Title

Beheading of St John the Baptist

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

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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. According to the information gathered by Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, the panel he had acquired had been given by Count Duchâtel to his son-in-law Louis-Charles de La Trémoïlle (1838-1911), Duke of La Trémoïlle (from whom the Belgian collector purchased it). The other panel had remained in the hands of the Count and, at his death, had passed to his son Charles Duchâtel (1838-1907), his successor in the title of Count Duchâtel, who was believed to still possess it at the time of 1899.

It has been repeated time and again that the Beheading of St John the Baptist of Geneva is the other panel acquired in Bordeaux by Duchâtel senior and subsequently possessed by Duchâtel junior. However, this is manifestly impossible: the Beheading of St John the Baptist is documented in Geneva from the early 19th century, so it would have been sold in his lifetime by General Darmagnac (which, in fact, he did with numerous pieces from his collection). In addition, the Beheading of St John the Baptist in Geneva has annotations from the 19th century on its reverse ("Jean Van Eyck / 1388 / nº 53 / [illegible] 1000 livres"), which do not appear on the panel acquired by Fritz Mayer van den Bergh. Furthermore, these annotations link its material history to that of the Ecce Agnus Dei in Belgrade, whose reverse bears the number 54, indicating that the two panels were part of the same sale, which, unfortunately, has not been identified.

In Geneva, the first known owner of the Beheading of St John the Baptist recorded in the archives of the museum that currently owns it was the painter and engraver François-Gabriel Fabry de Gex (1759-1841). In the same city, it later belonged to the traveler and collector Gustave Revilliod (1817-1890). From 1866, Revilliod allowed art lovers access to his home to enjoy his collection and, from 1877, he promoted, to house it, the construction of a museum which he named in memory of his mother: Musée Ariana. The museum opened its doors in 1884. By then, the Beheading of St John the Baptist by Juan de Flandes was part of its collection. Upon his death in 1890, Revilliod bequeathed the museum to the city of Geneva, on the condition that his former 'intendant et ami', Godefroy Sidler (1836-1910), would be its first curator. In the museum's catalogue published in 1905, Sidler dwells on the description of this panel, which, as a work by Hans Memling, was exhibited in the noblest space of the museum next to works by great masters, and states: 'Ce tableau est un des plus remarquables de l'Ariana' (This painting is one of the most remarkable of the Ariana). This attribution was superseded when, in 1929, Max J. Friedländer identified it as the work of Juan de Flandes. By then, the painting was still in the Musée Ariana.

In 1934, the Musée Ariana was incorporated into the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, which had opened its doors in 1910, at which point the Musée Ariana began to specialize in decorative arts. In 1940, in the context of the reorganisation of the respective collections, the Beheading of St John the Baptist must have been transferred from the Musée Ariana to the Musée d'art et d'histoire. According to information kindly provided by Mayte García, curator of this museum, it was then that the paintings were transferred from the Musée Ariana to the Musée d'art et d'histoire. In its new home, however, the Beheading of St John the Baptist did not initially enjoy the privileged position it had enjoyed until then. In 1937, Louis Gielly, responsible for the Fine Arts collections, had stated in an article on the reorganisation of the Musée Ariana's paintings that the Beheading of St John the Baptist was neither an Early-Netherlandish work nor a 15th century work, but a German imitation from the Romantic period. In fact, Gielly removed it from the Musée Ariana's galleries and put it in storage. It was only after his retirement in 1946 that his successor, Louis Hautecœur, in the new catalogue of the museum's collections published in 1948, restored a painting whose authenticity and attribution Friedländer had not doubted in 1929 and belonging to a group of which Friedrich Winkler had identified another panel in 1931 (the Revenge of Herodias in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp).

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 Beheading of St John the Baptist would be the upper panel of the right 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 right). It shows the moment immediately after the beheading, in which the imposing figure of the executioner, of a nobility belied by the crudeness of his face, extraordinarily realistic, deposits the head of the Precursor on the tray held by Salome, who immediately will take it to her mother. The coldness of the Idumean princess in the face of such a macabre situation contrasts with the disturbance evident on the face of the maiden who accompanies her. The episode takes place in the fortress of Machaerus, represented by Juan de Flandes with that vaguely ruinous air conducive to housing exotic birds that will often reappear in his work.

Locations

• 1499 - 1810

  monastery

  Miraflores Charterhouse, Burgos (Spain)

• 1810 - First half of the XIX^th c.

  plunder

  Jean-Barthélemy Darmagnac, Burdeos (France)

• First half of the XIX^th c.

  private collection

  François-Gabriel Fabry de Gex, Ginebra (Switzerland) *

• pre. 1884

  private collection

  Gustave Revilliod, Ginebra (Switzerland) *

• 1884 - 1940

  museum

  Musée Ariana, Ginebra (Switzerland)

• 1940 - present

  museum

  Musée d'art et d'histoire, Ginebra, Ginebra (Switzerland)