Word: ivo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...With your article on the discovery of a painting by Rogier van der Weyden [April 5] you have a reproduction of a portrait with the title "St. Ivo of Chartres." There seems to be some confusion here. France's Ivo (Yves de Chartres) wrote collections of canon law, but it was St. Yves of Brittany who was the patron saint of lawyers and is renowned for his defense of the poor and for free legal aid to the peasants. He was Yves (sometimes Ives or, in Latin, Ivo) Helory, who was born in 1253 on his father...
...identity of the man in the portrait is still a mystery, but Reader Richardson is correct that St. Ivo Helory of Kermartin was known for his defense of the poor. The National Gallery titles the painting "St. Ivo...
...picture had hung for years above the fireplace of a cottage in the Thames side village of Bray: a long-nosed, sallow ascetic with a scarred mouth, dressed in fur-trimmed doublet and dark scholar's cloak. A gold halo and inscription announce him to be St. Ivo, "the poor man's lawyer." Behind him, a window discloses silver water, trees, a farm, an arched bridge. The little panel (it measures 181 in. by 141 in.) had disappeared in the Middle Ages and reappeared late in the 19th century in the collection of the first Lord Newlands...
...portrait painted around 1440 of Van der Weyden's patron, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Other experts, such as John Pope-Hennessy, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, agreed. If it began as a portrait and was later converted into a religious image of St. Ivo, the National Gallery's painting is of unparalleled historical interest: it would be the first portrait in the history of Western art with a landscape in the background. Moreover, says Christie's, "it is the first portrait in European history to depict the sitter engaged in a normal everyday...
...National Gallery cautiously prefers to stick with St. Ivo. "The natural pose would be extraordinary if the picture were of Philip, merely somewhat unusual but nevertheless remarkable if it were of a saint," says Director Martin Davies. Yet the scholarly debate will certainly go on. The impassioned detail from the heavy eyes and fine-drawn skin to the sensitive mouth, argue a living model whose exact image Rogier van der Weyden was determined to record. Duke or saint, the painting is one of the most precious art discoveries of the past ten years...