GOSSART, Jan

Gossart study of the Spinario, drew after the original, is among the earliest renderings of the antique sculpture, preceded by only a few anonymous Italian drawings.

This Roman drawing by Gossart combines different studies on one sheet. The recto shows at least two sculptures seen in different parts of Rome, while on its verso a crossed-out sketch of a helmet can be seen. On the recto the central sculpture of a boy is framed by two sandaled legs and left and right and by helmets above and below. The sculpture of the boy is the Spinario, or Boy with Thorn, one of the most celebrated and beautifully preserved Hellenistic bronzes (now in the Musei Capitolini in Rome).

Gossart study of the Spinario, drew after the original, is among the earliest renderings of the sculpture, preceded by only a few anonymous Italian drawings.

The leg on the right side of the sheet was identified as the left leg of a colossal statue of a genius, now in Naples. Although it is not known where the sculpture was located when Gossart visited Rome, it is recorded as standing in the garden of the Villa Madama in the 1530s, when it was drawn by Maerten van Heemskerck. Van Heemskerck’s drawing indicates how the size and position of the statue, in the first niche in the wall at left, would have made it easy to study the details of the handsome decoration of the sandals.

The peculiar form of the drawing indicates that it was made for the decoration of a specific object. The interest in grotesques was raised by the discovery about 1500 of the Domus Aurea, Emperor Nero’s Roman palace.

Formerly the drawing was attributed to Dirck Vellert.

The sitter of this unusually small portrait is unknown. The Italian provenance of the panel (from the collection of Vincenzo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua) might suggest that the sitter was Italian.

The attribution of this design to Gossart is debated due to its quality; it could be the work by one of his pupil.

The present sheet is probably a preparatory drawing to a full-scale cartoon for a painting. Squared for transfer in black chalk, it would have provided a precise model for the author of the cartoon, maybe Gossart himself, maybe an assistant.

The figure at right is Raphaelesque, it is very close to the figure in Marco Dente da Ravenna’s print after a design by Raphael.

This drawing, retouched by Rubens with pen and light brown ink, was formerly attributed to Pieter Coecke van Aelst. It is a copy of a work by Baldassare Peruzzi, one of his decorations for the Volta Dorata in the Palazzo della Cancellaria, Rome. Since Peruzzi’s painting was completed almost ten years after Gossart left Rome, and no print after the composition is known, Gossart must have relied on a drawing, a copy of Peruzzi’s fresco or a preparatory drawing for it.

Gossart’s style, which blends Italian form with Flemish characteristics, also shows the influence of D�rer, whose engravings carried the classical canons of art across all of northern Europe.

This painting is the earliest example in Gossart’s oeuvre of the theme of Adam and Eve, a subject that preoccupied him over the course of his thirty-year career. It is closely based on D�rer’s 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, which presents the culmination of D�rer’s nearly four-year study of these two figures. Gossart exchanged D�rer’s dense forest backdrop and animal inhabitants for a clearing at the edge of the woods, with a small pond behind the figures and an open view to a meadow and hills beyoynd at the left. This landscape construction is generally characteristic of the works Gerard David painted in Bruges in the same period.

This theme occurs at least nine times in Gossart’s painted and graphic oeuvre, but none of these renderings is dated. On grounds of style, however, the present painting would seem to have been undertaken after the Neptune and Amphitrite of 1516 (Berlin, Staatliche Museen) or the Hercules and Deinara of 1517 (Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts), and to have preceded the Adam and Eve dating from around 1525 (Berlin, Staatliche Museen). In general terms, as his career developed, Gossart evolved compositions of greater complexity characterised by a repertoire of contorted poses with exaggerated anatomy and a vivid treatment of chiaroscuro. At the same time his technique became altogether freer. The Adam and Eve in the Royal Collection may date from around 1520.

Gossart refers to a number of prints for the poses of Adam and Eve: D�rer’s Adam and Eve of 1504, Jacopo de’ Barbari’s Mars and Venus and Marcantonio Raimondi’s Adam and Eve after Raphael. The pose of Eve is perhaps more specifically related to D�rer’s engraving known as The Dream of the Doctor, particularly the upper part of the body. Gossart had visited Italy in 1508-9 and became a prime exponent of Northern Mannerism, a style that evolved principally from the cross-fertilisation of German and Italian art. Quite apart from the large scale of the painting, the prominence of the foreground figures is still further enhanced by the sudden drop down to the middle-ground, dominated by a fountain set in the Garden of Eden. Fanciful architecture of this kind is frequently found in Gossart’s work. He was also a remarkably fine painter of the nude. The treatment of the musculature may not be to modern taste, but it was undoubtedly inspired by classical sculpture. The handling of the hair, especially Eve’s long tresses, which may have influenced Milton, was a speciality of the artist.

Supplementing the narrative of The Fall as recounted in the second and third chapters of Genesis is a certain amount of symbolism, which is illustrated in Gossart’s work: the two trees represent the Tree of Life and the Tree of Good and Evil, while the plants in the immediate foreground (columbine and sea holly) probably symbolise the contrasting emotions of the fear of God and the lust experienced by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam wears an apron of leaves, but Eve is still technically naked. Gossart was concerned to paint an epitome of the theme and was therefore disposed to take liberties with the biblical text.

This painting was presented by the States-General of Holland to Charles I in 1636. It was sold in 1650 after the death of Charles I, but was recovered at the time of the Restoration. It has been suggested that John Milton, who was appointed Latin Secretary to Cromwell’s Council of State in 1649, may have seen the work before it was sold, since the description of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost (Book 4, lines 300-18) is fairly close.

