Hugo van der Goes and the Netherlandish Drawings

This project aims to examine and to catalogue all the Netherlandish drawings influenced by Hugo van der Goes (Ghent ca 1440-1482 Rode Klooster, near Brussels). Among the known artists to whom some of these drawings are attributed were the Master of Mary of Burgundy, the Master of the Joseph Sequence, the Master of the Story of Tobit, the Master of the Lucy Legend, the Master of the Ursula Legend and the Master of 1499. Most of the drawings, however, have not been attributed with certainty to any artist. In works of unspecific style, in sketchy copies or in clumsy models for glass roundels it has even proved difficult to decide whether they are of North- or South-Netherlandish origin. The planned project will attempt to bring order to the current confusion. The kind of approach used will depend on the specific questions and problems raised by each individual drawing. With some sheets the main focus will be on style and material analysis, with others on iconographic investigation, with others on water-mark and provenance research. The on-site examination of the original drawings has already been carried out by the Corpus project (see below). Unexpected discoveries, however, may make new on-site inspection essential. The main task of this project is to analyse the data already collected, to process the technical literature and to engage in a thorough investigation of collection and auction catalogues. At the same time co-operation with glass painting experts, paper historians and, in particular, materials scientists will bring new indications of the temporal and geographical identifications of drawings (e.g. by means of water-mark radiographies, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy etc.). Apart from style and technology the function of each drawing will be examined; this is of particular importance in the analysis of drawings for glass roundels. Questions about function will tie in with more general investigations into the history of ideas and the socio-historical circumstances which determined the choice, use and diffusion of certain subjects. The proposed project will act in close co-operation with Fritz Koreny`s research project, The Corpus of German and Netherlandish Drawings, 1350-1500. Erwin Pokorny has worked in that Corpus project for the last six years, and has built up a photographic database which will be at the disposal of his Van der Goes project.

This project deals with drawings by Hugo van der Goes and his followers in the late 15th and early 16th century Netherlands, focussing on their relationship to painted glass roundels. On-site examinations of drawings and roundels were made in Amsterdam, Berlin, Boston, Braunschweig, Bruges, Dresden, London, Munich, Oxford, Rotterdam, Vienna, St Petersburg, Vienna, Windsor, Washington, and Weimar. 75 of the almost 120 drawings which were tentatively assigned to the Van der Goes group have been examined so far. Some of these were rejected. The project`s initial intention of attributing a number of drawings to specific anonymous masters in the circle of Van der Goes had to be abandoned since closer analysis of drawings and paintings attributed to those anonymous masters, such as for example the Master of the Tobias Legend, or the Master of the Joseph Series, resulted in the discovery that their oeuvres were the work of more than one individual. No drawing which is attributed to Hugo van der Goes himself can be linked to a stained glass painting. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford owns a pen drawing showing Joseph and Potiphar`s wife which is obviously a design for a glass roundel. Some years ago parts of this drawing were attributed to Van der Goes (Altniederländische Zeichnungen von Jan van Eyck bis Hieronymus Bosch, Antwerp 2002, Nr. 32, erroneously identified as Joseph and Asenath). The recently discovered watermark, however, is not known before 1483, and therefore provides an argument against this attribution (by contrast, the watermark of the chiaroscuro drawing `Christ on the Cross` in Windsor Castle can be dated to the 1470s, and supports an attribution to Van der Goes). Although Van der Goes`s large chiaroscuro drawing `Jacob and Rachel` at Christ Church, Oxford, is not a design for glass painting, some motifs were repeated in designs for glass roundels; thus, it was indirectly used as a model for such designs. A close examination of the paper allowed us to reconstruct the original format, and revealed a partially removed scene in the background showing Jacob`s ladder. This became a favorite roundel motif as well. Since designs for painted glass roundels were generally drawn just with pen and ink, the function of a number of circular chiaroscuro drawings, which display similar subjects, compositions, and diameters to ones known from glass roundels, remains unclear. They could have been sold as models for glass painters, or as autonomous art works. Hitherto no literary or visual source has appeared to explain the function of these chiaroscuro drawings. The second part of the Van der Goes project, which will continue until the summer of 2010, will we hope provide new insights.