-
with the incisivenessand directnessof specialized enquiry that
focusses both the objects and their problems at close range.
With his exceptional skill as a writer the author presents- on
important issues - the argument in a kind of openwork
technique so that the reader feels invited to take part in the
discussionand gets the impressionalmost of having a voice in
drawing the final conclusions. The chapter on the Ghent
altar-piece, for instance, has the heading: 'Hubert and/or
Jan van Eyck'. Those who expect to have served up to them
a final answer to that crucial problem will at first be disap-
pointed to discover that no clear-cut solution is forthcoming,
but will soon appreciate the wisdom of this scrupulous
reluctance to declare even the most plausible hypothesis an
established fact, and will appreciate the frankness of the
admissionthat furtherdevelopments'may entail new changes
in our hypotheses'. It should be stressed at once that the
'and/or' is meant to indicate only the uncertainty as to the
division of hands in the Ghent altar-pieceand does not imply
that Panofsky entertains doubts about the existence of
Hubert van Eyck. In other places the discussion of alterna-
tive solutions and rival theories has been relegated in the
more usual way to notes. Many of these have the nature of
excursiand sometimes amount to veritable critical essays,
constituting together a most formidable auxiliary apparatus.
1ERWIN PANOFSKY:Early Netherlandish Painting, I: xiii+573 pp.+28 pl.;
11:xxiii+ 334 pl. (Harvard University Press; Oxford University Press, Geoffrey
Cumberlege), Cx x is the set.
2
L. M. J. DELAISSe: 'Les "Chroniques de Hainaut"', etc., MiscellaneaE. Panofsky,
Bull. des Musies Royauxdes Beaux-Arts,Brussels [9551], P-54.
IIO
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AND TERBRUGGHEN'S CHRONOLOGY
1627. Gotha Flute Player, Crespi, Milan (1914) Bacchante with monkey,
London ?Jacoband Laban,Augsburg Drinker.
c.x627-8. Miss ter Bruggen Old Man writing,Pommersfelden Vanitas.
1628. Cologne ?Tobias and Sarah, Basle Singer,Amsterdam Philosophers(2),
Paris Concert,Malahide Castle Bravowith Dog.41
?1628. Kress David salutedby Women.
c. 628-October 1629.42Ex-Moltke Liberationof St Peter,Gauno Denial of St Peter,
Eastnor Castle Concert,Stuttgart Lute Player.
January-October 1629. Diest Annunciation,Borghese Duet, Schwerin Liberation
of St Peter.
41 This picture has suffered severely, as can be seen in the reproduction,
especially in the right arm and hand.
42 Terbrugghen's wife gave birth to a child, Hennickgen, on or a few days
before 14th March 163o (information from baptismal registers of Protestant
churches in Utrecht). This suggests that the painter, who died at the beginning
of November 1629, was still in reasonably good health in midsummer of 1629.
PACHT
Painting'--I
Those dealing with iconographic and related matters often
present concisely a complete outline of their subjects so that
they form small articles in themselves which could be trans-
ferred straight into the columns of such compendia as the
Reallexikonzur DeutschenKunstgeschichte.Grateful as one has to
be for so much subsidiaryinformationone cannot help feeling
that the day is not far off when text will be submerged by
marginalia and the main story of a book will have become a
mere pretext for learned digressions.
A good third of Panofsky's book is devoted to the pre-
history of Flemish painting, i.e. to the story of the artistic
movement which led to the foundation of a new art of
pictorial representation. It is by far the most detailed and
penetrating account we have had of this momentous chapter
of art history, memorable for its masterly characterizationof
the basic changes of painterly concepts that took place during
the protracted struggle for the conquest of the third dimen-
sion, and especially for the clear definition of the differences
in the Italian and Northern attitude to space. Panofsky is,
however, not content to show the general trend of the
development, but seeks to trace the actual course of events in
this transitionperiod from the anonymous history of styles to
the history of individual artists, not shrinking from a dis-
cussion of questions of personal authorship and precise
chronology. As was to be expected he holds very unorthodox
views on many subjects and proposes some startling changes
in the grouping, the chronologicalorder, and the valuation of
the artistic documents. How far are they justified?
