text
stringlengths
0
3.13k
Huisman, Philippe, French Watercolours of the 18th Century (1969) London, Thames and Hudson ISBN 978-0-500-23105-0
Wiebenson, Dora, The Picturesque Garden in France (Princeton University Press) 1978.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Robert, Hubert". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 402.
Sarah Catala. Les Hubert Robert de Besançon. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013 [catalogue raisonné of drawings from public library and fine art museum of Besançon].
External links
Joconde - Catalogue des Collections des Musées de France www.culture.gouv.fr (Ministère de la culture et de la communication) — List of the work of Robert (315 entries), French.
Hugo van der Goes (c. 1430/1440 – 1482) was one of the most significant and original Early Netherlandish painters of the late 15th century. Van der Goes was an important painter of altarpieces as well as portraits. He introduced important innovations in painting through his monumental style, use of a specific colour ra...
Life
Hugo van der Goes was likely born in Ghent or in the vicinity of Ghent around the year 1440. Nothing is known with certainty about the artist's life prior to 1467, the year in which he became a master in the painters' guild of Ghent. The sponsors for his membership of the guild were Joos van Wassenhove, master painter...
In 1468 the artist was commissioned by the city of Ghent to execute some works in connection with the grant of the Great Indulgence of the city. More commissions from the city in the following years required van der Goes to create decorations for events such as papal blazons. In 1468 he was in the town of Bruges maki...
In 1469 Hugo van der Goes and Joos van Wassenhove vouched for Alexander Bening for his entry as a master in the painter's guild of Ghent. Alexander Bening married Catherina (Kathlijn) van der Goes, a cousin or sister of Hugo van der Goes, in 1480. The artist and his workshop worked on commissions of the city of Ghent t...
When in 1470 Joos van Wassenhove left Ghent for Italy to become the court painter of Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, van der Goes became the leading painter in Ghent. In 1467 the Burgundian court had paid van der Goes for creating the blazons used at Philip the Good's funeral. The painter was repeatedly e...
It was during this period that Hugo van der Goes painted the Adoration of the Magi (also known as the Monforte Altarpiece (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)) and worked on the commission of Tommaso Portinari for the Portinari Altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence), which arrived at its destination in Florence only in 1483, when the artis...
Van der Goes achieved considerable success and secured important commissions from the Burgundian court, church institutions, affluent Flemish bourgeoisie and associations of Italian business people based in the Burgundian Netherlands. When he had reached the peak of his career in 1477 van der Goes suddenly decided to ...
During his time at the cloister he received in 1482 a request from the counsel of the City of Leuven to value the works for the Leuven city hall that Dieric Bouts had left unfinished at the time of his death. As a reward for this service van der Goes received a jug of Rhine wine from the city authorities. It is believ...
There is speculation that anxiety about his artistic achievements may have contributed to his madness, for 'he was deeply troubled by the thought of how he would ever finish the works of art he had to paint, and it was said then that nine years would scarcely suffice'. A report by a German physician, Hieronymus Münzer,...
The mental breakdown of Hugo van der Goes was only rediscovered in 1863, when the Belgian historian Alphonse Wauters published the information, which he had found in Ofhuys' newly discovered chronicle. Wauters' publication inspired the late Romantic Belgian painter Emile Wauters (a nephew of Alphonse Wauters) to create...
Work
General
Attribution of his work has been difficult for art historians. Many works, which in the early to mid 20th century were believed to be by his hand, are now accepted to be copies by members of his workshop or by followers. In the absence of documentary evidence, attributions have been based on a comparison with his 1470 ...
The originals of a large portion of van der Goes's works have been lost. These works only survive through later copies made after these now lost originals. The large number of copies bears witness to the high regard in which he was held and also contributed to his important influence on early Flemish art. Martin Sch...
Hugo van der Goes was an important painter of altarpieces as well as portraits. His principal religious works include the Portinari Triptych (Uffizi, Florence), the Adoration of the Magi (also called the 'Monforte Altarpiece'), the Adoration of the Shepherds (both Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), the Fall and Redemption of Ma...
In the 1460s, van der Goes was commissioned to provide an altarpiece for the Church of the Holy Trinity in Edinburgh by its first provost, Edward Bonkil. The church had been founded by Scotland's queen consort, Mary of Guelders. The four surviving panels of the Trinity Altarpiece depict James III, King of Scots, flank...
