.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This panel, the wing of a now-dispersed polyptych, is a rare and fine example of early French painting. It owes a strong debt to the early Netherlandish painting tradition, combining a linearity of design, which betrays the influence of Rogier van der Weyden, with smooth modelling, visible in the saint’s face, that is reminiscent of the work of the Amiens painter Simon Marmions. These stylistic elements point to a Northern French origin for this panel, more specifically Picardy, a rich border region north of Paris, which was in possession of the Burgundian Netherlands until 1477 when it was became part of the French kingdom.
The painting can be associated, on stylistic grounds, with a crucial group of late fifteenth-century panels from a dismantled altarpiece that decorated the high altar of the Carthusian monastery at Thuison, outside Abbeville in Northern France: four saints adorned the outer wings while the interior wings depicted scenes from Christ’s Passion (now all in Chicago, Art Institute save for one in St Petersburg, Hermitage; see G. Ring, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500, London, 1949, p. 219, no. 169, figs. 105-6). The outer panels displaying saints standing in niches are especially similar: Saint Honoré for instance, has a comparable oval face, with a similar long straight nose and thin fingers. He stands in a pose like that of Saint Anthony in this panel, his feet appearing to the foreground, below the heavy, angular drapery. The setting, with the tiled floor, elegant tracery and historiated capitals, echoes that of the niche of the Virgin and Child panel in the Thuison Altarpiece. Although further research remains to be done, these stylistic similarities suggest that this picture could well be a rediscovered work by the unknown artist behind the Thuison Altarpiece.
The painting can be associated, on stylistic grounds, with a crucial group of late fifteenth-century panels from a dismantled altarpiece that decorated the high altar of the Carthusian monastery at Thuison, outside Abbeville in Northern France: four saints adorned the outer wings while the interior wings depicted scenes from Christ’s Passion (now all in Chicago, Art Institute save for one in St Petersburg, Hermitage; see G. Ring, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500, London, 1949, p. 219, no. 169, figs. 105-6). The outer panels displaying saints standing in niches are especially similar: Saint Honoré for instance, has a comparable oval face, with a similar long straight nose and thin fingers. He stands in a pose like that of Saint Anthony in this panel, his feet appearing to the foreground, below the heavy, angular drapery. The setting, with the tiled floor, elegant tracery and historiated capitals, echoes that of the niche of the Virgin and Child panel in the Thuison Altarpiece. Although further research remains to be done, these stylistic similarities suggest that this picture could well be a rediscovered work by the unknown artist behind the Thuison Altarpiece.