Jan van Eyck and Workshop: “The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos”, ca. 1441–43. Oil on panel 18 5/8 × 24 1/8 inches. The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: Michael Bodycomb.
The Charterhouse of Bruges at Frick Collection For the first time in twenty-four years and only the second time in their history, two masterpieces of early Netherlandish painting commissioned by the Carthusian monk Jan Vos will be reunited in a special exhibition at The Frick Collection. September 18, 2018, through January 13, 2019.]]>
Source: Frick Collection
These works—the Frick’s “Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos”, commissioned from Jan van Eyck and completed by his workshop, and “The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos” (known as the Exeter Virgin, after its first recorded owner), painted by Petrus Christus and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin—are shown with a selection of objects that place them in the rich monastic context for which they were created. The exhibition pays tribute to Vos as a patron and offers insight into the role such images played in shaping monastic life in fifteenth-century Bruges. “The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos” is on view in the museum’s Cabinet Gallery and is organized by Emma Capron, the Frick’s 2016–18 Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow.
Carthusian Patronage in Renaissance Bruges
The Carthusians belonged to one of the most austere monastic orders of the late Middle Ages, removed entirely from the secular world and committed to a life of solitude and silence spent mostly within the confines of their cells. These ascetic ideals belied a complex attitude toward ornament and images. While specific images were cited as distracting luxuries in the order’s regulations, others were valued as important tools for meditation, and the Carthusians’ monasteries, known as charterhouses, became rich repositories of painted panels, illuminated manuscripts, funerary monuments, altarpieces, and other fine works of art.
In April 1441, the Carthusian monk Jan Vos was elected prior of the Charterhouse of Genadedal, an important monastery near Bruges that was patronized by the dukes of Burgundy and the city’s foremost patrician families. Soon after his arrival in Bruges, Vos commissioned “The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos” from Jan van Eyck, who laid out the painting’s composition. Following the artist’s death in June 1441, the panel was completed by an unknown member of his workshop. Several years later, Vos commissioned the closely related “Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos” from Petrus Christus.
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