The nine papers collected in this publication- which comprises the third and latest edition to the symposium volumes by the Metropolitan Museum of Art - were first presented in conjunction with the Museum's exhibition of Early Netherlandish painting culled from its own holdings in 1998. The essays, by an international roster of leading specialists, together uncover the circumstances underlying the creation of works of art and shed new light on their meaning, in the context of the growing interdisciplinary activity and burgeoning scholarship in the field. The importance of archival research into the socio-economic factors that existed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is emphasized- especially, the impact of art markets on the production of paintings as well as sculpture. Much new material has surfaced as a result of advances in the technical investigation of works of art, underscoring the premise that the clues to the meaning of a work are often found not only in its method of manufacture but also in the specific audience for which it was intended and in the function that it originally served for that audience. -- Publisher description.

An illustrated scholarly analysis of the art and the cultural interpretations of the Flemish Primitives.

Publisher Description

Molly Faries, Indiana University & Groningen University, Re-reading the Evidence: Perspectives on Technical Studies of Early Netherlandish Painting Ron Spronk, Harvard University Art Museum, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Early Years of Conservation and Technical Examinations of Netherlandish Paintings at the Fogg Art Museum J.R.J. Van Asperen de Boer, Professor Emeritus, Groningen University, Slowly towards Improved Infrared Reflectography Equipment Peter Klein, University of Hamburg, Dendrochronological Analyses of Netherlandish Paintings E. Melanie Gifford, Susana Halpne and Suzanne Quillen Lomax, National Gallery of Art, Issues surrounding the painting medium: a case study of a pre-Eyckian altarpiece Teri Hensick, Harvard University Art Museums, The Fogg's Copy After a Lost Van Eyck: Conservation History, Resent Treatment and Technical Examination of the Woman at Her Toilet Gianfranco Pocobene and Ron Spronk, Harvard University Art Museums, The Fogg's Virgin and Child from the Workshop of Dirck Bouts: Findings from Technical Examinations and Recent Conservation Treatment Henry Lie, Harvard University Art Museums, Digital Imaging for the Study of Paintings: Experiences at the Straus Center for Conservation Maryan W. Ainsworth, Metropolitan Museum of Art, What's in a name? The Question of Attribution in Early Netherlandish Painting "The volume brings together the connoisseurship and experience of outstanding scholars and leading scientists. It will highly benefit to all working in the field of technical examination." (H. Verougstraete in Sehepunkte, 5 (2005), nr. 2, 15.02.2005)u

During the past few decades, admirers of Petrus Christus have been astonishingly fortunate. Unknown or forgotten paintings in the style of Christus have turned up with surprising regularity: in the 1950s, the wonderful Kansas City Holy Family; in the 1960s the Birmingham Christ and the Bruges Isabella of Portugal Presented by Saint Elisabeth in the 1980s, the Cleveland Baptist and the problematic Bruges panels of the Annunciation and the Nativity. Nothing, of course, can compensate for the loss, during World War II, of the Dessau Crucifixion, and the Berlin wing panels of the Baptist and Saint Catherine. We had to wait until 1974 for the first monograph devoted to Christus, but since then two more books on Christus have been published and important discoveries have been made about his career in Bruges. Thanks to Maryan Ainsworth and her colleagues, we had a truly marvellous exhibition, where we had the privilige of studying more of Chrsitus' paintings than he himself can ever have seen gathered in one place. The exhibition itself initiated a new phase in Christus studies and it is the ideal beginning. If problems of attribution and chronology are ever to be settled, they had to be settled during the exhibition. This publication offers the papers of the 1994 Petrus Christus Symposium at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. L. Campbell, Approaches to Petrus Christus, W. Blockmans, The Creative Environment: Inventions and Functions of Bruges Art Production, C. Harbison, Fact, Symbol, Ideal, Roles for Realism in Early Netherlandish Painting, G.B. Canfield, The Reception of Flemish Art in Renaissance Florence and Naples, M.P.J. Martens, Discussion, J. Upton, PETRUS.XPI.ME.FECIT, The Transformation of a Legacy, S. Buck, Petrus Christus' Berlin Wings and the Metropolitan Museum's Eyckian Diptych, S. Jones, The Virgin of Nicholas van Maelbeke and the Followers of Jan Van Eyck, C. Eisler, Discussion, L. Gellman, Two Lost Portraits by Petrus Christus.

In Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience Ingrid Falque analyses the meditative functions of early Netherlandish paintings including devotional portraits, that is portraits of people kneeling in prayer. Such paintings have been mainly studied in the context of commemorative and social practices, but as Ingrid Falque shows, they also served as devotional instruments. By drawing parallels between the visual strategies of these paintings and texts of the major spiritual writers of the medieval Low Countries, she demonstrates that paintings with devotional portraits functioned as a visualisation of the spiritual process of the sitters. The book is accompanied by the first exhaustive catalogue of paintings with devotional portraits produced in the Low Countries between c. 1400 and 1550. This catalogue is available at no costs in e-format (HERE) and can also be purchased as a printed hardcover book (HERE).

In Anonymous Art at Auction, Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker takes the opposing view of the superstar economy by examining contemporary sales of Early Flemish paintings with unknown authorship and the effects of various substitutes for real names on price formation.

C. Heck and K. Lippincott, Symbols of Time in the History of Art: Introduction; A. Acres, Small Physical History: Trickling Past of Early Netherlandish Painting; B. Winston Blackmun, 'From Time Immemorial': Historicism in the Court art of Benin, Nigeria; S. Blumenroder, Andrea Mantegna's Grisaille Paintings: Colour Metamorphosis as a Metaphor for History; K. Enz Finken, An Early Christian Construction of Time: Salvation History in the Catacomb of Callistus in Rome; M. Wellington Gahtan, Notions of Past and Future in Italian Renaissance Art and Letters; P. Gerrish Nunn, Time and Tide wait for no man: a Victorian apocalypse; J. M. Greenstein, Faces in Time: Temporalities of the Sitter in Renaissance Portraits; J. Berger Hochstrasser, Goede Dingen Willen Tijt Hebben: Time as a Meditation on Painting in Dutch Still Life of the Seventeenth Century; P. Junod, Figures du Temps au siecle de l'histoire; W. Pullan, Death and Praxis in the Funerary Architecture of Mamluk Cairo; S. Sun, The Symbols of Seasonal Changes from Winter to Spring in East Asian Paintings; D. Motycka Weston, 'The Hour of the Enigma': The Phenomenal Temporality in the Metaphysical Painting of Giorgio de Chirico.