Fresh Perspectives on Hugo van der Goes’ Portrait of Margaret of Denmark and the Trinity Altarpiece

Abstract

The Trinity Altarpiece by the Netherlandish artist Hugo van der Goes is a little-discussed signifier of a sophisticated court culture and a specifically Scottish Renaissance. In this article the double-sided panel depicting the commissioner, Provost Edward Bonkil, Queen Margaret of Denmark and Saint George, is considered afresh. By situating the Scottish court within the wider context of courtly cultures in Denmark and Burgundy, it identifies a network of powerful individuals with political and religious links to the Queen. Close analysis of the panel brings to light chivalric ideals, the importance of diplomatic and trade relationships with Flanders and the presence of the ‘devotio moderna’ in Scottish religious practice. New evidence is presented which allows a suggestion to be made regarding the identity of St George and the subject of the lost central panel.

Notes

1 The Ghent-born artist flourished between 1467 and 1482. For his life and works see Elisabeth Dhanens, Hugo van der Goes (Brussels, 1998).

2 Colin Thompson and Lorne Campbell, Hugo van der Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh (London, 1974).

3 Norman Macdougal, James III (Edinburgh, 2016), p. 78.

4 Ranald Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, The Edinburgh History of Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 397-421.

5 S.B. Chandler, ‘An Italian Life of Margaret, Queen of James III’, The Scottish Historical Review 32 (1953), pp. 52-7.

6 Amy Victoria Hayes, ‘The Late Medieval Scottish Queens’ (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2016), p. 266.

7 Lorne Campbell, ‘Edward Bonkil: A Scottish Patron of Hugo van der Goes’, The Burlington Magazine 126 (1984), pp. 265-74.

8 Graeme Small, ‘The Scottish Court in the Fifteenth Century. A view from Burgundy’, in Werner Paravicini (ed.), La cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe. Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle culturel; Actes du colloque international tenu à Paris (Ostfildern, 2007), pp. 457-74, p. 463. For the longstanding Burgundian influence in Scotland, see Jonathan Spangler, ‘Aulic Spaces Transplanted: The design and Layout of a Franco-Burgundian Court in a Scottish Palace’, The Court Historian 14 (2009), pp. 49-62. See also James M. Murray, Bruges, the Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390 (Cambridge, 2009) and Jessica Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds: Between Ascetic Idealism and Urban Networks in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 6 (2014), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.1.

9 Andrea Thomas, Glory and Honour: The Renaissance in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2013), pp. 81-5. Artists from the Ghent-Bruges school, including Simon Bening, related by marriage to Hugo van der Goes, and Gerald Horenbout, produced Books of Hours for the Scottish court.

10 Rosalind K. Marshall, Scottish Queens 1034–1714 (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 57-69.The chapel was demolished in 1848 to make way for what is now Platform 2 of Waverley Station. The apse was reconstructed and is now located in Chalmers Close.

11 Helen Sarah Brown, Lay Piety in later Medieval Lothian, c. 1306–c. 1513 (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2006).

12 Alistair A. MacDonald. ‘The chapel of Restalrig: Royal Folly or Venerable Shrine?’, in A.J.R Houwen, A. A. Macdonald and S. Mapstone (eds), A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late-Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Leuven, 2000), pp. 27-59.

13 Macdougal, James III (Edinburgh, 2016), p. 250.

14 Rachel Gibbons, ‘Medieval Queenship: An Overview [review of three recent titles, Women and Sovereignty, Medieval Queenship, and Letters of the Queens of England]’, Reading Medieval Studies 21 (1995), pp. 97-107, p. 99.

15 Thomas, Glory and Honour, p. 85.

16 See: https://www.rct.uk/collection/conservation/the-trinity-panels-by-hugo-van-der-goes/alterations-to-the-painting [last accessed 20.04.2019].

17 Marshall, Scottish Queens, p. 75.

18 See Hugo van der Goes, The Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/403260/the-trinity-altarpiece-panels. See also Palaces of the Early Stuart Kings, Simon.Thurley, www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/cultural-revolution-palaces-of-the-early-stuart-kings/. Thurley shows that Oatlands was very much a feminine space.

19 Marshall, Scottish Queens, p. 77. Marshall consults the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland.

20 Marshall, Scottish Queens, p. 75.

21 See the Peterborough Lapidary, MS Peterborough Cathedral 33; and Francis Young, A Medieval Book of Magical Stones: the Peterborough Lapidary (Cambridge, 2016).

22 R.A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl-Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discovery (Philadelphia, 1998) p. 258. Pope Pius II, following his journey to Scotland in 1458, named pearls as significant exports along with hides, wool and salted fish.

23 Chandler, ‘An Italian Life of Margaret’, p. 56.

24 See Rogier van der Weyden’s Sforza triptych c. 1460 for visual similarities. Milan was renowned for its armour, worn by Anthony of Burgundy for example. Christian I of Denmark, Margaret’s father, wrote to Galeazzo Maria Sforza to arrange a visit to Milan to buy armour in 1475. See Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 182-4.

25 Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland 1424–1513 (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 81.

26 Huw Grange, ‘Preacher, Dragon-Slayer, Soldier, Elephant: George, the Miles Christii in Two Late Medieval French Versions of the George and the Dragon Story’, Reading Medieval Studies 37 (2011), pp. 15-25.

27 Steve Boardman, John Reuben Davies and Eila Williams (eds), Saint’s Cults in the Celtic World (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 157.

28 Boardman, Davies and Williams, Saint’s Cults, p. 158.

29 The figure cannot be confused with St Michael as the defining visual details, wings, which show Michael as an archangel, are not present in this work.

30 Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood, p. 81.

