Title

Birth of St John the Baptist

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

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This scene is one of the five that made up the triptych of the Baptism of Christ that presided over the altar on the north side of the lay brothers' choir of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, in Burgos. When, in 1659, new altarpieces were made for this space, the triptych of the Baptism of Christ had to be dismantled, but its panels were integrated into the new structure. In fact, when, in the 18th century, Antonio Ponz visited the Charterhouse, he pointed out that, in the altarpiece on the north side, there were still preserved 'sus antiguas pinturas, y son cinco' (its old paintings, and they are five). The scholar from Castellón was enthusiastic about the quality of this ensemble: 'Me alegrara que Ud. viese la hermosura y permanencia de los colores, lo acabado de cada cosa y la expresión tan grande de las figuras en aquel estilo que regularmente atribuimos a Lucas de Olanda [Lucas van Leyden] por la ignorancia en que se está de otros profesores que le superaron en su tiempo” (I would be happy if you could see the beauty and permanence of the colours, the finishing of everything and the great expression of the figures in that style that we regularly attribute to 'Lucas de Olanda' [Lucas van Leyden] because of the ignorance we have of other masters who surpassed him in his time). His interest in it led him to search for information about it in the Carthusian monastery's archives, where he recovered the following data: 'Aquí he encontrado el nombre de quien hizo estas pinturas por uno de los asientos del monasterio, y dice que el cuadro del Bautismo del coro de los legos lo empezó a pintar el Maestro Juan Flamenco en esta cartuja el año de 1496 y que lo acabó el de 1499, y que costó, sin contar la comida que le dieron, veinte y seis mil setecientos treinta y cinco maravedís' (Here I have found the name of the person who did these paintings in one of the entries of the monastery, and it says that the painting of the Baptism of the choir of the lay brothers was begun by 'Maestro Juan Flamenco' [Master John the Fleming] in this monastery in the year 1496 and that he finished it in 1499, and that it costed, without counting the food he was given, twenty-six thousand seven hundred and thirty-five maravedís).

These data have been the basis for a long and productive historiographical debate concerning, on the one hand, the location of the five paintings (which, like so many works of art of the Burgos Charterhouse, left, as we shall see, the place for which they had been created in the context of the War of Independence) and, on the other hand, the identification of the 'Master John the Fleming' who, according to the documentary evidence, had been their author. The second question was settled when, in 1979, Jozef de Coo and Nicole Reynaud identified him incontestably with Juan de Flandes, the Flemish painter who, from 1496, was in the service of Queen Isabella the Catholic (who, well known as the promoter of the works of completion of the Charterhouse of Miraflores, would have been the commissioner of this altarpiece): in fact, the realisation of the triptych of the Baptism of Christ in the Charterhouse strictly coincides in time with the making of the high altarpiece of the Charterhouse by the sculptor Gil de Siloe and the painter Diego de la Cruz). On the other hand, the first question could only be resolved when, at the beginning of the 21st century, the fifth and last panel of the ensemble was found in Belgrade (which also made it possible to establish a firm basis for its reconstruction, which until then had been the subject of various proposals). Of its five panels, only the central and main panel (Baptism of Christ) remains in Spain, and is currently in the collection of Juan Abelló, after passing through various private collections. The side panels are in museums in the United States (Birth of St John the Baptist), Serbia (Ecce Agnus Dei), Switzerland (Beheading of St John the Baptist) and Belgium (Revenge of Herodias). In 2010, an exhibition held at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp brought together the four wing panels, but there has never been an opportunity to reunite the whole set.

Although both documentary evidence and formal analysis point incontestably to Juan de Flandes as the author of the triptych of the Baptism of Christ in the choir of the lay brothers of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, there is some debate about the possible participation of Michel Sittow, another Nordic painter in the service of Queen Isabella the Catholic (in this case, from 1492), who could have participated in the preparatory drawing and even in the first phases of execution, especially in the Baptism of Christ panel, but also in the Ecce Agnus Dei panel, as Weniger argues.

