The Entombment (Bouts)
Encyclopedia
The Entombment is a glue-size
painting on linen
attributed to the Early Netherlandish
painter Dirk Bouts
. It shows a scene from the biblical entombment of Christ
, probably completed between 1440 and 1455 as a wing panel for a large hinged polyptych
altarpiece
. The now lost altarpiece is thought to have contained a central crucifixion scene flanked by four wing panel works half its length (two either side) depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The smaller panels would have been paired in a format similar to Bouts' 1464–67 Altar of the Holy Sacrament. The larger work was probably commissioned for export, possibly to a Venetian
patron whose identity is lost. The Entombment was first recorded in a mid-19th century Milan
inventory and has been in the National Gallery
, London since its purchase on the gallery's behalf by Charles Eastlake
in 1861.
The Entombment is renowned for its austere but affecting portrayal of sorrow and grief. It shows four female and three male mourners grieving over the body of Christ. They are, from left to right, Nicodemus
, Mary Salome
, Mary of Clopas, Mary mother of Jesus
, John the Evangelist
, Mary Magdalene
and Joseph of Arimathea
. The attendants' faces display a range of emotions, though each figure's expression is uniquely rendered. All are described with restraint in muted colours, mainly whites, greens and blues.
It is one of the few surviving 15th-century paintings created using glue-size, an extremely fragile medium lacking durability. The Entombment is in relatively poor condition compared to panel painting
s of similar age. Its colours are now far darker than when it was painted; they would originally have appeared as pale and dry. The painting is covered by accumulated layers of greyish dirt and cannot be cleaned without damaging the surface and removing large amounts of pigment as its glue-size medium is water-soluble.
and unified vanishing point
s is used by art historians to date his works from the period. Although its colourisation is among the best of his work, the perspective is clumsy in areas, thus the painting can be assumed to date no later than 1460. Bouts often quoted visual passages from artists and paintings that influenced his work, so the influences are well established and datable. Along with the companion Resurrection, British art historian Martin Davies believes the work shows influences from Rogier van der Weyden's Descent (c. 1435) and Miraflores Altarpiece
(1440s), which places it after 1440. Robert Koch dates it to between 1450 and 1455.
Charles Eastlake purchased the painting for just over £
120 in 1860 in Milan. During a period of aggressive acquisition intended to establish the international prestige of Britain's collection, it was acquired along with a number of other Netherlandish works from the Guicciardi family. Eastlake's notes mention that the works were "originally in the possession of the Foscari family". The Foscaris were a wealthy Venetian family which included Francesco Foscari
who was Doge of Venice
at the time the Bouts was painted; the dramatic story of him and his son is told in Lord Byron's play The Two Foscari, and Verdi's opera I due Foscari
. There is no documentary evidence to substantiate the claim that the painting came from the Foscari collection, and some art historians believe that representatives of the Guicciardis invented this provenance to impress Eastlake. Campbell considers the provenance "probable", noting that a descendant, Fergio Foscari (1732–1811), an ambassador to Saint Petersburg, squandered his fortune and may have been forced into selling pictures belonging to the family, and documentary evidence drawn from various inventories indicates that the painting was produced on commission for export to Venice.
The companion pieces in the Guicciardi collection (Annunciation, Adoration of the Kings, and Resurrection) were similar works in glue size, though of lesser quality; Eastlake's notebooks mention that they were "not so good (not so well preserved)". Their style and size are similar to The Entombment, suggesting that they were probably pieces that would have formed part of the larger polyptych. The Entombment was attributed to Lucas van Leyden
at the time, though Eastlake thought that, given its emotional power, it might be a van der Weyden. Bouts studied under van der Weyden, and was strongly influenced by his work. Davies proposed in 1953 that the figuration and pose in The Entombment may have been informed by a small grisaille
relief
in the arch of the central panel of van der Weyden's Miraflores Altarpiece.
The painting arrived in London from Milan in 1861, but was not attributed to Bouts until 1911. Two known copies exist: an unsophisticated panel sold in Munich to a private collector in 1934, and an oak panel attributed to a follower is in Kreuzlingen
, Switzerland.
The influence of Netherlandish painting spread to central Europe in the late 1400s, and many copies or designs based on the work of the Netherlandish masters were produced. The influence of Bouts' Entombment can be seen in the German artist Martin Schongauer
's c. 1480 engraving of the same name; it shares not only compositional similarity but echoes Bouts' emotive gesture, posture and expression.