While closely related to Gossart’s painting of the same theme in the Royal Collection, Windsor, this version is a further development of it in every way. Eve, offering the just-plucked forbidden fruit, is still apparently the instigator of the couple’s sin, but here the erotic nature of her proposal and Adam’s reluctance are more directly conveyed by the agitated poses of the figures. Although they have not yet tasted the apple, Adam already wears a leafy covering over his sex, while Eve is totally naked and sexually provocative.

While Gossart painted the figures, a landscape specialist, and possibly an animal painter as well, completed the painting.

In addition to some exceptional paintings, Gossart experimented with the subject of the Fall of Man on paper, to. The present drawing was partly derived from a woodcut by Hans Baldung Grien, to whom this drawing was formerly attributed.

In this sketchy drawing, perhaps a design for a woodcut, Adam and Eve are represented seated, in contrast with most earlier Northern depictions of the subject. It is related to Hans Baldung Grien’s woodcuts which likely influenced Gossart.

This is an early work by Gossart, probably painted after his Roman sojourn in 1508-09. in Bruges. Around this time there was a particular interest in the depiction of night scenes among painters in Ghent and Bruges.

The Agony in the Garden, with an unusually youthful Christ, is brilliantly painted as a nocturne, illuminated solely by moonlight. The wings for this central subject show the Penitent St Jerome in the Wilderness (National Gallery of Art, Washington).

This work is very impressive with its extraordinarily realistic effect of the waning crescent phase of the moon surrounded by a glow that is typical of high, thin cirrus clouds. This is perhaps the first instance in which a composition on panel was illuminated by the light of the moon.

Gossart was probably trained in Bruges before becoming a master in Antwerp in 1503. He entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, later Bishop of Utrecht, an illegitimate son of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. In 1508, when Philip went on a mission to the Vatican, Gossart probably accompanied him to record ancient monuments, seemingly the first Flemish artist to do so. The trip had a momentous effect not only on his own work, but on Netherlandish art in general. Under the impact of Gossart and like-minded ‘Romanists’, the native pictorial tradition rooted in the work of van Eyck and van der Weyden was rejected in favour of an Italianate Renaissance idiom ultimately based on ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, anatomical studies and mathematical perspective.

The picture illustrated here shows his mature style, in this instance equally compounded of Italianate elements and Flemish naturalism. It is the artist’s only known double portrait. Unlike many of Gossart’s sitters, these elderly people seem to belong to the prosperous bourgeoisie rather than the nobility. Shown in bust-length against a dark green background, they are strongly lit from the upper left. The light unites them within the picture space, revealing underlying structure, while at the same time accentuating the different tinges of their flesh and the sagging of their tired skin.

The badge on the man’s hat shows two naked figures with a cornucopia, perhaps an ironic comment on the sitters’ present state. Yet in an age when toothlessness and wrinkles were subjects of ridicule, Gossart endows the couple with enormous stoical dignity. The man, more active, grasps his fur collar and the metal head of a cane, and looks sternly ahead. But the woman, posed behind him with her hands concealed, her eyes downcast, is no less firm. Her white head-dress is reflected on her cheek and chin and casts a translucent shadow on her forehead, thus lightening the tonal contrasts visible in her husband’s face, and at the same time giving her an equal share of monumental authority.

Anna van Bergen (1492-1541) was the daughter of John of Brabant-Glymes, Lord of Bergen-op-Zoom. She married Adolf of Burgundy (c. 1489-1540), Admiral of Zeeland, in 1509. Gossart worked for Adolf and other members of the nobility following the death, in 1524, of his primary patron, Philip of Burgundy, who was Adolf’s granduncle, and it was this time that he would have had an occasion to paint Anna’s portrait.

The present painting is one of the few surviving female portraits by Gossart. The sitter is dressed extravagantly as is appropriate for a woman of Anna’s social standing and wealth.

This is probably the earliest of Gossart’s Roman studies. The drawing was made after a Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture representing Apollo with his cithara or lyre. During the first half of the sixteenth century, this sculpture was in the collection of Decidio and Fabio Sassi and displayed in the courtyard of the Casa Sassi, as recorded in a drawing by Maerten van Heemskerck.

The sculpture was acquired in 1546 from Fabio Sassi by Odoardo Farnese who had the missing left arm and the lower right arm completed before 1552. Gossart’s drawing does not show the sculpture as he must have seen it in Rome in 1508-09 as it was recorded by an anonymous Netherlandish artist before any restorations were undertaken. He completed Apollo’s lower right arm and entire left arm, and replaced the lyre with an ornamented throne and extended the sculpture’s drapery. It was not uncommon for artists to complete ancient sculpture when representing it: Marcantonio Raimondi’s print of the same Apollo Citharoedus completed the arms of the sculpture in a different way.

This recently discovered drawing is closely related to Gossart’s oeuvre. It was conceived under the influence of antique and Italian examples, and it was certainly created during Gossart’s trip to Rome in 1508-09.

The design of this image can clearly be attributed to Jan Gossart. A skilled unknown woodblock cutter carried out the work after the artist’s design, which was probably drawn directly onto the block of wood.

Cain and Abel is Gossart’s largest and most striking printed image. He attempted to rival D�rer’s large woodcut Samson Killing the Lion. The print is also closed to Lucas van Leyden’s etching and engraving of the theme Cain Killing Abel.

The left wing of the diptych represents Jean Carondelet while the right the Virgin and Child. It is signed at the bottom of the right wing: ‘Johannes Melbodie Pingebat’, and dated at the bottom of the left wing:‘Fait l’an 1517. On the frames: various inscriptions referring to the Virgin or indicating the donor.

