susan frances jones Jan van Eyck and Spain jan van eyck (active c. 1422-1441) was a painter whose inventive process was linked very closely to his powers of observation. In recent years, several exhibitions have shown that his painting was imitated and emulated in courts and towns across Europe. This article focuses on Van Eyck and Spain providing an overview of existing scholarship, and bringing in new observations and ideas where relevant. All of the works by Van Eyck in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon are lost to us, obliging us to rely on documentary evidence and copies, but three of the paintings with a provenance from the kingdom of Castile survive, allowing us to consider questions of production, date and attribution. Although it is probably broadly correct that Van Eyck’s style alerted painters all over Europe to radical new possibilities in the medium of painting, it is clear that his own role in the dissemination of Eyckian painting has been inflated while that of other, anonymous Eyckian painters has been diminished. In particular, this article reconsiders the period of the 1440s, questioning the idea that there was a “gap” in Bruges production after the artist’s death in 1441, addressing the identity of the painter and illuminator Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours. the kingdoms of the crown of aragon The taste for Van Eyck’s painting at the Neapolitan court of Alfonso V of Aragon (1396-1458; King of Naples from 1442) at mid-century is well-attested. According to the humanist Giovanni Pontano (14261503), in his treatise De magnificentia, the King preferred a particular painting by Van Eyck above all other things. Of the three paintings attributed to Van Eyck in Alfonso’s possession in Naples, only one came to him via Spain: a Saint George and the Dragon. The painting was acquired in Bruges in the Spring of 1444 by the merchant Joan Gregori by order of Berenguer Mercader, Chief Bailiff of the kingdom of Valencia. In a document of 2 May 1444, Gregori was reimbursed for the sum of 2144 sous reyals of Valencia: he had spent 2000 sous on the painting, and the remaining 144 sous on “four very fine shawms” (“quatre charamites molt fines”).1 In the summer of 1444, the painting and the shawms were shipped to the King at Naples via Valencia and Barcelona; they had arrived in Naples before 25 June 1445, when Alfonso wrote to Guillem de Vic, his counsellor and treasurer of the court in the kingdom of Valencia, and to his counsellor Berenguer Mercader, in order to square the accounts; in the letter, he noted that the purchases were very acceptable to him.2 Research by Lorne Campbell has shown that Berenguer Mercader († 1471),who was Lord of Buñol, knew Alfonso very well: he had served him as Chamberlain and had campaigned in Italy with him between 1437 and 1440, during the war of succession.3 Alfonso’s relation(Traducción al español de este artículo en pp. 149-161) 30 1. Lluís Dalmau, The Virgin of the “Consellers”, 1443-45. Oil on panel, 316 x 312.5 cm. Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (inv. no. 015938-000), on loan from the Ayuntamiento de Barcelona since 1902 1 ship with Gregori went back at least to 1434, when he represented Alfonso in Flanders in commissioning a set of tapestries.4 In that same year, Gregori served as Consul of the “nation” of Catalonia-Aragon in Bruges.5 He had been involved in trade with Flanders since at least 1431, and it is possible, as Campbell noted, that he knew Van Eyck. Thus Alfonso used middlemen to negotiate the geographical distance between Naples and Bruges, and he used men who had served him well in the past; this is also clear from the document of reimbursement of 1444, which states that by having the shawms made in Bruges at the order of the King, Gregori was acting “as already in days past”.6 Notably, the descriptions of the painting and the shawms emphasise their quality: in each of the documents of 1444 and 1445 the shawms are called “molt fines” and the painting is said to be “very highly finished” (“molt altament acabades”;“molt aptament acabada”). This j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain suggests that they were valued as outstanding objects of their kind, especially the painting for which Mercader paid a very high price.7 The document of 1444, which must reflect the views of Mercader, articulated the value of the recently-bought painting in other ways as well, identifying the painter by name, mentioning his status of “mestre”, his excellence (“lo gren pintor”), his role as court painter to the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke’s own illustriousness. Unusually for the period, the authorship of the painting was provided using a formula which seems to have become standard in Valencia: “by the hand of Johannes” (“de ma de maestre Johannes”; “feta de la ma de Johannes”). The only detailed description we have of the lost Saint George and the Dragon was written in 1524 by the Neapolitan humanist Pietro Summonte (1453-1526) in his well-known letter to the Venetian noble Marcantonio Michiel but the dimensions he provides suggest 31 that he saw a copy by the Neapolitan painter, Niccolò Colantonio (active in Naples between around 1440 and around 1470). The saint was depicted in a very complex pose in which both legs were visible: the right leg was shown almost out of the stirrup and the reflection of the dragon was visible in the polished surface of the armour of the left leg.8 This was unusual in a painting of Saint George on horseback. In the vast majority of paintings and manuscript illuminations of this period only one of the saint’s feet is shown—regardless of whether the saint and his horse are shown in profile view or three-quarter view. Notable exceptions are paintings by Paolo Uccello, Cosmè Tura and Giovanni Bellini, and in all of these the saint is represented in three-quarter or near frontal view. This is therefore the most likely solution in Van Eyck’s case as well, whether or not the paintings by Tura and Bellini owe something to his example. It is therefore possible, as suggested by Campbell, that the horse in the lower left corner of the famous miniature of the Prayer on the Shore in the TurinMilan Hours, by the Eyckian manuscript illuminator and painter known as Hand G, is ultimately derived from Van Eyck’s panel painting.9 It may be relevant that the same horse, seen in three-quarter view, reappears in an image of Saint George fighting the dragon in a book of hours now in the Huntington Library, probably 2 32 2. Saint George and the Dragon in a book of hours probably made in Bruges, c. 1450. 115 x 70 mm (whole folio). San Marino, Huntington Library (ms hm 1087), fol. 19 3. Workshop of Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Elizabeth of Thuringia and Jan Vos, c. 1441-43. Oil on panel, 47.3 x 61.3 cm. New York, The Frick Collection (inv. no. 1954.1.161) made in Bruges around 1450 (fig. 2)— the rearing pose and daring foreshortening of the horse is arguably more suited to the subject of Saint George and the Dragon, for which it was a long-standing convention, than for the cavalcade of the Prayer on the Shore. As well as using an agent in Bruges, Alfonso may have sent his painter Lluís Dalmau (c. 1428-63) to train in Van Eyck’s Bruges workshop. The main evidence for this—aside from a document dated 6 September, 1431, by which payment for his journey to Flanders was authorised—rests in an altarpiece executed about a decade later. The Virgin of the “Consellers”, made by Dalmau for the Consell de Cent for their chapel in the Casa de la Ciutat in Barcelona (fig. 1) allows us to draw several conclusions. First, Dalmau had clearly made sufficient copies of Eyckian models to create a painting Eyckian in its entirety. He must have seen both registers of the Ghent altarpiece, as shown by a segment of the landscape (in the second arch from the left), which is very close to the cityscape on the horizon just to the right of centre in the panel of the Adoration of the Lamb. As Bart Fransen has shown, the heads of Saint John the Baptist and of two of the angels in the altarpiece were known to Dalmau in exact size, which suggests that he made tracings of drawings in the workshop. These were either preparatory drawings or conceivably records of the completed panels.10 Secondly, Dalmau seems here to have worked to an extent in the same way as Van Eyck’s assistants, in that he used a major work by Van Eyck—the Virgin of Canon van der Paele (Bruges, Groeningemuseum) completed in 1436—as a compositional framework.11 The same model that he used for his figure of Saint Eulalia, for example, was used in the same location and for the same pictorial function by an assistant of Van Eyck in the Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Elizabeth of Thuringia and Jan Vos (fig. 3), a painting which is also based compositionally on the Virgin of Canon Van der boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 3 Paele. Dalmau not only knew the workshop pattern but also how it might be redeployed in standard Eyckian compositions. The motif of a distant landscape seen through a mid-ground arcade, which was not specifically registered in the contract, was also a standard motif in Eyckian painting (cfr. fig. 3). Dalmau’s materials and techniques have recently been studied.12 The ground is locally-available calcium sulphate and there is a thin isolation layer. Although it has been supposed that the stipulation for Baltic oak was in emulation of Van Eyck’s materials, it was probably chosen primarily for its quality, since Baltic oak had been used about a decade earlier by Bernat Martorell for his retable of Saint George and the Dragon, also in Barcelona, and, moreover, for a