Chapter 0

1.3 A Case Study

• Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist by Rogier van der Weyden

• First reading may provide basic familiarity, conventional subjects and general context but second reading may follow the subtleties of its argument

Physical Properties

• Painting is separated into two rectangular paintings like a square

• Oak Panels

• Prepared with chalk

• Mineral pigments suspended in oil

• At his time, artists had assistants

• Sketchy compositional outlines found so Rogier’s painting was almost entirely his own doing

• diptych - two panel painting

• polyptych - multiple-panel painting

Formal Structure

• one painting and two

• stone wall pushes figures into foreground

• sloping decent from first panel to second panel

• Christ is strictly centered

• environment is balanced

Iconography

• earlier painting

• Crucifixion Triptych with Donors and Saints

  • Wider cast of participants

  • More expansive landscape

  • Bible contains 4 accounts

    • 2 verses In John’s account

    • people in 15th century would have known that the skull and femur at the bottom of the cross would represent Adam

Cultural Context

• 1981 art historian Penny Howell Jolly

  • suggested that Rogier was influenced by another artist

  • painting might be called for a special mode of visual presentation and a particular iconographic focus

  • because the painting seemed unusually austere

• Fra Angelico at San Marco

  • Rogier made a pilgrimage to home

  • made a stop in Florence

  • altarpiece and frescos from Fra Angelico

  • San Marco altarpiece

The Carthusians

• personal and professional rls w/ monastic order of Carthusians

  • Belgian Charterhouse of Herrines (Carthusian monastery)