A Flemish Primitive…

Rogier Van der Weyden
Diptych of the Crucifixion, c. 1463-1464
Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

It sometimes feels like the Renaissance is owned by the Italians but I have always had a soft spot for the northern painters; particularly the Flemish masters with their brilliant glazing technique & attention to detail. Having said that, this painting, while containing little of the detail that so often shines in early Northern Renaissance works, has always been a favorite of mine because of it's unusually minimal & highly stylized formal elements. The framing of the figures in each panel with a flat, undraped panel of brilliant vermilion cloth, broken only by the creased grid of fold lines is quite dramatic. The normally vivid coloring of Saint John & Mary's robes, red & ultramarine respectively, have been bleached out to create a theatrical highlighting of the figurative components in the overall composition. There is possibly a slight stylistic connection here to Fra Angelico's frescoes in the monk's cells at the monastery of San Marco in Florence ~ not too much of a surprise since Van der Weyden traveled to Italy in 1450 on a pilgrimage  & would have most likely seen the frescoes. This could explain the fresco-like tones of the robes & simplicity of composition as well as the small number of figures: Flemish paintings tended to have been more densely populated. I myself have always thought the diptych had an almost Spanish look to it. All of this is, of course, interesting but the primary reason I find this work fascinating is this ~ every single time I look at it, a little voice in my head asks: "Where the hell is the third panel?" For some reason my gut repeatedly says to me that there should be another panel on the right. I've done a pathetically small bit of research on this & most historians believe it to be a two panel work & some actually feel that the two panels may have once been the side wings to a carved central panel which makes even less sense as Mary's robes continue over to the crucifixion painting. Obviously these paintings were meant to be side by side but I continue to think there was once another panel on the right. 

Still, whether or not there's a missing right side, isn't it a striking work?