CHAPTER V. PUPILS OF HUBERT AND JOHN VAN EYCK.-PETRUS CRISTUS WHEN Hubert and John Van Eyck took up their residence at Bruges and Ghent, they found their art established in those cities under rules and regulations common to other guilds. Young aspirants to celebrity were bound apprentices in this as in every other trade; and thus the painter's sanctuaries, as we may call them, were shrouded from public view with the same success as those of architects or glass painters. Artists thus preserved amongst themselves the knowledge of improvements, which became the envy of foreign craftsmen, whilst the secrets of manipulation were committed to those alone who had an interest in keeping them. It was by this means alone, and not by affectations of concealment, that these secrets were preserved. They justify Vasari, who remarked that Giovanni Van Eyck divulged them only in old age; and Van Mander, who asserted that the secret of oil-painting was preserved from Italian painters till Antonello came to Bruges.2 It is true, however, that Van der Weyden first brought to central Italy the secrets of oil-painting, and communicated them to artists when Antonello is said to have returned to Venice. In the meanwhile, a number of apprentices and pupils had spread the teaching of the Flemish masters throughout the Netherlands. 1 Vasari, ut sup., vol. i. p. 163. 2 Van Mander, p. 202. Petrus Cristus, or Christophsen, the first of these, was born about 1393, and is called by the Italians Pietro Christa. He was the first to follow John Van Eyck in the practice of oil-painting, and received, no doubt, the lessons of the elder brother also, whose style he followed much more faithfully than that of John. He painted, in 1417, a Madonna and Child, which for grace may rival John, and for power Hubert, remarkable for being the oldest picture of the school, and executed previously to any of the authentic works of Hubert or of John. From Bruges he went to Cologne, the seat of a noble school of art, degenerating into prettiness, which changed his manner. Some traces of his stay there, in 1438, are still preserved. He soon returned to Flanders, however, where he seems to have resided alternately at Bruges and Antwerp. In 1450 he was member of the painter's brotherhood of St. Luke, at Bruges; and in 1451 he painted the well-known altar-piece of Mr. Oppenheim's Collection at Cologne, for the Antwerp guild of goldsmiths. He then obtained the patronage of the Count d'Etampes, who gave him a commission for some works at Cambrai. A supernatural degree of sanctity was then attached to pictures of the Virgin, said to be produced by one of the apostles. A picture of this kind was brought from Rome to Cambrai in 1451, and Cristus was chosen to make copies of it. He produced three; and one of them is still preserved in the hospital of Cambrai. 1 Guicciardini calls him Pierre Creste. Guicciardini trad. Pierre Dumont, Descr. de tous les pays Bas. 8vo. Amst. 1641. From the original published in 1566, p. 124. He is there called Pierre Cristus. A painter of the same name, Bart. Cristus, appears on the register for the years 1470-80. The original is even now considered to possess peculiar sanctity, and is carried in procession every year with much parade and ceremony.1 Cristus returned a few years after to Cologne, and by degrees fell into exaggerated imitation of the Rhenish manner. His name appears in the chronicle of Michael Mörkens, who mentions an altar-piece in a chapel called the Holy Angels, belonging to the convent of Carthusians in that city, which was finished by a painter named Christophorus in 1471. Cristus and Christophorus may be the same artist, but proof is difficult, because the picture thus described is lost.2 The first production from the pencil of Cristus is the finest extant, the last which he composed, the feeblest. Retrograding with the painters of Cologne, he became weaker as he advanced in years. A pupil of Hubert Van Eyck, he had some features peculiar to John. He was, however, inferior to the elder in colour and design, and feebler than the younger in sentiment and spirit. He used his colours freely, but of a sombre and untransparent hue. When in his later years his manner changed under the influence of the school of Cologne, he chose to imitate the least agreeable features in the pictures of the master of the Dom, preferring them to the works of 1 Actes Capitul. de Cambrai. ap. De Laborde, ut sup., vol. i. Introd. p. cxxvi. "Concluserunt domini imaginem bæ. Vgs. que legavit Mğr. Fursens du Bruille, archid. Valenchem ponenda esse in capella Ste. trinitat." (Sitting of August 13, 1451.) 2 "Ad requisitionem illustris diu comitis de Stampis, Petrus Cristus, pictor incola Brugen. Tornacen. Dioc. depĩxit tres imagines ad similitudinem illius imaginis bæ. Mar et Sanctæ Virg. quæ in cappella est trinitat. collocata." (Sitting of April 24, 1454.) Wilhelm, whose graceful and noble inspirations were less to his mind than the pretty but more material forms of the later painter. Not so John Van Eyck, who, when he took an inspiration from the school, chose it from the nobler painter, giving an example which, at a later period, Memling followed with advantage. The picture of 1417, which represents the Virgin playing with the Infant Christ upon her knee, and offering him flowers, with two full-length figures of St. Jerome and St. Francis at its sides,' shows the painter to have been completely Flemish. His tones, though sombre, were powerful; his outlines somewhat hard. His flesh tints, though dark in shadow, were not unpleasant. The same characteristics are observable in a picture of the Madrid Museum, divided into four compartments, representing the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of our Lord, and the Adoration of the Magi. Each of these subjects is in a Gothic arch, carved with subjects from the Passion. In some of the figures we trace a resemblance to those in a Last Judgment of Cristus, at Berlin, but their colouring and execution are more akin to the picture of Francfort. Unfortunately, the panels have been somewhat injured by age.2 St. Elisius, offering the ring to a youthful couple, now in the possession of Mr. Oppenheim, at Cologne, taxed the powers of Cristus, as compositions of a large size generally taxed the Flemish painters of the fifteenth century, not 1 No. 402, Stædel Gallery, Francfort. Purchased from the Aders' Collection, signed, "Petrus Xpř. me fecit, 1417." Wood, 16" 3"" by 15" 9"", Austrian measure. 2 No. 454, Madrid Museum Catalogue. Wood, 2 feet 10 inches 6 lignes by 3 feet 10 inches, Spanish measure. perhaps to a great extent, but sufficiently to make the effort visible, betraying symptoms of decline in his powers. Marked by hard outlines, and a tone more sombre and opaque than usual, its disagreeable features are rendered striking by its size.1 The picture of 1451, more ambitious in subject than the last, is similar in scene and composition to the altarpiece at Danzig. The Saviour, surrounded by saints, presides in an exalted seat over the Last Judgment, the Archangel weighing the righteous and unrighteous in a balance. Beneath the latter are represented, as usual, the tortures of the condemned. The companion to this panel includes two scenes from Scripture,-the Annunciation and the Birth of our Lord. The latter are productions of a less pleasing description than are the previous efforts of the master, and exaggerate the defects already noticed, The Virgin, no longer in the same attitude as she was usually represented by the Flemings, recals to mind, by rotundity of head and a fashion of turning the hair round the ear, the graceful productions of Stephen of Cologne. But in these, as in the draperies, Cristus lacks the elegance of the master of the Dom.2 The Last Judgment comprises all the disagreeable features of Cristus' style, with general feebleness of composition, and frightfully imaginative monstrosities adorning the infernal regions,—a prelude, apparently, to the exaggerated vagaries of Jerome Bosch. 1 Signed, "Petr. Xpi. me fecit ao. 1449.” 2 No. 529A, and 529B, Berlin Catalogue. Signed partly on one wing, partly on the other, "Petrus Xpi. me fecit anno domini 1452." Wood, 4 ft. 7 z. by 1 ft. 94 z., Prussian measure. |