Since the Parisexhibition of 1904 firstassembledthe scanty
remains of the French Primitives, not much has been added
to our knowledge of French panel painting before the advent
of Fouquet, yet some of the pictures once believed to be
French have had in the meantime to be struck from the
register of French art and assigned to other schools of Gothic
painting which have become better known (for instance the
Lippmann panels of the Pierpont Morgan Librarywhich can
be linked up with the style of the Liber Viaticusof Johan of
Neumarkt, i.e. with the Bohemian school, or the Wilton
diptych which one now considersto be English). Continuing
12. Detail from Virginand Child with a Fire-screen,by the Master 13. Detail from Virginand Child, attributed 14. Detail from Virgin in Glory, SS.
of Flemalle. (National Gallery.) to Jean Malouel. (Louvre.) Peter, Augustine, and a Monk, by
the Master of Flkmalle. (Museum,
Aix-en-Provence.)

15. Annunciation,miniature from MS. Lat.862, fols.2Iv-22r, from the circle of Giovanni di Benedetto da Como. 16. Detail of Annunciationfrom the Belles
Dated 1383. (Biblioteca Estense, Modena.) Heures du Duc de Berry, by Paul de
Limbourg. (Metropolitan Museum,
New York.)

from altar-piece, by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck. (St Bavon, Ghent.)
17. Annunciation I8. Nativity, miniature from Add. MS.29433, fol.56,
by Zenobi da Firenze. (British Museum.)

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 PANOFSKY S EARLY NETHERLANDISH
this processof eliminating heterogeneouselements, Panofsky
has subjected the French tree to the most severe pruning,
leaving a bare minimum of indisputably French works. It has
to be admitted that some of the paintings rejected by him
stand precariouslyisolated in the context of French art. But
to observe in them stylistic connexions with foreign schools
does not eo ipsowarrant their expatriation. For each of these
schools (Bohemian, Austrian, German, Spanish) had in the
late fourteenth century strong French ingredients and what
led us to think of some of their representatives as possible
relations of the disputed 'French' paintings may have been
just these comparatively superficial'Gallicisms'- the fashion
of the time - and none of the more specific, inalienable
characteristicswhich alone would constitute reliable criteria
for deciding questions of origin. Panofskyseeks to change the
labels of four major works (p.82) and suggests a Bohemian
origin for the Annunciationof the Sachs Collection,3 an
Austrian or 'South Bohemian' origin for the small Bargello
diptych,4 assigns the Carrand diptych5 to the school of
Valencia, and looks in the case of the Berlin diptych with the
Carthusian donor for a home in what he calls the Bavarian
school, connecting it with the Paehl altar-piece (generally
regarded as an example of Salzburg workmanship).
Unfortunately Panofsky,though he stressessome allegedly
un-French features, gives hardly any reasonsfor his startling
attributions, but in the case of the first two examples - which
actually ought to go under one heading, for the Sachs
Annunciation and the Bargello diptych have long ago been
shown by F. Winkler to be products of the same hand, if not
parts of the same altar7 - we can at least guess what he had
in mind. There is indeed a certain resemblance between
them and the works of the Master of Wittingau, extending
also to such peculiaritiesas the motif of the embroideredloin-
cloth of the Crucified or that of the host of tiny birds popu-
lating the roof of the stable of Bethlehem (cf. the Bargello
Epiphanyand the Nativityfrom Hluboka Castle),8 but in the
main this correspondenceconcernsjust those features in the
Bohemian panels which one was used to regard as signs of
French influence or at least as novel elements in Bohemian
art, such as the bearded types with their well-groomed wavy
hair, the swinging rhythm and the elegant appearance of the
figures, and finally the gliding movement of the drapery. In
other respects there are great differences: in the Bohemian
paintings the movement is not enacted by a play of fluent
lines (Panofsky's 'over-animation of linear movement'), but
by a broad stream of flowing mass, a legacy of the earlier
Bohemian tradition. Could then the relationship 'Bargello
diptych - Master of Wittingau' not perhaps be explained as
that between Western model and Central European para-
phrase? Or have we thoroughly to revise our views not only
about French, but also about Bohemian painting and assume
that what we believed to be the result of Western influence
was an entirely autochthonous development? One thing is
certain, that whoever sets out to refute Panofsky's attribu-
tion and to reclaim for France the Bargello diptych and its
3
Repr. in G. RING: A Centuryof FrenchPainting, London [1949], pl.17.
