The Artist: For a biography of Gerard David, see
“Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. The Met’s
Self-Portrait (
1975.1.2487) by the manuscript illuminator Simon Bening is inscribed with the date 1558 and his age of seventy-five. He thus was born probably in Ghent in 1483 or 1484, the son of famous illuminator Alexander (or Sanders) Bening and Catherine de Goes, the sister or niece of the painter Hugo van der Goes. By 1500, Simon had moved to Bruges where he registered his illuminator’s mark at the painters’ hall, and in 1508, he joined the confraternity of the book trade. Bening worked in and around Flanders and Brabant for a time before finally settling in Bruges in 1519. His commissions came from a wide circle of wealthy and highly influential patrons, among them the Portuguese diplomat and humanist, Damião de Góis, the Infante Dom Fernando of Portugal, Mencía de Mendoza, members of the Habsburg Imperial family, and Albrecht of Brandenburg. Bening worked at the peak of the popularity and sophistication of Flemish manuscript illumination, and his reputation spread throughout Europe. He was particularly noted for his skill in the representation of landscape. Francesco de Holanda (1517–1584), a Portuguese artist, humanist, and courtier, considered Bening as one of the five most important illuminators of his time, and “among the Flemish, the most pleasing colorist who best painted trees and far distances.”[1]
The Painting: Although this charming vignette appears to depict the commonplace occurrence of a mother nursing her child, contemporaries would have immediately recognized the Virgin and Christ Child and been attuned to the devotional aspect of the painting. The figures are directly excerpted from Gerard David’s popular paintings of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (for example, The Met's
49.7.21 and fig. 1 above). However, there is no specific reference here to the Flight, and Christ’s earthly father, Joseph, usually accompanied by the load-bearing donkey, is absent. Instead, the Virgin humbly sits on a brick wall, surrounded by vegetation in an enclosed garden (known in Latin as the
hortus conclusus), a sign of the Virgin’s purity. The mint that grows to either side of her is a healing plant, indicating her virtue; and the violet leaves below the mint symbolize her humility.[2] These features stress the Virgin’s central role in Christ’s Incarnation and his Redemption of humankind. A stream of milk flows from Mary's breast to Christ's mouth as turns toward the viewer and gestures with a wooden spoon, linking physical nourishment with the spiritual nourishment he offers. This theme was further developed in a series of paintings by Gerard David and his workshop, set in a domestic interior, where the Virgin feeds Christ his milk soup, and the Child plays with a spoon (Ainsworth 1998, pp. 295–308). The serene mood of the painting is enhanced by the idyllic landscape setting.
The Attribution and Date: The painting was originally considered by some scholars to be by Gerard David himself (see Friedländer 1920, and 1928 "worthy of the master and . . . in his manner, with the exception of the somewhat strange landscape"; Mundy 1980). However, the fact that the motif of the Virgin and Child was copied from larger paintings of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt by David and his workshop (for example, The Met
49.7.21; Museo del Prado, Madrid [fig. 1]; and Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp), and the landscape is not characteristic of his work led most scholars to attribute the painting to David’s atelier (see References). Recognizing the close similarity of the landscape in The Met painting with those in illuminations by Simon Bening, Ainsworth tentatively attributed the panel to Bening (1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003). Recently, it has been possible to carry out further technical examination of the painting, resulting in a more precise evaluation of its technique and execution in regard to its attribution. Moreover, there has been ongoing study of David’s cooperation with other artists, both in terms of prestige collaborations as well as workshop assistance marshaled to meet increased market demand for paintings sold in Bruges and Antwerp particularly in the early decades of the sixteenth century.[3]
In a comparative study of this work with paintings by Gerard David (see Technical Notes), namely the Virgin and Child with Four Angels (
1977.1.1), Sophie Scully recognized that the technique and handling of the heads of the Virgin and Child in each are quite similar. The selective use of lead white for the highlights of the features of the face is comparable—the peak of the forehead, the rounded form of the upper eye lids, a long stroke down the length of the bridge of the nose, above the upper lip, and at the neck to suggest the volume of the form (fig. 2). The structure of the eye cavities of the downcast eyes shows a similar approach, with defining light paint strokes at the edge of the upper lid, and at the inner corner of the eye, with a darker stroke at the base of the lower lid (fig. 3). Likewise, the Christ Child’s features are identically handled with blue added to the white of the eyes, the dotted glint of the eye similarly placed in each, and the whitish stroke down the bridge of the nose, ending in a touch of highlight (fig. 4). Even the groupings of parallel lead-tin yellow brushstrokes that define the highlights of the wavy hair of the Virgin are strikingly comparable (fig. 5). What differentiates the
Virgin and Child from David’s
Virgin and Child with Four Angels is the pinkish tonality in the flesh tones of the former, and the warmer slightly brownish glazes applied in the latter.