Carondelet is represented half-length, praying before the Virgin; on the back of the portrait is his coat-of-arms, and on the back of the Virgin is a trompe-l’oeil skull, with a pious inscription and the date.

Carondelet was born at D�le in 1469, and died at Mechelen in 1545; he was the son of Chancellor Carondelet. He was a church dignitary, holding various offices and benefices, and played a political r�le in the Low Countries. Having entered the Church, he acquired various important posts. From 1497 he was a member of the Grand Conseil pour les affaires du Justice. In 1517 he went to Spain with Charles V, and returned with him to the Low Countries in 1519. In 1531 he became President of the Privy Council. In addition, he acquired numerous ecclesiastical dignities; in 1493 he was Archbishop of Palermo and Primate of Sicily. He was a scholar and a humanist, and a friend of Erasmus, who dedicated his Saint Hilarius to him; evidently he had a liking for having his portrait done, since there are two others of him by Gossart, another by Van Orley, and one by Vermeyen.

This work dates from Gossart’s mature period; it shows his preoccupation with the sculptured form which he acquired through contact with Michelangelo and antique statues in Rome in 1508. In this year he accompanied Philip of Burgundy, natural son of Philip the Good and Admiral of the fleet, who was sent as a private ambassador to Philip II. It is assumed that the artist based this painting on some antique bust - Euripides, Socrates, or Julius Caesar. The artist was torn between the Flemish tendency towards naturalism and Italian idealization, as can be seen in his portrayal of the Virgin. For this reason the donor portrait is superior to the other wing, both in truth of life and in pictorial quality; it is, moreover, in a better state of preservation.

The left wing of the diptych represents Jean Carondelet. The donor portrait is superior to the other wing, both in truth of life and in pictorial quality; it is, moreover, in a better state of preservation. It is Gossart’s most splendid portrayal of Jean Carondelet, painted when the sitter was archdeacon of the cathedral at Besan�on, and it is one of the masterpieces of early Netherlandish portraiture.

The right panel of the Carondelet Diptych represents the Virgin and Child. This depiction does not mimic the idealised type of the Virgin that Gossart used for his many representations of her and therefore might be a portrait of a woman in the guise of the Virgin. The pose of the Child is uncharacteristically naturalistic, and his head is not idealised in the same way as the other images of the Christ Child in Gossart’s oeuvre.

The reverse of the Virgin and Child panel portrays a skull in a niche, painted with extraordinary realism. Above is a quote from St Jerome concerning the fragility of life and the inevitability of death. The adjoining verso shows Carondelet’s coat of arms, apparently painted by an inferior hand.

This work dated 1520 is Gossart’s earliest print and also one of the earliest etchings produced in the Low Countries. According to the final line of the inscription at the bottom of the etching, Charles V was twenty years and three months old when he was portrayed by Gossart. It is likely that Gossart used an earlier image of Charles as a model and updated the regalia to reflect Charles’s new positions. (Charles was crowned emperor in 1520.)

The etching was hand-coloured by Dirck Jansz van Santen.

This small image was intended for private devotion. It was most likely framed individually and hung on a wall, or hand-held for private devotional practice.

This devotional image, one of Gossart’s most popular pictures, exists in twenty surviving copies, bearing various titles. The theme provided an opportunity for the artist to render a muscular nude body and slightly bent-over torso based on the Belvedere Torso, which Gossart must have seen on his 1508-09 trip to Rome and likely recorded in a now-lost drawing.

Gossart was inspired by two prints by D�rer as he created this composition. One was the Man of Sorrows on the title page of the Large Passion, the other the Man of Sorrows by the Column from the Engraved Passion.

Among the large number of surviving copies are several that are signed indicating Gossart’s authorship of an original produced in 1527. A study of the painting in Budapest and New York leaves no doubt that the Budapest version is the original on which every copy is based.

This painting is also known as the Man of Sorrows. Christ is depicted here as the melancholy hero whose taut musculature and profoundly distraught expression reveal the depth of his anguish. The physical bulk of the figure and the exaggerated modeling of his muscular form led some early on to identify him as Samson. Gossart did not separate biblical from mythological subject matter in his continuing development of the sculptural form of the body as a way to convey meaning. The common source for several of the male figures in his late paintings was the Belvedere Torso.

Gossart’s completion of the fragment may have been inspired by Marcantonio Raimondi’s signed and dated engraving, the Mars, Venus, and Eros of 1508. In the unimpeded view and detailed articulation of the musculature of the torsos, Gossart’s Christ and Raimondi’s Mars bear a striking resemblance.

Christian II (1481-1559) was King of Denmark and Norway (1513-23) and Sweden (1520-23). He was hated by the nobility in Denmark and Norway for his system of taxation. Jutland (Denmark) revolted and gave the Danish crown to Frederick I in 1523. Christian fled to the Netherlands, but attempted to regain his throne in 1531 by invading Norway. He was captured by Danish forces in 1532 and imprisoned until his death.

Despite his nomadic life, Christian seems to have been one of the most important patrons of Gossart’s late career. he commissioned the artist to design his wife’s tomb and epitaph after her death in 1526 and to paint a portrait of the royal couple’s three children. Furthermore, he commissioned two woodcut portraits and the present drawing.

Christian’s eagerness to be portrayed by leading artists was evident as early as 1515,several years before he was deposed, and the many portraits of Christian in different media rival in quality those of almost any other sitter in the early sixteenth century. Gossart’s portrait drawing of Christian is on a par with his best portrait paintings. It is beyond doubt that Gossart knew the king personally.