4 Ibid., pl.I6, Fig.27.
5Ibid., pls.I-3, Fig.24; also PANOFSKY,pl.46.
6 RING, op. cit., Fig.Ig
9 (MS.io of Ushaw College, nr. Durham) which was written by one Johannes
7
'Ein unbekanntes franz6sisches Tafelbild', Belvedere[1927], pp.6 ff. Cf. also
F. WINKLER'S review of Panofsky'sbook in Kunstchronik, [1955], p.12.
vm
8 Cf. the reproductionsin RING, op. cit., pl.I6, and A. MAT*J~EKand j. PEIlNA:
CzechGothicpainting, Prague I to go before we are capable of differentiating between the various local styles.
[1950o], pl. 7.
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PAINTING'-I
associate will have to show detailed proofs.9Correct attribu-
tions are not a question of connoisseurship,but a test whether
we have the artistic phenomena in focus or not.
The Carrand and Berlin diptychs are far less isolated
than the enigmatic group of the small Bargello diptych and
it is not easy to understand why their status should be
queried. B. Martenso0once confrontedthe Carranddiptych -
called now Valencian by Panofsky- with an early fifteenth-
century Cologne picture to demonstrate the French orienta-
tion of the latter's style, and there is no doubt that both use
one and the same compositionalidea. The analogies with the
Valencian panels to which Panofskydraws attention are far
too general to stake any claim on them (the characteristic
knife-edge folds of Valencian drapery are completely absent
from the Carrand diptych) and on the other hand there are
numerous close parallels to be found between the diminutive
figure types of the Carrand panels and those of the Jacque-
mart de Hesdin circle (more precisely the figure types in the
GrandesHeuresdu Duc deBerry)11and works of Franco-Flemish
origin (Panofsky, Figs.I 10-12). The conclusion to be drawn
from all these observations can only be that the Carrand
diptych originated in some place between Valencia and
Cologne (which centres mark approximately the periphery
of the diffusion of the French 'International' style), certainly
much nearer to Cologne and the Lower Rhine, somewherein
the Northern region between Arras-Valenciennes and
Holland-Guelders from which at that time the avant-garde
of Western painting seems to have come.
Panofsky's thoughts about the Berlin diptych and its
provenance seem to have been influenced by his observation
that its Crucifixion shares with the Paehl altar-piece a com-
paratively rare iconographical detail, namely the motif of the
Virgin holding up the edge of her veil as if to receive the
blood issuing from Christ'sside-wound.'2 But this is hardly a
sufficient reason to assign the Berlin diptych to a South
German school, since stylistically its closest relatives can be
found among the illuminatorswho worked partly in England
or for English patrons (Master of the Beaufort Saints),13
9 To my mind by far the closest relative of the Bargello diptych is a pair of
panels preserved in the Frankfurt Staidelsches Kunstinstitut (Coronationof the
Virgin) and Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum (Joseph and Mary) respectively,
said to be of Lower Rhenish origin. Repr. in A. STANGE: DeutscheMalerei der
Gotik, I, Berlin [1934], Figs.I13-15.
10 Meister Francke,Hamburg [I929],
p.I6o, pls.71-2.
11The idea of the hooded Virgin with the hidden face occurs in almost identical
execution in the Crucifixionof the Carrand diptych, called Valencian by
Panofsky, and in the Flight into Egypt of the Antwerp quadriptych, given by
Panofsky to a follower of Melchior Broederlam, cf. PANOFSKY, Figs.99 and II I.
12 In this the Master of the Paehl altar-piece followed a Bohemian example, the
Vy?gi Brod Crucfixion,repr. in MATPJ&EK, etc., pls.127-8, a work from the circle
of the Master of Wittingau (Trebon Master), on whose French orientation see
MATAJ&EK, op. cit., p.27. A much earlier representative of this motif occurs in
western art in a Carolingian ivory (on the golden book-cover from St Denis,
Paris, Lat.9436) repr. by H. SWARZENSKI: Monumentsof Romanesque Art, London
Fig.26 (pl.I2).