, as it is lowered into a deep stone tomb. He is attended by seven mourners dressed in contemporary clothing. Among the group of mourners standing at Christ's side, the three female figures are shown with downcast eyes while the two men look directly at Christ; these gazes are reversed with the couple kneeling at his feet. The background contains a wide landscape with a winding pathway and a broad river before a more distant vista of trees and hills. Bouts is considered an innovative painter of landscapes, even in his portrait work where they are included as distant views seen through open windows. The vista in The Entombment is regarded as one of his finest, and is typically composed of distant brown and green hills against a blue sky.
The Pharisee
Nicodemus
supports Christ as he is lowered, and can be identified by his similarity to Simon the Pharisee in another canvas attributed to Bouts, Christ in the House of Simon. The Virgin
wears a white headdress and a dark blue dress with a yellowish mantle
, and holds Christ's arm just above his wrist as if afraid to let go of her dead son. She is supported by John the Evangelist
, who wears a red robe. The three other women are identified as the Three Marys
. Dressed in green robes, Mary Salome
stands to the Virgin's left, wiping tears from her face with the fold of her white headdress. Mary of Clopas is behind them, holding a red cloth over her mouth, while the Magdalen
is in the foreground at Christ's feet, dressed in a heavily folded cloak. The man in the brown–green tabard
at the feet of Christ is probably Joseph of Arimathea
, who, according to Gospel, brought Christ's body from Pontius Pilate
to Golgotha.
The Entombment is painted on linen tightly woven with 20 to 22 vertical and between 19 to 22 horizontal threads per centimeter. The cloth is Z-spun
(tightly spun) and tabby woven
with flax
perhaps combined with cotton. The cloth support is lined, unusually, with similar but more finely woven linen mounted
on a wooden stretcher. Before the paint was applied, the linen was first mounted on a temporary stretcher and outlined with a brown border – now visible on the lower border – which was used as a guide to cut the picture down before framing. Glue-sizing consists of creating a distemper by mixing pigments in water and then using a glue-base derived from boiled animal skin and other tissues as a binder. The pigments were applied to a linen
cloth, treated with the same glue sizing, fixed in turn to its frame by glue. The paint saturated the cloth, often leaving an image on the reverse side, which was lined with an additional cloth.
Pigments bound in glue had an optical quality that rendered them opaque in appearance and unusually vivid. Unlike oil, which makes chalk appear translucent, chalk mixed in glue is rendered as stark white. Similarly, more expensive pigments assume brilliant opacity in a glue medium. The whites are chalk
in areas mixed with lead white
, especially in the Magdalen's mantle and veil
and in Christ's shroud
and the Virgin's veil. The artist used four blue pigments, an unusual number for paintings of the period, with indigo
predominating. As a plant-derived pigment, indigo it has a tendency to fade over time. Azurite
and lead-white line the under-paint, while the landscape contains indigo mixed with lead-tin yellow. The sky and Nicodemus' collar are painted with lighter and less intense azurite
, while the Virgin's dress is azurite mixed with ultramarine
and smalt
, a blue ground-glass pigment.
The greens are mostly verdigris
, although those predominant in the landscape are mostly blends of blue and yellow pigments, and the green of the cloth worn by Mary Salome is malachite
mixed with yellow lake. The browns are blends of reds and blacks. John's red robe is composed from cinnabar
and vermilion
made from rubia
and insect dyes. Some of the reds are mixed with earth colours not susceptible to the effects of light, and have thus survived close to their original appearance. The black pigments are generally bone black
s but in places from charcoal
. The blacks are mixed with chalk in areas, producing a red to brownish 'earthy' appearance.
The cloth support is visible in areas where the paint was thinly applied. Rusty nail holes can be seen in the lower border and across the top of the picture in an area of sky that was initially covered by frame. They indicate that the woodworking was positioned much lower than Bouts had intended; generally works painted on commission were placed by professional joiner
s who worked independently of the painter. The low placing of the frame however protected the underlying colours over the centuries from light; they are preserved as first laid down. The panel was originally attached to its frame by pegs and nails; the nails would have been used to attach the linen to the underlying wooden frame.
as a binder
was at the time a relatively inexpensive alternative to oil, and a large number of works were produced in the 15th century. Glue size does not saturate its medium as much as oil, allowing the pigment to show as matt
and opaque
, giving – especially with reds and blues – an intense appearance when applied to cloth. Cloth is fragile and easily perishable, and this work is one of the best preserved of the few surviving examples of the technique from the period; the majority extant today were executed on wood using oil
or egg tempera
. Curtains or glass were often used to protect glue-sized works.