similarly prestigious location: the chapel of the Palau de la Generalitat, the ruling body of Catalonia.13 Dalmau’s paint medium was a drying oil.14 The structure of the paint layers and the distribution of j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain pigments within those layers is compatible with Netherlandish painting: in the blue colour of the cloak of one of the singing angels, for example, the lowest layer is azurite and the two uppermost layers are natural ultramarine, all three being mixed with a drying oil.15 Given Dalmau’s comprehensive collection of Van Eyck patterns, and that he was in Flanders as court painter to Alfonso V of Aragon, it is plausible that he spent a prolonged period in Van Eyck’s workshop in the early to mid-1430s.16 It is not known when Alfonso became interested in Van Eyck’s painting, but a strong possibility is the late 1420s, when he received two Burgundian embassies in quick succession—one in 1426 and the other in 142728—which aimed to secure Philip the Good’s marriage to Alfonso’s sister, Eleanor.17 As shown by Bart Fransen, it is possible (though not explicitly documented) that Jan van Eyck participated in the embassy of 1426.18 These embassies took place immediately after Van 33 4. Jan van Eyck and workshop, Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, c. 1440-45. Oil on panel, 29.2 x 33.4 cm. Turin, Galleria Sabauda (inv. no. 7) 5. Joan Reixach (attributed), Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata. Oil on panel, 88.9 x 55.8 cm. London, Christie’s, 10 July 1998, no. 193 4 Eyck became court painter to Philip the Good in May of 1425, making the reception of Van Eyck’s painting at the Aragonese court parallel to its reception at the Burgundian court itself. Van Eyck’s high status in Valencia evidently owed a great deal to the King. Dalmau was one of a network of painters active in Valencia which also included Joan Reixach (active in Valencia, doc. 1431-86), and Jaume Baçó known as Jacomart (Valencia, c. 1411-1461); all three of these painters had the right to place the royal arms above the entrance of their houses.19 The role of Louis Alincbrot, a painter first recorded in Valencia in 1439 but previously in Bruges, may be significant but is little understood. No authenticated work by him survives (see article by Susie Nash in this issue). It is unlikely that he was trained in an Eyckian tradition because he was already vinder of the Bruges painters’guild in 1432-33, and would have completed his apprenticeship there before Van Eyck took up permanent residence in Bruges.20 We cannot be sure that Alincbrot was trained to paint in oil (the use of which predated 34 Van Eyck); however, it is likely that he had knowledge of the medium. From the late 1430s, in Valencia, Dalmau would have been a source of Eyckian models, techniques, methods and materials, and, furthermore, ideas.21 He was clearly familiar with some of Van Eyck’s ideas about painting, including that a painted panel should display its authorship and that a signature inscription could be used to inflect the way the painted image was seen and understood. In the Virgin of the “Consellers”, his signature on the throne of the Virgin simulates letters carved in stone, provoking a comparison between media in which painting emerges as an art of illusion, with the capacity to deceive. It is a measure of Dalmau’s grasp of the implications of Eyckian painting that he uses yellow paint instead of real gold to represent the gold embroidery at the edge of the Virgin’s mantle, thereby changing the measure of value of the painting from the use of costly materials to the display of artistic skill. Indeed, the contract suggests that his patrons did not envisage a painting that exploited the illusionistic powers of oil boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 to the full, as it called for real gold and did not stipulate the use of an oil medium. Imported objects were also a means of transmission. According to the posthumous inventory of the possessions of the Valencian clergyman, Andreu García, drawn up in 1452, the painter Berenguer Mateu (active between 1423 and 1446) had given to him in surety for a loan “a half image on paper in pen and ink by the hand of Johannes” (“una myga ymatge en paper de ploma de ma de Johannes”).22 In addition, Joan Reixach, who made paintings for Alfonso V of Aragon had by 1448 acquired a painting of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata “made in oil by the hand of Johannes” (“acabada ab oli de la ma de Johannes”). Although he attributed it to Van Eyck, it may have been from the workshop, as indicated by the fact that he bought it in Valencia for the relatively small sum of 15 Valencian pounds.23 Reixach bequeathed the painting to Andreu García to hold in usufruct during his lifetime on the condition that, when he died, the painting, or the proceeds from its sale, should be returned to the painter’s heirs. García was an important figure in this context. Research by Encarna Montero has shown that his family was from the ruling class of Valencia, he cultivated multiple connections to painters and he acted as a middleman between patrons and painters, becoming involved in the making of objects. To an extent, he was able to promote and shape artistic taste.24 Garcia was thus a key figure in the cultural life of Valencia; his admiration for Van Eyck and connections with Reixach and Jacomart were reflections of taste at the royal court, and he appears to have played an important role in the spread of progressive styles and ideas in local painting. The Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata attributed to Reixach was presumably one of several copies of the Eyckian archetype now in Turin (fig. 4). Since, unusually, the Eyckian design is known to us, we can explore its reception more deeply. Of the two derivative paintings attributed to Reixach, which are different from each other in style, we will discuss only that formerly in the Balanzó collection, which is believed to be an image made for private devotion (fig. 5).25 Van Eyck’s painting offered local painters the opportunity to study effects of light and transparency, the cracked surfaces of stone, botanically accurate flora (the palmetto plants) and ripples in a stream. What Reixach took from the Eyckian painting was mainly its landscape, which brought to his own composition the sense of a specific place and, j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain 5 through the rippling stream, a moment in time. Yet the Eyckian type of the figure of Saint Francis was rejected and replaced by an older, well-established model which descended from a prototype by Giotto painted around 1300 (Paris, Musée du Louvre): this may be seen in the saint’s single raised knee, the positioning of the feet, the display of all five wounds, the linear rays connecting the wounds to those of the seraph, and the gesture of the saint’s hands, spread out widely. This response may reflect the fact that the Eyckian type of the saint is peculiar. No rays connect the saint to the vision, nor does he look up: there is no psychological connection between the saint and the vision of the seraph. Curiously, Saint Francis does not wear a tonsure. That Valencian painters did recognise these oddities is clear: even 35 6. English, The Agony in the Garden, fifteenth-century. Carved, painted and gilt alabaster, 42.2 x 26.7 cm. London, The Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. A.69-1946) 6 in the relatively close copy by the Master of the Porciúncula, made around 1460/70, the saint is tonsured and is shown looking up at the seraph, his palms held up towards the vision. The source for the saint’s pose and gesture in the Eyckian design is to be found neither in the early biographies of Saint Francis, nor the dominant iconographic tradition for the subject established by Giotto. The model for the figure of the praying Saint Francis is actually the figure of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin in Jan van Eyck’s Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (Paris, Musée du Louvre).26 The saint’s pose was deliberately modelled on that of a “donor” figure—a figure depicted kneeling in prayer. What Van Eyck and his patron had in mind was clearly the well-established typological and pictorial tradition whereby Francis’s prayer on Mount La Verna is shown as a re-enactment of Christ’s prayer on the Mount of Olives—and this is confirmed by the pose of Brother Leo, who is portrayed not as a witness to the miracle but asleep, like Christ’s disciples (compare fig. 6). The multiple associations sparked by the figure of Saint Francis thus establish him as a threefold conflation of the beholder, of the saint and of Christ. 