[1954],
13
Panofsky advances 'tentatively' the theory of an Ypres school of illumination
in which he sees, and because he sees in it, an echo of the style of Melchior
Broederlam, the Ypres panel painter. In this connexion it may be of interest to
mention that the Annunciationminiature (Clowes Coll., Indianapolis) he repro-
duces in Fig. 165 is a work of the Master of the Beaufort Saints and that to my
knowledge the only manuscript with miniatures by this hand which can be
localized precisely has the use of Th6rouanne (Oxford, Bodl. Libr. MS. Rawl.
lit. e.32), a centre in which illumination seems tohave been practised since
A not altogether different style can be found in an unpublished Book of Hours 1300oo.
Heineman at Bruges in 14o8/9. It seems to me that either all these centres had
round 14oo a fairly homogeneous style - in which case the question of exact
localization loses much of its significance - or that we have still some distance
II3
 PANOFSKY'S 'EARLY NETHERLANDISH
partly for such centres as Therouanne, Ypres, Bruges (cf. the
slender, emaciated, willowy figure types, the form of the
faces tapering towards the chin, of the haloes consisting of a
diffusion of rays that merge into the patterned background -
a feature never occurring in the South German schools, and
also the segments of clouds carrying the bust of God the
Father and a host of angels, all painted in blue grisaille).14
The idea behind all these questionable attributions is,
however, to prove that the notion of a fourteenth-century
school of Paris is - as far as panel painting is concerned -
devoid of any meaning and in this I think Panofsky is right.
We can form a perfectly clear picture of what late fourteenth-
century Paris illumination looked like, yet its style bears no
definite resemblance to that of any of the so-called French
panels of about 14oo00.Panofsky finds the term 'Burgundian
School' almost equally suspect or problematic, questioning
above all the theory that the paintings executed for the court
of Burgundy at Dijon were produced in a Dijon atelier. The
answer to this query came quickly. All doubts which could be
entertained in this matter have now been dispelled by C.
Sterling in a most important study (Miscellanea Panofsky, op.
cit., PP-57 ff.) which succeeds in resurrecting the artistic per-
sonality of Jean de Beaumetz, predecessor of Malouel as
court painter of Philip the Bold, and in which a good case is
made for the existence of a strong local tradition (uneforte
continuiti locale) in spite of the different racial origins of the
artists working in Dijon. That the commonly held view of
the Burgundian style has been finally vindicated is of special
significance for the question of the origin of the ars nova of
Flemish painting in the fifteenth century. For as F. Winkler
convincingly showed more than forty years ago,15 it is in the
pictures by Malouel and his circle that we have to see the
premises of the figure style at any rate of the Master of
Flemalle (my comparison of Figs.12 to 14 is intended further.
to underline this filiation). It makes sense that the new
Flemish style, practised in one of the domains of the Bur-
gundian Empire, should have drawn its inspiration from the
art cultivated at Dijon, the Burgundian capital - and not
from Paris which Panofsky thinks of as a more probable
fountain-head of the movement represented for us by the
Malouel tondo and its relatives.
With so little of certifiable French panel-painting preserved
and this further so drastically reduced, it is only natural that
Panofsky should rely for his sketch of the pre-Eyckian
development predominantly on the wealth of book-painting
that has come down to us from this period, much of it of the
highest order.'6 Although it is generally acknowledged today
that in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries illumina-
tion was not a minor art (applied art), but comprised some of
the most progressive forces of its time - Panofsky even thinks
that contemporary panel painting 'by comparison tended to
14A particularly instructive comparison is, for instance, that between the
Crucified of the Berlin diptych (RING,Op.cit., pl.I9) and the crucified Christ of
Brit. Mus. Royal MS.2 A xvIm (KUHN: 'Hermann Scheerre and English
Illumination of the Early Fifteenth Century', Art Bulletin,xxii [1940], Fig.3o).
15 Der MeistervonFlimalle undRogiervan der Weyden,Strasburg [1913], pp.I41 ff.
16 One class of documents has
unfortunately not been included in Panofsky's
account apart from a brief mention of the Angers Apocalypse:the early tapes-
tries. Yet an analysis of the arrazzi of I4o02 in Tournai by Panofsky would no
doubt have given us much needed information about the character of Franco-
Flemish design for works on a monumental scale. If for no other reason as main
representatives of the highly secular art of the period the early tapestries
deserve the closest attention of the student of Franco-Flemish painting.
