Master Rogier's invisible sketch
Нидерландский мастер XV века переосмыслил древнее предание про евангелиста, превратив образ для молитвы в глубокую беседу о ремесле художника.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston holds an oak panel painted in tempera and oil nearly six centuries ago. In the center of a bright hall, the holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke kneels before the Most Pure Virgin. In his hands there is no familiar icon-painter's brush – only a silverpoint, a metal stylus for drawing. The saint traces the finest gray line on the prepared sheet, carefully capturing the features of the Most Pure One from life.
The painting was created between 1435 and 1440, when Rogier van der Weyden received the official post of city painter of Brussels. The well-known tradition that the holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke was the first to depict the Most Holy Theotokos, the Brussels master transferred into the cozy domestic interior of a fifteenth-century Netherlandish room. The Theotokos sits on the lower step before a throne beneath a rich canopy, tenderly nursing the Infant, while the holy master carefully sketches Her image.
The panel entered the Boston museum collection in 1893. Research has confirmed its authenticity. Analysis of the wood showed that the oak for the panel was felled around 1410. The timber underwent a long seasoning before reaching the painter's workbench.
Whose face does the ancient evangelist conceal?
Art historians have long paid attention to the treatment of the saint's face. Experts suggest that under the guise of the apostle the artist painted himself. Rogier van der Weyden, who left not a single signature on his finished works, decided on such an unexpected step.
Initially, the master was interested in a completely different composition. In the preparatory drawing, the evangelist's head was placed on the same level as the face of the Theotokos, but later the author raised it slightly higher. A hovering angel was planned above the Most Pure Virgin, yet in the final version the artist removed the heavenly messenger entirely. None of the later copies of this painting, kept in museums in Munich and Bruges, contain such corrections.
A secret study and figures by the river
Netherlandish painting always demands slow reading from the viewer. Behind Saint Luke's back, a tiny room can be seen. On the wooden floor an ox lies still – the symbol of the evangelist – and beside it lies an open book. A thin scroll can be seen in the ox's mouth.
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A little farther, beyond a low stone parapet, stand two small figures. A man and a woman, their backs turned to the viewer, gaze motionlessly at the bends of the river and a distant city. Who they are is unknown. In the first version of the drawing, the hood of the figure on the right was scarlet, but the author covered it with black.
This fragment with the river, the stone barrier, and the figures seen from behind is a respectful quotation. Rogier paid his creative debt to the "Madonna of Chancellor Rolin," created by the brilliant Jan van Eyck. But while Jan painted his canvas for a distinguished official, Rogier created his work for his own guild. In 1520, in Brussels, this painting was, apparently, seen by the famous German master Albrecht Dürer, who left brief notes about his journey.
The Eastern Brush and the Western Stylus
The story of the evangelist developed in Christian art along two different paths. In the East, the ancient tradition was mentioned by the historian Theodore the Lector as early as the 6th century, who asserted that the icon of the Mother of God was painted by the holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke himself. In the Byzantine and Orthodox tradition, he is always depicted as a strict iconographer. A tall easel stands before him, and in his hand the saint holds a brush, tracing the features of the face in tempera and gold. A similar composition can be seen on a Cretan icon of the 16th century or on an early canvas by the young El Greco.
In the West, Rogier van der Weyden carried out an artistic revolution. He does not copy ancient models, but becomes an artist of a new age, beginning his work with living observation and sketches made from life.
The Western painter removes the golden background, placing the Holy Family beneath the vaults of an ordinary room. However, this does not diminish the sanctity.
Rogier shows that honest labor, the careful line of the silverpoint stylus, and human attention to detail become a form of service to God.
The painting never received the author's signature. For the early Netherlandish masters, modesty remained an important part of character. Yet the master left on the canvas an artistic hand of his own, uniting in it the craft of the painter, the memory of the evangelist, and a special standing before the grandeur of God's world.
