Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols.
Van der Weyden was strongly influenced by Jan van Eyck, and the painting is very similar to the earlier Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, usually dated to around 1434, with significant differences. The figure's positioning and colourisation are reversed, and Luke takes centre stage; his face is accepted as van der Weyden's self-portrait. Three near contemporary versions are in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and the Groeningemuseum, Bruges.van Calster (2003), 465 The Boston panel is widely considered the original from underdrawings that are both heavily reworked and absent in other versions. It is in relatively poor condition, having suffered considerable damage, which remains despite extensive restoration and cleaning.
The painting's historical significance rests both on the skill behind the design and its merging of earthly and divine realms. By positioning himself in the same space as the Madonna, and showing a painter in the act of portrayal, Van der Weyden brings to the fore the role of artistic creativity in 15th-century society. The panel became widely influential with near copies by the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula and Hugo van der Goes.
Commission
There are no surviving contemporary archival documents for Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, but art historians agree that it was almost certainly painted for the Brussels painters' guild, for their chapel at the Church of St. Michael and St. Gudula (now the cathedral),van Calster (2003), 465 where van der Weyden is buried."Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin ". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 27 December 2014 It may have been commissioned to celebrate the artist's appointment as city painter for Brussels. Luke the Evangelist was thought to have been a portraitist, and Northern European painters' guilds were considered to be under his protection.Bauman (1986), 5
In the 15th-century images of Luke painting the Virgin were more commonly found in Northern rather than Italian art.Smith (2004), 16 Luke was credited with painting the original of the immensely popular Italo-Byzantine Cambrai Madonna, to which numerous miracles were attributed.Ainsworth (1998), 104 The original of that work was taken to France from Rome in 1440, and within four years at least 15 high quality copies had been made.Harbison (1995), 102 It was regarded as an example of St Luke's skill, and contemporary painters strove to emulate him in their depictions of Mary. Popular belief held that the essence of the Virgin was captured in Luke's portrait of her.Ainsworth (1998), 139
After van Eyck Van der Weyden closely follows van Eyck's c. 1435 Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, though there are significant differences. The landscape in the van der Weyden is less detailed, and its top gives less of an illusion of openness than van Eyck's. The most obvious similarity is the two figures standing at a bridge, who may not carry specific identities;Campbell (2004), 54 those in the van der Weyden are sometimes identified as Joachim and Anne, the Virgin's parents. In van Eyck's painting the right hand figure wears a red turban, a motif widely accepted as that artist's indicator of a self-portrait; similar images can be found on the London Portrait of a Man and the reflection in the knight's shield in the Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, Bruges.Ridderbos et al. (2005), 68
Van der Weyden reverses the positioning of the main figures; the Virgin appears to the left,Campbell (2004), 21 a positioning that became predominant in later Netherlandish diptychs. The colours in this work are warmer than those in the van Eyck. Van der Weyden switches the colours of their costumes; Luke is dressed in red or scarlet, Mary in the more typical warm blues. The Virgin type has further been changed, here she is depicted as a Maria Lactans ("Nursing Madonna"). This is one of the standard depictions of her, different from the Hodegetria (Our Lady of the Way, or She who points the way) Virgin type most usually associated with Byzantine and Northern 15th-century depictions of St Luke. This depiction of Mary's motherhood stresses the "redemption of mankind by Christ as human ... [and] spiritual nourishing".de Vries, Annette. "Picturing the Intermediary. Artistic Consciousness in Representations of Saint Luke Painting the Virgin in Netherlandish Art: The Case of Van der Weyden's Saint Luke ". Historians of Netherlandish Art, 2006. Retrieved 27 December 2014
Description The panel contains four individual pieces of oak, painted over a chalk ground bound with glue.Newman (1997), 135 The preparation wood is dated to around 1410, giving an estimated date for the Van der Weyden in the mid-1430s. The dominant pigments are lead white (often used in the panel to highlight blue and green passages), charcoal black, ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow, verdigris and red lake.Newman (1997), 136 There has been some discolouration – some greens are now brown, including pigments used to depict grass in the background.Newman (1997), 142
Mary sits under a brocade canopy or cloth of honour, painted in brown hues which have since discoloured to dark green.Newman (1997), 1423 The canopy hangs down to a wooden bench attached to the wall behind her.Borchert (1997), 64 Mary's hair is loose and she wears an embroidered dress lined with fur. Around her neck is a light veil, and she is shown in the act of nursing. Her dress is a centrepiece of the panel, composed of a variety of blues overlaid with lead white and deep blue lapis lazuli highlights. The inner parts of her robe contain violet coloured fabrics, lined with greyish blues and purples.