II14
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PAINTING' -I
remain somewhat retardataire' - the fact that as a rule the
study of the two media has been in the care of different
classes of specialists, seems so far to have prevented a com-
pletely homologous treatment of the introductory - the
miniaturists' - and the main - the panel painters' - part of the
story. In Panofsky's book the two arts are treated perhaps for
the first time as equals within one and the same historical
narrative. It furthermore includes as its most original contri-
bution an account of the so-called regional schools of The
Netherlands (i.e. ateliers situated in Flanders, Hainaut,
Brabant, Guelders, Holland) which with the exception of the
most Northern, in the strict sense Dutch schools have re-
mained until quite recently step-children of art history and
have never been studied as a whole.
This first systematic survey of what has virtually been a
terra incognita at last satisfies a need that has for some time
been acutely felt by students of Late Gothic painting. For it
had become clear to them that the conventional picture of a
Flemish art growing up on more or less virgin soil or in a
thoroughly provincial milieu devoid of any positive aesthetic
characteristics was a misrepresentation of historical reality.
It was F. Lynal7 who first drew attention to a current of
popular realism in pre-Eyckian Flemish illumination of
about 1400 which contrasts sharply with the much more
refined, yet also more subdued naturalism of art at the
various Valois courts. Panofsky supplements Lyna's findings
on the iconographic side by demonstrating that in certain
novel or unorthodox iconographic features the Master of
Fl1malle and his great contemporaries and followers draw on
local sources. In the review of Baldass' book on Van Eyck in
these columns'8 I spoke of yet another line of local tradition
which merges into the ars nova and accounts for one of its
peculiarities, namely for the strangely spare figure-types
which the early Eyckian group of the Turin Hours has in
common with the preceding generation of Flemish and
Lower Rhenish painters and illuminators. But when all this
is said we have to admit that we are not much nearer to the
solution of the main question, that of the genesis of the new
art of painting. As a passionate genealogist of iconographic
motifs Panofsky tends to over-estimate the importance of the
indigeneous sources for the formation of the new Flemish
painting and to play down the contribution of the cosmo-
politan French and Franco-Flemish tradition. He argues at
great length and with infinite patience the case for a specific
'Netherlandish' iconography which is presented as the
ancestral background of the founders of Flemish painting,
but such questions as that of the antecedents of the F1lmalle
Master's landscapes, to be sought in the direction of the
cosmopolitan Limbourgs, he dismisses in two short para-
graphs. It is on such occasions that one recalls Panofsky's
words in the preface about the dilemma of writing at the
same time for the general reader and the special student, and
one wonders whether a scienti breviterloquor is not implied
here. In one instance at least, in that of the Limbourgs' Trds
Riches Heures, this consideration is what justifies in Panofsky's
eyes his unexpectedly short treatment:'... this manuscript...
is so well known that I shall limit myself to a minimum of
comment'.
17 'Les miniatures d'un MS. du "ci Nous Dit" et le r6alisme
Pr6eyckien',
Scriptorium,I [1946-7], pp.io6 ff.
18 'A new Book on the Van Eycks', THEBURLINGTONMAGAZINE,XCV
[19531,
pp.248 ff.
