Page 165 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

After Isabella's death in 1504, Sittow evidently for the chapel of the University of Salamanca. He 4 6
returned to his native Reval to straighten out a established residence in Palencia in 1508 and Pedro Berruguete
matter of his inheritance (Trizna 1976, 39). In began work on the main altarpiece of the church Spanish, c. 1450-0. 1504
1514 he traveled to Denmark, where he painted a of San Lazaro in that city (four panels of which are
portrait of King Christian n (Statens Museum for now in the National Gallery of Art). In 1509 Juan THE PROPHET DAVID
Kunst, Copenhagen). In 1516 he was in Marines, de Flandes contracted to paint the immense altar-
painting for Margaret of Austria and the future piece of the Cathedral of Palencia; he was still c. 1480-1490
oil on panel
Charles v. His last years were spent in Reval, working on that project when he died in 1518 98.4 x 59.1 (j8 /4 x 2^/4)
3
where he died in 1525 or 1526. (Vandevivere 1967, 35). references: Lainez 1943, 46; Post 1947, 85, 86;
Sittow's work on Isabella's altarpiece is docu- Juan de Flandes also painted three of the panels Angulo Iniguez 1954, 12:89-90
mented in a 1516 inventory of the panels made exhibited here. Albrecht Diirer, who saw the
when they were in the collection of Margaret of panels in Margaret's collection on his trip to the Church of Santa Eulalia, Paredes de Nava
Austria. The Ascension of Christ (Earl of Yar- Netherlands in 1520-1521, admired the small
borough, Brocklesby Park, Habrough) and the paintings for their "purity and excellence," quali- Pedro Berruguete was born in Paredes de Nava,
Assumption of the Virgin are there attributed to ties still prized today. Scene after scene quietly a town northeast of Palencia, around 1450. We
"la main de Michel" (the hand of Michel). Sittow unfolds before us, picked out with the meticulous know nothing definite about his early life and
painted for Margaret and may well have been at brushstrokes of a painter completely at ease training, but his style indicates that he may have
her court in Malines to help with the inventory with the miniature format. The figures move with served an apprenticeship in the Low Countries
and thus identify panels that he himself had exe- studied serenity through simple architectural around 1470. He may have traveled from there
cuted (Sanchez Canton 1930,115). settings (Supper at Emmaus) or against atmos- directly to Urbino in the company of Joos van
Juan de Flandes may have been trained as a pheric landscapes (Assumption of the Virgin) that Gent, who worked between 1473 and 1475 for
miniaturist in his native Flanders; however, when sometimes reflect the rugged austere landscape Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. For the
Isabella died in 1504 and his tenure as court artist of Isabella's Castile (Temptation of Christ in the studiolo of the ducal palace in Urbino, Berruguete
ended, he never again worked on such a small Desert). s.s. painted allegories of the Liberal Arts, and com-
scale. In 1505 he was painting the main altarpiece pleted with Joos van Gent a series of twenty-eight

164 CIRCA 1492