There are clear indications of collaboration in the workshop procedures evident in the
Virgin and Child. This is noticeable above all in the motif of the figures. As mentioned above, the figures are nearly identical—except for the position of the Christ Child’s legs and feet— to the same figures in other paintings of David’s
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, especially the version in the Prado (fig. 1). This suggests that the Madrid and New York paintings likely derived from a similar workshop pattern, although not the same one. Furthermore, Jean Wilson has pointed out that The Met’s
Virgin and Child belongs to a group of paintings by David and his assistants (called the Rouen Grouping after the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen
Virgin Among Virgins) that all employed the same distinctive drapery patterns for the Virgin’s robe (Wilson 1998).
These indications of streamlined production, using pre-existing patterns, are further indicated by the preliminary working stages of the painting. The underdrawing of The Met’s
Virgin and Child, revealed by infrared reflectography, consists of an initial light sketch, restricted to the contours of forms, that appears to be free hand, although it possibly followed a transferred pattern (fig. 6). This sketch was then reinforced and modified to some extent in a second stage with a brush and liquid medium that may have been applied over a still tacky, oiled-out layer, as the brushstrokes appear to bleed out at their edges. This latter type of underdrawing has been observed in other paintings that are assigned to David’s workshop, and which appear often to be corrective of the preliminary sketch [4]. Could this suggest the hand of the master of the workshop engaging in details of quality control before working up the important figures of the Virgin and Child himself? In any event, this type of underdrawing is considerably different from that found in autograph paintings by David where he worked out the details of a new composition directly on the grounded panel surface (see, for example, the underdrawing in The Met’s
Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
49.7.21.
Additional workshop collaboration may be identified above all in the beautifully serene landscape in the background, which was painted in its entirety before the figures were added (see Technical Notes). It differs from David’s typical treatment of landscape in his known oeuvre, as in The Met's
Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Instead, it is highly characteristic of the works of Simon Bening, who is known for his innovations in landscape, especially in manuscript illumination of the Ghent-Bruges school (Ainsworth 1998, 1999, 2003).[5] His typical landscapes show a stylized depiction of plants in the foreground that separate the figures from the far distant view. A standard Bening landscape, as exemplified by this painting and his manuscript illuminations, includes gray rock masses and trees at the left, a vignette of a small house or castle by a body of water at the right in the middle distance, and a pale blue view of hills or mountains in the far distance (fig. 7, 8; Ainsworth 2003, pp. 142–43). The trees consist of distinct, round clusters of branches that are uniform in their placement (fig. 9) and show surprisingly loose and quick handling of the brush (Turner 2006). Bening is known to have incorporated Davidian figures within his own landscapes, and to have been highly influenced by David’s works in his mature phase, especially after settling in Bruges permanently in 1519 when he became a citizen there (see Ainsworth 2002, pp. 1–25). It is clear that the two artists had regular contact and exchanged and shared patterns for painting and manuscript illumination (Ainsworth 2003, pp. 240–65). In this regard, the praise of Francesco de Holanda and Denis Harduyn of Bening as both a great landscape painter as well as a master of illumination and of the oil medium respectively rings true.[6]
Maryan W. Ainsworth 2022, updated from 2012 and 2019
[1] Francesco de Holanda,
De pintura antigua, tratado de Francesco de Hollanda…commentada par Joaquim de Vasconcellos, 2nd ed., 1930, p. 286. For further on Simon Bening’s career and on specific works, see Thomas Kren in Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, exh. cat. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2003, pp. 447–87.
[2] Mirella Levi d’Anona,
The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting, Florence, 1977, pp. 398–99.
[3] Maryan W. Ainsworth, “Afterthoughts Concerning Prestige Collaboration,” in Maryan W. Ainsworth, ed.,
Workshop Practice in Early Netherlandish Painting, Case Studies from Van Eyck through Gossart, Turnhout, 2017, pp. 116–20. See also, Maryan W. Ainsworth, “Gerard David in Antwerp,” in
Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ed. by Catharine Ingersoll, Jessica Weiss, and Alisa M. Carlson. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, pp. 97–106.
[4] For examples of the “corrective” underdrawing of a second, sometimes brush application over an often dry first stage, see Ainsworth 1998, p. 99, fig. 97; p. 171, fig.163; p. 179, fig. 173.
[5] See Thomas Kren, “Landscape as Leitmotif: A Reintegrated Book of Hours illuminated by Simon Bening,” in
Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrik, London, 1998, pp. 209–32; and Thomas Kren, “Simon Bening Juan Luis Vives, and the Observation of Nature,” in Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne S. Korteweg, eds.,
Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow, Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, Turnhout, 2006, pp. 311–22.
[6] Cited by Joseph Destrée,
Les Heures de Notre-Dame dites de Hennessy, Brussels, 1923, p. 13.
