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Some Portraits by Johan Maelwael, Painter of the Dukes of Burgundy

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Some Portraits by Johan Maelwael, Painter of the Dukes of Burgundy ~ BRILL QUa!rendo38 (2008) 98-IIO www.brill.nl/qua Some Portraits by Johan Maelwael, Painter of the Dukes of Burgundy Victor M. Schmidt University of Groningen, Netherlands The splendid exhibition on the Limbourg brothers, held in Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen in 2005, not only provided a welcome occasion to reconsider their manuscript illuminations but also provided an opportunity to pay attention to the work of their uncle, Jean Malouel (or Johan Maelwael, to call him by his Dutch name), who was the painter of the Valois dukes of Burgundy in Dijon from 1396 until his death in 1415. In his catalogue essay, Pieter RoelofS did a nne job by surveying what is actually known about the painter and his oeuvre. I He and Rob Duckers gave me the opportunity to discuss in a catalogue entry a drawing in Copenhagen showing the Derision of Christ and its relation to the well-known Martyrdom ofSt Denis from Champmol, now in the Louvre (inv. M.1. 674), which I suggest should be attributed to Maelwael as well. 2 The problems surrounding the altarpiece in the Louvre are manifold, and require a more extensive discus- sion elsewhere. In this contribution, I want to consider some portraits of the dukes of Burgundy that may, or may not, have been painted by Maelwael. According to an ingenious hypothesis put forward by Millard Meiss and Colin Eisler in 1960, a half-length portrait of John the Fearless in prayer, lost but known through an eighteenth-century drawing (illus. I), originally formed a diptych with the Virgin and Child with Angels in Berlin, which is generally attributed to Johan Maelwael and shown as such in the exhibition in Nijmegen.3 I P. Roelofs, 'Johan Maelwael, court painter in Guelders and Burgundy', in: The Limbourg brothers. Nijmegen masters at the French court, I400-I4I6, ed. R Diickers and P. Roelofs (Gent 2005), pp. 35-53· 2 Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Kobberstiksammlung, inv. GB 2971. V.M. Schmidt, in: Diickers and Roelofs, op. cit. (n. I), pp. 412-3, cat. n. 122. 3 Berlin, Gemaldegalerie, inv. no. 87.1. See M. Meiss & C. Eisler, 'A new French primitive', in: Burlington Magazine, 102 (1960), pp. 233-40, in part. pp. 239-40: Diickers and Roelofs, op. cit. (n. I), pp. 347-8, cat. no. 89. I will discuss this picture in a forthcoming essay in: Invention: Northern Renaissance studies in honor of Molly Faries, ed. J. Chapuis (Turnhollt 2008). © Koninklijke Brill NY, LeiJen, 2008 V.M. Schmidt / Qut£rendo 38 (2008) 98-IIO 99 1. Eighteenth-century drawing after a lost portrait of John the Fearless, duke of Bur- gundy (original after 1419). Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Collection de Bourgogne, XX, f. 308. The similar (but not identical) drapery in front of the duke is also seen in the Berlin picture. Moreover, the Child's gesture towards the left seems to imply the presence of a pendant piece to that side. If this hypothesis is correct, we would have a spectacular early instance of a half-length devotional diptych.4 4 For the early history of the devotional diptych, seeV.M. Schmidt, 'Diptychs and supplicants..
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