JOOS van Wassenhove

Joos van Wassenhove was one of the first in a long line of Netherlandish painters to make Italy his adopted land, and his last works represent an impressive blending of Northern skill in the execution of detail and colour in the oil medium and the scale and grandeur of Italian monumental mural decoration.

The Allegory of Music is part of a series on the seven liberal arts.. As is customary, each of the panels included an enthroned woman to personify a corresponding liberal art.

Twenty-eight panels representing illustrious men of every period adorned the studiolo (study) of Federigo da Montrefeltro in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. Among those portrayed were politicians, philosophers, men of science and of letters, and ecclesiastics, such as Hippocrates, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, St Augustine, Cicero, Virgil, Homer, Euclid, Pius II, Sixtus IV. In this room devoted to reading and meditation, the series expressed the duke’s aspirations and offered him intellectual and moral models. The Flemish painter Joos van Wassenhove (Justus of Ghent) worked on the decoration of the room until 1474; another painter, the Spanish Pedro Berruguete completed the project in 1476, altering it however.

The twenty-eight portraits - fourteen of which are now in the Louvre - were arranged in two rows one above the other on the four walls of the studiolo, separated by small columns.

Twenty-eight panels representing illustrious men of every period adorned the studiolo (study) of Federigo da Montrefeltro in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. Among those portrayed were politicians, philosophers, men of science and of letters, and ecclesiastics, such as Hippocrates, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, St Augustine, Cicero, Virgil, Homer, Euclid, Pius II, Sixtus IV. In this room devoted to reading and meditation, the series expressed the duke’s aspirations and offered him intellectual and moral models. The Flemish painter Joos van Wassenhove (Justus of Ghent) worked on the decoration of the room until 1474; another painter, the Spanish Pedro Berruguete completed the project in 1476, altering it however.

The twenty-eight portraits - fourteen of which are now in the Louvre - were arranged in two rows one above the other on the four walls of the studiolo, separated by small columns.

Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, was both a distinguished condottiere and a cultivated humanist. In 1473, he decided to build an enormous new palace, for which he had commissioned a design from the Dalmatian architect Luciano da Laurana. Artists came from all over Italy - sculptors from Venice, specialists in marquetry from Florence - to work on the decoration. One room at the top of the building was intended to serve as his “studiolo” - a quiet retreat, remote from the bustle of the court, where the Duke would be able to read, write and meditate. Since he could not find a painter anywhere in Italy who knew how to work in oils, he sent for a Flemish artist to decorate this private space. This artist would seem to have been Joos van Wassenhove (Justus of Ghent).

What we do know for certain is that after Justus had painted the Communion of the Apostles for the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini, he went on to play a key part in the making of twenty-eight portraits of famous men for the studiolo. These pictures depict great philosophers, famous poets and doctors of both the Greek and Roman Churches. Today they are divided between the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino and the Louvre in Paris. Justus was also long believed to have been the painter of the Portrait of Duke Federico and His Son and of The Duke and His Son Listening To a Lecture, which are at Hampton Court, but it is now agreed that these two paintings are clearly not his work.

Justus’s style during the years he spent in Ghent was probably very close to that of Rogier Van der Weyden in his use of figures based on popular types. Skeletal bodies, forced stationary poses, and a light and subtle palette ranging from wine-red to hyacinth blue and acid green are all characteristic of his art at that period. When he moved to Urbino, he abandoned neither his earlier manner nor the Flemish concern for realism, but adapted them to these monumental works, incorporating influences from both Italian art and the humanist ideas that circulated at the Duke’s court.

The portraits he executed for the ducal palace, although works of some historical importance, do not really bear comparison with the perfection in this genre of his great Italian contemporaries. Justus appears to have had assistance in his work on these paintings from certain Tuscan painters and even from Spanish artists who were residing in Urbino at the time. Some authorities have gone so far as to describe him as a mere assistant himself, attributing the true paternity of these works to Melozzo da Forli or Giovanni Santi, artists whose names are now largely forgotten, or to the Spaniard Pedro Berruguete, who - as we know played an important role in decorating Federico’s hideaway. However, the fourteen paintings in the Louvre have recently been examined using laboratory techniques, which have established that they are all drawn in a way that is typically Flemish and that two of them, the portraits of St Jerome and St Augustine, are entirely by Justus’s hand.

