MALOUEL, Jean

A series of scenes make up this picture, all of them painted against a gold background. Although the crucified Christ has been placed in the centre of the composition, the chief subject is St Denis, the first Bishop of Paris and patron saint of France. The court painter of Dijon has painted the scene of his last Communion and his martyrdom in 285, in the company of the deacon Eleutherius and the priest Rusticus. On the left of the crucifix the Bishop, seen behind the bars of a blue prison with a superstructure of red bricks, receives the Host from the haloed figure of Christ in a gold brocade robe and blue mantle, accompanied by angels. On the right, the burly executioner, dressed in green, is beheading the holy Bishop, whose head is half severed from the body. As against the formal representation of Christ and the saints, the faces of the crowd watching the event are markedly individual; especially noteworthy are the bearded figure in a red robe and the man wearing a white turban. The lively group balancing the mass of the prison, the open spaces of the middle distance all go to make up a superb example of French moderation and proportion.

It has been suggested that this painting was begun by Jean Malouel and completed by Henri Bellechose.

Malouel was a Flemish artist who from 1397 was a court painter to Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, dukes of Burgundy. He was commissioned to paint 5 altarpieces for the Chartreuse of Champmol in 1398 and was one of the earliest panel painters of North Europe.

This Pietà received its name due to the fact that the Louvre possesses a smaller Pietà of the same style.

Seated against a golden background God the Father supports the lifeless, bleeding body of the dead Christ in his arms. With yearning eyes the Virgin bids farewell to her Son, clasping his arm with both hands. Behind her the figure of St John the Evangelist in a red robe completes the composition, his fair head following the line of the circular frame. On the left of God the Father and the dead Christ small angels in blue and red robes express their sorrow. One of them embraces the knee of Christ, the other one holds the transparent white veil covering the lower part of his body. The pale and grey ivory of Christ’s body is set off by the more vivid, richer colours of the other figures. The delicate interplay of the fingers and hands is particularly to be admired. The coat of arms of Burgundy appears on the reverse of the panel, and it can therefore be assumed that the picture was made for the court of Burgundy; perhaps for the Chartreuse de Champmol of Dijon.

The half length figure of the Virgin, with the Child supported by her right arm, is shown within the three-dimensional representation of a window-frame. It was due to the influence of Sienese painting that this Byzantine type of picture found its way to the North. In the Burgundian (and French) painting this is the very first half figure representation of the Madonna and as such has remained unique for many years. This small picture (which is only as big as a Book of Hours) may have stood on the altar of a domestic chapel or on a prie-dieu in the corner of a room.

The motif of the window-frame provides the reason why the Virgin is represented as a half length figure. In this way the Madonna comes close to the praying person, but, at the same time, the frame emphasizes the majesty of the Mother of God. (Because rulers generally appeared at a window to show themselves to the people, the window became a symbol of royalty.) The painter may have had in mind the medieval hymns in which the Virgin was praised as “the Window of Heaven” (fenestra coeli), as it was through her that the Lord endowed the world with genuine light.

The Child’s delicate body is also depicted from the waist upwards, emerging from Mary’s wide and velvety soft cloak. It is not the primary purpose of the drapery to convey the structure of the underlying figure, for the drapery forms an independent element of the composition, which can be modelled as the artist wishes. (See, for example, the protruding form at the Madonna’s right shoulder.) The arrangement whereby the folds of the mantle spread out radially from the Madonna’s left wrist is most refined and so is the narrowing down of the blue area of the whole drapery at the bottom part of the picture.

The two figures are almost fused together by love, and yet are surrounded by a melancholy mood, the austere premonition of the Passion. The Virgin is absorbed in her thoughts, the Child opens His big, round eyes and looks at the spectator. His forefinger may enjoin silence upon the approaching worshipper. We can see the same motif in Stefano da Verona’s Madonna in the Rosary, whose style as well as that of Michelino da Besozzo’s The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine were directly influenced by the painting which originated from the Malouel workshop.

This painting is probably the earliest surviving work on canvas from France. It follows the gracefully hieratic mode of the International Style, seen especially in the cascades of calligraphic drapery and the elegantly elongated fingers of the Mother and Son.