 PANOFSKY)S cEARLY NETHERLANDISH
One would have fewer qualms about the over-emphasis of
the iconographic approach if really all the iconographic
peculiarities which Panofsky considers as specifically
'regional' were as 'un-French' as he assumes. But this is by
no means the case. For several characteristic motifs on which
Panofsky lays much stress important examples from the
French or Franco-Flemish, the 'Cosmopolitan', milieu can
be adduced whereby the basis on which Panofsky's argument
rests is considerably narrowed. There is first what he calls
'the submissive gesture of the Annunciate - hands crossed
before her breast'. This 'faintly exotic gesture' is according to
him 'exceedingly rare in French and Franco-Flemish
Annunciations' and 'it is by the persistence of a Guelders and
Lower Rhenish tradition... that we can account for its
appearance in the Ghent altarpiece'. But not only does it
occur in one of the most famous 'Franco-Flemish' Annuncia-
tions, the Belles Heures du Duc de Berry of Paul de Limbourg'9
(Fig.16), but it is there combined with another significant
iconographic detail peculiar to the Ghent version (Fig.i 7), the
motif of the angel carrying instead of a sceptre or scroll the
bunch of lilies one usually sees in a vase between the two
figures. This motif, to my knowledge unknown from indi-
genous Netherlandish miniatures, is of course also of Italian
origin and as an Italian example that combines both features
I reproduce here an unpublished double miniature from the
circle of Giovanni di Benedetto da Como (Milan), dated
1383 (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS. Lat.862, fols.2Iv-
22r) (Fig.I 5). No work of the regional schools has yet come to
light that would form a better link between Italy and Ghent
than the Limbourg miniature. Another instance of an Italian
invention transmitted to the Flemish painters, according to
Panofsky, not through French channels but through local
Flemish intermediaries is the Madonna dell'Umiltd theme. Its
popularity in the pre-Eyckian and pre-Flkmallesque schools
of the Flemish and Low-German territories cannot be denied,
but is it really as exceptional in French art as Panofsky
thinks? The British Museum possesses a French early fifteenth-
century Book of Hours, stylistically related to Bourges work,
Harley MS.2952,20 where every division of the quinzejoyes de
la viergeis adorned with another variant of the damed'humilitd
and the motif can also be found in other schools, for instance
in the atelier of the Bedford21 and the Rohan Master, as an
illustration to such prayers in the Book of Hours as required a
more informal and intimate type of Madonna.22
To my mind there is also something paradoxical in
Panofsky's thesis that precisely those artistic centres which
produced by far the most Italianate style (the painters of the
Duc de Berry at Bourges, the Paris school of illumination, the
Anjou milieu which incidentally has never been properly
studied) should, as far as iconography is concerned, have been
'averse to motifs too Italianate'. It is conceivable that the
provincial schools which rarely had a first-hand knowledge
of Italian models fell for a different class of (ultimately
1x Now in the Metrop. Mus., New York. Publ. in extenso by j. PORCHER in
Paris
[1953].
20oSee E. G. MILLAR: Lesprincipauxmanuscrits peinturesd'originefran;aisedu British
Museum,Paris [1932], No.48.
21 See, for instance, pl.va of Bull. de la Soc. Fran;. de Reprod.de MSS. d peintures,
xx, Paris [1937].
22 For the special case of the Virginof the Annunciation combining the humility
posture with the motif of reading in a prayer-book (MWrodealtar-piece) Italian
models of the type reflected in a Spanish late fourteenth-century panel in
Barcelona (POST:Historyof SpanishPainting, zz, Fig. 146) have to be assumed.
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PAINTING-)-I
Italian) iconographic concepts, but even in this case only the
enclaves of Italian influence on French soil could have pro-
vided the material from which the Northerners drew their
inspiration. As is well known the Duc de Berry, apart from
employing artists who had been to Italy, possessed many
Italian pictures and other objects in his art collections which
could have served as an object-lesson in Italian iconography. 23
Italian artists, too, worked at his court and in Paris, and in a
miniature executed by one of them with the name Zenobi da
Firenze, an artist of Bolognese training24- who is responsible
for the historiated initials of the Brussels Trks Belles Heures-
several of the rarer features of the new Nativity iconography
occur which finally found their way into the Flimalle
Master's Nativity picture in Dijon, notably the motif of Joseph
holding the candle and that of the two midwives (Brit. Mus.,
Add. MS.29433, fol.56) (Fig.I8). In combining these motifs
with the hut instead of the Brigittine cave Zenobi's miniature
compares with the Dijon picture even better than the
Nativities in manuscripts from Guelders quoted by Panofsky.25
He himself admits that one characteristic motif of the new
Nativity, the shepherds as interested spectators peering into
the hut from without, is derived from the 'metropolitan' art
of the Limbourgs.
It is not difficult to see why Panofsky should lay so much
stress on the search for the regional roots of Flemish painting.