36 The figure links the beholder into a chain of devotional models to consider and emulate, serving as a metaphor and stepping stone for spiritual transformation. The purpose of the painting was “imitatio Christi”. The interpretation of the painting as a model for prayer has important implications for our understanding of Jan van Eyck, and his workshop production, because it means that the Stigmatisation is not truly a narrative painting, concerned primarily with simulating the effect of a real event: rather, it is a devotional image, an embodiment of perfect prayer, and thus timeless. It seems to confirm Jan van Eyck’s lack of interest in narrative, already shown by his preference for the subject of the Virgin enthroned. Did the painters in Valencia understand why the painting looked the way that it did? Reixach’s close relationship to Andreu García suggests that he could have seen the painting in these terms. Not only was García interested in theology and in the arts but he had a particular empathy for Observant Franciscanism. Among the books in his library were a life of Saint Francis and an array of writings by Saint Bonaventura, including the standard devotional text, the Lignum Vitae.27 Indeed, since García’s devotional practice leant decisively towards affective prayer and meditation, it is plausible that, when Reixach bequeathed the painting to García for his lifetime, his intention was for him to use it. In the case of the Balanzó Saint Francis, however, it seems clear that Van Eyck’s painting did not satisfy the patron’s needs with regard to sacred iconography. Whereas the Eyckian version emphasises the saint’s interior feelings of ardent love and compassion for the crucified Christ, which is the subjective cause of the stigmatisation, Reixach’s painting places the emphasis on the seraph, which is the objective cause. This reaffirms the miraculous nature of the event. The seraph is seen against the sky, which is real gold, and its wings are coloured a fiery, burning red, which is picked up again in the wounds of the saint. The difference in boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 iconography cannot be attributed in this case to the transfer of the image to a new context such as a retable for liturgical use, since Reixach’s painting was probably made for a private oratory. But the Eyckian painting in Reixach’s possession was no doubt designed for a different kind of viewing experience altogether: it would have been considerably smaller in scale than Reixach’s painting (which measures almost 89 x 56 cm), and it required the viewer to enter into an intimate, mimetic relationship with the saint, rooted in their shared humanity. One idea in the Eyckian work that was congenial to Reixach’s patron, however, was that of showing Brother Leo asleep, which in Van Eyck’s painting produces a moral contrast between the saint/ Christ, who is watchful for his soul, and his follower/ disciple, who is not. Indeed, this contrast may explain the addition of a pair of cranes next to Saint Francis, for these birds were believed to keep watch for enemies at night. The Eyckian landscape was also a crucial element since it guided the viewer to see the foreground rocks and streams as if from very close-to and the panoramic distance as if from far away, placing the miracle within a wider, temporal world. The patron did retain a gold ground, however. For him, the recognisability of the sacred image was important, as was its presentation against real gold, both of which enabled the object to fulfil its function of arousing devotion. eyckian painting and naples: the crucifixion and last judgment (new york) Among the most important Eyckian paintings formerly in Spain are the Crucifixion and Last Judgment in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 7). They form part of a small group of works attributed to the panel painter and manuscript illuminator Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours, whose attribution to Jan van Eyck has been defended and attacked with equal vigour. The question of the painter’s identity is crucial because depending on whether these works are dated to the 1420s or the 1440s, they can be used to tell widely different narratives of Eyckian painting, and thus of fifteenth-century European painting as a whole. The paintings were first recorded in 1841 by Passavant, who said that they had come from a “convento” in Spain.28 Since then, it has usually been supposed that they were in Castile in the fifteenth century: J. V. Brans, for example, suggested that they were given to j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain this convent by Juan II of Castile.29 But a recent discovery indicates that they were in Naples. As observed by Gabriele Finaldi, they are surely the paintings described in the 1641 inventory of the guardaroba of Ramiro Núñez Felípez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina de las Torres and Spanish Viceroy of Naples (c. 1600-1668), and his second wife Anna Carafa della Stadera, Principessa of Stigliano (1607-1644), where they are attributed to Albrecht Dürer. The entry is as follows: Dui quadretti lungho attaccati insieme con tre colonne con base e capitelli et architrave sopratutto indorato con dio Padre nella sumita et uno di detti quadri vi e la Crocefissione di Nostro Sigre in mezzo li dui ladroni co’diuerse figurine di Soldati, e le Marie con lettere antiche intirno, nell’altro Giesu Christo appoggiatto alla Croce con diverse figure d’Angeli e sotto esso infinite figure di santi, sotto a’quali il Purgatorio co’un Angelo in mezzo e sotto l’inferno co’lettere similmente intorno di mano del detto Alberto dura.30 In spite of the attribution to Dürer, there can be no doubt from the description, which is very complete down to the frames with circular inscriptions in “lettere antiche”, that these are the paintings now in New York. In all probability, the Duke acquired the paintings in Naples between 1637 and 1641, during his viceregal tenure for Philip IV of Spain, and took them back to Madrid after his return in October 1643.31 The newly-discovered information raises the unresolved question of the original format of these panels. Passavant recounted that they had been the wings of a triptych, and that the centre panel, which had been stolen, was an Adoration of the Magi; however, the subject mattter of the wings makes this unlikely. A diptych format is plausible thematically, and a diptych juxtaposing the same subjects was in the possession of John, Duke of Berry.32 Brought together, the paintings provoke contemplation of the interrelationship between Christ’s sacrifice, on the left, and his victory over Death, on the right. But the evidence for triptych wings is stronger, given the unusually tall and narrow dimensions of the panels and the fact, provided by Passavant, that both the reverses bore fragments of figures standing on socles, painted in shades of grey (in fifteenth-century diptychs typically only one exterior panel is so painted).33 In a recent reconstruc37 7. Associate of Van Eyck (Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours), Crucifixion and Last Judgment, probably 1440s. Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 56.5 x 19.7 cm (each). New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1933 (inv. no. 33.92ab) 8. Antonello da Messina (attributed), Crucifixion. Panel, 39 x 23 cm. Sibiu, Muzeul National Brukenthal (inv. no. 732) 9. Valencian?, Crucifixion, c. 1450-60? Oil on panel, 44.8 x 34 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 94 [1976.1]) 7 tion, Stephan Kemperdick has suggested that the centre was a relief sculpture of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.34 The physical evidence is complex. There are two sets of old holes in the frames: those on the sides of the frames are consistent with hardware for a folding diptych but the second set, on the reverses, accords with hardware for a winged triptych. On this basis, Maryan Ainsworth has suggested that the original format was a triptych, and that the object was made into a folding diptych early on.35 The new document shows that in 1641 the two paintings were already without a central image. It remains unclear when the paintings were reframed 38 all’ antica, as described in the inventory: tabernacle frames came into use in Italy for smaller devotional paintings and single-panel altarpieces from the midfifteenth century and continued in fashion through the sixteenth.36 The framework seems to have been a tabernacle frame, with no moving parts, typical of Southern Europe: it incorporated three columns (one between the two paintings and one to either side) and, above, an entablature showing an image of God the Father (the fact that this image of God is said to be “nella sumita” suggests that the entablature supported a triangular pediment or gable). The reframing represents the kind of change in taste in which a central relief sculpture, boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 8 9 perceived as old-fashioned and “Gothic”, might have been discarded. It all but eliminates the option of a painted centre panel, which would arguably have been incorporated into the same structure. But it does not exclude the possibility that the object had already been converted into a folding diptych—something more likely to have occurred before 1641 than in the late seventeenth century or eighteenth century. The reference in the inventory to “lettere antiche” encircling the frames of the two pictures can be examined in relation to the recent discovery that there are traces of circular inscriptions in Gothic textualis on the front of the frames, on the flat outermost moulding. At some point, these were scraped off and the frames have been regilded.37 Any interpretation of this must at present be speculative: it is possible that this represents a change of mind during production, but perhaps more plausible that these were originally present at the same time as the majuscule inscriptions formed in pastiglia on the narrow, j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain sloped, inner mouldings, and that the frames were originally inscribed with two sets of circular inscriptions, one inside the other, a system that can be found in medieval goldsmith work. Why and when the outer inscriptions were removed is unknown: they may have been damaged or unreadable, or appeared old-fashioned. It is possible that it was done when the paintings were reframed all’ antica, leaving only the inner inscriptions visible. That the New York paintings were in Naples in the seventeenth century is of interest because there is good reason to place them there in the fifteenth. It has long been recognised that the Crucifixion in