The colours would have first appeared as bright and crisp, but over six-and-a-half centuries have acquired layers of grey dirt which darken the tone and render them as faint and pallid. Normally these layers would be removed by restorers, but given the delicate and fragile nature of a work painted in a water-soluble medium, it is impossible to do so without removing large amounts of pigment. The colours as they appear today have faded from their original hues. The Virgin's mantle is now brown but would have been painted as blue. Joseph's tabard
, once blue, now appears as green. The original indigos of the landscape are lost, while the azurite
in Nicodemus's collar has darkened.
It is possible to see the degree to which the format allowed Bouts, in the words of art historian Susan Jones, to "[achieve such] sophistication ... to create both fine linear detail and subtle tonal transitions." Jones notes that the sky would have appeared with the same clear and pale blue that is still intact in a narrow strip along the top of the work, which has been protected from light and dirt by a frame. In its current condition the muted landscape appears to echo the sorrow of the mourning figures.
X-ray show that there were a few bare preparatory drawings made with chalk before the paint was applied. This is left exposed in some areas, most noticeably in the Virgin's veil and mantle and in Christ's shroud. Infrared photography
reveals little underdrawing but that the canvas underwent several changes before it was completed; Mary Salome was repositioned slightly to the left, the size of Nicodemus' arm and shoulder were reduced, and the Magdalen's face was painted over the Virgin's mantle.
The cloth on which the work was painted had been lined with a more finely woven piece of linen and restretched, probably by the same person who stretched and lined the other works identified with the larger altarpiece. It was placed under glass, probably in the early 19th century and certainly before its acquisition by the National Gallery (Eastlake noted that it was under glass in 1858). The piece was evidently sent rolled and unframed to its patron. A brown border painted along the four sides indicates where the frame should be positioned when it is added to its final support. The row of rust-stained nail holes running along the top of the cloth is evidence that the frame was eventually positioned within the pictorial field, at a point far lower than Bouts had intended. This low framing protected a portion of the canvas from deterioration and allows us to see some of the colours as they would have originally appeared.
saw the work in 1858 and again in 1860 during visits to Milan to purchase Northern Renaissance art
on behalf of the National Gallery. He also viewed three companion pieces but was told they were not on sale. His notes described each of these other works, which he titled: Annunciation (now in the J. Paul Getty Museum
), Adoration of the Kings (now in a private collection in Germany) and Presentation (or Resurrection; now in the Norton Simon Museum
, Pasadena, California
). These works are the same size as The Entombment, have similar colouring and pigmentation and are painted using the same glue-size technique, but are not as well preserved. It is probable that all were re-lined and stretched at the same time by the same restorer, indicating that they were kept together until shortly before The Entombment was acquired by the National Gallery.
Art historian Robert Koch remarked in 1988 on the similarity of provenance, material and technique, tone and colour of the four works described by Eastlake. He proposed that they were intended as wings of five-part polyptych
altarpiece. Based on the format of Bouts' 1464–67 Altar of Holy Sacrament, whose four wing panels are the same length as The Entombment, he believes the altarpiece would have comprised a large central panel with four works half its length and width positioned two at either side. His speculative reconstruction places The Entombment on the upper right hand wing, above the Adoration.
The large centre canvas has not been positively identified. However both Koch and Campbell believe that a damaged Crucifixion, now in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts
, Brussels, was likely the centre piece. Its size (181 × 153.5 cm) is exactly double that of the four wing panels. Campbell believes that the altarpiece was painted on commission for export, probably to Venice. The altarpiece was probably broken up as large religious works had fallen out of fashion by the 17th century, and would have had more value as single panels.
Glue-size
Glue-size refers to a technique in painting where pigment is bound to cloth with glue extracted from animal skin. Typically the unvarnished linen was in turn fixed to its frame using the same glue...
painting on linen
Linen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
attributed to the Early Netherlandish
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...
painter Dirk Bouts
Dirk Bouts
Dieric Bouts was an Early Netherlandish painter. According to Karel van Mander in his Het Schilderboeck of 1604, Bouts was born in Haarlem and was mainly active in Leuven , where he was city painter from 1468...
. It shows a scene from the biblical entombment of Christ
Entombment of Christ
The Entombment redirects here. For other uses, The Entombment The Entombment of Christ, that is to say the burial of Jesus Christ, occurred after his death by crucifixion, when, according to the gospel accounts, he was placed in a new tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.-Biblical account:All four...