If we bear in mind that the new art came into being in an act
of emancipation from the unwritten rules and aesthetic
norms of French Gothic painting, the next question to ask is
obviously which actually the forces were that strove to assert
themselves and to find an adequate mode of pictorial ex-
pression. What could be more interesting than to observe
manifestations of the specifically Flemish Kunstwollenbefore
it became as it were fully articulate! In this respect a study of
the peculiar realistic and burlesque marginal drolleries in
which Flemish illuminators specialized from 1300 on may be
no less rewarding than the tracing of unusual iconographic
traditions in which Panofsky excels. Yet highly symptomatic
as these phenomena certainly are we have to look elsewhere
for the decisive events in the story of emancipation which
raised Flemish painting from a provincial dialect to an
2s See on this point PORCHER,Op. cit., pp.I6 ff., with bibliography.
24 I have listed some of the more important works of this artist, found both in
Italian and French manuscripts, in note 19, p.52, of my Master of Mary of
Burgundy,London [1948] (Chester Beatty MS.84 should not have been in-
cluded). Since then another sumptuous MS. illuminated by his hand has
turned up, the Hours of Charles le Noble, King of Navarra and Count of
Evreux (t1423), in a French private collection (Manuscrits et Livres Pre'cieux
retrouvisen Allemagne,Paris [1949], pt.II, in which J. Porcher discovered on
the artist's signature: 'Zebo da Firenze dipintore'. He must be identical
p.414
with Zanobi da Firenze whose name is mentioned in Bolognese documents
according to F. MALAGUZZI-VALERI: 'La Miniatura in Bologna dal XIII al
XVIII secolo', Arch.Stor. Ital., Serie V., Tomo xvIII [1896], pp.42 iff. Charles
le Noble stayed in Paris in 1404 and in 1408, the MS. is of Paris use.
25 To avoid any misunderstanding it should be pointed out that Zenobi's mid-
wives behave exactly as their counterparts in Franco-Flemish painting,
'limiting themselves to their professional activities'; in short they are used as
mere genre motifs without any reference to Salome's incredulity and the
miracle of the dried hand as in the F16malle Master's Nativity picture. The only
pictorial renderings of this incident, i.e. of the original legend, which Panofsky
was able to quote as parallels come from German art (illustration of Wernher of
Tegernsee's Lied vonderMaget, etc.); but a Western MS., the English fourteenth-
century PictureBible from Holkham Hall, also includes it. I wonder, however,
whether the real source of inspiration for the F16malle Master was pictorial at
all and whether it should not be sought in the realm of the Mystery Plays. The
story of the two obstetrices narrated in great detail in the LudusCoventriae (ed. by
K. S. BLOCK: Early English Text Society, London
[1922], pp.i4o ff.) runs closely
parallel to the Fl6malle Master's pictorial version.
I15
 PANOFSKY'S 'EARLY
artistic language sui generisand gave it equal status to that of
the great European idioms. The example set by another
great realistic current, that of Siena and Milan, proved in-
dispensable in loosening the tongue of the would-be realists
from the Northern regions and in retrospect it seems to have
been the historic function of Paris and the other Valois courts
to attract in the critical period all the best artistic talents of
the North and so to provide opportunities for the contact
with Italian and Italianate art. The greatest advance towards
the solution of the problem of the interior - which was to be
one of the great specialities of Flemish and Dutch painting -
is, for instance, not found among works of the provincial
Northern schools, but, as Panofsky has shown, in one of the
most instructive passages of the book, in the miniatures of a
Parisian artist, the so-called Boucicaut Master. In landscape
painting and in the individualization of the narrative a
similar advanced position was reached by the brothers Lim-
bourg, who though natives of Guelders worked at Bourges,
artists to whom the title of pioneers of the pre-Eyckian move-
ment, which Panofsky so jealously wishes to reserve for the
Boucicaut Master, should be awarded by rights before all
others. Melchior Broederlam of Ypres is the only first-rate
painter from the North who seems to have worked for, but
not at, the French courts.
ROBERT
The Hertford-Wallace
Collection
IT has often been remarked upon that the only essential
feature of French decorative art in the eighteenth century
not to be found in the Wallace Collection today is that of
tapestry, such pieces as can be seen there being confined to
the upholstery of chairs and sofas. These include, admittedly,
a valuable Beauvais series after Francesco Casanova which
has already been mentioned in this Magazine,1 but of the
great output of wall-tapestry which streamed from the
Gobelins, Beauvais, and other manufactories during the
eighteenth century, no example remains today at Hertford
House.
