VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER. - Painter, b. at Tournai around 1400 and d. at Brussels on 16 June 1464.
He had various names, from "Rogelet de la Pasture" in his native city to "Ruggieri da Bruggia" in Italy. Officially considered 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 works of various kinds completed there, the decoration of the Justice Hall in the Town Hall stood out and aroused universal admiration for centuries; it was destroyed, it seems, in 1695.
Around 1445 he began the imposing altarpiece of the Last Judgment in the hospice of Beaune near Dijon, with the images of the patron Nicolas Rolin and his consort, and in 1449, on the occasion of the Jubilee, he came to Italy, staying at Ferrara, where he worked at the court of Lionello d'Este and markedly influenced the masters of that school with a triptych much praised by Ciriaco d'Ancona and of which the center panel probably survives, consisting of the Deposition, now in the Uffizi Gallery. V. der W. did not use to sign and date his works, so their identification is not always certain.
Among the most important, in the field of sacred painting, are numbered: the three Depositions of the Escorial (Madrid), The Hague and the Uffizi, the great triptych of the Sacraments (Antwerp, the central part is reproduced in vol. VIII, col. 269) rich in beautiful perspectives of Gothic 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, the St. Luke Painting the Virgin, in the Pinakothek of Munich, the Madonna known as the Medici, in the Städel Museum of Frankfurt.
Among his most excellent portraits figure those of Charles the Bold (Berlin Museum), of Meliaduse d'Este, with the little hammer of the Holy Door between his gaunt fingers (Metropolitan Museum of New York), of Philip de Croy (Antwerp Museum), and of Anthony, Grand Bastard of Burgundy, and of L. Froimont (Brussels Museum).
Heir to the highest qualities of Jan Van Eyck, V. der W. reached expressive heights in the depict-
(from A. Goffin, L'art religieux en Belgique. La peint. des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Bruxelles-Parigi 1881, pl. 88)
VAN DER WEYDEN, ROGER - St. Luke Painting the Virgin. Munich, Pinakothek.
ration of the pathetic and lyrical episodes of the Gospel, and he knew how to combine a profound realistic spirit, evident in the portraits, in the figures of contemporary life and in the landscape backgrounds, with a sumptuous palette and an exquisite execution. - See pl. XCI.
Bibliography9 works
Alberto Neppi