In 1527, Gossart painted his final work on a mythological subject, Danaë, a large-scale work, using sober and elegant architectural motifs as the setting for its subject.

In the centre of the painting an enraptured Danaë sits on two plump pillows on the floor. With her bare legs spread apart, and her deep blue mantle slipping seductively from her shoulders to reveal her right breast, she receives Zeus in the form of the fertile golden rain that gently falls into her lap. In the background, viewed through the columns, are buildings in a mixture of architectural styles: an Italian Renaissance palace, a medieval turret, a north ITalian church tower and lantern, and a Flamboyant Late Gothic edifice.

Danaë is frequently represented in Renaissance and Baroque painting. You can view other depictions of Danaë in the Web Gallery of Art.

This painting was formerly attributed to Bernaert van Orley, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and Lucas van Leyden. It was also assumed for a time that it was the central panel of a triptych, called Salamanca Triptych with the wings now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. This assumption is not accepted by recent research.

The picture shows an early example of the works of Romanist painters (Northern artists influenced by Italian Renaissance painting).

This is one of several drawings of approximately the same size, made with the same technique on blue or dark-coloured paper which are associated with the name of Gossart. All of these drawings derive their form sand size from stained-glass roundels, which were particularly popular in the Low Countries in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The subject of the present drawing is Aegisthus Killing Agamemnon in the Presence of Clytemnestra.

This is one of several drawings of approximately the same size, made with the same technique on blue or dark-coloured paper which are associated with the name of Gossart. All of these drawings derive their form sand size from stained-glass roundels, which were particularly popular in the Low Countries in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The subject of the present drawing is A Woman Killing Three Sleeping Men.

This is one of several drawings of approximately the same size, made with the same technique on blue or dark-coloured paper which are associated with the name of Gossart. All of these drawings derive their form sand size from stained-glass roundels, which were particularly popular in the Low Countries in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The subject of the present drawing is A King or Emperor at a Banquet.

This is one of several drawings of approximately the same size, made with the same technique on blue or dark-coloured paper which are associated with the name of Gossart. All of these drawings derive their form sand size from stained-glass roundels, which were particularly popular in the Low Countries in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The subject of the present drawing is A Woman and Her Handmaid in a Bedroom with a Resting Man.

This drawing on two separate pieces of paper laid down together on a modern mount, is one of Gossart’s most accomplished graphic works. As indicated by the way of feet, arms, and drapery, the cross, and the column all overlap the border, this design of a coffered ceiling was almost certainly meant to be painted as a trompe-l’oeil decoration, maybe in grisaille. It is assumed that the design is related to Philip of Burgundy’s renovation campaign at his castle in Wijk bij Duurstede.

Gossart’s design is closely related to Melozzo da Forli’s fresco in the Sacristy of St Mark in the Basilica della Santa Casa, Loreto.

This design for a monumental glass window depicts scenes from the life of St John the Evangelist. The drawing is squared for transfer in black chalk, which could indicate that a full-scale cartoon was made of the composition. The coat of arms held by a rooster at lower left is blank, leaving unanswered all questions regarding the destination of the window, its patron, and whether it was ever realised.

This drawing depicts scenes from the life of St Leonard, the sixth-century abbot. It could be a ‘modello’, made for final approval of the commission, but also a ‘ricordo’, to be kept as a record of a completed project.

The attribution of this sheet has been debated, Bernaert van Orley has often been mentioned as a possible attribution.

Gossart’s design is related to a royal commission. He was involved in designing a sepulchral monument for Charles V’s younger sister Isabella, who was called Elizabeth after her marriage to the king of Denmark, Christian II. She died in 1526 and was buried in Ghent. Christian commissioned the monument almost immediately, and Gossart seems to have been entrusted with the overall design. The present drawing represents a rejected design for the tomb.

Of all his early drawings this sheet stands out as Gossart’s best, and certainly his most ambitious. It can be assumed to have been made as an autonomous work.

Floris van Egmond (1469-1539) was a prominent and influential nobleman who held a high rank in the Habsburg-Burgundian army. In 1515 he became stadholder of Friesland and in 1518 stadholder of Holland, Zeeland and West-Friesland.

The present painting is probably a copy after Gossart by a follower.

The painterly combination of pen and brush sets this sheet apart from all other known drawings by Gossart. Because the drawing is squared for transfer in black chalk, it has been thought to be preparatory to a painting, although no related work is known today.

The subject is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. On a journey, Hercules and Deianira came to a river where the centaur Nessus was the ferryman. While carrying Deianira across he attempted to ravish her. Hercules, already on the further bank, drew his bow and slew Nessus. The centaur, knowing that his blood was now poisoned with the hydra’s gall from Hercules’s arrow, cunningly told Deianira with his dying words to collect it, as it would one day serve as a love-potion. While Hercules was away in distant parts, Deianira, at home in Trachis, learned that he was courting another woman, Iola. She sent a messenger to him with a gift, the tunic smeared with Nessus “love-potion,” that was poisoned. When Hercules put it on the poison began to corrode his flesh which led to his death.

Gossart’s painting shows the couple in happier time, their interlocking legs a sign of conjugal bliss. With mouths slightly open in a sigh, they stare lovingly into each other’s eyes. They sit in a marble-paneled niche, the panels below showing a selection of scenes from the life of Hercules. Deianira sits on the tunic that will later cause his demise.

The beautifully composed crossed legs of the couple, and in particular the pose of Deianira, were in part inspired by Jacopo de’ Barbari’s engraving of Cleopatra. Gossart seems to have followed even more closely the model of Jacopo Ripanda’s Neptune and Amphitrite figures,

This print clearly derives from Gossart’s painting Hercules and Deianira in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. However, the attribution to Gossart is debated, the names of Hans Baldung Grien and Maerten van Heemskerck were also proposed as possible author. It may be that the plate was completed only partially in Gossart’s lifetime and was left unfinished until it was completed by another hand at a later date.

