![The Virgin among the Virgins (ca. 1509) ”Oil on panel, 118 x 212 cm” [Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen, France] -- Gerard David (Flemish; ca. 1460 - 1523) | by La Música en La Pintura - Music in Painting.](http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52617098662_9caae455f5.jpg)
The Virgin among the Virgins (ca. 1509) ”Oil on panel, 118 x 212 cm” [Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen, France] -- Gerard David (Flemish; ca. 1460 - 1523)
Trained in Haarlem, the city where Gérard de Saint-Jean worked, then well received in Bruges, Gérard David became one of the great painters, extending the tradition of Hans Memling, who died in 1494: in 1484 he became a free master of the guild of painters he married in 1496 Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the guild of goldsmiths. The altarpiece of the Virgo inter Virgines was donated in 1509 to the Carmelite convent of Sion in Bruges.
Mary sits enthroned between two musical angels with the Child shelling a bunch of grapes, a Eucharistic symbol. She receives the homage of an assembly of martyrs with childish charm, recognizable by their attributes treated in precious ornaments: from left to right, Dorothée with a basket of roses (the lawyer Théophile had made her the promise to convert if she sent her roses and apples from the garden of Christ), Catherine of Alexandria with her crown adorned with the wheel of torture (which broke miraculously instead of killing her), Agnès, a lamb at her feet (the saint died at 14 years old for having refused to marry a pagan), behind her, an anonymous woman, then Fausta with a saw (instrument of her martyrdom), Apolline with pliers (which were used to pull out her teeth), Godelive with a scarf (which her husband used to strangle her), Cécile next to an organ (she sang the Lord's praises to the end), Beard with a headdress adorned with a tower (her father locked her in it) and Lucie holding her eyes (which some say were torn out of her and others es that she would have ripped herself off). A man, at the top left, joins in this holy conversation, opposite a woman in a white cornette: it is the painter Gérard David himself and probably his wife, Cornelia.
The saints stand out against a neutral background with a plastic force that evokes a bas relief but is enlivened by the graceful emergence of the faces and the beauty of the materials. In this dense set, the virgin with accentuated verticalism unusual for the painter and of great statuary solidity, seems to respond to the Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo who arrived in the city in 1506.
Source: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen,
mbarouen.fr/fr/oeuvres/la-vierge-entre-les-vierges
The Virgin among the Virgins (ca. 1509) ”Oil on panel, 118 x 212 cm” [Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen, France] -- Gerard David (Flemish; ca. 1460 - 1523)
Trained in Haarlem, the city where Gérard de Saint-Jean worked, then well received in Bruges, Gérard David became one of the great painters, extending the tradition of Hans Memling, who died in 1494: in 1484 he became a free master of the guild of painters he married in 1496 Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the guild of goldsmiths. The altarpiece of the Virgo inter Virgines was donated in 1509 to the Carmelite convent of Sion in Bruges.
Mary sits enthroned between two musical angels with the Child shelling a bunch of grapes, a Eucharistic symbol. She receives the homage of an assembly of martyrs with childish charm, recognizable by their attributes treated in precious ornaments: from left to right, Dorothée with a basket of roses (the lawyer Théophile had made her the promise to convert if she sent her roses and apples from the garden of Christ), Catherine of Alexandria with her crown adorned with the wheel of torture (which broke miraculously instead of killing her), Agnès, a lamb at her feet (the saint died at 14 years old for having refused to marry a pagan), behind her, an anonymous woman, then Fausta with a saw (instrument of her martyrdom), Apolline with pliers (which were used to pull out her teeth), Godelive with a scarf (which her husband used to strangle her), Cécile next to an organ (she sang the Lord's praises to the end), Beard with a headdress adorned with a tower (her father locked her in it) and Lucie holding her eyes (which some say were torn out of her and others es that she would have ripped herself off). A man, at the top left, joins in this holy conversation, opposite a woman in a white cornette: it is the painter Gérard David himself and probably his wife, Cornelia.
The saints stand out against a neutral background with a plastic force that evokes a bas relief but is enlivened by the graceful emergence of the faces and the beauty of the materials. In this dense set, the virgin with accentuated verticalism unusual for the painter and of great statuary solidity, seems to respond to the Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo who arrived in the city in 1506.
Source: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen,
mbarouen.fr/fr/oeuvres/la-vierge-entre-les-vierges