Sibiu, attributed to Antonello da Messina (c. 1425/30-1479) and a Crucifixion in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid are closely related to the Eyckian picture in New York (figs. 8 and 9).38 The attribution of the Metropolitan Crucifixion and Last Judgment has been overwhelmingly to Jan van Eyck, and they are of special importance in illuminating the relationship between Van Eyck and An39 10 11 40 tonello. In recent scholarship, however, there has been an understandable desire to deconstruct the prevailing narrative that Antonello was above all an imitator of Van Eyck and to acknowledge the importance of the Provençal and Valencian currents of painting in Naples in his formation. It is evident that the Sibiu Crucifixion cannot be explained by the Eyckian painting, but it does have significant similarities, and these extend beyond the design. The dark smudges of grey paint in the cloudy sky, the blackness of the hands of the thieves, which are tied to the cross, or the way of depicting porous rock so that it looks “spongey” are all found in the Eyckian Crucifixion. Furthermore, the group of mourners and witnesses in the Sibiu Crucifixion offers a similar variety of viewpoints, poses and emotional states, including a figure viewed from behind, a figure standing in total impassivity, a figure whose face is almost entirely concealed, and so forth. To produce an effect of realism in narrative as emotionally engaging as that produced by Hand G entailed choosing a particular moment in the drama (here, that immediately after Christ’s death), the construction of a three-dimensional, topographically distinctive space, and the representation of a variety of emotions: these aspects of narrative were clearly studied by Antonello, and may go back in part to this Eyckian painting.39 The idea that Antonello did see and study the New York Crucifixion would be in keeping with the essence of Summonte’s account that he was trained in Naples by Colantonio, who had access to panel paintings imported from Flanders, making exact copies of some of these. Whether the Sibiu Crucifixion dates from the period of Antonello’s presumed training there in c. 1445-55, or whether he made it after his return to Messina, where he was working as an independent master in 1457, is open to question.40 The Crucifixion in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has been attributed to Colantonio and to the young Antonello, as well as to a Franco-Flemish master working in Naples, but Mauro Natale and Frédéric Elsig have argued convincingly that the painter was Valencian.41 A relationship to the New York Crucifixion is manifest in the variety, richness and crowding of the figures, including the reworking of particular poses and groups: the face and headdress of Veronica, looking directly out at us, clearly goes back to one of the Marys in the foreground of the New York Crucifixion. The Valencian boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 10. Jan van Eyck, The Annunciation, c. 1434-36. Oil on panel transferred to canvas, 92.7 x 36.7 cm. Washington, The National Gallery of Art (inv. no. 1937.1.39) (detail) 11. Last Judgment (detail of fig. 7) 12. The Master of the Llangattock Hours and Willem Vrelant, Annunciation, miniature from the Llangattock Hours, Bruges, c. 1450. 264 x 184 mm (whole folio). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (ms Ludwig ix 7), fol. 53v painter appears to have known the Eyckian painting in extraordinary detail, responding to the trails of darkness in the blue sky, the dark tonality of Christ’s face and the blackness of his lips and the open mouths of some of the figures, revealing tiny white teeth. But the Thyssen Crucifixion is in some ways closer to Antonello’s painting than to the Eyckian model, for example in the very deep, flat landscape in the middle ground; in the fact that the figures are all on foot (whereas in the Eyckian painting many are on horseback) and that the thieves’ crosses are trees. The figure of Saint Mary Magdalen in the Thyssen painting—standing in red at the foot of the cross—is strongly reminiscent of the Saint John the Evangelist in the Sibiu Crucifixion.This suggests that the painter had access both to the Eyckian Crucifixion and to Antonello’s work (or something like it), and the most direct explanation for this would be that he spent time in Naples, whether or not the Thyssen Crucifixion itself was painted there. It is unlikely, however, that the New York Crucifixion and Last Judgment were painted by Jan van Eyck. The ambition of the painter’s treatment of space, his interest in showing the human figure in three-dimensions and in foreshortened view rather than parallel to the picture plane and the way that the figures are integrated into their settings all argue in favour of dating the Crucifixion to the late 1430s at the earliest, as a late phase of Eyckian painting, as some scholars have acknowledged.42 Like some of the miniatures in the Turin-Milan Hours attributed to the same painter, the Crucifixion and Last Judgment are closely related to Jan van Eyck’s signed and dated works of the 1430s. The figure of Saint Michael the Archangel in the Last Judgment is comparable to the same saint in Van Eyck’s Dresden triptych, dated 1437. The angel welcoming the blessed in the centre, moreover, painted by an asj o nes. jan van eyck an d spain 12 sociate of Hand G, recalls the angel in Van Eyck’s Annunciation in Washington (mid-1430s?), whose left leg is in a similar position (figs. 10 and 11). That it was not painted before Van Eyck’s Annunciation is clear from the fact it is closer in some respects to the angel of the Annunciation in the Llangattock Hours, painted in Bruges in the 1450s (fig. 12), which is a close copy of Van Eyck’s painting, and which appears to descend from the same model, presumably an outline drawing in which the ornamental details—the textile pattern and the angel’s crown—were omitted, and the morse that fastens the angel’s cope was represented only by a circle. The drawing would have been one of the many Van Eyck models circulating in Bruges in the 1440s, some of which derived from his finished paintings. The choice of this particular Van Eyck model for the New York Last Judgment was partly iconographic, as the angel’s smile was apt for its role of welcoming the saved. The difference between Hand G and Van Eyck rests not only in the realm of pictorial imagery, furthermore, but also extends to the treatment of the object 41 as a whole, including the frames. Van Eyck’s highly systematic way of articulating the various surfaces of the painted panel in the 1430s, involving the frame inscriptions, their languages and scripts, is not in evidence in the Crucifixion and Last Judgment. Set on the narrow, innermost frame moulding, and occasionally even adjusted to the scale of the corresponding figures, the inscriptions in the Metropolitan Crucifixion and Last Judgment are closely integrated with the related images, serving to illuminate the meaning of the separate narrative episodes.43 This inner moulding was not used by Van Eyck for inscriptions in his own paintings. The majuscule script of Hand G’s frame inscriptions, moreover, is not a mixed hand like Van Eyck’s, which, because it is derived from epigraphic scripts of the last quarter of the twelfth century, contains a combination of round and square forms. Circular Gothic textualis inscriptions do not occur in Van Eyck’s surviving oeuvre at all. And finally, whereas Hand G has built up his inscriptions in pastiglia to simulate the three-dimensional epigraphy of goldsmith work, Jan van Eyck, by contrast, created convincing illusions with paint. By using recognisably old majuscule letters in simulation of bronze, stone and marble, Van Eyck arguably sought to position his modern painting within a historical tradition of image-making, centred on the esteemed tradition of his own region of the Meuse valley —and there is no evidence for any such interest in the oeuvre of Hand G. The difference is not only formal or technical, therefore, but arguably represents different artistic personalities: that is, painters who had different ideas about how to market their work and how to attract and engage their patrons. That the New York panels date from the 1440s is probable on the grounds of costume: one of the men on horseback to the right of Christ’s cross wears a blue chaperon with a distinctly thick bourrelet (padded brim), which is closely comparable to examples in Netherlandish painting of the second half of the 1440s.44 Nor is there any reason to argue, as did Charles Sterling, that a now-lost picture of the Crucifixion by Van Eyck resembling that in New York was taken by him to Valencia around 1427: the Southern European works in question do not require a missing intermediate work to explain them.45 Although it would be too rigid to argue that Hand G’s works, or those related to his style, must all be dated after Jan van Eyck’s 42 death—and indeed the design represented by the Ca d’Oro Crucifixion in Venice, which can be attributed to Hand G, may go back to the 1430s—the Crucifixion and Last Judgment in New York, were most likely made in the 1440s, directly for export. If this dating is correct, it forces us to reconsider some of our assumptions about Bruges. Because art historians tend to treat Bruges painting as synonymous with Jan van Eyck, it was long assumed that his death in 1441 created a gap in the market and that Petrus Christus was his only close follower. This view has been refined and it is now generally accepted that Van Eyck’s workshop remained open for a period in the 1440s, a phenomenon usually described in terms of continuity rather than creativity and innovation. But Hand G’s style, and