Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl

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Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl: Robert Campin

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Robert Campin Oil Painting - Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl

Keywords: Saint, John, Baptist, Franciscan, Heinrich, Werl

Work Overview: Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl
Robert Campin
Alternative name: The Werl Triptych
Date: 1438
Style: Northern Renaissance
Series: Werl Altarpiece
Genre: religious painting
Media: panel, tempera
101 x 47 cm
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

The Werl Triptych (or Triptych of Heinrich von Werl) is a triptych altarpiece completed in Cologne in 1438, of which the center panel has been lost. The two remaining wings are now in the Prado in Madrid. It was long attributed to the Master of Flémalle, now generally believed to have been Robert Campin, although this identity is not universally accepted. Some art historians believe it may have been painted as a pastiche by either the workshop or a follower of Campin or the Master of Flémalle.

The right wing depicts a seated, pious Saint Barbara, who is shown engrossed in her reading of a bound and gilded holy book, seated in front of a warm open fire which lights the room with a golden glow. The left wing has a donor portrait of Heinrich von Werl, who kneels in prayer in the company of John the Baptist facing the missing devotional center-panel scene, which is lost and unrecorded. The two extant panels are in Madrid and renowned for their complex treatment of both light and form. The panels became influential on other artists from the mid-15th until the early 16th century, after when Early Netherlandish painting fell out of favour until it was rediscovered in the early 19th century.

From an inscription in the left wing, the panels are known to have been commissioned by Heinrich von Werl, provincial head of Cologne during 1438. He is shown in the left wing kneeling in devotion alongside Saint John the Baptist. This panel contains a number of elements indebted to Jan van Eyck, notably the convex mirror in the midground, which as with the 1434 Arnolfini Marriage, reflects the scene back at the viewer.

Although the center panel is lost with no surviving copies, inventory records or descriptions, it has been speculated that it was set in the same room occupied by Saint Barbara.[2] This is likely given the abrupt end of the lines of the beams of the roof and the frames of the window, as well as the direction of the falling light. The center panel may have formed the setting for a Virgo inter Virgines.[3][4] Given that there is no surviving evidence of the triptych's influence on Cologne art until the middle of the century, it was likely the triptych was until then positioned either in private or in an inaccessible place in the church large enough to hold a number of altarpieces.[5] However it became influential from the mid-15th century.

Of the two panels, that of Barbara, although flawed in some anatomical respects, is richer in detail and considered the superior piece.

Left panel: Saint John and donor
The donor, Heinrich von Werl, is named in the Latin inscription on the left wing, which translates as; "In the year 1438 Minister Heinrich von Werl, master of Cologne, has this image painted" (Anno milleno c quater x ter et octo. hic fecit effigiem ... depingi minister hinricus Werlis magister coloniensis).[10] Von Werl was a member of the Minorites order (today known as the Franciscan order) in Osnabrück. He moved to Cologne in 1430 to study at the university, where he received a magister degree in 1435, having earlier been appointed provincial of Cologne province. He probably commissioned this work for the Minorite church in Cologne. He died in retirement in Osnabrück in 1463.[10]

The panel shows von Werl kneeling in prayer as he is presented by John the Baptist in a domed interior. Campin was heavily influenced by van Eyck by the early 1430s, and this wing is indebted to him in a number of ways; in the fall of light, sharp detail and especially the convex mirror in the middle ground which reflects the scene back at the viewer, a direct reference to van Eyck's 1434 Arnolfini Marriage.[9] The form of the lettering on this wing identifies both the donor and date, and is heavily influenced by van Eyck's elegant, almost decorative, inscriptions.

The painting is typical of early commissioned altarpiece in that the donor is not include in the central devotional scene. Instead he is demoted to a side panel, a witnesses to the divine[11] who are visible through the doorway connecting the wing to the central panel. Campin's Mérode Altarpiece, painted after 1422,[12] places the donor wing in an exterior setting in a garden below the level of the Virgin, here he is placed in an interior. Although the door in the earlier work connects the space of the donor and Virgin, it is open and seemingly obstructs his view of the Virgin.[13] Campin's early altarpieces, unlike those of van Eyck's, stick with the traditional hieratic form of a center panel reserved for the devotional scene, and are physically and spatially removed from the wings. In the Werl Triptych, the donor is a mere witness rather than a protagonist, although he is positioned in an interior rather than an exterior setting. The triptych further introduces the idea of the intermediary saint, again a van Eyeckian influence; here represented by John the Baptist seen holding a lamb in the same panel as von Werl, increasing the significance of the area occupied by the donor.

The Werl Altarpiece was a triptych the central panel of which has been lost. The left wing depicts the donator Heinrich von Werl, a theologian from Cologne, head of the Minorite Order, with St John the Baptist, the right wing St Barbara.

Though long regarded as an authentic work by Robert Campin (the Master of Flémalle), the altarpiece now is usually thought to be a pastiche by a follower. The bench on which St Barbara sits and the perspective of the whole room is taken over from Campin's Annunciation (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); even the white towel and the ewer of water, symbolizing the Virgin's chastity, have been copied, though they are not the attributes of St Barbara. Her attribute, the tower in which she was imprisoned, is shown outside the window - typical of the way the early Netherlandish school rationalized abstract symbols naturalistically. In the left wing, the mirror on the wall is borrowed from Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage in the National Gallery in London, painted four years earlier.

An inscription in gothic letters identifies the sitter and dates the work: "In the year 1438, I painted this effigy of Master Heinrich von Werl, Doctor of Cologne". A Provincial of the Franciscan Order in that German city beginning in 1432, Werl was full Professor of Theology and quite a famous preacher. On a trip to Tournai, he was able to contact the painter and have himself portrayed inside a room, kneeling next to Saint John the Baptist. Campin´s painting shows a clear influence of Roger van der Weyden in the great slenderness, elegant expression and curved figure of Saint John. The van Eyck brothers are also clearly echoed here in the landscape visible through the window, and the use of a convex mirror that reflects two Franciscans and the Baptist. This work is paired with Saint Barbara (P01514), as the two were the doors of a triptych whose central panel has been lost.

The centre panel of this Triptych has been lost. In the right panel St Barbara sits reading her book within a middle-class room so typical of Campin. An open fire heats the room from behind the Saint who sits on a bench common in Campin's paintings. St Barbara's green dress is in stark contrast to the red cushions on the bench, above the fireplace a detailed sculpture of the Trinity can be seen.
The left panel features St John and the doner Heinrich von Werl who is placed prominently in front of St John. In a clear reference to the work of van Eyck, a convex mirror reflects the scene back into the room. Both panels feature windows that show views of the landscape in the distance.
Robert Campin died in Tourni on 26 April 1444.

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Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan Heinrich von Werl

Robert Campin

Work Overview