, probably completed between 1440 and 1455 as a wing panel for a large hinged polyptych
Polyptych
A polyptych generally refers to a painting which is divided into sections, or panels. The terminology that follows is in relevance to the number of panels integrated into a particular piece of work: "diptych" describes a two-part work of art; "triptych" describes a three-part work; "tetraptych"...
altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...
. The now lost altarpiece is thought to have contained a central crucifixion scene flanked by four wing panel works half its length (two either side) depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The smaller panels would have been paired in a format similar to Bouts' 1464–67 Altar of the Holy Sacrament. The larger work was probably commissioned for export, possibly to a Venetian
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
patron whose identity is lost. The Entombment was first recorded in a mid-19th century Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
inventory and has been in the National Gallery
National gallery
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...
, London since its purchase on the gallery's behalf by Charles Eastlake
Charles Eastlake
Charles Locke Eastlake was a British architect and furniture designer. Trained by the architect Philip Hardwick , he popularised William Morris's notions of decorative arts in the Arts and Crafts style, becoming one of the principal exponents of the revived Early English or Modern Gothic style...
in 1861.
The Entombment is renowned for its austere but affecting portrayal of sorrow and grief. It shows four female and three male mourners grieving over the body of Christ. They are, from left to right, Nicodemus
Nicodemus
Saint Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, who, according to the Gospel of John, showed favour to Jesus...
, Mary Salome
Salome (disciple)
Salome , sometimes venerated as Mary Salome, was a follower of Jesus who appears briefly in the canonical gospels and in more detail in apocryphal writings...
, Mary of Clopas, Mary mother of Jesus
Mary (mother of Jesus)
Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...
, John the Evangelist
John the Evangelist
Saint John the Evangelist is the conventional name for the author of the Gospel of John...
, Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...
and Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels.-Gospel references:...
. The attendants' faces display a range of emotions, though each figure's expression is uniquely rendered. All are described with restraint in muted colours, mainly whites, greens and blues.
It is one of the few surviving 15th-century paintings created using glue-size, an extremely fragile medium lacking durability. The Entombment is in relatively poor condition compared to panel painting
Panel painting
A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...
s of similar age. Its colours are now far darker than when it was painted; they would originally have appeared as pale and dry. The painting is covered by accumulated layers of greyish dirt and cannot be cleaned without damaging the surface and removing large amounts of pigment as its glue-size medium is water-soluble.
Provenance and attribution
Bouts did not inscribe any of his paintings, which makes attribution and dating difficult. His developing skill with perspectivePerspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
and unified vanishing point
Vanishing point
A vanishing point is a point in a perspective drawing to which parallel lines not parallel to the image plane appear to converge. The number and placement of the vanishing points determines which perspective technique is being used...
s is used by art historians to date his works from the period. Although its colourisation is among the best of his work, the perspective is clumsy in areas, thus the painting can be assumed to date no later than 1460. Bouts often quoted visual passages from artists and paintings that influenced his work, so the influences are well established and datable. Along with the companion Resurrection, British art historian Martin Davies believes the work shows influences from Rogier van der Weyden's Descent (c. 1435) and Miraflores Altarpiece
Miraflores Altarpiece
The Miraflores Altarpiece is a c. 1442-5 oil-on-oak wood panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden, in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin since 1850...
(1440s), which places it after 1440. Robert Koch dates it to between 1450 and 1455.
Charles Eastlake purchased the painting for just over £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
120 in 1860 in Milan. During a period of aggressive acquisition intended to establish the international prestige of Britain's collection, it was acquired along with a number of other Netherlandish works from the Guicciardi family. Eastlake's notes mention that the works were "originally in the possession of the Foscari family". The Foscaris were a wealthy Venetian family which included Francesco Foscari
Francesco Foscari
Francesco Foscari was doge of Venice from 1423 to 1457, at the inception of the Italian Renaissance.-Biography:Foscari, of an ancient noble family, served the Republic of Venice in numerous official capacities—as ambassador, president of the Forty, member of the Council of Ten, inquisitor,...
who was Doge of Venice
Doge of Venice
The Doge of Venice , often mistranslated Duke was the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice for over a thousand years. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. Commonly the person selected as Doge was the shrewdest elder in the city...
at the time the Bouts was painted; the dramatic story of him and his son is told in Lord Byron's play The Two Foscari, and Verdi's opera I due Foscari
I due Foscari
I due Foscari is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on a historical play, The Two Foscari by Lord Byron....
