Rogier van der Weyden’s depiction of Saint Luke drawing the Virgin, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is more than just a meditation on the art of painting

I typically examine the expression on the face of Saint Luke on this masterpiece by Rogier van der Weyden at Boston’s Museum of Tremendous Arts. Van der Weyden is believed to have painted himself within the guise of Saint Luke. His face is concentrated and dispassionate (take a look at the even set of his mouth). It’s affected person.

Since Saint Luke is the patron saint of artists, I think about Van der Weyden extending that persistence as a lot to himself (it takes time to get a very good likeness) as to his topics. (Good luck making an attempt to maintain an unswaddled, feeding toddler nonetheless.)

However there may be additionally a touch — from the slight tilt of his head (the sort youngsters make after they see an lovable pet, however dialed proper again) — of tenderness. Tenderness and devotion. His perspective places me in thoughts of the thinker Simone Weil, who mentioned: “Consideration, taken to its highest diploma, is identical factor as prayer. It presupposes religion and love.”

Nicely, anyway. What a portray! “Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin” exists in a number of variations, however students suppose that this one, typically dated 1435-1440, is the unique. Within the different variations, the artist appears to have been working from an already settled composition, whereas right here there may be proof of alterations within the under-drawing. (It takes time to get it proper!)

The portray’s theme was pricey to artists, due to the legend that Luke the Evangelist was not solely the creator of a lot of the New Testomony, but additionally the painter of the primary pictures of the Virgin Mary. Luke subsequently grew to become the patron saint of painters’ guilds. To attain grasp standing in these guilds, artists would typically paint variations of Luke depicting the Virgin.

In Van der Weyden’s model (the perfect by anybody), Luke is drawing with a stylus, so he’s unencumbered by portray paraphernalia. What he’s doing may be very targeted, very direct. Past the three figures within the foreground, there may be an enclosed backyard. Two figures look out over the far wall to a city on a river and a distant panorama.

One might fill pages simply naming the issues in it, each close to and much. Notably mesmerizing is Van der Weyden’s rendering of the gold brocade on the silk fabric hanging behind and above the Virgin. The artist’s ability (the gold thread displays extra mild within the elements of the textile which might be nearer to the solar) is simply flabbergasting, because it was little question supposed to be.

Van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck, together with Robert Campin (also called the Grasp of Flemalle), inaugurated a profound transformation in picture-making within the cities of the previous lowlands (the Netherlands) that have been managed by Philip the Good of Burgundy. They proceeded empirically, straight observing how mild and colour behave in area, somewhat than by synthesizing remark and the principles of linear perspective that have been being developed by their friends in Italy.

Whereas the likes of Masaccio in Italy have been portray frescoes, Van Eyck and Van der Weyden had mastered the lustrousness of oil paint. They used skinny, clear glazes that filtered mild mirrored off underlying layers, creating astonishingly lifelike illusions of texture and environment. However they weren’t “realists” within the fashionable sense. They have been extra bold than that.

They cunningly built-in Christian symbolism into pictures that have been spatially unified and in step with actuality. Right here, for instance, Adam and Eve — whose unique sin the toddler Jesus was born to redeem — seem not in a separate panel or a definite a part of this image, however, extra plausibly, as a carving within the throne on which the Virgin sits. Mary’s place on the step of the throne, in the meantime, suggests her humility, simply because the enclosed backyard symbolizes her purity.

Van der Weyden’s composition bears a hanging resemblance to Van Eyck’s “The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin” within the Louvre. Van Eyck’s image, most likely painted a number of years earlier, is about in an identical architectural area with an identical view out to an enclosed backyard with a metropolis, river and panorama past.

All the pieces in each photos is about connecting the divine and the on a regular basis. In Van der Weyden’s “Saint Luke,” I really like the best way the toddler Jesus’s ft and fingers are flexed as he smiles, as if in a euphoria of anticipation. Discover, too, the Virgin’s calm as she provides her breast. It matches Luke’s affected person remark. Luke is patron saint of healers in addition to artists, and the breastfeeding Mary (sometimes called Maria Lactans) additionally symbolizes the Mom Church, which was presupposed to take care of the hungry, the sick — for everybody.

So whereas the portray is a meditation on the artwork of portray (or drawing, on this case), it could additionally open onto one thing even deeper — one thing to do with paying consideration and devotion, with therapeutic, with giving. “Consideration,” wrote Weil, “is the rarest and purist type of generosity.”