Resumen de Une image et sa descendance: échos méconnus de la "Madone au chanoine Van der Paele" de Jean van Eyck
An Image and its Descendants: Little Known Echoes of Jan Van Eyck's "Madonna with Canon Van der Paele".
The present article studies several unrecognized aspects of the artistic descendants of Jan van Eyck's "Madonna with Canon Van der Paele" (1436). Probably in the years before 1500, a painter from Lubeck, Bernt Notke, borrowed from van Eyck the sophisticated design of the majolica pavement, on which his personages are placed. He used it in a "Mass of Saint Gregory", destroyed in 1942, a monumental composition in which several figures could also have been inspired by Jan van Eyck's epitaph-panel. In the 1530-1540s, a painter from Bruges close to Gerard David repeated in a modernized form the Saint Donatian from Jan van Eyck's panel. He is represented in front of a landscape on the right wing of a litlle known triptych in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Finally in the 19th century, a Belgian neo-Gothic painter (?), perhaps a forger, painted a version of the "Madonna eith Canon Van der Paele" in triptych form. The image emphasizes the divine character of papal authority. The descendants of van Eyck's masterpiece were rich and varied and constitute in themselves a chapter of art history.