The model of this drawing is the Hercules of the Forum Boarium, a larger-than-life statue in gilded bronze, discovered at the end of the fifteenth century on the Forum Boarium in Rome. Soon after it was taken to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where it remains. Gossart drew the sculpture when it was placed on a high pedestal at the right side of the courtyard, as recorded in a drawing by Maerten van Heemskerck.

The subject is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4:285-388). A Hellenistic myth of oriental origin tells of a being who was half male, half female, the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite (Mercury and Venus), hence his name. As a young man - he began life as a male - he once bathed in a lake, where Salmacis, one of Diana’s nymphs, dwelt. She fell in love with him at first sight and clung to him with such passion that their two bodies became united in one.

In Gossart’s painting the two figures stand in the water, Hermaphroditus trying to resist her embrace, while in the left background, the uniting couple is depicted. Throughout the 1510s and 1520s, Gossart continued to search for successful solutions to depict interlocking figures - whether in confrontation as here, or in amorous embrace, as in his drawings of Adam and Eve. The present painting shows Gossart’s early attempts in this regard.

Jean II Carondelet (1469-1545), was a Burgundian cleric, politician, jurist and one of the most important advisors to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. He was a patron of Erasmus and a brother of Ferry Carondelet.

This sensitively rendered portrait shows the hallmarks of Gossart’s early style: the tightly cropped composition; the plain, dark background; the conservative pose of the sitter, which emulates earlier examples from Bruges, namely, portraits by Hans Memling.

The present print bears no signature or monogram, but Jan Gossart is without doubt the artist who produced the desisgn upon which it was based.

This painting is a copy of the original in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Until 1965, it was the opposite, the Boston painting was accepted as original. The direct comparison between the two at an exhibition in Rotterdam in 1965 left no doubt that the Boston painting was the superior work.

The unguent jar that she holds in her hands identifies the figure as Mary Magdalen. In terms of style, pose, and composition, Mary Magdalen is presented like a portrait, and indeed, she may represent a young woman in the guise of the saint. This type of representation became popular from the late fifteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Gossart’s Magdalen dates to the end of his career, when he became quite interested in placing his figures in crowded stone architectural settings. In addition, Gossart’s increasingly mannered attempts to reference marble sculpture by accentuating the three-dimensionality of his figures and the porcelain-like, polished surfaces of heads and hands is especially characteristic of his output in the late 1520s until his death in 1532. He crafted elaborate details and luminous surfaces in the Netherlandish tradition, but he also introduced classical elements such as the antique-inspired urn that foreshadows Mary’s anointment of Christ’s feet.

The impact of Gossart’s stay in Rome in 1509 took another decade to surface. Between 1516 and 1524 , he again worked for Philip of Burgundy. The Neptune and Amphitrite is the only extant part of a programme of mythological paintings made for Philip’s Suytburg (Souburg) castle near Middleburg in Zeeland. The choice of Neptune, god of the sea, and his wife, a Nereid or sea-nymph, was appropriate for the Admiral. These startlingly large nudes (the first nudes in the history of Flemish art) have few precedents in Northern Renaissance art. D�rer’s Adam and Eve inspired the poses but not their ample bodies. Gossart was influenced, too, by Jacopo de’ Barbari, the Venetian who also painted at Middleburg (see e.g. his Mars and Venus). The deities stand like colossal statues in the call of an ancient temple. He has elongated the bodies and extended their erotic character. Features such as the ‘bucrania’ (ox skulls) on the architrave doubtlessly derived from Gossart’s Roman drawings.

Jan Gossart’s most compelling paintings were made for Philip of Burgundy during the time the patron was shaping his political identity as admiral of the Burgundian fleet (1502-17). From about 1516 to 1521, Gossart worked as Philip’s court artist, depicting mythological nudes that can be understood as a celebration of sensual pleasures. In reviving classical eroticism for Philip, the artist used his painterly skills to assimilate the loves of the ancient gods into the life of a sixteenth-century Burgundian ruler.

Gossart’s colossal nudes are made more arresting by naturalistic details that enliven their idealised forms. These classical gods have bushy heads of golden hair, with every individual strand articulated and highlighted. In addition, Neptune has bits of curly facial hair resembling that of an adolescent boy.

The sitter of this portrait was identified on the basis of a portrait medal by Christoph Weiditz. Francisco de los Cobos y Molina (c. 1477-1547) was the secretary of State and Comendador for the kingdom of Castile under the rule of the Emperor Charles I of Spain (later Emperor Charles V). He became wealthy in his work with the state and used some of his riches in fostering patronage and acquiring art. He was a confidant and adviser as secretary to Emperor Charles V, with whom he travelled to Bologna in 1530 for Charles’s coronation by Pope Clement as Holy Roman Emperor and afterward to Germany and Flanders, between 1530 and 1532. It was probably on the trip to Flanders that de los Cobos met and engaged Gossart to paint his portrait.

This portrait belongs to Gossart’s last great works, the perfection of the execution shows him at the peak of his abilities. It is exemplary of his high-end, costly production for his most important clients.

Despite his distinctive facial features, this sitter’s identity is unknown. His extravagant costume, fine gloves, and manicured hands suggest a life of wealth and luxury, and his hat is adorned with a pin showing a young man struggling to lift a stone tower. The inscription surrounding this image may be a warning about the folly of decadence; it translates from French as: “He who holds too much wearies himself in vain.”