the extent and nature of his innovations, arguably depended on his access to a wide diversity of artistic traditions available in Bruges at one time: predominantly Van Eyck, whose paintings and inventions were available in Bruges, and were clearly studied intensively by this painter, but also other prestigious traditions, whether pre-Eyckian painting made in Bruges or foreign traditions that had been imported into the city. Objects were imported and installed in local churches and drawings were brought to Bruges by immigrant artists trained in centres such as Paris, Utrecht and Cologne. It has been argued convincingly, for example, that Hand G’s Crucifixion in New York shows knowledge of a miniature of the Crucifixion by the Bedford Master, painted around 1420, and that this can be explained by direct contact with an illuminator from the Bedford Master’s Paris workshop, who had come to Bruges, bringing workshop patterns with him.46 The early 1440s was an attractive moment to settle in Bruges, not only because Philip the Good, his nobles and bureaucrats were embarking on a new period of active patronage, and because the town was entering an era of social stability and economic prosperity, but also because a ducal ordinance of 24 January 1441 had lowered the cost of citizenship over the four subsequent years. From the perspective of Southern European artists, the Crucifixion and Last Judgment would not be early works of Van Eyck, made some two decades earlier, but rather the very latest products of Bruges painting—exemplars of the increasingly important genre of narrative. The idea that Antonello at a central moment in his formation was able to study these paintings as boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 13. School of Jan van Eyck, The Fountain of Life and the Triumph of the Church over the Synagogue, 1440s? Oil on panel, 181 x 119 cm. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (p-1511) three-dimensional objects opens up new avenues of study in the ongoing debate about how he obtained his knowledge of Netherlandish oil techniques, materials and methods of framing. The identity of the patron of the Crucifixion and Last Judgment is not known. Nor it is clear how the Duke of Medina de las Torres acquired these pictures. Some of the paintings in his collection came to him by descent through his marriage to Anna Carafa, who, as the only surviving child and sole heiress of Antonio Carafa della Stadera, Duke of Mondragone, and his wife Elena Aldobrandini, sister of the Duchess of Parma, was a very wealthy heiress. Medina also bought paintings on the open market, employing an agent in Rome, and, in addition, according to Alfred von Reumont, he “caused the most beautiful pictures of the town to be presented to him—or, in other words, he took them”.47 Given that the Duke of Medina de las Torres was married to Anna Carafa, it would be remiss not to consider the possibility that the paintings were in the Carafa family in the fifteenth century. The branch of the Carafas of Maddaloni was close to the Aragonese kings of Naples, and owed its status in particular to Diomede Carafa, first Count of Maddaloni (1406?-1487; created count, 1465).48 Diomede served Alfonso and then Ferdinand (r. 1458-1494) first in a military and administrative role and increasingly as a diplomat and counseller. He was held in the highest esteem by Alfonso. His taste for Netherlandish painting, furthermore, is clear from a gift given to him in 1472 or 1473 by the Florentine merchant and banker Filippo Strozzi, consisting of two ancient marble heads, two Flemish paintings on linen and a painting of “Saint Francis” by Rogier van der Weyden.49 Like Alfonso, therefore, he admired Netherlandish paintings and ancient artefacts. In 1466 he built and moved to an all’ antica palace in Naples, which housed a collection of antiquities, and hosted illustrious visitors to Naples, including, in 1475, Anthony of Burgundy.50 Nonetheless, Anna Carafa cannot have inherited the paintings by direct descent from Diomede; like Diomede, she was from the branch of Carafa della j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain 13 Stadera (rather than Carafa della Spina), but she was descended from the Princes of Stigliano rather than the Counts of Maddaloni.51 The pattern of inheritence of Diomede’s collection, however, was complex, since, after his death, some of the ancient artefacts in his palace were dispersed due to family disputes over the succession, which arose in 1567 and again in 1623, when one of the claimants, Scipione Carafa, took over the palace by force.52 Further study of the Carafa family may shed light on the patronage or early ownership of these paintings. The Crucifixion and Last Judgment are not listed in Diomede’s will, dated 17 May 1487.53 the kingdom of castile With the evidence that the New York panels were probably made for export to Naples and not Spain, the Fountain of Life (fig. 13) becomes probably the most important Eyckian painting in Castile in the fifteenth century. It has been identified with a painting described in the Libro becerro of the Hieronymite monastery of 43 Nuestra Señora del Parral, in Segovia, as “Un retablo rico de pincel de Flandes que tiene la ystoria de la Dedicacion de la Yglesia”, one of a series of gifts given to the monastery by the Castilian King Enrique IV (r. 1454-74). The inventory does not provide the name of the painter, which was probably not known to the writer, and this may be taken as an indication that the painting was not signed. Another of the paintings given to the Parral monastery by the King was “una verónica de Flandes muy devota pintada en una tabla para las procesiones”. It has been suggested that this painting was a version of Jan van Eyck’s lost Holy Face, copies and variants of which were probably made in his workshop as well as by Netherlandish followers active around 1500.54 How the Fountain of Life entered the royal collection is unknown. It has been argued that Juan II of Castile commissioned the painting directly from Jan van Eyck. It is known that some members of the Burgundian embassy to Portugal of 1428-29 in which Van Eyck took part visited Juan II’s court in Castile (probably at Valladolid), but it is not certain that Van Eyck was among them. Had the painting been a royal commission of the late 1420s or 1430s, furthermore, it seems likely that Van Eyck would have painted at least part of it. Another possibility is that the Fountain of Life was commissioned for presentation to the King by a powerful or influential figure at court, whether a member of the nobility or a clergyman. A long-distance commission of this kind would have involved middlemen, probably of the Castilian “nation” in Bruges. The Fountain of Life has been regarded as an early copy of a lost work by Hubert or Jan van Eyck; as a work by an assistant in Jan van Eyck’s workshop and as the work of an imitator of the Van Eycks.55 Its connections to the Ghent altarpiece, the Virgin of Canon van der Paele and the Virgin of Chancellor Rolin suggest that the painter had access to patterns and inventions of Jan van Eyck. Yet the Fountain of Life is in some ways untypical of Jan van Eyck and even of his workshop. Clearly, the unusual subject matter must have forced the painter to search more widely than was customary for visual models: the group of the Jews in the lower right foreground goes back to an earlier figurative tradition represented by two works from the Lower Rhine: a drawing of a group of Jews, made around 140015 (from the Netherlands or the Lower Rhine) and a 44 small-scale painting of Christ on the Living Cross made in Cologne in c. 1420/30 (Art Institute of Chicago).56 Felipe Pereda’s study of the representation of the Chief Rabbi, standing blindfold at the head of the group of Jews, meanwhile, suggests that the painter used for his model a drawing in an illustrated copy of the Postilla Litteralis by Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270-1349), the bestknown commentary on the Old and New Testaments of the period.57 But the differences go beyond the use of non-Eyckian patterns and ideas. Whereas the cloths of estate in the topmost tier of the Fountain of Life are velvets brocaded with gold,58 those of the enthroned figures in the Ghent altarpiece and in Jan van Eyck’s marian paintings of the 1430s are consistently lampas silks woven with geometric flower and fruit motifs in red, white and gold. Furthermore, the use of column bases that are inversions of their capitals in the Fountain of Life (in the towers at either side) would be impossible in Van Eyck’s painting of the 1430s. While in the Annunciation of the Ghent altarpiece, and elsewhere, Van Eyck did use a peculiar kind of column base that looks like an upside-down capital, the capital itself is entirely different. In the Virgin and Child with Saints in the Frick Collection (see fig. 3), which is clearly by one of Van Eyck’s assistants, and was likely painted between c. 1441-43, such differences from Van Eyck’s ideas and methods do not occur: the cloth of estate is based closely on the red lampas silk in Van Eyck’s Virgin by a Fountain (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum) and although the underdrawing shows “inverted capital” column bases in the mid-ground arcade, the capital designs are exact repetitions of those of Van Eyck’s Virgin of Chancellor Rolin: the workshop assistant has recreated the “look” of Van Eyck by re-using the same stock patterns as Van Eyck, and for the same purposes and pictorial functions. This is not always the case in the Fountain of Life. In addition, a number of the figure and facial types in the Fountain of Life, including the types of the angels, are not consistent with Van