Title

Christ Appearing to His Mother

Flandes, Juan de (Posible procedencia de los Países Bajos, ca. 1465 - Palencia, ca. 1519)

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Object history

In 1445, Juan II of Castile donated a triptych to the Carthusian Monastery of Miraflores (Burgos), painted on oak wood with each panel measuring 74. x 45 cm. The panels depict scenes of the Nativity of Christ, the Pietà, and the appearance of the resurrected Christ to His Mother. There seems to be no doubt about the artist, identified as the painter Rogier van der Weyden, as the now-lost donation document, seen by Antonio Ponz in 1783 in Viaje de España, XII, stated: “Hoc oratorium a Magistro Rogel, magno & famoso Flandresco, fuit depictum.”

It is also documented that this piece was indeed a triptych, as Ponz described it as “a small altar with its doors,” rather than a fixed presentation with a rigid frame, as it currently appears. According to records preserved at the Carthusian monastery in the late eighteenth century, the triptych was a gift from Pope Martin V to the king of Castile. This may have been a belief rather than fact, though it may indeed have reached Juan II as a gift. What we do know with certainty, thanks to dendrochronology, is that it was created around the time of its donation to the monastery.

The triptych likely remained in the Miraflores Monastery at least until Ponz saw it there, though it was soon moved to Burgos Cathedral, where it was discovered by General Darmagnac during the French invasion of Spain. By 1835, it was in London and was auctioned at Christie’s the following year, alongside other works from Darmagnac’s collection. In 1842, it was acquired by King William II of the Netherlands. Following his death in 1850, it was auctioned in The Hague and acquired by the Royal Gallery in Berlin, where it remains today.

Despite the high quality of the paintings, from the mid-19th century onward, following Passavant’s analysis, the triptych was regarded as a copy of an original by Van der Weyden. This hypothesis seemed supported by the existence of a similar triptych initially housed in the Royal Chapel in Granada, of which only two panels remain there today. The right panel, depicting the Appearance of the Resurrected Christ to His Mother, is now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 1908, Manuel Gómez-Moreno and Wilhelm von Bode each concluded that the Royal Chapel triptych was the original and that the one from the Miraflores Monastery was a copy. Although most Flemish painting scholars, including Wauters, Friedländer, and Panofsky, supported this view, in 1981, Rainald Grosshans demonstrated that they were mistaken and that the Berlin version was, in fact, the original. X-ray and infrared imaging indicated it was not by Van der Weyden, but definitive evidence came through dendrochronology performed by Peter Klein on the New York panel and by Josef Vinckier on the Granada panels, showing that the three formed a set and were made from oak felled shortly before their creation in the mid-1490s. Stylistic analyses thus gave way to scientific evidence dating the Miraflores Triptych half a century earlier.

Due to their artistic characteristics, the New York panel (and those in Granada) can be attributed to Juan de Flandes, a painter serving Queen Isabella I of Castile from 1496 to 1504. We also know that Juan de Flandes was at the Miraflores Monastery, where he created an altarpiece dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, consisting of five panels now dispersed among several museums. Queen Isabella resided at the monastery founded by her father from September 1496 until May 1497, and we know from Ponz that Juan de Flandes was there painting the altarpiece of Saint John. It seems plausible, therefore, that he may have produced a copy of the triptych, now in Berlin, at the queen’s request.

The copied set, although not exact—there are visible differences, particularly in the colours of the Virgin’s robes and its smaller size (62.2 x 37.1 cm of painted surface)—remained among Queen Isabella’s possessions until her death in November 1504. In February of the following year, her belongings were auctioned in Toro (Zamora), and Ferdinand II of Aragon, acting as her executor, ordered the dispatch of a “retablo de tres pieças…,” describing scenes that match those in the document, even in dimensions, with slight allowance for the framing.

However, this triptych was neither made for nor sent to the Royal Chapel. The foundation of the chapel by the Catholic Monarchs occurred in September 1504, just two months before Isabella’s death, and when she died, no specific location had yet been decided for its construction. While Ferdinand arranged for tapestries to be sent to the Royal Foundation, he did not explicitly designate these paintings for that purpose. It was only in 1520 that Charles V, years after the chapel’s completion, ordered that items deposited at the Monastery of San Francisco be transferred to the chapel.

The limited interest shown toward these panel paintings is reflected in how the triptych was treated. In 1630-1633, an attempt was made to place it on the inside right door of the reliquary in the transept on the Epistle side. For this purpose, one panel (the one now at the Metropolitan Museum) was sawed down, while the other two were trimmed along the top to fit this new location.

At some point, the excess panel left the Royal Chapel and later ended up in the possession of Mariano Téllez-Girón, the 12th Duke of Osuna. It entered the art market and, around 1907, was in a private English collection before reaching Duveen in 1912, who held it until 1917, when it was acquired by Michael Dreicer of New York and subsequently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1921.

Description

The scene is framed by Gothic architecture. In the centre of the composition, the risen Christ appears before the Virgin, who raises her hands in surprise. In the background and in a smaller format, the newly risen Christ is shown next to the tomb. Around the tomb are the sleeping Roman soldiers. The special attention paid to the clothing, the landscape and the faces of the figures are characteristic of Flemish painting.

Locations

• XV^th c. - Early XVI^th c.

  municipality

  Toro, Toro (Spain)

• Early XVI^th c. - XIX^th c.

  church

  Royal Chapel, Granada (Spain)

• XIX^th c. - ca. 1912

  private collection

  Ducal House of Osuna, Madrid (Spain) *

• ca. 1912 - ca. 1917

  dealer/antiquarian

  Duveen, Nueva York/París/Londres (United States) *

• ca. 1917 - ca. 1921

  private collection

  Michael Dreicer, New York (United States) *

• ca. 1921 - present

  museum

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)