This portrait bears a striking resemblance to certain of the putative images of Gossart (e.g. in Jan Wierix’s engraving), therefore it is perhaps a self-portrait, that could explain the unusually casual and loose manner in which it was painted.

This significantly darkened portrait of an unidentified man belongs to a group of works that are more modest then Gossart’s highly prized efforts for important and wealthy clients. These compositions show a bust-length figure before a simple green background , facing right or left, and usually with one hand resting at the lower edge of the painting. The simplicity of these paintings and the relative lack of personal identifying marks have relegated these sitters to anonymity.

The tightly cropped composition showing the sitter turned to the left in a three-quarter pose against a dark background derives from the tradition of Bruges portraiture, especially that of Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling. All three artists portrayed their sitters as dignified yet aloof, always highly refined and elegant, e.g. Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Young Man, or Hans Memling’s Portrait of Tommaso Portinari.

The present painting is one of Gossart’s most dynamic portraits, the sitter, whose identity remains unknown, appears about to speak. The composition of the sitter before a green background, his figure casting a shadow to the right, was favoured by Gossart for his portraits during the late 1520s. His sculptural approach to the figure, and the successfully foreshortened gesturing hand are hallmark of his late style.

This painting portrays Franck van Borselan (c. 1395-1471), Count of Ostrevant and a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Formerly the portrait was attributed to Jan Mostaert. Recently it has undergone cleaning and restoration as well as technical examination at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a result, the painting was given to Jan Gossart.

Formerly this portrait was attributed to Jacopo de’Barbari, but since 1927 it is associated with Jan Gossart. The sitter is identified as Henry III of Nassau-Breda (1483-1538), although this is not universally accepted. Henry III was an important statesman and general in the Netherlands during the Burgundian era. He served Margaret of Austria, Maximilian I, and Charles V.

This portrait is not typical in Gossart’s oeuvre, but it is generally accepted as his work. The identity of the well-to-do sitter is not clearly established, however, it is assumed that the portrait represents Philip of Burgundy (1464-1524), Admiral of the Netherlands from 1498 to 1517 and bishop of Utrecht from 1517 to 1524.

Only people of significant means or high social standing would have had their portraits painted in the sixteenth century. This sitter has an especially commanding presence. He is dressed in somber finery and positioned in front of an arch, perhaps to suggest the carved bust of an ancient Roman, set in a niche.

This portrait shows an unidentified man in middle age. The delicately rendered strands of his graying hair and the salt-and-pepper stubble of his beard, as well as his deeply lined jowls, sagging double chin, and the crow’s-feet at the edge of his left eye, are closely observed.

This painting was once attributed to Hans Holbein. However, the style and execution are typical of Gossart’s, rather than Holbein’s works. Such portraits of modest size, tightly cropped, and featuring a plain dark green background were parrt of Gossart’s standard output.

Gossart painted many portraits. By their rigorous psychological analysis he is surely one of the most talented northern artists to have practiced this genre. Usually, he would paint his sitters against a dark green background.

Several possibilities have been suggested for the sitter’s identity: Baudouin of Burgundy, Adolf of Burgundy, who had succeeded Philip of Burgundy (bastard son of Duke Philip the Good) as admiral in Zeeland, and Charles of Burgundy (1491- 1538). The latter proposal has found increasing acceptance.

The sitter’s cool gaze contrasts with the swirl of emblematic valuables surrounding his codpiece, which is accentuated by the gentleman’s gesturing hands. These objects include a ring, short sword with a pommel, keys, and a dagger inscribed “AUTRE QUE VOUS JE N’AIME” (I love you only)- an efficient motto for Duke Philip the Good, who enjoyed countless lovers and left innumerable bastard, including Adolf and his half-brother Philip, who had the chateau at Souburg, where Gossart worked for a time. A fish on the swordguard may identify Gossart’s patron as an admiral. Love was literally on the sitter’s mind, as a jeweled medal in his cap shows Venus and Cupid.

This well preserved painting represents the peak of Gossart’s portraiture. In terms of its ambitious composition and the mastery illusion inn depicting such a wide variety of objects, it is unparalleled in his oeuvre. It joins a group of occupational portraits that had begun to appear by the middle of the fifteenth century, with examples such as St Eligius in His Workshop by Petrus Christus, and became increasingly popular in the early sixteenth century with paintings by Bernaert van Orley, Quentin Massys, Maerten van Heemskerck, Hans Holbein, and Marinus van Reymerswaele.

The sitter of the present painting has been identified by the objects on his desk as either a banker or a merchant. According to a recent research, he is Jan Jacobsz. Snoeck (1510-1585), a descendant of a noble family of Gorinchem, who held important posts, including alderman, in his town.

This elegantly dressed gentleman is portrayed before a green background. He displays a cartouche with the Latin phrase TV MICHI / CAUSA / DOLORIS (You are the cause of my pain). A possible identification of the sitter is Janus Secundus (1511-1536), the poet and humanist author who worked for Margaret of Austria.

The style of this portrait of an unidentified man, characterised by muted colours and an enamel-like varnish, places the painting within Gossart’s mature period.

Artfully arranged on the desk before the sitter are a shaker of talc or sand for blotting the ink as he writes, a round, flat box, scissors, a small portable case for writing implements, a pile of coins, a balance with a ‘dobla excelente’ coin on the triangular scale and a square weight on the round scale at right, a penknife, a book with a brown leather cover closed with a stylus, and an inkstand with four writing quills, red sealing wax, and a roll of paper. The man writes on a loose quire in front of him while holding his place in his bound notebook.

