The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos Details
About the Author Emma Capron is the 2016–18 Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at The Frick Collection and the 2018–19 Slifka Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maryan Ainsworth is Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Till-Holger Borchert is Director of the Bruges Museums. Read more
Reviews
The Chaterhouse of Bruges is the volume written to accompany a small (nine item) exhibition at The Frick Collection (NY, NY) focused on their painting by Jan van Eyck and Workshop of The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth and Jan Vos, the later being the donor who commissioned the work from van Eyck shortly before the artist's death in 1441 after Vos became prior of the Carthusian Charterhouse outside of Bruges, Beligum. The volume features four essays, two by Emma Capron, who recently held a fellowship at The Frick, one by noted expert Maryan Ainsworth of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and one by Til-Holger Borchert, Director of the Bruges Museums. Together the essays consider the original role of the painting as a religious object, issues of attribution based largely on a technical examination done on the piece some years back by staff at The Met, van Eyck's relationship to Petrus Christus, who followed van Eyck as a leading painter of Bruges and was at one time thought to have contributed to the panel, and on the collecting of works by van Eyck and workshop in the U.S.A. (where there are a half dozen). Although one can always wish for larger illustrations of certain details, the volume features good quality color reproductions of works referenced in addition to endnotes (which would be more useful as footnotes), a bibliography, exhibition checklist, map, index and appendices translating three period documents explaining the use of the panel to gain indulgences. The wisdom of referencing and illustrating Grant Wood's American Gothic (1930) in this book is questionable, but there is no doubt that the volume will be of interest to those who have spent time enjoying The Frick's van Eyck or any of the other works by him surviving in collections in the States and Europe.