Research, however, into the early history of the Collection,
as formed by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard
Wallace, shows that the representation of this very element
was originally as extensive and of the same outstanding
quality as the rest of their collections, and that the display
of tapestry which Lord Hertford could produce at the
time of his death in I870 must have been one of the very
finest.
It is well known that a large part of what in fact constituted
the total number of works of art of all kinds inherited by
Sir Richard Wallace from Lord Hertford in I87o, did not
pass to the nation on Lady Wallace's death in 1897.2 But, as
will be shown later, a substantial proportion of the tapestry
collection was indeed sold by Sir Richard Wallace prior to
1 D. S. MACCOLL:'French Eighteenth
Century Furniture in the Wallace Collec-
tion-X', THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, XLIV [19241,
p.70.
2 See ROBERT CECIL: 'The Remainder
of the Hertford-Wallace Collections',
THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, XCII [1950], p.I68.
116
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NETHERLANDISH PAINTING'--I
That history was made first in France and Burgundy by
French and Franco-Flemish artists26 and later by Flemings
in their own country was the view which was more or less
common knowledge before Panofsky wrote his book. I have
felt it necessary to restate it in order to point out that though
we must be grateful to Panofsky for widening our horizon,
the new facts and observations do not invalidate the theory
of the evolution to which we were accustomed.
[The second part of Dr Pdcht's article will appear in a later
issue - ED.]
2" The term Franco-Flemish is actually a misnomer and as misleading as, for
instance, the use of the word 'Flemish' for the miniatures of the great Roman-
esque Bibles of Stavelot or Floreffe. 'Flemish' when used in connexion with
pre-Eyckian art evidently implies all sorts of Netherlandish or Low-German
dialects, but only a few of the great Northern artists came from Flanders. A
very important contingent (Malouel, the Limbourgs) came from the Duchy of
Guelders. New biographical documents concerning these artists have just been
published by F. GORISSEN:'Jan Maelwael und die Brtider Limburg', Bijdragenen
mededelingender Vereniging'Gelre' [1954], pp.153 ff., from which we learn the
important fact that all three Limbourg brothers died in 1416 - the same year as
their patron the Duc de Berry - probably in an epidemic. The impression of this
valuable study, in which the author warns us of the danger of projecting the
political geography of modern times into the civilization of the past, is marred
by assigning to the period of I40ooa panel in Kranenburg (and so connecting it
with the early Guelders Masters) which is retarded provincial work of the
second half of the fifteenth century as P. Clemen had rightly put it.
CECIL
of Tapestry
his own death in I890. Nevertheless, Sir John Murray Scott
(Lady Wallace's residuary legatee) did inherit some valuable
pieces which were left with so many of his possessions to
Victoria, Lady Sackville, and were sold by her to Messrs
Jacques Seligmann of Paris in 1914. They have subsequently
been to a large extent dispersed.
The first indication that we have that Lord Hertford
possessed wall-tapestry is in 1865 when he lent nine panels to
the great 'Musee Retrospectif' exhibition organized in Paris
by the Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts appliques 'a l'Indus-
trie.3 This loan consisted of two Beauvais armorial panels
with the arms of France and the cipher of King Louis XIV
on red and blue grounds respectively; four panels of the
Gobelins Don Quichotteseries signed by Audran and dated
1757, no ground colour being mentioned; a panel of the
Louis XIV period representing the Toilet of Flora; two
Gobelins panels signed by G. S. Neilson representing Juno
and Diana respectively; and a further Beauvais panel signed
with a fleur-de-lis and the initials A.C., representing Russians
seated at a table listening to music, after Le Prince.
It has only been possible to identify and trace the present
whereabouts of two of these panels. The first mentioned
armorial panel (No.5734) on a red ground appears still to be
in the possession of Messrs Seligmann, Paris, and the last
mentioned (No.5751) corresponds in description to Le Repas
from the Beauvais series Jeux Russiens, after Le Prince.4 This
3 See
Catalogue, Paris, 1867, Nos.5734, 5735, 5738, 5739, 5744, 5751.
4 See J. BADIN: La
Manufacturede Tapisseriesde Beauvaisdepuisses originesjusqu'la
nosjours, Paris [I909], p.63. A version of Le Repasis illustrated opp. p.84.