Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Rogier van der Weyden
Netherlandish; 15th-century
Antwerp, Belgium: Royal Museum of Fine Arts
88%
The Seven Sacraments. 1440-1445. Oil on three panels
This altarpiece sacrifices some compositional integration to achieve its stunning recessional effect, which is mostly for the best but becomes a liability when the crowding figures in the two wing panels come to distract — as they sometimes but not always do — from the way the almost unimaginably open space of the cathedral is simultaneously gulping Christ backwards and hurling him out towards the front of the image. This back-and-forth, which somehow leaves the crucified savior locked inside a perfect stillness, is the triptych's core visual dynamic: the mourning Maries at the base of the cross are tossed around by it, the whole shape of the altarpiece seems to be its emergent property, the many figures cram the outer reaches of the image as if to protect themselves from its force. Apart from this, worth mentioning are the trompe l'oeil archways that rim each of the three panels. They're an indication of the triumph of pictorial art over sculpture and its related forms in the 15th century. Though they somewhat detract from the painting's overall perspectival romp, they're extremely interesting as artifacts of painting's historical coming-into-prominence. (TFS, 2026)
Antwerp, Belgium: Royal Museum of Fine Arts
84%
Diptych of Phillippe de Croy. 1460. Oil on panel
There’s not a single old Netherlandish portrait painting that isn’t at the very least very good: this was the invention of placing figures on grounds in continuous depicted space, after all, and the radicality is there to be felt in even the most pedestrian piece by some “anonieme meester.” The really great portraits, however, set themselves apart by not merely doing the figure-and-ground thing, but by doing it in a way that signals some sort of reflection on the tendentiousness and the limits of this gesture — of its fragility and its contingent nature. This picture by van der Weyden approaches greatness, even if it doesn’t quite reach it. The wall behind de Croy is, through its darkness, ever so slightly hatched and gridded, such that the sitter’s adamant features and solid cloak push out into space only after a bit of jockeying. But because of this struggle de Croy seems that much surer and more situated. Though initially, as the right half of a diptych, he would have been facing an image of the Virgin and Child, here his gaze off the left of the panel emphasizes his almost tragic boundedness within it. The companion panel lives in San Marino, CA. (TFS, 2026)