The Portinari Triptych
Van der Goes's most famous surviving work is the Portinari Triptych (Uffizi, Florence). The Triptych is an altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence by Tommaso Portinari, the manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank.
In 1483, apparently some years after its completion by van der Goes, the Portinari Altarpiece arrived in Pisa from which it was shipped via canal to the Porta San Friano in Florence. The altarpiece was hung in the church of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
The raw features of the shepherds in van der Goes's composition made a deep impression on painters working in Florence. Domenico Ghirlandaio likely drew inspiration from the Portinari Triptych for his Epiphany in the Sasseti chapel. The largest Netherlandish work that could be seen in Florence, it was greatly praised. ...
After Hugo van der Goes's death the triptych was wrongly attributed to others, including Andrea del Castagno and Domenico Veneziano. These two artists had produced the frescoes around the altarpiece, but were not involved in its design. In 1824, Karl Friedrich Schinkel identified it as the work of Hugo van der Goes. I...
The central panel of the Portinari Triptych depicts the central Christian myths concerning the birth of the Christian saviour god: the nativity of Jesus, the adoration of the shepherds and the annunciation to the shepherds (in the far right background). Many interpretations of the iconography of the altarpiece have bee...
The side panels depict the male (left wing) and female (right wing) members of the Portinari donor family who commissioned and donated the altarpiece. The right wing also includes a scene of the annunciation to the Magi and the left wing a scene of the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.
Portraits
Hugo van der Goes is regarded as one of the most significant portrait artists of 15th-century Europe. At that time portraiture was gaining importance in art because of the renewed importance attached to the individual fostered by the rise of humanism.
No independent portraits by Hugo van der Goes have survived. His achievements in this genre are only known by the donor portraits included in his devotional diptychs and triptychs. Examples are the left wing of the Saint Hippolytus Altarpiece, the central and right panels of which are by Dieric Bouts (c. 1475, Groenin...
The Portrait of a Man (c. 1475, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is a good example of his portrait work. This small panel was cut down to its current oval shape from its original rectangular format. It formed likely the right wing of a small altarpiece known as a diptych, which is only made up of two panels. Alt...
Van der Goes used chiaroscuro effects to further accentuate the modeling of the facial features, which appear to be made of stone. These features as well as the appearance of the hands and background after they were painted over by later restorers may explain why scholars previously attributed this male portrait to the...
The donor portrait of Hippolyte de Bertohoz on the left wing of the Saint Hippolytus Altarpiece and Edward Bonkil's head painted on the right wing of the Trinity Altarpiece show a similar realism in the treatment of portraits by van der Goes. The Portrait of a Man at Prayer with Saint John the Baptist (Walters Art Muse...
Stylistic development
Van der Goes is regarded as one of the most original and innovative early Netherlandish artists. As many works of van der Goes have not survived and most of the surviving works cannot be dated accurately, it is difficult to establish a stylistic development for van der Goes. The Portinari Altarpiece is the sole of hi...
Even so, art historians see a global development starting with a style close to the illusionism of van Eyck. This early style was characterised by a detailed description in rich colour and a single vanishing-point perspective as can be observed in the Monforte Altarpiece and Portinari central panel. Van der Goes may h...
Later works gradually abandoned illusionism for an increased emphasis on the artificiality of the picture as created image, divorced from reality. This effect was achieved by the use of a limited range of colours and the expressive distortion of figures as well as space. Example of works in this later style are the D...
The muted coloring of the late Adoration of the Shepherds seemed to support the interpretation of a stylistic evolution away from illusionism. A recent restoration of the Adoration has provided new visual evidence, which contradicts the earlier reading as it revealed that rather than muted the painting was bright and s...
Not all scholars agree there was a stylistic development in van der Goes's work. Some insist that his career of only 15 years was too short to allow for a development to be distinguished. Other scholars regard van der Goes as an artist with an ability to create in the same period and even within a single composition ...
Drawings
Hugo van der Goes left a large number of drawings. These drawings or the paintings themselves were used by followers to produce large numbers of copies of compositions from his own hand that are now lost. After van der Goes's death, the book illustrator Alexander Bening, who was married to a niece of van der Goes, lik...