Luke is positioned on a green cushion, between the heavenly figure and the small study behind him. He is either rising from a kneeling position or about to genuflect. His eyes fix on her attentively, and he seems near hypnotised. Jesus is similarly transfixed.Hall (2014), 58 Hall describes Luke's hands as floating before him, holding the tools "with the same delicacy that an angel might hold a lily or sceptre". Mary has turned her face so that he can depict her in near full profile, a rare honour, while Luke's kneeling position is closely analogous to that of a typical donor portrait in the presence of the Virgin.
Luke is beardless and in his early 40s, close to van der Weyden's age in the mid-1430s.Marrow (1999), 54 His face is not idealised; he is middle-aged with light stubble and greying hair.Blum (1997), 107 The room behind him contains his attributes including an ox and an open book representing his Gospel. He is painted with more naturalism than Mary; his eyes in particular are more realistically drawn. Christ's conform to the then idealised form, as simple crescents. Mary's are formed from curved lines typical of late Gothic ideals of feminine beauty.Ishikawa (1990), 54 Compared to contemporary paintings of this type, the work is unusually free of inscriptions; they appear only on items in Luke's study, dimly perceived on his right: on a book, on an ink bottle, and on a scroll emanating from the mouth of his ox, beneath the small desk.Acres (2000), 98–101
The scene is set within a rather narrow interior space,Campbell (1980), 14–5 with a barrel vault ceiling, patterned floor tilings, and stained glass windows. The outer wall opens to the midground, with a patch of grass and plants, and has a view of a river or inlet.Nash (2008), 157 Art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith notes how the transition between the grounds establishes a "complex spatial space in which [van der Weyden] achieved an almost seamless movement from the elaborate architecture of the main room to the garden and parapet of the middle ground to the urban and rural landscape behind".Smith (2004), 21
Two figures in the mid-ground stand at a battlement wall overlooking the water, their backs turned against the viewer, the male pointing outwards.Acres (2000), 25 They are framed by columns, and are looking towards the detailed city and landscape in the background.Kleiner (2008), 407 The figures seem preoccupied with "looking", which Carol Purtle believes, to van der Weyden, was a form of devotionalism; through meditating on an image, the "beholder experienced visions of transports of ecstasy".Purtle (2007), 8 Technical analysis shows that both figures were heavily reworked both in the underdrawing and the final painting;Borchert (1997), 78 the hood of the figure on the right was originally red, but over-painted as black, amongst many other differences.van Calster (2003), 481
The positioning of these figures closely resembles that of two persons depicted in the van Eyck panel. In that painting the right-hand figure turns to face his companion, gesturing at him to look outwards. In the van der Weyden, the equivalent figure seems protective of his friend, who here is female, while the left-hand figure in the earlier panel might represent a tribute to the artist's brother Hubert who had died in the 1420s.van Calster (2003), 477 A red headdress was an indicator of self-portraiture for van Eyck. As in the van Eyck, the figures act as examples of repoussoir,van Calster (2003), 476 in that they draw our attention to the picture's underlying theme – the painting's ability to visualize the infinity of the world in the landscape. The painting may allude to the concept of paragone; the man points to the landscape, perhaps highlighting the ability of painting, unlike sculpture, to supply its foreground with background.van Calster (2003), 478
Examination of the underdrawing shows that the artist intended a van Eyckian angel crowning the Virgin, but this was omitted from the final painting.Borchert (2001), 213 He heavily reworked the positions of the three main figures even towards the end of completion.Ishikawa (1990), 57 The draperies of the mantles were at first larger. Christ's body at first faced Luke, but was later tilted in the direction of his mother. The mother and child were brought closer together. Luke's head was at first level with the Virgin's, but in the final painting is raised slightly above.Ishikawa (1990), 53 The differences extend beyond those in the foreground. The fortifications of the inner courtyard have been enlarged, while the two figures looking out over the river were smaller, the river itself narrower.
Self-portrait Luke's face is widely considered to be a van der Weyden self-portrait. He may have wanted to associate himself both with a saint and with the founder of painting. This is reinforced by the fact that Luke is shown drawing in silverpoint on white paper; an extremely difficult medium that demands high concentration, and is normally used only for preparation.Rothstein (2005), 4 The artist is boldly emphasising his ability and skill with preparatory sketches; a single surviving silverpoint drawing attributed to van der Weyden, now in the Louvre, contains a female head very similar to Mary's in the Boston panel."Head of the Virgin ". Louvre. Retrieved 5 December 2014