Eyck. If the Fountain of Life was painted in van Eyck’s workshop, a date in the early 1440s or later is more probable than the 1430s. This would make it contemporary or closely contemporary to the Frick Virgin, painted between about 1441 and 1443. Both these works draw on Van Eyck’s legacy, but they are in some ways more closely connected to each other than to Van Eyck: boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 in the Frick Virgin and the Fountain of Life (at the topmost level), for example, the layout of the tiled floors goes back to Van Eyck’s Virgin of Canon van der Paele, but their designs are identical to each other and far less complex than that devised by Van Eyck.59 A similar relationship exists between the Fountain of Life and a miniature of Christ Blessing, attributed to Hand I/J of the Turin-Milan Hours (destroyed; formerly Turin Hours, fol. 75v), and generally accepted as a work of the period c. 1440-45: the figure in the miniature is a reworking of the enthroned Deity in the Ghent altarpiece but the framework of Gothic architecture is similar to that in the Fountain of Life in a variety of ways, including its combination with a floor of Valencian tiles. These various interconnections (only touched on here) suggest that the workshop in the early 1440s is a possibility for the date of the Fountain of Life. It is generally accepted that although Jan van Eyck died in 1441, his workshop would not have closed straight away.60 If we accept that his workshop was in his house on the Sint-Gillis Nieuw Straat, it would have closed when the house was sold in the year 25 June 1443-24 June 1444, between two and three years after his death. It has been suggested that Jan’s brother Lambert van Eyck continued the workshop until around 1450, but no documents exist to show that this is so, and no surviving work by Lambert has been identified. At present, therefore, a more useful hypothesis for the study of Eyckian production in Bruges after Jan’s death is a network of painters in separate workshops, who interacted with each other and who responded to the legacy of Hubert and Jan van Eyck in different ways. As argued above, by far the most important would have been the painter and illuminator Hand G of the TurinMilan Hours, but others were the group of illuminators Hands H, I/J and K, and, from 1444 onwards, the panel painter Petrus Christus. Painters and illuminators from outside Bruges came to set up their own workshops or to operate as journeymen; and, in addition, one or more of Jan van Eyck’s assistants may have become a master in his own right. A more likely option, then, is that the Master of the Fountain of Life had spent time in Van Eyck’s workshop but made this painting outside the workshop, either in the 1430s or, more likely, the 1440s. This solution would accommodate the fact that, at least in terms of pictorial motifs, the Fountain of Life is further j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain away from Van Eyck, than is, say, the Frick Virgin. If it was made in Bruges, it could have been commissioned through a member of the group of Castilian merchants who resided there and who would have arranged its transportation to Castile. A date around 1444 or later may explicate the similarity to Petrus Christus in the facial type of the Virgin Mary, which recalls Christus’s Budapest Virgin and Child.61 The relationship of the Fountain of Life to the Frick Virgin and the miniature of God enthroned from the Turin-Milan Hours would simply represent knowledge of Eyckian designs, methods and ideas held in common by all three painters. Progress may be made by considering other works related to the Fountain of Life, such as the Virgin in a Niche (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; c. 1500), which is likely to be an exact copy of a lost painting by the master.62 Another way to clarify matters would be to compare the techniques of this master and those of Jan van Eyck in his signed and dated work. Recent technical studies have brought Jan van Eyck’s individual technique and brushwork into focus, including consistent methods and techniques, such as scraping off wet paint or using his fingers to soften edges or create textures. Certain techniques of the Fountain of Life do appear Eyckian—notably, the way the floor tiles in the upper level are painted—but in general the handling departs from Van Eyck’s in being strongly graphic and linear: this is most clear in the foliage on which the angels sit. A relatively heavy opaque white or pale pink paint is typically applied to flesh tones in an additive fashion, most obviously in the figures of the angels, but also in the foreground portraits. Comparison with the Ghent altarpiece and with relevant anonymous Eyckian paintings may clarify the painter’s relationships to the Van Eycks and to Bruges painting, as well as the duration of his activity. Another complicating factor is that this master may have been trained in a foreign tradition— conceivably that of the Lower Rhine, given that the painter drew on Rhenish figurative traditions. Similar complexities surround the second painting with a provenance from Castile: the Virgin and Child in an Interior by the Master of the Covarrubias Virgin (fig. 14). Neither the date nor the place of production is known, and a separate issue is the nationality of the painter, who has been identified as Spanish, German or Flemish.63 That either the painter or the patron 45 14. Master of the Covarrubias Virgin, Virgin and Child in an Interior, 1440s? Oil on panel, 46.1 x 35 cm. Covarrubias, Colegiata de San Cosme y San Damián (after the restoration) 15. Virgin and Child in an Interior (detail) (before the restoration) 14 15 was German is suggested by the motto depicted on the right-hand wall. The most plausible reading thus far is “Wer ich des sicher b[in]”; a more recent reading of “Wer sey des sicher” (“Who would be certain of it”), is not convincing, as shown by a detail of a photograph taken before cleaning and restoration (fig. 15).64 The nature of the painting’s link to Castile is unclear because the date of its arrival there is unknown: the earliest published reference is the catalogue of an exhibition held in Burgos Cathedral in 1921, when it was already in the parish 46 museum of the Collegiate Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Covarrubias.65 Complicating the question of attribution and date, the appearance of the painting was altered radically during cleaning and restoration shortly before 1968. As Elisa Bermejo has noted, a clearer understanding of the restoration is needed in order to clarify how far either the current state of the painting or the pre-restoration state represents its original appearance.66 The support is oak, but the ground has not been analysed and the valuable evidence of the frame’s construction and profile has been neglected, although, as noted in 1958 by Paul Coremans and René Sneyers, it seems to be a repainted original. The Master of the Covarrubias Virgin has been identified by Eberhard König as one of the manuscript illuminators of the Hand K group of the Turin-Milan Hours. This idea was taken up and developed by Bodo Brinkmann, who identified the same master as a South German, possibly Bavarian, resident in Bruges, characterising him as a member of a posthumous Van Eyck workshop.67 Rather than the output of a single painter, however, the various panel paintings and manuscript illuminations in question seem to have been made by different painters drawing on a common Eyckian heritage in ways that are sometimes comparable. Thus the Hand K illuminators and the Bavarian painter were in the possession of pattern drawings that recorded designs by Van Eyck, Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours and, indeed, by the Master of Flémalle. The Master of the Covarrubias Virgin may have been an immigrant in Bruges, or had perhaps worked there as a journeyman—indeed, it is very plausible—but there is nothing at present to associate him specifically with a continuing Van Eyck workshop. Neither the Fountain of Life nor the Covarrubias Virgin was painted by Jan van Eyck. These works now boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 in Castile can be attributed to Van Eyck’s workshop and following. This overview therefore affirms the prevalent view that interest in Van Eyck was more intensive, more widespread and took hold earlier in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon than in the kingdom of Castile, and that the ideas, tastes and policies of Alfonso V of Aragon were fundamental to this. The paintings by Jan van Eyck and his workshop at the Neapolitan-Aragonese court and in the town of Valencia constituted a small but influential group. It is of course important to recognise that the evidence itself is very fragmentary and may distort the picture to some extent—one thinks of the lack of certainty, for exam- ple, about whether the Castilian kings owned a version of Van Eyck’s lost Holy Face. It seems plausible, however, that while Alfonso of Aragon prized Van Eyck’s painting above all other things, his work did not have the same appeal for the monarchs of Castile, whose interests were more varied. susan frances jones was Assistant Curator at The National Gallery, London (1994-96) and Old Master Society Fellow at The Art Institute of Chicago (1998-2001). Currently, she is working on the verona project (Van Eyck Research in OpeN Access) at the kik-irpa (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage) in Brussels, which entails research on Van Eyck and the scientific and technical documentation of paintings by Jan van Eyck and his workshop. susan.jones@kikirpa.be s u m a r i o : Este artículo realiza un somero repaso de las