. There is no documentary evidence to substantiate the claim that the painting came from the Foscari collection, and some art historians believe that representatives of the Guicciardis invented this provenance to impress Eastlake. Campbell considers the provenance "probable", noting that a descendant, Fergio Foscari (1732–1811), an ambassador to Saint Petersburg, squandered his fortune and may have been forced into selling pictures belonging to the family, and documentary evidence drawn from various inventories indicates that the painting was produced on commission for export to Venice.
The companion pieces in the Guicciardi collection (Annunciation, Adoration of the Kings, and Resurrection) were similar works in glue size, though of lesser quality; Eastlake's notebooks mention that they were "not so good (not so well preserved)". Their style and size are similar to The Entombment, suggesting that they were probably pieces that would have formed part of the larger polyptych. The Entombment was attributed to Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden , also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden...
at the time, though Eastlake thought that, given its emotional power, it might be a van der Weyden. Bouts studied under van der Weyden, and was strongly influenced by his work. Davies proposed in 1953 that the figuration and pose in The Entombment may have been informed by a small grisaille
Grisaille
Grisaille is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco...
relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
in the arch of the central panel of van der Weyden's Miraflores Altarpiece.
The painting arrived in London from Milan in 1861, but was not attributed to Bouts until 1911. Two known copies exist: an unsophisticated panel sold in Munich to a private collector in 1934, and an oak panel attributed to a follower is in Kreuzlingen
Kreuzlingen
Kreuzlingen is a municipality in the district of Kreuzlingen in the canton of Thurgau in north-eastern Switzerland. It is the seat of the district and is the second largest city of the canton, after Frauenfeld, with a population of over 18,000...
, Switzerland.
The influence of Netherlandish painting spread to central Europe in the late 1400s, and many copies or designs based on the work of the Netherlandish masters were produced. The influence of Bouts' Entombment can be seen in the German artist Martin Schongauer
Martin Schongauer
Martin Schongauer was a German engraver and painter. He was the most important German printmaker before Albrecht Dürer....
's c. 1480 engraving of the same name; it shares not only compositional similarity but echoes Bouts' emotive gesture, posture and expression.
Description
The Entombment shows Christ's body, wrapped in a white linen shroud and still wearing a crown of thornsCrown of Thorns
In Christianity, the Crown of Thorns, one of the instruments of the Passion, was woven of thorn branches and placed on Jesus Christ before his crucifixion...
, as it is lowered into a deep stone tomb. He is attended by seven mourners dressed in contemporary clothing. Among the group of mourners standing at Christ's side, the three female figures are shown with downcast eyes while the two men look directly at Christ; these gazes are reversed with the couple kneeling at his feet. The background contains a wide landscape with a winding pathway and a broad river before a more distant vista of trees and hills. Bouts is considered an innovative painter of landscapes, even in his portrait work where they are included as distant views seen through open windows. The vista in The Entombment is regarded as one of his finest, and is typically composed of distant brown and green hills against a blue sky.
The Pharisee
Pharisees
The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...
Nicodemus
Nicodemus
Saint Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, who, according to the Gospel of John, showed favour to Jesus...
supports Christ as he is lowered, and can be identified by his similarity to Simon the Pharisee in another canvas attributed to Bouts, Christ in the House of Simon. The Virgin
Mary (mother of Jesus)
Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...
wears a white headdress and a dark blue dress with a yellowish mantle
Mantle (clothing)
A mantle is a type of loose garment usually worn over indoor clothing to serve the same purpose as an overcoat...
, and holds Christ's arm just above his wrist as if afraid to let go of her dead son. She is supported by John the Evangelist
John the Evangelist
Saint John the Evangelist is the conventional name for the author of the Gospel of John...
, who wears a red robe. The three other women are identified as the Three Marys
The Three Marys
The Three Marys are the three biblical Marys who came to the sepulchre of Jesus in the Gospels and were companions of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Eastern Orthodoxy they are among the Myrrhbearers, traditionally including a larger number of people. All four gospels mention the women going to the...
. Dressed in green robes, Mary Salome
Salome (disciple)
Salome , sometimes venerated as Mary Salome, was a follower of Jesus who appears briefly in the canonical gospels and in more detail in apocryphal writings...
stands to the Virgin's left, wiping tears from her face with the fold of her white headdress. Mary of Clopas is behind them, holding a red cloth over her mouth, while the Magdalen
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...
is in the foreground at Christ's feet, dressed in a heavily folded cloak. The man in the brown–green tabard
Tabard
A tabard is a short coat, either sleeveless, or with short sleeves or shoulder pieces, which was a common item of men's clothing in the Middle Ages, usually for outdoors. It might be belted, or not...
at the feet of Christ is probably Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels.-Gospel references:...