The sitter of this portrait is unknown. However, based on his unusual clothes, it can be assumed that he belonged to the Court, or Council, of Holland, Zeeland, and West Friesland. This panel was probably the right wing of a diptych, indicated by the sitter’s pose: he silently offers his devotion to a holy image, probably a Virgin and Child, at his proper right. The left panel has not yet been identified.

This painting may have been the right wing of a diptych. It was suggested - not convincingly - that the Virgin and Child in the National Gallery, London (on loan from a private collection since 1993) which has approximately the same size, formed the left wing.

According to the inscription above the monk’s head, the sitter was forty years old in 1526. Although in the earlier literature he was described as a Benedictine monk, in fact there are no identifying clues as to his affiliation.

The signature above the monk’s left shoulder is a later addition.

This very damaged portrait of an unidentified, well-to-do woman is typical of Gossart’s portraits of the 1520s.

The present print bears no signature or monogram, but Jan Gossart is without doubt the artist who produced the design upon which it was based.

The composition represents three scenes from the life of St Giles, a seventh-century hermit who lived in a forest in Provence and sustained himself by drinking the milk of a doe, his sole companion. The saint’s life is told in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend.

The attribution to Gossart is not universally accepted.

This composition in grisaille is divided over two separate panels that had been joined at an unknown date. It formed the exterior wings of a triptych that had at its centre the Agony in the Garden (now in Berlin).

While earlier representations of St Jerome most often depicted him as a contemplative scholar in his study, in the latter half of the fifteenth century a new type emerged, that of the penitent Jerome in the wilderness. In the southern Netherlands, the new iconography appeared in Bruges, initially with Hans Memling’s image of St Jerome before a rocky landscape of about 1485-90 and flourished about 1510 and after in the workshops of Gerard David and Adriaen Isenbrant.

Gossart’s painting follows composition developed in these workshops: Jerome is kneeling at the right with his lion, facing the cross with the crucified Christ attached to a tree at the left, his cardinal’s hat is on the ground; the landscape is framed by rocky cliffs.

This drawing is a design for a stained-glass roundel. Of all the roundel designs associated with Gossart’s name, this is the only one not executed on blue paper and heightened with white gouache.

The painting comes from the Chapel of the Guild of St Luke in Sint-Romboutskerk, Mechelen. To the central panel with ogival-arch top, wings by Michiel Coxcie were added in the second half of the sixteenth century. Later it was on the main altar of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

Gossart painted two versions of the subject, this is the earlier one, the second is in Vienna. The Prague version is Gossart’s largest extant painting. The carefully planned architectural background is remarkable; in this painting Gossart presented the Guild of St Luke with the most up-to-date report on Roman art and architecture.

In his presentation of the theme, Gossart referred to a famous painting by Rogier van der Weyden. He placed his figures in the same relationship to each other, and likewise represented Luke as recording the details of the Virgin and Child in a metalpoint drawing.

The scene was a favourite subject of the late Gothic German and Netherlandish masters. This painting, one of the greatest by Gossart, is a departure from traditional Netherlandish representation of the subject. It was inspired by Italian art and reformulated in Gossart’s manner. The setting is a Renaissance hall decorated with grotesque pilasters bearing classical medallions copied from Roman coinage. In the background there is a tempietto adorned with the statue of Moses. St Luke, kneeling at a prie-dieu, makes a metalpoint drawing of the Virgin, appearing in a vision before him. He is guided by the hand of an angel.

A number of Italian sources have been suggested in the literature as possible prototypes, including Raphael’s Tempi Madonna, Fra Bartolomeo’s Vision of St Bernard, and Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation.

Gossart painted two versions of the subject, this is the later one, the first is in Prague. A remarkable innovation of the second version is that the Madonna is not a sitter of the portrait painting, she appears as a vision of St Luke.

Sitting on a low step, Mary is the Virgin of Humility, but she is simultaneously praised as the Queen of the Heaven in the antiphon Regina Coeli, which is embroidered on the hem of her mantle. The Ave Maria prayer, acknowledging her as both the mother of Christ and intercessor for humankind, is embroidered there as well. Mary’s baring of her breast to nurse the Christ Child identifies her as the Virgo Lactans.

In the foreground, luxuriously dressed, Luke sits comfortably on a stone ledge, his legs casually crossed and his sandal having fallen to the floor. He records the poses of the Virgin and Child, who are physically present before him, not a vision as in his later painting of the same subject. In Luke’s drawing, the Virgin looks to her right, not at the rose in her hand, indicating that Luke draws her as he sees her, not as we do it.

St Luke, kneeling at a prie-dieu, makes a metalpoint drawing of the Virgin, appearing in a vision before him. He is guided by the hand of an angel. Luke takes off his shoes in the presence of the vision of the Virgin and Child.

The details of this precisely planned composition, such as the putti on the pilasters, show a deft manipulation of oil paint to create the illusion of a variety of textures.

The details of this precisely planned composition, such as the gold design at the edge of the Virgin’s cloak, show a deft manipulation of oil paint to create the illusion of a variety of textures.

The details of this precisely planned composition, such as the remarkable wings of the angel, show a deft manipulation of oil paint to create the illusion of a variety of textures.

This drawing is probably a re-creation of antique armour, inspired by studies in Rome. It can be dated to Gossart’s trip to Rome or immediately after it.

This drawing is probably a re-creation of antique armour, inspired by studies in Rome. It can be dated to Gossart’s trip to Rome or immediately after it.

This Adoration is thought to have been the altarpiece of the Lady Chapel of Sint-Adriaansabdij, Geraardsbergen. It was commissioned by a local nobleman, Daniel van Boechout, Lord of Boelare, who was to be buried in the chapel.

