Dresden Triptych (Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine and a Donor or Triptych of the Virgin and Child)

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Dresden Triptych (Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine and a Donor or Triptych of the Virgin and Child): Jan van Eyck

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Jan van Eyck Oil Painting - Dresden Triptych (Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine and a Donor or Triptych of the Virgin and Child)

Keywords: Dresden, Triptych, Virgin, Child, Michael, Catherine, Donor, Triptych, Virgin, Child

Work Overview: Dresden Triptych (Virgin and Child with St. Michael and St. Catherine and a Donor, or Triptych of the Virgin and Child)
View of the inner wings
The two outer wings contain an Annunciation scene in grisaille
1437
Oil on oak panel
33.1cm × 13.6cm; 33.1cm × 27.5cm; 33.1cm × 13.6cm
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The Dresden Triptych (or Virgin and Child with St. Michael and St. Catherine and a Donor, or Triptych of the Virgin and Child) is a very small hinged-triptych altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It consists of five individual panel paintings: a central inner panel, and two double-sided wings. It is signed and dated 1437, and in the permanent collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, with the panels still in their original frames. The only extant triptych attributed to van Eyck, and the only non-portrait signed with his personal motto, ALC IXH XAN ("I Do as I Can").[a 1] the triptych can be placed at the midpoint of his known works. It echoes a number of the motifs of his earlier works while marking an advancement in his ability in handling depth of space, and establishes iconographic elements of Marian portraiture that were to become widespread by the latter half of the 15th century. Elisabeth Dhanens describes it as "the most charming, delicate and appealing work by Jan van Eyck that has survived".[1]

The paintings on the two outer wings become visible when the triptych is closed. They show the Virgin Mary and Archangel Gabriel in an Annunciation scene painted in grisaille, which because of their near-monochrome colouring give the impression that the figures are sculpted. The three inner panels are set in an ecclesiastical interior. In the central inner panel Mary is seated and holds the Christ Child on her lap. On the left hand wing Archangel Michael presents a kneeling donor, while on the right St. Catherine of Alexandria stands reading a prayer book. The interior panels are outlined with two layers of painted bronze frames, inscribed with mostly Latin lettering. The texts are drawn from a variety of sources, in the central frames from biblical descriptions of the assumption, while the inner wings are lined with fragments of prayers dedicated to saints Michael and Catherine.

The work may have been intended for private devotion, perhaps as a portable altarpiece for a migrant cleric. That the frames are so richly decorated with Latin inscriptions indicates that the donor, whose identity is lost, was highly educated and cultured. Because of a lack of surviving documentary evidence on commissions of 15th century-Northern painting, the identities of donors are often established through evidence gathered by modern art historians. In this work, damaged coats of arms on the borders of the interior wings have been identified with the Giustiniani of Genoa – an influential albergo active from 1362 – who established trade links with Bruges as early as the mid-14th century.

The Dresden Triptych was probably in the possession of the Giustiniani family in the mid- to late-15th century.[1] It is mentioned in a May 10, 1597 record of a purchase by Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and was then sold with the Gonzaga Collection to Charles I of England in 1627.[2] After Charles's fall and execution, the painting went to Paris and was owned by Eberhard Jabach, the Cologne-based banker and art dealer for Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin. A year after Jabach's death in 1695, it passed to the Elector of Saxony, and next appears in a 1754 inventory of the Dresden Collection, attributed to Albrecht Dürer,[1] until the German historian Aloys Hirt in 1830 established it as a van Eyck.[2] In the mid-19th century the Dresden catalogues first attribute it to Hubert van Eyck (d. 1426) and a few years later to Jan.[1]

Van Eyck signed, dated and added his motto to the central panel, a fact only discovered when the frame was removed in the course of a mid-20th century restoration,[3] and confirmed with the 1959 discovery of the signature which is placed along with the words IOHANNIS DE EYCK ME FECIT ET C[OM]PLEVIT ANNO D[OMINI MCCCCXXXVII.ALC IXH XAN ("Jan Van Eyck Made And Completed Me In The Year 1437. As I Can"). The word "completed" (complevit) may suggest the completion date, but as master painters of the era typically had workshops to assist on major works, the wording can be seen as aggressively socially ambitious; perhaps an arrogant master painter indicating his workshop assistants had little material involvement in the panels, and that he was primarily responsible for its design and execution. This view is reinforced by the fact that it is the only non-portrait to contain van Eyck's motto, ALC IXH XAN.[4] Until the discovery of the signature the piece was variously dated to an early piece from the 1420s to his later period in the late 1430s.[5] Because the panels are so definitely attributed they are often used as a touchstone to date van Eyck's other works; there are a number of evident stylistic developments, including the type of stained glass windows and mouldings around the arcades, and his ability at handling perspective, which can be used to determine if other works at least pre-date the triptych.[6]

The central panel has often been compared to his unsigned and undated Lucca Madonna of c. 1436. That work echoes the central panel of the Dresden triptych in a number of aspects, including the dark green canopy, the figuration and positioning of Mary, her heavily-folded dress, the orange and brown pigments of the floor, the geometric carpet and the wooden carvings.[7] The Lucca Madonna is thought to be a portrait of the artist's much younger wife, Margaret.

The triptych is in poor condition, having suffered damage and heavy paint loss, and has undergone a number of restorations.[46] The outer wooden frames, originally painted in grey and yellow marbling, were later overpainted in a design of black and red[14] in the 16th or 17th centuries when "a faux turtle-shell design, imitating the then-fashionable veneer, replaced the earlier scheme of jaspered paint".[2] An ebony surround was added to the inner frames for protection in the 1840s.[2] There has been extensive repair work on the paint forming Mary's dress,[4] with large areas of her gown repaired in 1844 by painter Eduard Bendemann.[46] The badly damaged coats of arms have been retouched,[5] while the frames have sustained impairment and are overpainted in areas.[9] The painting was looted and taken to Moscow during the Second World War. It was returned in 1959 when it was cleaned, restored and underwent examination in a laboratory. This process revealed the ALC IXH XAN inscription on the inner moulding of the central frame in front of the tiled floor when a coat of brown paint was stripped away.[2][5] The surround was removed during the 1959 restoration.

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Dresden Triptych (Virgin and Child with St Michael and St Catherine and a Donor or Triptych of the Virgin and Child)

Jan van Eyck

Work Overview