, who, according to Gospel, brought Christ's body from Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...
to Golgotha.
The Entombment is painted on linen tightly woven with 20 to 22 vertical and between 19 to 22 horizontal threads per centimeter. The cloth is Z-spun
Spinning (textiles)
Spinning is a major industry. It is part of the textile manufacturing process where three types of fibre are converted into yarn, then fabric, then textiles. The textiles are then fabricated into clothes or other artifacts. There are three industrial processes available to spin yarn, and a...
(tightly spun) and tabby woven
Plain weave
Plain weave is the most basic of three fundamental types of textile weaves . It is strong and hard-wearing, used for fashion and furnishing fabrics....
with flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
perhaps combined with cotton. The cloth support is lined, unusually, with similar but more finely woven linen mounted
Hanging scroll
A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit Chinese painting and calligraphy. Displaying the art in such way was befitting for public appreciation and appraisal of the aesthetics of the scrolls in its entirety by the audience. The traditional craft involved in...
on a wooden stretcher. Before the paint was applied, the linen was first mounted on a temporary stretcher and outlined with a brown border – now visible on the lower border – which was used as a guide to cut the picture down before framing. Glue-sizing consists of creating a distemper by mixing pigments in water and then using a glue-base derived from boiled animal skin and other tissues as a binder. The pigments were applied to a linen
Linen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
cloth, treated with the same glue sizing, fixed in turn to its frame by glue. The paint saturated the cloth, often leaving an image on the reverse side, which was lined with an additional cloth.
Pigments bound in glue had an optical quality that rendered them opaque in appearance and unusually vivid. Unlike oil, which makes chalk appear translucent, chalk mixed in glue is rendered as stark white. Similarly, more expensive pigments assume brilliant opacity in a glue medium. The whites are chalk
Chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....
in areas mixed with lead white
Lead paint
Lead paint or lead-based paint is paint containing lead, a heavy metal, that is used as pigment, with lead chromate and lead carbonate being the most common. Lead is also added to paint to speed drying, increase durability, retain a fresh appearance, and resist moisture that causes corrosion...
, especially in the Magdalen's mantle and veil
Veil
A veil is an article of clothing, worn almost exclusively by women, that is intended to cover some part of the head or face.One view is that as a religious item, it is intended to show honor to an object or space...
and in Christ's shroud
Shroud
Shroud usually refers to an item, such as a cloth, that covers or protects some other object. The term is most often used in reference to burial sheets, winding-cloths or winding-sheets, such as the famous Shroud of Turin or Tachrichim that Jews are dressed in for burial...
and the Virgin's veil. The artist used four blue pigments, an unusual number for paintings of the period, with indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
predominating. As a plant-derived pigment, indigo it has a tendency to fade over time. Azurite
Azurite
Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. It is also known as Chessylite after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France...
and lead-white line the under-paint, while the landscape contains indigo mixed with lead-tin yellow. The sky and Nicodemus' collar are painted with lighter and less intense azurite
Azurite
Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. It is also known as Chessylite after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France...
, while the Virgin's dress is azurite mixed with ultramarine
Ultramarine
Ultramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli...
and smalt
Smalt
Smalt is powdered glass, colored to a deep powder blue hue using cobalt ions derived from cobalt oxide . Smalt is used as a pigment in painting, and for surface decoration of other types of glass and ceramics, and other media...
, a blue ground-glass pigment.
The greens are mostly verdigris
Verdigris
Verdigris is the common name for a green pigment obtained through the application of acetic acid to copper plates or the natural patina formed when copper, brass or bronze is weathered and exposed to air or seawater over a period of time. It is usually a basic copper carbonate, but near the sea...