modalidades de recepción de la obra de Van Eyck en España. En las imágenes valencianas de San Francisco recibiendo los estigmas se desechó la visión eyckiana del santo. El público local no dejó de advertir las peculiaridades iconográficas de la figura, y quizá le resultara difícil percibir lo sagrado en la imagen eyckiana, que representa al santo sin aureola y sin fondo de oro. Un documento recientemente descubierto indica que la pareja de obras eyckianas la Crucifixión y el Juicio Final (Nueva York, Metropolitan Museum) estaba en Nápoles en el siglo xvii; es probable que llegara a esa ciudad hacia 1445-50. Atribuida aquí a un imitador de Van Eyck activo en la década de 1440, cabe sostener que refleja el ambiente artístico de Brujas en esa época, cuando la pintura eyckiana coexistió con muchas otras tradiciones. La pintura eyckiana más significativa que hubo en Castilla fue la Fuente de la Gracia (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, ¿1440-50?), pintada por un artista que había pasado algún tiempo en el taller de Van Eyck durante la década de 1430. pala bra s clave: Jan van Eyck; Antonello de Messina; Valencia; Mano G; San Francisco de Asís; narrativa summary: This article offers an overview of the reception of Van Eyck in Spain and the variations within it. In Valencian images of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, the Eyckian design for the saint was rejected: local audiences recognised the iconographic peculiarities of the figure; furthermore, they may have found it difficult to perceive the sacred in the Eyckian image, in which the saint is represented without a halo and without a gold background. A recently-discovered document indicates that the Eyckian Crucifixion and Last Judgment (New York, Metropolitan Museum) were in Naples in the seventeenth century; they had probably arrived there by c. 1445-50. Attributed here to an imitator of Van Eyck active in the 1440s, they arguably reflect the artistic environment of Bruges in the period, where Eyckian painting co-existed with numerous other artistic traditions. The most significant Eyckian painting in Castile was the Fountain of Life (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 1440s?), painted by an artist who had spent time in Van Eyck’s workshop in the 1430s. k eywo rds : Jan van Eyck; Antonello da Messina; Valencia; Hand G; Saint Francis of Assisi; narrative j o nes. jan van eyck an d spain 47 1. See j. sanchis y sivera, Pintores Medievales en Valencia, Valencia, 1930, pp. 114-15 (Archivo del Reino de Valencia, Mestre Racional 59 [Batlia general de Valencia. Comptes d’administraciò, Valencia, 1444], fols. 273v-274r, 2 May 1444 and fol. 283v, 22 August 1444). The Saint George is discussed by l. campbell, Eyckian Saints in Italy: George; Jerome; Francis, unpublished lecture given at the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 2002 and r. cornudella, “Alfonso el Magnánimo y Jan van Eyck. Pintura y tapices flamencos en la corte del rey de Aragón”, Locus Amoenus, 10 (2009-10), pp. 39-62, here pp. 49-51. 2. r. weiss, “Jan van Eyck and the Italians”, Italian Studies, xi (1956), p.15. 3. campbell, op. cit. (note 1), p. 1. 4. Ibidem; cornudella, op. cit. (note 1), p. 46. 5. Ibidem, p. 49 and n. 57. 6. “Com ja en dies passats lo dit en Johan Gregori per servir del dit Senyor hagues fetes fer aquelles en bruges”, sanchis y sivera, op. cit. (note 1). 7. See campbell, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 1, 5 (the author notes that the sum of 2000 sous reyals of Valencia paid for the Saint George was a high price, roughly equivalent to 128 Venetian ducats, or £166 or 40 groats of Flanders, while the sum of fifteen Valencian pounds paid by Joan Reixach for his Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata was equivalent to only around 300 sous). 8. See l. campbell, “Cosmè Tura and Netherlandish Art”, in s. campbell et al. (eds.), Cosmè Tura, Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara, exh. cat., Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2002, pp. 71-105. 9. campbell, op. cit. (note 1), p. 2. 10. For an argument that copies were made from the finished Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, see s. jones, “The Use of Patterns by Jan van Eyck’s Assistants and Followers”, in s. foister et al. (eds.), Investigating Jan van Eyck, Turnhout, 2000, pp. 197-207, here pp. 199-201. 11. Ibidem, p. 199 and note 19. 12. n. salvadó et al., “Mare de Déu dels Consellers, de Lluís Dalmau. Una nova tècnica per a una obra singular”, Butlletí del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, ix (2008), pp. 43-61. 13. m. wolff (ed.), Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Cata- 48 logue of the Collection. New Haven, 2008, pp. 78-86, here p. 83 (entry by J. Berg Sobré). 14. salvadó et al., op. cit. (note 12), p. 50. 15. Ibidem, p. 54. 16. Ibidem, p. 56. 17. See cornudella, op. cit. (note 1), p. 47 and b. fransen, “Jan van Eyck and Valencia”, article forthcoming in Van Eyck Studies, Symposium xviii, for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting (Brussels, 19-21 September 2012), Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique/Koninklijk Instituut voor Vlaamse Primitieven (kik-irpa) and Centre de Recherches Primitifs Flamands, 2015. I am grateful to my colleague Bart Fransen for generously making this article available to me before publication. 18. Ibidem. 19. See j. v. garcía marsilla, “El Poder Visible. Demanda y Funciones del Arte en la Corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo”, Ars Longa: cuadernos de arte, 7- 8 (1996 - 97), pp. 33-47; here p. 46. For the notion of a social network in this context, see fransen, op. cit. (note 17). 20. j. d u v e r g e r , “Br ugse Schilders ten tijde van Jan van Eyck”, Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (Miscellanea Erwin Panofsky), 1-3 (1955), pp. 83-119; here p. 102. 21. The circulation of Eyckian patterns and ideas in Valencia has been investigated by f. benito doménech, “Evocaciones flamencas en los primitivos valencianos”, in f. benito doménech and j. gómez frechina (eds.), La clave flamenca en los primitivos valencianos, exh. cat., Valencia, Museo de Bellas Artes, 2001, pp. 23-30. j. gómez frechina, “Algunas pautas flamencas en la pintura valenciana del siglo xv”, in ibidem, pp. 63-76. 22. m. e. montero tortajada, La transmisión del conocimiento en los oficios artísticos, Valencia, 1370-1450, Ph.D. Dissertation supervised by Dr. A. Serra Desfilis, Universitat de València, Valencia, 2013, pp. 221-62 and 597. 23. See note 7. 24. montero tortajada, op. cit. (note 22), pp. 597-601. 25. For this painting, and the Valencian response to the Eyckian work, see gómez frechina, op. cit. (note 21), pp. 68-69 and j. gómez frechina, “La estética flamenca en la pintura valenciana: testimonios, influencias y protagonistas”, in e. mira and a. delva (eds.), A la búsqueda del Toisón de Oro. La Europa de los príncipes, la Europa de las ciudades, exh. cat., Almudín, Museo de la Ciudad, 2007, pp. 381-405, here pp. 390- 92. The dimensions are 89 x 56 cm. The other example attribued to Reixach is on the banco of the retable of Saint Ursula, signed and dated 1468. 26. s. jones, The Workshop and Followers of Jan van Eyck, Ph.D. Dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, London, 1998, pp. 163-64. 27. For his interest in Observant Franciscanism, see montero tortajada, op. cit. (note 22), pp. 601, 604, 606-7 and 614-17. 28. j. d. passavant, “Beiträge zur Kenntniß der alt-niederlandischen Malerschulen des 15ten und 16ten Jahrhunderts”, Kunstblatt, 3 (January 1841), p. 9. 29. j. v. l. brans, Isabel la Católica y el arte Hispano-Flamenco, Madrid, 1952, p. 41. 30. See f. bouza, “De Rafael a Ribera y de Nápoles a Madrid. Nuevos inventarios de la colección Medina de las Torres-Stigliano (16411656)”, Boletín del Museo del Prado, 45 (2009), pp. 44-71, here p. 63. The source of the document is: Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Consejos Suprimidos, leg. 51182/1/5 [Guardarobba del 1638 e 1641. // Inventario della Guarda robba dell’Illmi et Eccmi Signori Duca de Medina de la torres et Eccma Sigra Prencipessa di Stigliano D. Anna Carrafa fatto a di 17 di Giugno 1638 di tutte le robbe notate al libro vecchio et altre no’notate in esso, consignate ad Alessandro Leticia Guardarobba di detti signori Eccmi. E di nuovo a di otto di luglio 1641 consignate ad Alessandro Becchi Roman nuovo Guardarobba per ordine di detti Signori Eccmi con Nota delli mancamenti ritrouati in ciascheda partita. “Nota di diversi quadri”], ff. 55r-70v; ff. 55r-56v. 31. Ibidem, p. 49. Inventories of shipments made in 1649 and 1655-56, long after the Duke left Italy, may confirm this. For the date of Medina’s return, see also r. a. stradling, “A Spanish Statesman of Appeasement: Medina de las Torres and Spanish Policy. 16391670”, The Historical Journal, 19 (1976), pp. 1-31, here p. 6. 32. p. durrieu, “Les van Eyck et le duc Jean de Berry”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1 (1920), pp. 77-105, here pp. 102-3. Brans (op. cit. [note 29]), p. 104, n. 5, drew attention to another object with this combination of subjects, which was possibly a diptych, in an inventory of Isabella of Castile (Archivo de Simancas), folder no. 186): “Otra tabla de dos piezas, que està en la una pieza Nuestro Señor puesto en la cruz, y en la otra, el Juicio, a la redonda de unos cercos dorados por dentro”. 33. passavant, op. cit. (note 28), p. 10 (“die aussern seiten zeigen spuren von zwei grau in grau gemalten figuren auf tragsteinen stehend”). 34. s. kemperdick and f. lammertse (eds.), The Road to Van Eyck, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2012, p. 106, fig. 20. 