Sittow's possible participation in this ensemble and its close relationship with the courtly environment are linked to another question of interest related to this work: technical analyses of its support have been able to determine that the Baltic oak wood used for its manufacture comes from the same tree that was used for the manufacture of the support of the copy of the Miraflores triptych by Rogier van der Weyden that belonged to Isabella the Catholic (it is mentioned in the auction of her goods that took place in Toro in February 1505) and that ended up in the Royal Chapel of Granada, although one of its panels is currently in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Apparition of Christ to His Mother). Evidently, this copy could only have been made in the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores itself at the time when Juan de Flandes was working there, but scholars debate whether it is a work by Juan de Flandes or by Michel Sittow (and, in this case, since it is a copy, the individual stylistic features are blurred, making it difficult to ascribe).

Focusing again on the triptych of the Baptism of Christ, although the historical sources place it on the altar of the north side of the choir of the lay brothers of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, Martens thinks that it was placed originally on the altar of the south side, based on the study of the light of this triptych and its pendant, the triptych of the Adoration of the Magi by the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, brought from the Low Countries in 1495.

Its panels are not mentioned among the works of the Charterhouse of Miraflores plundered by General Darmagnac in 1810, in the context of the War of Independence, but the interest of Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, the Antwerp collector who in 1899 acquired the Revenge of Herodias, in knowing the provenance of the works he was purchasing, allows us to confirm this: this panel, along with another one of the same set, had been acquired in the mid-19th century in Bordeaux by Tanneguy Duchâtel (1803-1867), Count Duchâtel, it is not clear whether from General Darmagnac himself, who died in 1855, or from the heirs of General Darmagnac. This news confirms that the ensemble, which, as shown by the measurements of its panels (consistent with those of the 1659 altarpiece in which they were relocated), had originally belonged to the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, was plundered by General Darmagnac.

The Cleveland Birth of St John the Baptist was not known until 1976, when it was made known by Ann Tzeutschler Lurie in an article published in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art the year after the American museum acquired it from Frederick Mont, an important antiquarian of Austrian origin based in New York. Lurie identified it as a work by Juan de Flandes and related it to the other paintings by this artist belonging to an altarpiece of St John the Baptist that were known at that time (namely, Baptism of Christ, Beheading of St John the Baptist and Revenge of Herodias), being, moreover, the first to venture to formulate a proposal for the reconstruction of this set.

Despite the absence of news about the Birth of St John the Baptist prior to its acquisition by The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1975, we believe that this panel can be identified with the other panel acquired in the mid-19th century in Bordeaux by Count Duchâtel. The former minister of King Louis Philippe bought, as indicated above, two panels. He kept one and gave the other (Revenge of Herodias) to his son-in-law Louis-Charles de La Trémoïlle (1838-1911), Duke of La Trémoïlle, who sold it in 1899 to Fritz Mayer van den Bergh. When this sale took place, the intermediary, a certain "C.te G. de Guizard", told Fritz Mayer van den Bergh that, according to Henri Delaborde (1811-1899), Count Delaborde, Charles Duchâtel (1838-1907), son of Tanneguy Duchâtel and his successor in the title of Count Duchâtel, still had the panel that accompanied the Revenge of Herodias 'si il non l'a vendu' (if he has not sold it) and undertook to make inquiries about it and to retain it, if necessary, in the hope of acquiring it for ridder Mayer van den Bergh. We do not know if at this point Count Duchâtel junior no longer had it or if he simply did not want to part with it.

Traditionally, the Duchâtel panel has been identified with the Beheading of St John the Baptist in the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Geneva, but, as we argue in the study of this piece, this is manifestly impossible, both because of the early date at which General Darmagnac disposed of it and because of the annotations on its reverse, which denote a passage through the market shared with the Ecce Agnus Dei of the Narodni Muzej of Belgrade and which transcends the route taken by the Revenge of Herodias (Charterhouse of Miraflores → General Darmagnac → count Duchâtel senior → duke of La Trémoïlle → ridder Mayer van den Berg) and by his companion (Charterhouse of Miraflores → General Darmagnac → count Duchâtel senior → count Duchâtel junior → ?).

