Rogier van der Weyden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
WRITER : DAVID CRAWFORD - COPYRIGHTED ARTICLE (2024).
Barbara Lane (1989) references that the likely construction and consecration dates of the hospital and its chapel was between 1443 and 1451. The patron was Nicolas Rolin the influential chancellor of Philip the Good of Burgundy. It is also assumed that Rogier’s altarpiece was commissioned as a funerary monument for the patron and his third wife. Furthermore, it is postulated that the establishment of the hospital was contracted to act in part as redemption for the patron’s soul.
There were noted famines in 1438 across Burgundy and the subsequent outbreaks of plague had ravaged the populace.
The sanctioning of the Hospital build by Pope Eugenius IV in 1441 was therefore particularly judicious. These concise contemporary contextual considerations assist in exploring the significance of the hospital setting in relation to its subject matter. Rolin stipulated in the hospital charter that thirty hospital beds would be adjacent to the chapel. This allowed daily morning mass to be witnessed by the hospital in-patients and probably influenced the requisite large altarpiece dimensions of 220cm x 546 cm. Both Church and lay courts had also passed contemporary laws to direct the handling and management of bloodletting and general physical health-care practices. Such regulation was instigated due to the widely held conviction that bodily maladies usually had an attendant spiritual causality (Bettina Bildhauer, 2013). Even if the ill-fated patients remained frail, they could therefore potentially still participate in their own “spiritual healing” by viewing this large altarpiece whenever possible, in on-going veneration and Christian worship.
On the altarpiece exterior Rogier depicted Saint Sebastian and Saint Anthony in Grisaille. Both Saints were perceived in medieval times to be healing saints and their portrayal within the hospital setting is correspondingly apt. In the fifteenth century “humoral medical” beliefs were prevalent and in the absence of any evidence based medical interventions, prayers for divine intercession were perhaps the least physically harmful procedure for patients; of which a large percentage would nevertheless likely die during their hospital stay. In view of the accepted hospital mortality rate the last judgement altarpiece probably served several purposes. It reminded the viewers of the importance of Christian faith and the need for regular adherence to religious practices in order to ensure personal salvation after death.
The outer panel depiction of the Annunciation prompts viewers to remain cognisant of the moment when actual Christian salvation of humans became attainable. The exterior also shows the patrons in prayer and has more of a muted colour palette, acting as contrast to the multi-coloured altarpiece holy interior: in addition to adding weight to the argument that the patron portraits functioned as funerary monuments for Nicholas Rolin and his wife.
When the altarpiece panels are opened, we see Christ and the Archangel Michael in the centre of the polyptych. The message that Rogier is conveying is that there is an absolute judgement for all souls in the afterlife. There is solemnness and majesty in the depiction of Christ at the zenith of the altarpiece central panel. The Archangel Michael below Christ unites heaven with the earth as the Archangel holds the scales that both weigh and signal whether the figures/souls will be blessed or damned. Both Christ and Michael are painted looking directly outwards towards the viewer. The centrality and gaze of Christ and the Archangel meets the viewer’s gaze and directly challenges the viewer’s own commitment towards enduring Christian piety. Rogier is, as it were, asking the viewers to review their own worldly conduct and to personally reflect upon their own eventual judgement by Christ in the afterlife. The background and arrangement of other figures extend across the interior panels, presenting a unified panorama across the nine panel segments, placing Christ at the highpoint. This placement of “Christ supreme” is reminiscent of illuminated manuscript Last Judgement scenes - which Rogier would have been familiar with – showing Christ above the dead as they rise from their graves (See: John Plummer 2019).
Rogier is therefore largely continuing with conventional artistic formulations about the nature of heaven and hell. Using familiar pictorial Christian tropes, Rogier conversely introduces a palpable degree of visual accuracy in his depiction of the physical figures and adds volume to the golden cloud like background. Yet irrespective of Rogier’s stylistic nuances, the well-known Christian leitmotifs prevail. The viewer can easily distinguish that there are more anguished sinners who are damned than blessed souls that are saved. We see heaven on the right of Christ and Hell on his left. By continuing with familiar imagery Rogier is promulgating to viewers the staunch importance of maintaining Christian integrity and demonstrating the ultimate authority of Christ.
References
1. Lane, Barbara G. “‘Requiem Aeternam Dona Eis’: The Beaune ‘Last Judgment’ and the Mass of the Dead.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 19, no. 3, Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische Publicaties, 1989, pp. 167–80, https://doi.org/10.2307/3780717.
2. Bildhauer, Bettina. “Medieval European Conceptions of Blood: Truth and Human Integrity.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, [Wiley, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland], 2013, pp. S57–76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42001729.
3. John Plummer, 2019, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, George Braziller publishers.
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