, although those predominant in the landscape are mostly blends of blue and yellow pigments, and the green of the cloth worn by Mary Salome is malachite
Malachite
Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...
mixed with yellow lake. The browns are blends of reds and blacks. John's red robe is composed from cinnabar
Cinnabar
Cinnabar or cinnabarite , is the common ore of mercury.-Word origin:The name comes from κινναβαρι , a Greek word most likely applied by Theophrastus to several distinct substances...
and vermilion
Vermilion
Vermilion is an opaque orangish red pigment, similar to scarlet. As a naturally occurring mineral pigment, it is known as cinnabar, and was in use around the world before the Common Era began. Most naturally produced vermilion comes from cinnabar mined in China, and vermilion is nowadays commonly...
made from rubia
Rubiá
aRubiá is a municipality in the Spanish province of Ourense. It has a population of 1734 and an area of 101 km²....
and insect dyes. Some of the reds are mixed with earth colours not susceptible to the effects of light, and have thus survived close to their original appearance. The black pigments are generally bone black
Bone char
Bone char, also known as bone black, ivory black, animal charcoal, or abaiser, is a granular material produced by charring animal bones. To prevent the spread of mad-cow disease, the skull and spine are never used...
s but in places from charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
. The blacks are mixed with chalk in areas, producing a red to brownish 'earthy' appearance.
The cloth support is visible in areas where the paint was thinly applied. Rusty nail holes can be seen in the lower border and across the top of the picture in an area of sky that was initially covered by frame. They indicate that the woodworking was positioned much lower than Bouts had intended; generally works painted on commission were placed by professional joiner
Joiner
A joiner differs from a carpenter in that joiners cut and fit joints in wood that do not use nails. Joiners usually work in a workshop since the formation of various joints generally requires non-portable machinery. A carpenter normally works on site...
s who worked independently of the painter. The low placing of the frame however protected the underlying colours over the centuries from light; they are preserved as first laid down. The panel was originally attached to its frame by pegs and nails; the nails would have been used to attach the linen to the underlying wooden frame.
Condition
Painting on linen cloth using glue sizeSizing
Sizing or size is any one of numerous specific substances that is applied to or incorporated in other material, especially papers and textiles, to act as a protecting filler or glaze....
as a binder
Adhesive
An adhesive, or glue, is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials...
was at the time a relatively inexpensive alternative to oil, and a large number of works were produced in the 15th century. Glue size does not saturate its medium as much as oil, allowing the pigment to show as matt
Gloss (material appearance)
Gloss is an optical property, which is based on the interaction of light with physical characteristics of a surface. It is actually the ability of a surface to reflect light into the specular direction. The factors that affect gloss are the refractive index of the material, the angle of incident...
and opaque
Opacity (optics)
Opacity is the measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation, especially visible light. In radiative transfer, it describes the absorption and scattering of radiation in a medium, such as a plasma, dielectric, shielding material, glass, etc...
, giving – especially with reds and blues – an intense appearance when applied to cloth. Cloth is fragile and easily perishable, and this work is one of the best preserved of the few surviving examples of the technique from the period; the majority extant today were executed on wood using oil
Oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...
or egg tempera
Tempera
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...
. Curtains or glass were often used to protect glue-sized works.
The colours would have first appeared as bright and crisp, but over six-and-a-half centuries have acquired layers of grey dirt which darken the tone and render them as faint and pallid. Normally these layers would be removed by restorers, but given the delicate and fragile nature of a work painted in a water-soluble medium, it is impossible to do so without removing large amounts of pigment. The colours as they appear today have faded from their original hues. The Virgin's mantle is now brown but would have been painted as blue. Joseph's tabard
Tabard
A tabard is a short coat, either sleeveless, or with short sleeves or shoulder pieces, which was a common item of men's clothing in the Middle Ages, usually for outdoors. It might be belted, or not...
, once blue, now appears as green. The original indigos of the landscape are lost, while the azurite
Azurite
Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. It is also known as Chessylite after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France...
in Nicodemus's collar has darkened.
It is possible to see the degree to which the format allowed Bouts, in the words of art historian Susan Jones, to "[achieve such] sophistication ... to create both fine linear detail and subtle tonal transitions." Jones notes that the sky would have appeared with the same clear and pale blue that is still intact in a narrow strip along the top of the work, which has been protected from light and dirt by a frame. In its current condition the muted landscape appears to echo the sorrow of the mourning figures.
X-ray show that there were a few bare preparatory drawings made with chalk before the paint was applied. This is left exposed in some areas, most noticeably in the Virgin's veil and mantle and in Christ's shroud. Infrared photography
Infrared photography
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about...
reveals little underdrawing but that the canvas underwent several changes before it was completed; Mary Salome was repositioned slightly to the left, the size of Nicodemus' arm and shoulder were reduced, and the Magdalen's face was painted over the Virgin's mantle.