Against this background, the only panel likely to have belonged to the two generations of counts Duchâtel is the Birth of St John the Baptist of Cleveland, which Lurie, however, thought would that have circulated on the market in the company of the Geneva panel (when she wrote her articles, the Belgrade panel was not yet known). She based this on the fact that both on the reverse of the Geneva panel and on the reverse of the Cleveland panel there is an attribution to Jan van Eyck, but, while on the Geneva panel this annotation is of the period, on the Cleveland panel this annotation is modern (although it most probably takes up a former annotation), since this panel was thinned and cradled, not having retained, as a consequence, its original reverse. We consider, for this reason, that this annotation only shows that, at some point in its passage through the art market, the Cleveland panel was attributed to Jan van Eyck (as it used to be done generously in the art market), without this attribution necessarily implying a shared trajectory with the Geneva panel, linked to the Belgrade panel and both unrelated to the route taken by the Duchâtel panels.

Even so, there remains a very large gap in the history of this panel, between its possession in Paris by Count Duchâtel junior at the end of the 19th century and its sale in New York by Frederick Mont in 1975, for which we have no information.

Description

When Juan de Flandes painted the triptych of the Baptism of Christ in the Charterhouse of Miraflores between 1496 and 1499, the triptych of the Adoration of the Magi by the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, which presided over the other altar of the lay brothers' choir, was already there, so Juan de Flandes followed the typological model of the latter: a central panel housing a single scene (in this case, the Baptism of Christ) flanked by side panels housing two superimposed scenes. This model is not very common in Early Netherlandish painting, although its prestigious reference is the triptych of the Last Supper by Dirk Bouts in the Sint-Pieterskerk in Louvain. While in the triptych of the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine the scenes of the wings are painted on a single panel, on the back of which are depicted large figures in grisaille, in the triptych of Juan de Flandes the scenes of the wings are painted on independent panels that would have been fitted into a mount and on the back of which a marble imitation was painted (which, until the recent identification of all the panels and their exhaustive technical analysis, made it difficult to determine the exact position of each panel in the ensemble).

The Nativity of St John the Baptist would be the upper panel of the left wing and, after the dismantling of the triptych and the reuse of its panels in the 1659 altarpiece, it would have been relocated in one of the lateral compartments of the altarpiece (probably, if a narrative logic was followed, in the one on the left). With it began the story of the life of the Precursor of the triptych of the Baptism of Christ painted by Juan de Flandes for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores. In a domestic interior that is not very detailed in its descriptive details, but very meticulous in its rendering (see, for example, the clock or the smoking brazier), we are offered, in reality, two episodes: the birth itself, with the representation of Elizabeth, exhausted by the efforts of childbirth, lying on a rich bed and ready to receive the refreshment brought to her by a maid approaching from the right, and the imposition of the name of the Baptist, with the representation, in the foreground, of the elderly Zechariah, to whom the Virgin presents the newborn. According to an apocryphal account, Zechariah had lost his speech as a punishment for his disbelief about his imminent paternity, so he had to use writing to say that his son would be called John: that is why Juan de Flandes represents him writing on a bill. In the maid who approaches Isabella, which was added by Juan de Flandes at an advanced stage of the pictorial process (in fact, she was not contemplated in the underlying drawing), it has been thought that it is a crypto-portrait of Isabella the Catholic, but this is subject to discussion. Finally, it should be noted that, at the head of Elizabeth's bed, hangs a convex mirror of clear Eyckian lineage: this is one of the several quotations that, in this work, Juan de Flandes took from the great master and that, no doubt, justified the optimistic attribution that was made of it in the past.

Locations

• 1499 - 1810

  monastery

  Miraflores Charterhouse, Burgos (Spain)

• 1810 - Mid XIX^th c.

  plunder

  Jean-Barthélemy Darmagnac, Burdeos (France)

• Mid XIX^th c. - Third quarter of the XIX^th c.

  private collection

  Tanneguy Duchâtel, Duchâtel Count, Paris (France) *

• Third quarter of the XIX^th c. - ca. 1900

  private collection

  Charles Duchâtel, Duchâtel Count, Paris (France) *

• 1975

  dealer/antiquarian

  Frederick Mont (A. F. Mondschein / Adolf Fritz Mondschein / Frederick Mondshcein), New York (United States) *

• 1975 - present

  museum

  The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (United States)