35. m. w. ainsworth, “Revelations Regarding the Crucifixion and Last Judgment by Jan van Eyck and Workshop”, article forthcoming in Van Eyck Studies, Symposium xviii, for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, op. cit. (note 17). 36. p. mitchell and l. roberts, A History of European Picture Frames, London, 1996, p. 19. 37. ainsworth, op. cit. (note 35). 38. See for example m. natale and f. elsig (eds.) in El Renacimiento mediterráneo. Viajes de artistas e itinerarios de obras entre Italia, Francia y España en el siglo xv, exh. cat., Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza y Valencia, Museo de Bellas Artes, 2001, cat. 38, pp. 294-97 (Thyssen Crucifixion) and cat. 60, pp. 397-400 (Sibiu Crucifixion); t.-h. borchert, “Antonello da Messina e la pittura fiamminga”, in m. lucco (ed.), Antonello da Messina. L’opera completa, Milan, 2006, p. 35. The Sibiu Crucifixion is painted in oil on fruitwood. The Thyssen Crucifixion is painted in oil on wood (conifer). 39. For Hand G’s narrative techniques, see a. s. labuda, “Jan van Eyck, Realist and Narrator: On the Structure and Artistic Sources of the New York Crucifixion”, Artibus et Historiae, 27 (xiv) (1993), pp. 9-30, here pp. 10-12 and 14. 40. natale and elsig, op. cit. (note 38), pp. 397-400 suggest a date after 1457. 41. For the Thyssen painting, see ibidem, pp. 294-97. For the idea that the painter was Franco-Flemish, boletín del museo del prado. tomo xxxii número 50 2014 active c. 1435/45, see m. boskovits, (in collaboration with s. padovani), Early Italian Painting, 1290-1470, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, London, 1990, p. 78. 42. For a stylistic argument against Van Eyck’s authorship, see reynolds, “The King of Painters”, in foister et al. (eds.), op. cit. (note 10), pp. 1-16, pp. 6-12. For a date in the 1430s, but an attibution to Van Eyck and his workshop, see for example t.-h. borchert, Jan van Eyck, Hong Kong, 2008, pp. 80-86 and s. buck, “Petrus Christus’s Berlin Wings and the Metropolitan Museum’s Eyckian Diptych”, in m. w. ainsworth (ed.), Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges. An Interdisciplinary Approach, New York-Turnhout, 1995, pp. 65-84. 43. The textual sources for these inscriptions are Isaiah (53:6-9, 12), Revelation (20:13 and 21:3-4) and Deuteronomy (32:23-24). 44. Chaperons with a bourrrelet of similar thickness are worn by Edward Grymeston, in his portrait by Petrus Christus (The National Gallery, London, L3), dated 1446, and Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy in the frontispiece miniature of the Chroniques de Hainaut, Mons and Brussels, 1447-48 (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms. 9242, fol. 1). For illustrations, see m. w. ainsworth, Petrus Christus. Renaissance Master of Bruges, exh. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, p. 53, fig. 65 and l. campbell, “Rogier van der Weyden and Manuscript Illumination”, in e. morrison and t. kren (eds.), Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context: Recent Research, exh. cat., Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006, pp. 87-102, here p. 94, fig. 7.12. 45. c. sterling, “Tableaux espagnols et un chef d’oeuvre portugais méconnus du xve siècle”, Actas del xxiii Congreso Internacional de Historia del Arte, España entre el Mediterráneo y el Atlántico, (Granada, 1973), Granada, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 497-525; p. 514. 46. buck, op. cit. (note 42), pp. 6583, here pp. 71-72 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms 1855, fol. 137v) and e. könig, “Ein Pariser Buchmaler in den eyckis- j o nes. jan van eyck chen Partien des Turin-Mailänder Stundenbuchs: Hand F”, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, xlvixlii (1994), pp. 303-10. 47. bouza, op. cit. (note 30), p. 61. 48. For Diomede, see a. von reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni: Naples under Spanish Dominion (translated from the German), London, 1854, pp. 112-21; j. d. moores, Diomede Carafa and his Unpublished Correspondence, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University College London, 1967; t. persico, Diomede Carafa, Uomo di Stato e Scrittore del Secolo xv, Miami, 2013 [reprint of Luigi Pierro, Napoli, 1899]; d. b. aldimari, Historia genealogica della famiglia Carafa, 3 vols., Naples, 1691, pp. 74-95; j. w. imhoff, Corpus Historiae Genealogicae Italiae et Hispaniae, Nuremberg, 1702, pp. 332-33, Tabula xvi. Interestingly, in view of the subject matter of the New York panels, Carafa erected a chapel next to his palace in Naples dedicated to the Holy Cross. 49. m. rohlmann, Auftragskunst und Sammlerbild. Altniederländische Tafelmalerei im Florenz des Quattrocento, Alfter, 1994, p. 111. 50. For the collection, see b. de divitiis, “New Evidence for Sculptures from Diomede Carafa’s Collection of Antiquities”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 70 (2007), pp. 99-117. 51. For the line of the Princes of Stigliano, see von reumont, op. cit. (nota 48), pp. 223-29; imhoff, op. cit. (nota 48), pp. 322-23, Tabula xi. 52. See g. ceci, “Il Palazzo dei Carafa di Maddaloni poi di Colubrano” (i and ii), Napoli Nobilissima, ii (1893), pp. 168-70. 53. His will is reprinted in persico, op. cit. (note 48), pp. 142 and 324. 54. The version in Berlin, which according to Weale was originally in a convent in Burgos and later in Segovia, clearly dates from around 1500, and was no doubt exported to Spain at that period (w. h. j. weale, Hubert and John Van Eyck, London, 1908, p. 167). 55. The most recent overview is b. fransen, “Jan van Eyck, ‘el gran pintor del ilustre duque de Borgoña’. El viaje a la Península y la Fuente de la Vida”, La senda española de los artis- an d spain tas flamencos, Fundación amigos del Museo del Prado, Barcelona, 2009, pp. 105-25. 56. j. bruyn, Van Eyck Problemen. De Levensbron. Het Werk van een Leerling van Jan van Eyck, Utrecht, 1957, p. 18 suggested a Middle or Lower Rhenish prototype; g. messling, suggested the Netherlands around 1400-15 and made a comparison with a manuscript illumination from the Lower Rhine, in s. kemperdick and f. lammertse (eds.), The Road to Van Eyck, exh. cat., Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2012, cat. 71, pp. 264-65. For the painting in Chicago, see wolff, op. cit. (nota 13), pp. 391-96; p. 395 (entry by M. Wolff). 57. f. pereda, “‘Eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear’: Literal Sense and Spiritual Vision in the Fountain of Life”, in r. dekoninck, a. guiderdoni and é. granjon (eds.), Fiction sacrée. Spiritualité et esthétique durant le premier âge moderne, Leuven, 2013, pp. 113-55, here pp. 130-34. 58. l. monnas, e-mails dated 21 March 2014; 8 October 2014. According to Monnas, although the design and making of the kind of velvet shown in the Fountain of Life was technically possible in the late 1420s, a date in the 1430s for the production of such silks is preferable stylistically. l. monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300-1550, New Haven-London, 2008, p. 124. 59. I am following here the kind of reasoning used by m. smeyers in “The Philadelphia-Turin Paintings and the Turin-Milan Hours”, in j. watkins (ed.), Jan van Eyck: Two Paintings of Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Philadelphia, 1997, pp. 6574, here p. 72. 60. j. k. steppe, “Lambert van Eyck en het portret van Jacoba van Beieren”, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 44 (1983), pp. 53-86; s. jones, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 1-20 and passim. 61. See jones, op. cit. (note 10), pp. 203-4. 62. See jones, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 141-42. For the painting, see m. w. ainsworth and k. christiansen (eds.), From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, exh. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998, no. 48, pp. 220-23 (ill.) 63. For an overview, see Time to Hope. Tiempo para la Esperanza, exh. cat, New York, Las Edades del Hombre Foundation, Saint John the Divine, 2002, pp. 130-34 (entry by C. J. Ara Gil) and e. bermejo martínez, La pintura de los primitivos flamencos en España, 2 vols., Madrid, 1980, vol. i, no. 6, pp. 54-56. 64. This latter reading, by B. Eggete of the University of Salamanca, is referred to by ara. gil, op. cit. (note 63), p. 134. The letter in the centre of the second word, which is said to read ‘sey’ is not the same shape as the other forms of the letter ‘e’ in the inscription, in the words ‘wer’ and ‘sicher’. 65. Catálogo General de la Exposición de Arte Retrospectivo, vii Centenario de la Catedral de Burgos, Burgos, 1926, no. 465, lámina xii (Fototipia Hauser and Menet, Madrid). 66. natale and elsig, op. cit. (note 38), cat. 31, pp. 272-74; p. 272 (entry by E. Bermejo). 67. For the Hand K attribution see e. könig et al., Die Blätter im Louvre und das verlorene Turiner Gebetbuch. RF2022-2025 Département des arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre, Paris und Handschrift K.IV.29 Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Torino [facsimile edition], Lucerne, 1994, p. 56; f. bœspflug and e. könig, Les “Très Belles Heures” de Jean de France, duc de Berry. Un chef-d’oeuvre au sortir du Moyen Âge, Paris, 1998, p. 267. For the attribution to a Bavarian painter, see b. brinkmann “Ein deutscher Maler in der Werkstatt Jan van Eycks”, in f. m. kammel and c. b. gries (eds.), Begegnungen mit Alten Meistern. Altdeutsche Tafelmalerei auf dem Prüfstand, Nuremberg, 2000, pp. 61-76, here pp. 68-72 (active in the circle or immediate following of Van Eyck) and t.-h. borchert (ed.), Van Eyck to Dürer. Early Netherlandish Painting and Central Europe, 1430-1530, exh. cat., Bruges-Tielt, Groeningemuseum, 2010, nos. 192-96, pp. 374-76 (entry by T.-H. Borchert). 49