VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER. — Painter, born in Tournai c. 1400 and died in Brussels on 16 June 1464.
He bore various names, from “Rogelct 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 Low Countries in the 15th century. Among the various works executed there, the decoration of the Hall of Justice in the Town Hall, which aroused universal admiration for centuries, stood out; it was apparently destroyed in 1695.
Around 1445 he began the imposing altarpiece of the Last Judgment in the hospice of Beaune near Dijon, featuring the images of the patron Nicolas Rolin and his wife, and in 1449, during 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 the Deposition, now in the Uffizi Gallery, probably forms the central panel. Van der Weyden did not sign or date his works, so their identification is not always certain.
Among his most important works in the field of sacred painting are: the three Depositions at 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 fine ogival architectural perspectives; the triptych with the Nativity and that of the Brabant Braque family, and the Pietà (Louvre Museum); the triptych with the Adoration of the Magi, the Annunciation, and the Presentation in the Temple; and St Luke Painting the Virgin, in the Pinacoteca of Munich; the so-called Medici Madonna, in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Among his most excellent portraits are those of Charles the Bold (Berlin Museum), Meliaduse d’Este, with the mallet of the Holy Door between his hands (Metropolitan Museum of New York), Philip de Croÿ (Antwerp Museum), and Anthony the Great Bastard of Burgundy and L. Froimont (Brussels Museum).
Heir to the highest qualities of Jan van Eyck, Van der Weyden reached expressive heights in his depictions.
VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER — St Luke Painting the Virgin. Munich, Pinacoteca.