Inside the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro and his guests enjoyed several handsome suites of rooms. The crowning glory of Federico’s private suite was his studiolo (“small study”). The densely carved, gilded, and coffered ceiling carries Federico’s personal emblems and an inscription giving his noble titles and the date 1476, the decoration being part of extensive renovations and enhancements begun in 1474. The lower walls are lined with trompe l’oeil wood intarsia. Books, scholarly equipment, musical instruments, and even Federico’s armour are all convincingly rendered, mimicking the actual objects kept behind the cupboard doors. It is a breathtaking essay in perspective, composition and craftsmanship, probably executed by Florentine craftsmen in the workshop of the architect and woodworker Giuliano da Maiano, following designs by several artists, including Botticelli.

Above the intarsia two rows of paintings depict paired exemplars of the major fields of scholarly learning from antiquity through to Federico’s own time. Federico commissioned most of the paintings from the Flemish artist Joos van Wassenhove, who came to work at Federico’s court.

Presently most of the original paintings are represented by large photographs, the originals having been removed to museums throughout Europe.

The most important and most perfect work of Joos van Wassenhove (Justus of Ghent) by far is The Institution of the Eucharist (The Communion of the Apostles), painted for the high altar of the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini. The picture was based on a painting by Fra Angelico that Justus may have seen at St Mark’s convent in Florence, in which the disciples leave the table to kneel at Christ’s feet. Yet, despite this influence, the finished work shows just how far Justus’s style remained purely Flemish, virtually untouched by all he had seen during his time in Italy.

The scene is set in the chancel of a church built on the Latin plan, its apse supported by a row of composite columns. On each side of the painting is an opening through which distant houses and towers are visible. These panoramic views are reminiscent of Ghent or of Bruges. Christ is seen standing three-quarters on to the viewer, in front of the table. He holds the paten in his left hand, as he offers the consecrated bread to St James the Less. Around him, those disciples who have received the host appear happy and at peace, while the faces of the others express their eagerness to partake of it too. The unfortunate figure of Judas stands to one side in the shadow, as if trying to avoid Christ’s gaze. In the foreground stand a plate and pitcher that will later be used to wash the disciples’ feet.

In the background, to the right, is a lively group made up of Duke Federico, two of his courtiers and Caterino Zeno, the ambassador of the Shah of Persia. The presence of this latter figure seems designed to indicate that the Holy Eucharist is a universal sacrament and that Christ has become incarnate in order to save all men, whatever their origins. Just behind this group a young woman can be made out, carrying the young Guidobaldo in her arms. Two angels hover above the protagonists, held in perfect balance by their tensile wings. One of them is praying, while the other simply expresses his emotion as a witness to the sacred event below.

There is a remarkable contrast between the group of the apostles, on the one hand, and that of the Duke and his followers, on the other. Justus demonstrates his great talent as a portraitist in the means he finds to express both the ardent faith of the former and the noisy activity of the latter, highlighting their facial expressions by the movement of their hands. He also plays on the contrasts between the simple, even poor clothes of the apostles, and the rich and luxurious apparel of the Duke and his companions. As for Christ, he is shown wearing a grey-blue robe. His disciples are in tunics of various colours - green, light red, yellow and brown. They have fair hair, save for one who is dark, and Judas, who has red hair. This admirable counterpoint of colours is complemented by the greeny blue of the wings of the two angels, that stands out against the dark brown of the apse. It is rare to find a painting from that period that so felicitously combines the demands of both spiritual feeling and realism.

Christ is shown wearing a grey-blue robe. His disciples are in tunics of various colours - green, light red, yellow and brown. They have fair hair, save for one who is dark, and Judas, who has red hair.

In the background, to the right, is a lively group made up of Duke Federico, two of his courtiers and Caterino Zeno, the ambassador of the Shah of Persia. The presence of this latter figure seems designed to indicate that the Holy Eucharist is a universal sacrament and that Christ has become incarnate in order to save all men, whatever their origins. Just behind this group a young woman can be made out, carrying the young Guidobaldo in her arms. Two angels hover above the protagonists, held in perfect balance by their tensile wings. One of them is praying, while the other simply expresses his emotion as a witness to the sacred event below.