1455-60 Oil on oak panel, 77 x 48 cm Staatliche Museen, Berlin The left panel depicts the Naming of John the Baptist. Elisabeth lies in bed in the background after giving birth, while the pregnant Mary, the future mother of Jesus, brings the newborn child to his father Zacharias. Zacharias had been struck dumb for his doubts when an angel told him, during service in the temple, that he was to be the father of a son (this scene is shown in the lowest archivolt relief on the left). He therefore has to write down the name of the child. Mary, as the more important saint, is distinguished from Zacharias and Elisabeth by her aureole. The side panels of the St John Altarpiece do not merely show the beginning and end of the Baptist's earthly life. The parallels between the pictorial motifs also express moral conflict. On the left, the chaste Virgin Mary holds the newborn baby in her arms; she and Zacharias are looking at one another gravely, aware of the significance of the event.Artist:WEYDEN, Rogier van der Title: St John Altarpiece (left panel) Painted in 1401-1450 , Flemish - - painting : religious
Painting ID:: 63861
1455-60 Oil on oak panel Staatliche Museen, Berlin The body of the executed man is part of the foreground group, and the executioner can set his sword against John's right shoulder, shown in a flat plane. At the same time, however, two mourners who belong to the background are placed directly above the cellar stairs where the dead man is lying, and a figure diminished to about one-third of the size of the foreground figures appears to be standing only a little farther back from them.Artist:WEYDEN, Rogier van der Title: St John Altarpiece (detail) Painted in 1401-1450 , Flemish - - painting : religious
Painting ID:: 63871
1455-60 Oil on oak panel Staatliche Museen, Berlin As a lascivious worldly beauty, Salome wears a magnificent dress in the fashion of French princesses, with exotic decorative items including the pointed head-dress. The background shows the scene of the banquet in which Salome's mother, Herodias, stabs the decapitated head of the Baptist in her hatred for him.Artist:WEYDEN, Rogier van der Title: St John Altarpiece (detail) Painted in 1401-1450 , Flemish - - painting : religious
Painting ID:: 63872
1507-08 Oil on wood Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp The monumental triptych welds together 15th century tradition and the new ideas about art which were emerging from Italy. The light effects, the gradation of colour and the interweaving of the composition hark back to the attention to detail, the use of landscape as a backdrop and the rather stereotypical figures of the previous century. , Artist: MASSYS, Quentin , St John Altarpiece (detail) , 1451-1500 , Flemish , painting , religious
Painting ID:: 64221
Date between 1474(1474) and 1479(1479)
Medium Oil on oak panel
Dimensions Height: 173.6 cm (68.3 in). Width: 173.7 cm (68.4 in). (central)
cjr
Painting ID:: 87606
Hans Memling between 1474(1474) and 1479(1479)
Medium oil on oak panel
cyf St John Altarpiece Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1435-1494
Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is believed that Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1455?C1460). He then went to Bruges around 1465.
There is an apocryphical story that he was a wounded at the Battle of Nancy, sheltered and cured by the Hospitallers at Bruges, and that to show his gratitude he refused payment for a picture he had painted for them. Memling did indeed paint for the Hospitallers, but he painted several pictures for them, in 1479 and 1480, and it is likely that he was known to his patrons of St John, prior to the Battle of Nancy.
Memling is connected with military operations only in a distant sense. His name appears on a list of subscribers to the loan which was raised by Maximilian I of Austria, to defend against hostilities towards France in 1480. In 1477, when he was incorrectly claimed to have been killed, he was under contract to create an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges. This altarpiece, under the name of the Seven Griefs of Mary, is now in the Gallery of Turin. It is one of the fine creations of his more mature period. It is not inferior in any way to those of 1479 in the hospital of St. John, which for their part are hardly less interesting as illustrative of the master's power than The Last Judgment which can be found since the 1470s in the St. Mary's Church, Gda??sk. Critical opinion has been unanimous in assigning this altarpiece to Memling. This affirms that Memling was a resident and a skilled artist at Bruges in 1473; for the Last Judgment was undoubtedly painted and sold to a merchant at Bruges, who shipped it there on board of a vessel bound to the Mediterranean, which was captured by Danzig privateer Paul Beneke in that very year. This purchase of his pictures by an agent of the Medici demonstrates that he had a considerable reputation.
