JUAN DE FLANDES

The Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic was executed in the period when Juan de Flandes was in the service of the Queen. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow. The Capture of Christ is one of the surviving panels.

The painting belongs to the retable on the high altar of the Cathedral in Palencia. It is assumed that the man dressed in green at the right side of the painting is a self-portrait.

This is one of the 47 small panels which belonged to the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic.

The Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic was executed in the period when Juan de Flandes was in the service of the Queen. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow. The Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen is one of the surviving panels.

The Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic was executed in the period when Juan de Flandes was in the service of the Queen. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow. The Christ Nailed to the Cross is one of the surviving panels.

The Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic was executed in the period when Juan de Flandes was in the service of the Queen. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow. The Christ and the Canaanite Woman is one of the surviving panels.

This is one of the 47 small panels which belonged to the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic.

Herod and Herodias sit at a table in a Renaissance interior. Salome presents the severed head of John the Baptist to them on a platter. Herod recoils from the atrocity, but Herodias holds a knife ready to pierce John’s tongue in revenge for the saints’s denunciation of her sinful behaviour.

The panel belonged to an altarpiece devoted to the story of John the Baptist which was painted in 1496 for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores near Burgos. The original form of the altarpiece has been partially reconstructed. Its central panel was the Baptism of Christ, now in a Madrid collection. Each wing consisted of at lest two panels placed one on top of the other.

Although the work of Juan de Flandes is not really Southern Netherlandish in character, we nevertheless detect the clear influence of painters from Ghent and Bruges, especially Hugo van der Goes. He uses painterly techniques to create a strange atmosphere. The bright lighting and accentuation of the green, red and orange sections generate a nervous tension. Placing the main protagonists in the foreground lends the scene an expressive aura and a pronounced monumentality, which is further heightened by the dramatic movement, the sharply delineated forms and the realistic appearance of the figures.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Salome, closing scene

The panel is from the church of St Lazarus in Palencia.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Guillaume Dufay: Veni, Creator Spiritus, hymn for Pentecost

The portraits of Joan the Mad and Philip the Handsome were painted on the occasion of their marriage. The paintings shows the capabilities of the artist in the genre of portrait, the only subject permitted beside religious themes in Catholic Spain.

Queen Juana I of Castile (1479-1555) is generally known as “Joan the Mad”. Despite her nickname, Juana’s “madness” has often been disputed; she may have been locked up for political reasons only. Either way, she was a passionate woman, who fell madly in love with her handsome husband and continued to caress him even after his death. At the age of 16, Juana was betrothed to Philip the Handsome of Austria (1478-1506), only son of the Emperor Maximilian I, and they married in 1496 in the Low Countries.

The portraits of Joan the Mad and Philip the Handsome were painted on the occasion of their marriage. The paintings shows the capabilities of the artist in the genre of portrait, the only subject permitted beside religious themes in Catholic Spain.

Queen Juana I of Castile (1479-1555) is generally known as “Joan the Mad”. Despite her nickname, Juana’s “madness” has often been disputed; she may have been locked up for political reasons only. Either way, she was a passionate woman, who fell madly in love with her handsome husband and continued to caress him even after his death. At the age of 16, Juana was betrothed to Philip the Handsome of Austria (1478-1506), only son of the Emperor Maximilian I, and they married in 1496 in the Low Countries.

While Juan de Flandes also produced important altarpieces, his role as court painter was to portray the queen and, without doubt, other members of the royal family. This portrait may depict Catherine of Aragon, Infanta of Spain and daughter of the Catholic kings. Catherine married Henry VIII of England, who subsequently divorced her and thereby precipitated the religious schism between England and the Papacy.

The Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic was executed in the period when Juan de Flandes was in the service of the Queen. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow. The Resurrection of Lazarus is one of the surviving panels.

This picture was probably part of an elaborate multipanel retablo, or altarpiece, commissioned in 1505 for the chapel of the University of Salamanca.

