Word: weyden
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Duke or Saint. This week Britain's National Gallery will put the panel on show cleaned, the halo and lettering removed (they are by a later hand), and identified as a lost work by the great Flemish master Rogier van der Weyden. After long negotiation with the estate of Lady Baird, who died in 1969, the gallery bought it for the equivalent in cash and tax relief of $1,920,000. It was the second highest price ever paid by the museum for a work of art, topped only by the $2,240,000 paid for Leonardo da Vinci...
Carritt had concluded that it was a 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...
...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...
...collection is not inferior to the Met's loan. In fact, probably the greatest early American paintings belong to the MFA: John Singleton Copley's portraits and Gilbert Stuart's Martha and George Washington have few equals (not to mention Boston's John Singer Sargent canvasses). If Van Der Weyden's Christ Appearing to His Mother makes the viewer sigh, he should take a look at home- Van Der Weyden's Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, in Boston's permanent collection...