31 Linda Clark (ed.) The Fifteenth Century, VI: Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 41.

32 Jessica Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds: Between Ascetic Idealism and Urban Networks in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 6 (2014), pp. 21-22.

33 D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325–1520 (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 400.

34 Marshall, Scottish Queens, p. 77.

35 See E. de la Coste, Anselme Adorne, Sire de Corthuy, Pèlerin de Terre-Sainte (Brussels, 1855) [available as a Project Gutenberg e-book (2010): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30949/30949-h/30949-h.htm].

36 Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood, p. 49; Macdougal, James III, pp. 252-9; Alan Macquarrie, ‘Anselm Adornes of Bruges: Traveller in the East and Friend of James III’, The Innes Review 3 (1982), p. 17.

37 Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, ‘“Capell nuncapato Jherusalem noviter Brugis”: The Adornes Family of Bruges and Holy Land Devotion’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 39 (2008), pp. 1041-64, p. 1043.

38 Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’ Adoration of the Shepherds’, p. 11.

39 Macdougal, James III, p. 257.

40 Macquarrie, ‘Anselm Adornes of Bruges’, p. 21.

41 For Cornelis Tielman see J.Galliard, Recherches sur l’Eglise Jérusalem à Bruges (Bruges, 1843). pp. 9-10.

42 Maximiliaan P.J. Maartens, ‘New Information on Petrus Christus’s Biography and the Patronage of his Brussels “Lamentation”’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 20 (1990-1991). p. 9. Maartens draws attention to the abbreviation JHE being repeatedly used in documents referring to the Jeruzalemkerk. See also Kirkland-Ives, “Capell nuncapato Jherusalem noviter Brugis”, pp. 1056-7.

43 Jacques Heers and Georgette de Groër (eds)., Itinéraire d'Anselme Adorno en Terre Sainte (1470­–1471) (Paris, 1978). See also Maartens, ‘New Information on Petrus Christus’s Biography’, pp. 8-18. Maartens identifies a portrait of Adornes through study of iconographic details relating to Jerusalem in Petrus Christus’s Lamentation.

44 Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds’, p. 10.

45 Susanne Franke, ‘Between Status and Spiritual Salvation: The Portinari Triptych and Tomasso Portinari’s Concern for his Memoria’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 33 (2007-2008), p. 123.

46 Noël Geirnaert, The archives of the Adornes family and the Jerusalem Foundation in Bruges, 2 vols (Bruges, 1987-1989). I am grateful to Noël Geirnaert for discussing this with me.

47 Jill Harrison, ‘A Pious and Popular Queen’, research presented at the Transcultural Portrætter seminar, National Portrait Gallery, London, 28 April 2018.

48 My thanks to Emeritus Professor Diana Norman for pointing out the significance of the necklace to the Trinity.

49 Franke, ‘Between Status and Spiritual Salvation’, pp. 133-4.

50 Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds’, p. 8

51 R. R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968), pp. x-xii.

52 Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds’, pp. 6-9. See also S. D. Mederos, ‘Devotion and Observance - A devotio moderna construction of Saint Bridget of Sweden in Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Ms.114’ (PhD diss., University of Lincoln, 2016), pp. 32-52; and Bernhard Ridderbos, ‘Objects and Questions’, in Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren and Henk van Veen (eds), Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research (Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 4-173.

53 Christina. A. Strauch, ‘Royal Connections: The Scottish Observants and the House of Stewart’, The Innes Review 58 (Autumn 2007), pp. 158-61. Strauch notes that the first members of the Order came from Zeeland and settled in the West Bow adjacent to Edinburgh Castle c. 1457.

54 Hay, Scottish Queens, p. 99.

55 Strauch, ‘Royal Connections’, p. 167.

56 Campbell and Thompson, Hugo van der Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh, p. 83.

57 Campbell and Thompson, Hugo van der Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh, p. 81.

58 The Adoration of the Shepherds, Berlin Nativity; The Adoration of the Kings, Monforte Altarpiece, both in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum, Berlin; The Portinari Altarpiece, Uffizi Gallery, Florence; The Adoration of the Magi, State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

59 Manuela Beer, Iris Metje, Karen Straub, Saskia Werth and Moritz Woelk (eds), The Magi: Legend, Art and Cult (Cologne, 2015), pp. 21-22.

60 C.A Briggs, ‘The Virgin Birth of Our Lord’, The American Journal of Theology 12 (1908), pp. 189-210, p. 201. For adherents of the Devotio Moderna, the concepts of the Trinity and the Virgin birth were not a cause for academic dispute, accepted spiritually and personally rather than known academically.

61 Boardman, Davies and Williams (eds), Saint’s Cults in the Celtic World, pp. 160-179.

62 Boardman, Davies and Williams (eds), Saint’s Cults in the Celtic World, p. 174.

63 Boardman, Davies and Williams (eds), Saint’s Cults in the Celtic World, p. 167.

64 Beer et al. (eds), The Magi, Legend, Art and Cult, p. 21 and pp. 299-300. See Altarpiece with the Adoration of the Magi, The Master of Frankfurt, c. 1520 now in the National Museum of Copenhagen.

65 Boardman, Davies and Williams (eds), Saint’s Cults in the Celtic World, p. 167.

66 My sincere thanks to Charles Burnett, retired Ross Herald Extraordinary, for sharing his research on Margaret’s emblems.

67 Thomas, Glory and Honour p. 85.

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Jill Harrison

Jill Harrison is a Lecturer in Art History and Research Associate at the Open University. Her research focuses on the political and economic aspects of Trecento Italian art with emphasis on Giotto’s lost secular schemes. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Art and Experience in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, 2018). She is currently undertaking further work on Hugo van der Goes’ Trinity Altarpiece in the context of a Scottish Renaissance.