Trained in Ghent and Bruges, Juan de Flandes went to Spain to work in the service of Queen Isabella of Castile. His Flemish mode of painting gradually become less linear under the influence of Italian art, eventually taking on a style which used soft lyrical forms in a manner very similar to that of Gerard David.

The Gothic style and an essentially medieval, narative naturalism continued to characterize Castilian painting until well into the sixteenth century. This survival of archaic formulas is partially attributable to certain painters of foreign origin, for example, the Flemish painter known Juan de Flandes, who from 1496 was employed in the service of Isabella of Castile. Juan de Flandes remained essentially an expressionist painter beneath the virtuosity of his Flemish technique.

The name by which Spanish documents refer to Juan de Flandes simply means “John or Jan of Flanders.” Juan is first recorded as working for Queen Isabel in 1496; two years later he is mentioned as her court artist.

Juan de Flandes demonstrated a preference for clearly articulated space and refined color schemes. Characteristic of paintings from the city of Ghent, charming narrative vignettes frequently enlivened the backgrounds of Juan’s pictures.

The Nativity is one of the six surviving panels of an altarpiece from the main chapel in the Church of San L�zaro, Palencia, in northern Castile.

Juan’s Nativity, as with many religious scenes, amplifies a biblical episode with theological references. The Gospel of Luke writes that the baby was wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Here, however, the child is naked and lies on his mother’s robe upon the ground, implying that the son of god was poorer than the humblest son of man. The ox and ass, eating from the straw-filled manger, are not mentioned together in Luke. The Book of Isaiah, however, states that these beasts knew their master and his crib. Since a grain storage crib relates directly to Luke’s feeding manger, early Christian scholars believed that Isaiah’s prophesy was fulfilled when even the livestock would recognize Jesus as their master.

Meanwhile, illuminating the starry night, concentric rings of divine light emanate from the angel appearing to the shepherds on the distant hilltop. Perched on the ruined stable, an owl may refer to the nocturnal darkness dispelled by the coming of Christ.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 16 minutes):

Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto grosso in g minor op. 6 No. 8 (Christmas Concerto)

The panel is from the church of St Lazarus in Palencia.

Juan de Flandes was trained in the Ghent-Bruges school, and very little is known about him. The only indications of his early life are his style as a painter and the generic name given him in Spain. Even his twenty-three years in Castile are sparsely documented and known mostly through contracts and official records. He is first recorded in the payrolls of Isabella’s servants in 1496, and stayed on at court until her death eight years later. Little remains of this period of activity, except for the altarpiece of St John the Baptist, executed for the Charterhouse of Miraflores (surviving panels are in the Museum van der Bergh, Antwerp, Museum of Art, Cleveland, Mus�e d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and private collection) and part of the magnificent work of art known as the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic. This polyptych originally comprised forty-seven small panels (each measuring about 21 x 16 centimetres). Approximately twenty-seven survive, of which two were executed by Michel Sittow.

The Temptation of Christ, one of the surviving panels of the polyptych, reveals Juan de Flandes’s origin in the art of Hugo van der Goes and his follower the Master of Mary Burgundy, whose precise, delicate style of miniature painting he adapted to works in oil on panel.

The composition of this remarkably refined little painting is based on a lost small work by Memling, which is best reflected in the Virgin of the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Since the dimensions correspond, the work must have been done with a tracing or punch-cardboard based on the original. The version discussed here shows the image in the right direction. The Virgin is represented high above a landscape, more monumental than the prototype. She stands behind a wall over which a white cloth is draped with very heavy folds. This also differs from the model. The panel was incorrectly ascribed to Michel Sittow, and later attributed to Juan de Flandes in 1966. On account of the quality, the typical facial features and the vaporous green-grey landscape, this attribution cannot be doubted.

The panel originated about the time of the Retablo Mayor of Palencia (c. 1510) and may have been the central panel of a small triptych described in the accounts of Palencia Cathedral as the ‘tabla oratorio de tress pie�as’. If so, it could have been a work in the style of Memling’s Triptych of Benedetto Portinari (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), with a donor and a saint in front of a continuous landscape on the wings.