The sumptuous huge panel has been elaborated in dazzlingly crisp detail, without compromising the clarity and focus of the whole. In the ruinous edifice of the Old Dispensation, the kings of the earth with their retinues, awestruck shepherds and the nine celestial orders of angels join to adore the newborn Child, seated on his mother’s lap as upon a throne. Caspar has offered gold coins in a gold chalice; his name is incised on its lid lying next to his hat and golden sceptre at the hem of the Virgin’s gown. Balthazar advancing on the left is identified by the inscription adorning his crown, and the artist has signed his name below. The border of the cloth on which Balthazar, like a priest at the altar, holds his precious offering, is embroidered with the first words of the hymn to the Virgin, Salve Regina: ‘Hail Queen, mother of mercy, life, sweetness…’ The artist’s second signature is incorporated in the neck ornament of Balthazar’s black follower. The third king, Melchior, waits on the right. On the hillside behind his retinue the angel is announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds. Joseph, in red and with a cane, stands at some distance gazing up to Heaven. Although generally following Netherlandish precedent, Gossart shows his awareness of modern, and even foreign, art: the dog in the right foreground is copied directly from D�rer’s famous engraving of the miraculous conversion of Saint Eustace, dated to ¹⁵⁰⁰⁄₁.

Two unusual features of the imagery are the dove of the Holy Spirit descending from the star, which becomes a symbol of God the Father - so that the three persons of the Trinity are represented in the Adoration - and the Virgin holding the chalice offered by Caspar. Jesus seems to proffer one of the gold coins. Of the three gifts which the Wise Men from the East presented to the Child (Matthew 2:11) the myrrh, later used to embalm Christ’s body, traditionally symbolised his sacrifice; the frankincense was specified in the Old Testament as an incense reserved for the tabernacle of the Lord; the gold was tribute paid by kings to the King, after the example of Solomon. Yet perhaps an additional significance is suggested here in the Child’s gesture. The royal tribute will be redeemed in blood - the eucharistic wine - through the Saviour’s infinite charity.

Gossart’s painting provokes close reading, although its general message within the Christian story is clear. It is perhaps the last great exemplar of that painstaking art of the Netherlands which spared no labour to place at the feet of the Virgin and her Son a minute description of the costliest products of human craft - the wares of goldsmiths, weavers, furriers, embroiderers, tailors, hatters and bootmakers - arrayed on panel through ingenious mastery of the painter’s brush. As a testimonial to his own craft or to show his devotion, the artist may have included his own likeness, peeping out of a narrow doorway behind the ox at the Virgin’s shoulder.

Gossart’s main source of inspiration seems to have been the Monforte Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes. In addition, the artist also borrowed from prints by D�rer and Schongauer (e.g. the dogs from Schongauer’s Adoration of the Kings, and D�rer’s St Eustace).

Recent technical examination of Gossart’s paintings led to the suggestion that Gerard David collaborated with Gossart on some paintings including the present Adoration. It is assumed that, in addition to some other details, the head of the Virgin was painted by Gerard David, whose influence on Gossart is shown by a comparison with David’s Adoration of the Kings in London.

Recent technical examination of Gossart’s paintings led to the suggestion that Gerard David collaborated with Gossart on some paintings including the present Adoration. It is assumed that, in addition to some other details, the head of the Virgin was painted by Gerard David, whose influence on Gossart is shown by a comparison with David’s Adoration of the Kings in London.

Recent technical examination of Gossart’s paintings led to the suggestion that Gerard David collaborated with Gossart on some paintings including the present Adoration. It is assumed that, in addition to some other details, the head of the Virgin was painted by Gerard David, whose influence on Gossart is shown by a comparison with David’s Adoration of the Kings in London.

In the early twentieth century this drawing was attributed first to Bernaert van Orley, then to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, but these attributions were discarded. The composition relates to both D�rer’s woodcut from his Life of the Virgin and Schongauer’s engraving of the same subject.

This drawing, attributed to Gossart, was likely part of a small series, possibly depicting the life of Christ and meant as a model for a miniature.

There are several round drawings on tinted paper associated with Gossart, but this is the only one signed by the artist (at upper right). It can be related to a woodcut of D�rer, which Gossart emulated without slavishly imitating it. Because of its round shape, the drawing has been generally assumed to be a design for a stained-glass roundel.

The attribution of this drawing to Gossart is debated.

This is the only drawing by Gossart of this subject; related subjects are also depicted in two of his paintings and an etching. The peculiar shape of the drawing, with its rounded upper half flanked by two unequal corners, relates to a specific kind of portable polyptych.

The left wing of the diptych depicts the Virgin and Child in the Church, while the right wing the donor Antonio Siciliano and St Anthony.

The diptych was commissioned by Antonio Siciliano who served as chamberlain and secretary to Massimiliano Sforza, the Duke of Milan. In 1513 he was dispatched to Margaret of Austria in Mechelen on a diplomatic mission. It is assumed that Siciliano commissioned the painting from Gossart, who about 1513 worked at Margaret’s court in Mechelen.

The donor is depicted in the right-hand panel, kneeling with his dog by his side, against the backdrop of a mountainous landscape with a meadow full of flowers in the foreground, in the act of being presented by his patron St Anthony to the Madonna, represented on the opposite panel.

The authorship of the diptych is debated, especially that of the donor (right) wing. Several alternative suggestions were proposed, the authorship being connected to the Antwerp Mannerists or to the artists contributing to the Grimani Breviary. The left panel is attributed to Gerard David. This attribution is supported by recent technical examination.