The Lamentation

The artistic personality of the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines was first discussed by the great historian of early Netherlandish art Max J. Friedländer in his review of the seminal Exposition des primitifs flamands, held in Bruges in 1902. Friedländer adopted the name after the panel of The Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, establishing a more extensive oeuvre for the painter in his Early Netherlandish Painting, comprised of some twenty works.

Given the very distinctive characteristics of the artist’s style, he is generally believed to have worked in the North Netherlands during the last two decades of the fifteenth century, with most scholars identifying him as working in the city of Delft. While his anonymity precludes secure placement, his paintings clearly reflect the artistic trends that were current in Holland in the late-fifteenth century, echoing works by Geertgen tot Sint Jans of Haarlem, and anticipating the later developments seen in the work of masters like Cornelis Engebrechtsz. of Leiden.

The Master of the Virgo inter Virgines appears to have worked not solely as a painter but also as a designer of printed images, producing woodcuts (or the designs for woodcuts) for a number of illustrated devotional texts printed in Delft in the 1480s. The demands of designing graphic works seems to have been carried forward into his painted panels, which show a similar care in the arrangement of figures and clarity of composition. While little of his known painted oeuvre can be dated with any precision, some likely dates can be proposed. One interesting example is a Lamentation, formerly at the Carthusian monastery of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Kapelle at Herne, near Enghien (now in the Sint-Nicolaas Hospitaal, Enghien). The monastic community at Herne was closely associated with the charterhouse which had been founded near Delft in 1470. It was from Herne, for example, that the first monks had arrived to establish the Delft monastery. Twelve years after its foundation, one of these founding monks, Gaspar van der Stock, returned to Herne to assume the monastery’s priorate. Given the presence of the Master’s Lamentation in Enghien and his presumed activity in Delft, it seems possible that van der Stock took the picture with him upon his return. The Master’s activity in the 1480s can be confirmed through his involvement with the illustration of books in the same decade.

Given this approximate period of activity, Châtelet has proposed two possibilities for the anonymous artist’s identity (Early Dutch Painting: Painting in the northern Netherlands in the fifteenth century, Oxford, 1987, pp. 148-9). The first, referred to simply as Pieter ‘de Maelre’ (Peter the Painter) in contemporary documents, was active in 1450, when he was already referred to as a master and was still working in Delft in 1495, when he was recorded undertaking work at the city’s Oude Kerk. The second, Dirc Jansz, is first found in archival sources in 1474, working on the decoration of a tomb in the city. He was similarly mentioned in 1495, though documentation remains sparse on his working career. While these brief references cannot provide the basis for a secure identification, the younger painter, Dirc Jansz, is perhaps more probable. Pieter ‘de Maelre’, as an established master in 1450, would have been from an older generation of artists and it is unlikely that his painterly style would reflect the more dynamic and current developments seen in the distinctive works of the anonymous Master.

The depiction of this Lamentation is highly characteristic of the Master’s distinctive idiom, using stylised figures, typified by large, doll-like heads, small features and bold use of chiaroscuro. The composition is particularly striking in the division of the two groups of mourners either side of Christ’s body. To the left, the Virgin, supported by Saint John the Evangelists, leans toward the body of her son, while behind her the elaborately dressed Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome turn toward each other. The body of Christ is supported by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who are joined by Mary Magdalene, dressed in a richly worked gown of cloth-of-gold. The separation between the groups implies a sense of narrative, with those to the left Christ’s mourners and to the right those who will take His body and prepare it for burial.

This painting relies closely on another Lamentation painted by the Master (Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery). Described by Friedländer as one of the Master’s most characteristic works, the Walker Lamentation shows a clear stylistic development in depicting grieving figures, moving from the more ostentatious expressions of the Enghien Lamentation to a subtler articulation of sorrow. As Godefridus Johannes Hoogewerff described the work of the Master, ‘this art does not wail: it is dumbfounded’, an idea that is perfectly encapsulated in the grief-induced stupor of the mourners in the Liverpool picture and the present work (see M.R. de Vrij, De Meester van der Virgo inter Virgines, Amsterdam, 1999, p. 32). Indeed, this Lamentation closely follows the Walker picture, not simply in the internalised expressions of grief shown in the figures, but also in the correspondences of the composition. Some notable differences in the present panel, however, can be seen in the two Marys behind the Virgin, who are shown turning in different directions; in the landscape, in which the whole of Golgotha is visible in the upper right, with Christ’s empty cross (bearing the titulus above it) flanked by the two thieves, who still hang on their crosses; and in a further narrative detail in which the painter includes a figure carrying a ladder away from Golgotha, suggestive of the moment, just before that shown in the panel, of Christ’s deposition. In the Walker Lamentation, only the base of a single cross can be seen, with the foot of a ladder propped against it.

Dendrochronolgical analysis of the panel has provided a felling date of after circa 1465, suggesting that the painting itself is likely to have been executed after the late 1470s (Ian Tyers, October 2021, available upon request). While the surface of the panel has been subject to some later restorations that have, in parts, obscured the original quality of the painter’s work, areas like the two Marys at the left of the composition and the starkly painted body of Christ show the artist’s mastery of his technique and his consummate skill in handling paint. Infrared reflectography further reveals the original quality of his work in a high level of planning of the composition, with each figure carefully painted in reserve (Tager Stonor Richardson, October 2021, available upon request). Faint, delicate liquid underdrawing describes the folds of the draperies, notably in the transparent glazed shadows of Saint John’s red robe, painted with close-spaced hatching that echoes the fluid modelling of the forms. It is noteworthy that the present panel, like the Master’s eponymous panel in the Rijksmuseum, shows almost no trace of underdrawing in the faces, while sharing with it the controlled and systematic cross-hatching in the draperies.
We are grateful to Till-Holger Borchert for confirming the attribution after first-hand inspection.