VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER. — Painter, born in Tournai around 1400 and died in Brussels on 16 June 1464.
He had various designations, from “Rogelet de la Pasture” in his native city to “Ruggieri da Bruggia” in Italy. Officially recognized as a master in 1432, three years later he became painter to the city of Brussels, where his workshop was the most important in the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. Among the various works executed there, the decoration of the Hall of Justice in the City Hall stood out and aroused universal admiration for centuries; it was apparently destroyed in 1695.
Around 1445 he began the imposing altarpiece of the Last Judgment in the hospice of Beaune near Dijon, with images of the patron Nicolas Rolin and his consort; and in 1449, on the occasion of the Jubilee, he came to Italy, stopping in Ferrara, where he worked at the court of Lionello d’Este and significantly influenced the masters of that school with a triptych highly praised by Ciriaco d’Ancona, of which probably the central panel remains, consisting of the Deposition, now in the Uffizi Gallery. V. der W. did not habitually sign or date his works, and their identification is therefore not always certain.
Among the most important, in the field of sacred painting, are: the three Depositions in the Escorial (Madrid), The Hague, and the Uffizi; the great triptych of the Sacraments (Antwerp; the central panel is reproduced in vol. VIII, col. 269), rich in beautiful perspectives of ogival architecture; the triptych with the Nativity and that of the Brabant Braque; and the Pietà (Louvre Museum); the triptych with the Adoration of the Magi, the Annunciation, and the Presentation in the Temple; St. Luke Painting the Virgin, in the Munich Pinakothek; and the Madonna known as that of the Medici, in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Among his most excellent portraits are those of Charles the Bold (Berlin Museum), Meliaduse d’Este, with the little hammer of the Holy Door between his emaciated fingers (Metropolitan Museum of New York), Philippe de Croy (Antwerp Museum), and Antonio, the Great Bastard of Burgundy, and L. Froimont (Brussels Museum).
Heir to the highest qualities of Giovanni Van Eyck, V. der W. reached expressive heights in the depic-
(from A. Goffin, L'art religieux en Belgique. La peint. des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Bruxelles-Parigi 1881, tau. 88)
VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER - St Luke Painting the Virgin. Munich, Pinacoteca.
depiction of the pathetic and lyrical episodes of the Gospel, and knew how to combine a profound realistic spirit, evident in the portraits, in figures from contemporary life, and in the landscape backgrounds, with a sumptuous palette and exquisite craftsmanship. - Vedi tav. XCI.