The cloth on which the work was painted had been lined with a more finely woven piece of linen and restretched, probably by the same person who stretched and lined the other works identified with the larger altarpiece. It was placed under glass, probably in the early 19th century and certainly before its acquisition by the National Gallery (Eastlake noted that it was under glass in 1858). The piece was evidently sent rolled and unframed to its patron. A brown border painted along the four sides indicates where the frame should be positioned when it is added to its final support. The row of rust-stained nail holes running along the top of the cloth is evidence that the frame was eventually positioned within the pictorial field, at a point far lower than Bouts had intended. This low framing protected a portion of the canvas from deterioration and allows us to see some of the colours as they would have originally appeared.
Polyptych
Charles EastlakeCharles Eastlake
Charles Locke Eastlake was a British architect and furniture designer. Trained by the architect Philip Hardwick , he popularised William Morris's notions of decorative arts in the Arts and Crafts style, becoming one of the principal exponents of the revived Early English or Modern Gothic style...
saw the work in 1858 and again in 1860 during visits to Milan to purchase Northern Renaissance art
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...
on behalf of the National Gallery. He also viewed three companion pieces but was told they were not on sale. His notes described each of these other works, which he titled: Annunciation (now in the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
), Adoration of the Kings (now in a private collection in Germany) and Presentation (or Resurrection; now in the Norton Simon Museum
Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.-Overview:...
, Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
). These works are the same size as The Entombment, have similar colouring and pigmentation and are painted using the same glue-size technique, but are not as well preserved. It is probable that all were re-lined and stretched at the same time by the same restorer, indicating that they were kept together until shortly before The Entombment was acquired by the National Gallery.
Art historian Robert Koch remarked in 1988 on the similarity of provenance, material and technique, tone and colour of the four works described by Eastlake. He proposed that they were intended as wings of five-part polyptych
Polyptych
A polyptych generally refers to a painting which is divided into sections, or panels. The terminology that follows is in relevance to the number of panels integrated into a particular piece of work: "diptych" describes a two-part work of art; "triptych" describes a three-part work; "tetraptych"...
altarpiece. Based on the format of Bouts' 1464–67 Altar of Holy Sacrament, whose four wing panels are the same length as The Entombment, he believes the altarpiece would have comprised a large central panel with four works half its length and width positioned two at either side. His speculative reconstruction places The Entombment on the upper right hand wing, above the Adoration.
The large centre canvas has not been positively identified. However both Koch and Campbell believe that a damaged Crucifixion, now in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium , is one of the most famous museums in Belgium.-The museum:...
, Brussels, was likely the centre piece. Its size (181 × 153.5 cm) is exactly double that of the four wing panels. Campbell believes that the altarpiece was painted on commission for export, probably to Venice. The altarpiece was probably broken up as large religious works had fallen out of fashion by the 17th century, and would have had more value as single panels.
Sources
- Borchert, Till-Holger. "Collecting Early Netherlandish Paintings in Europe and the United States". in Ridderbos, Bernhard, Van Buren, Anne, Van Veen, Henk (eds). Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005 ISBN 978-90-5356-614-5
- Campbell, Lorne. The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings. National Gallery, 1998. ISBN 978-1-85709-171-7
- Davies, Martin. Primitifs flamands. I, Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux au quinzième siècle: The National Gallery, London. De Sikkel, Volume 1, 1953
- Dunkerton, Jill. Giotto to Dürer: early Renaissance painting in The National Gallery. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991 ISBN 978-030-0050-820
- Jones, Susan Frances. Van Eyck to Gossaert. National Gallery, 2011. ISBN 978-1-85709-504-3
- Koch, Robert. "The Getty 'Annunciation' by Dieric Bouts". The Burlington Magazine, Volume 130, July 1988
- Leonard, Mark, et. al. "Dieric Bouts's 'Annunciation'. Materials and Techniques: A Summary". The Burlington Magazine, Volume 130, July 1988
- Spronk, Ron. "More than Meets the Eye: An Introduction to Technical Examination of Early Netherlandish Paintings at the Fogg Art Museum". Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, Volume 5, Autumn 1996
Further reading
- Bomford, David; Roy, Ashok; Smith, Alistair. "The Techniques of Dieric Bouts: Two Paintings Contrasted". The National Gallery Technical Bulletin. Volume 10, No 1, January 1986. 39–57
- Eastlake, Charles; Avery-Quash, Susanna (ed). The travel notebooks of Sir Charles Eastlake. Wakefield, West Yorkshire: Walpole Society, 2011.