(Tournai, 1399/1400 - Brussels, 1464)
Jef van der Veken ( Anvers, 1872 - Ixelles, 1964)
Vierge à l'‘enfant (Virgin and Child) (Madonna from the diptych by Jean Gros, counterpart to the Portrait of Jean Gros, kept at the Art Institute of Chicago), ca. 1460–64
Oil on wood, "hyper-restoration" by Jef Van der Veken (1920s), former Renders Collection (Bruges), custody of the state in reparation for war damages - 1951.
38.7 cm x 28.5 cm
Born in Tournai, Rogier Van der Weyden was one of the most influential artists of his time. Van der Weyden is renowned for infusing an emotional atmosphere into late medieval art, and his religious scenes are a testament to his ability to humanise his subjects through his technically perfect rendering of details and materials.
In this devotional painting, the divine nature of the figures is clearly represented by the golden rays that enshroud them like a halo. But by choosing to depict the breast-feeding of the infant Jesus in a gesture imbued with naturalness and tenderness, the painter from Tournai is above all highlighting the Virgin's role as mother. The union between mother and baby is also symbolised by the whiteness of two fabrics : the Virgin's transparent veil over her uncovered breast and the cloth in which she is carrying the child.
A fascinating story also underlies this work. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was worked on by the famous restorer and gifted forger Jef Van der Veken. Fascinated with the Flemish Primitives, Van der Veken carried out an abusive restoration of the panel, going so far as to imitate false ageing cracks in the pictorial material. The work was subsequently sold to Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering in 1941. After its recovery by Allied troops in Berchtesgaden (Germany), it was returned to the Belgian State in 1946 and kept in Tournai in 1951 as war reparations.
Link to the second panel of the diptych in the Art Institute of Chicago's collections.