1440-1482 Flemish Hugo van der Goes Galleries Hugo became a member of the painters' guild of Ghent as a master in 1467. In 1468 he was involved in the decoration of the town of Bruges in celebration of the marriage between Charles the Bold and Margaret of York and he provided heraldic decorations for Charles's joyeuse entr??e to Ghent in 1469 and again in 1472. He was elected dean of the Ghent guild in 1473 or 1474. In 1475, or some years later, Hugo entered Rooklooster, a monastery near Brussels belonging to the Windesheim Congregation, and professed there as a frater conversus. He continued to paint, and remained at Rooklooster until his death in 1482 or 1483. In 1480 he was called to the town of Leuven to evaluate the Justice Scenes left unfinished by the painter Dieric Bouts on his death in 1475. Shortly after this, Hugo, returning with other members of his monastery from a trip to Cologne, fell into a state of suicidal gloom, declaring himself to be damned. After returning to Rooklooster, Hugo recovered from his illness, and died there. His time at Rooklooster is recorded in the chronicle of his fellow monk, Gaspar Ofhuys. A report by a German physician, Hieronymus M??nzer, from 1495, according to which a painter from Ghent was driven to melancholy by the attempt to equal the Ghent Altarpiece, may refer to Hugo. His most famous surviving work is the Portinari Triptych (Uffizi, Florence), an altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence by Tommaso Portinari, the manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank. The triptych arrived in Florence in 1483, apparently some years after its completion by van der Goes. The largest Netherlandish work that could be seen in Florence, it was greatly praised. Giorgio Vasari in his Vite of 1550 referred to it as by "Ugo d'Anversa" ("Hugo of Antwerp"). This the sole documentation for its authorship by Hugo; other works are attributed to him based on stylistic comparison with the altarpiece. Hugo appears to have left a large number of drawings, and either from these or the paintings themselves followers made large numbers of copies of compositions that have not survived from his own hand. A drawing of Jacob and Rachel preserved at Christ Church, Oxford is thought to be a rare surviving autograph drawing.  Related Paintings of Hugo van der Goes :. | The Portinari Altarpiece | The Adoration of the Shepherds | Monforte Altarpiece | A Benedictine Monk | Calvary Triptych |
Related Artists:
Per Wilhelm Cedergren
painted Winter picture from Dalaro Skans in 1856
Jean Delville
Belgian Symbolist Painter, 1867-1953 Belgian painter, decorative artist and writer. He studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, with Jean-Franeois Portaels and the Belgian painter Joseph Stallaert (1825-1903). Among his fellow students were Eugene Laermans, Victor Rousseau and Victor Horta. From 1887 he exhibited at L Essor, where in 1888 Mother (untraced), which depicts a woman writhing in labour, caused a scandal. Although his drawings of the metallurgists working in the Cockerill factories near Charleroi were naturalistic, from 1887 he veered towards Symbolism: the drawing of Tristan and Isolde (1887; Brussels, Musees Royaux B.-A.), in its lyrical fusion of the two bodies, reveals the influence of Richard Wagner. Circle of the Passions (1889), inspired by Dante Alighieri Divina commedia, was burnt c. 1914; only drawings remain (Brussels, Musees Royaux B.-A.). Jef Lambeaux copied it for his relief Human Passions (1890-1900; Brussels, Parc Cinquantenaire). Delville became associated with Josephin Peladan, went to live in Paris and exhibited at the Salons de la Rose+Croix, created there by Peladan (1892-5). A devoted disciple of Peladan, he had his tragedies performed in Brussels and in 1895 painted his portrait (untraced). He exhibited Dead Orpheus (1893; Brussels, Gillion-Crowet priv. col.), an idealized head, floating on his lyre towards reincarnation, and Angel of Splendour (1894; Brussels, Gillion-Crowet priv. col.), a painting of great subtlety.
Bartolomeo Montagna
Orzinuovi ca 1450-Vicenza 1523 .Painter and draughtsman. Montagna is first documented in 1459 in Vicenza as a minor and, still a minor, in 1467. In 1469 he is recorded as a resident of Venice. In 1474 he was living in Vicenza where, in 1476 and 1478, he was commissioned to paint altarpieces (now lost). He has variously been considered a pupil of Andrea Mantegna (Vasari), Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Alvise Vivarini, Domenico Morone and Vittore Carpaccio. While none of these artists, except Carpaccio, was irrelevant to Montagna's stylistic formation, scholars agree that Giovanni Bellini was the primary influence on his art. He may have worked in Bellini's shop around 1470. Several of Montagna's paintings of the Virgin and Child in which the influence of Antonello da Messina is especially marked (e.g. two in Belluno, Mus. Civ.; London, N.G., see Davies, no. 802) are likely to be close in date to Antonello's sojourn in Venice (1475-6); they are therefore best considered Montagna's earliest extant works (Gilbert, 1967) rather than as an unexplained parenthesis around 1485 between two Bellinesque phases (Puppi, 1962). These early paintings appear to be followed by others in which the geometrically rounded forms derived from Antonello become more slender and sharper-edged. Their figures are imbued with a deeply felt, individual humanity, sometimes austere and minatory, sometimes tender. Among them are some larger-scale works,