A drawing of Jacob and Rachel preserved at the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford is thought to be a rare surviving autograph drawing by van der Goes. It was possibly a preliminary study for a stained glass window.
Works
Notes
External links
Media related to Hugo van der Goes at Wikimedia Commons
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Goes, Hugo van der" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 181.
Il Sodoma (1477 – 14 February 1549) was the name given to the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. Il Sodoma painted in a manner that superimposed the High Renaissance style of early 16th-century Rome onto the traditions of the provincial Sienese school; he spent the bulk of his professional life in Sien...
Biography
Giovanni Bazzi was born in Vercelli, Piedmont, in 1477. His first master was the "archaic" Martino Spanzotti; he also appears to have been a student of the painter Giovenone. After acquiring the strong colouring and other distinctive stylistic features of the Lombard school and – though he is not known to have travelle...
Along with Pinturicchio, Sodoma was one of the first to practice in Siena the style of the High Renaissance. His first important works were frescoes in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, on the road from Siena to Rome, illustrating the life of St Benedict in continuation of the series that Luca Signo...
Sodoma was invited to Rome in 1508 by the celebrated Sienese merchant Agostino Chigi and was employed there by Pope Julius II in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. He executed two great compositions and various ornaments and grotesques in vaulted ceilings divided into feigned compartments in the antique manner ...
Before October 1510 he was in Siena, where he painted the exterior of Palazzo Chigi in monochrome chiaroscuro with scenes from the Bible and from Antiquity, the first such work seen in Siena. His painting at this time began to show distinct Florentine influences, especially of Fra Bartolommeo.
Called again to Rome by Chigi, in the Villa Chigi (now the Villa Farnesina), working alongside Baldassarre Peruzzi, Sodoma painted subjects from the life of Alexander the Great: Alexander in the Tent of Darius and the Nuptials of the Conqueror with Roxanne, which some people consider his masterpiece. When Leo X became ...
In his youth, Bazzi had married, but he and his wife soon separated. A daughter married Bartolomeo Neroni, called also Riccio Sanese or Maestro Riccio, one of his principal pupils.
Bazzi acquired his nickname of Il Sodoma, as it were "the sodomite", from as early as 1512.
This appears to have been one among various nicknames, he was also known as Mattaccio or Matazo ("the madman") among the monks of Monte Oliveto.
It is due to the contemporary art historian Giorgio Vasari that Bazzi's nickname of Il Sodoma has become conventional.
According to Vasari's testimony, Bazzi always surrounded himself with "boys and beardless youths, whom he loved more than was decent", for which reason he acquired the nickname Il Soddoma.
Still, according to Vasari, Bazzi took pride in the nickname and composed stanzas and songs about it.
Bazzi returned to Siena and, at a later date, sought work in Pisa, Volterra, and Lucca. From Lucca, he returned to Siena not long before his death on 14 February 1549 (older narratives say 1554). He had supposedly squandered his property and is said, without documentary support, to have died in penury in the great hosp...
Work
Some critics see in Sodoma's Madonna in the Pinacoteca di Brera (if it really is by him) the direct influence of Leonardo da Vinci. Modern criticism tends not to follow Giovanni Morelli in supposing that Raphael painted Sodoma's portrait next to himself in The School of Athens, while a drawing at Christ Church is suppo...
Among his masterpieces are the frescoes, completed in 1526, in the chapel of St. Catherine of Siena painted for the church of San Domenico (Siena), depicting the saint in ecstasy, fainting as she receives the Eucharist from an angel. In the Oratory of San Bernardino, are scenes from the history of the Virgin, painted i...
Some of his works, including the Holy Family now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena) have been mistaken for works of Leonardo da Vinci. His easel pictures are rare; there are two in the National Gallery, London.
Partial list of works
Flagellation of Christ (1510) - Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
The Road to Calvary (1510) - Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Cinuzzi Deposition (before 1513) - Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena
The Death of Lucretia (1513) - Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Saint George and Dragon[1] (1518) - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Rape of the Sabine Women[2] (1525) - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
St. Sebastian (1525) - Oil on canvas, 206 x 154 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence