1045. A CANON AND HIS PATRON SAINT.
Gerard David (Early Flemish: 1460-1523).
This remarkable painter, who has been rediscovered in recent years by the researches of Mr. Weale, was born in Oudewater, a small town in the south of Holland. He settled in Bruges in 1483, passing through the various grades of the Painters' Guild in that town, until he became its Dean in 1501. He was also connected with the Guild of Illuminators of Bruges, and with that of painters at Antwerp. In 1496 he married the daughter of a Bruges goldsmith. In 1509 he painted and presented to the Carmelites of Sion at Bruges a beautiful altar-piece, in which he introduced his own portrait in the background to the right, and that of his wife to the left. This altar-piece was sold by the Carmelites in 1785, and is now in the Museum of Rouen. Other important works by the painter are now in the Academy at Bruges, and in the church of St. Basil in that town there is a triptych by him. The present picture and No. 1432 were also painted for a church in the same place. David's works have often been confounded with those of Memlinc, and it is impossible to give them higher praise. He was a fine colourist. His faces show that he was an adequate interpreter of character. The details he executed with the utmost minuteness and skill; and he is remarkable also for his careful and truthful landscapes. In 1508 David entered a religious brotherhood; he was buried in Notre Dame at Bruges, where he was laid beneath the tower.
The canon kneels in adoration, with his patron saints around him—St. Bernardino of Siena behind, St. Donatian in advance of him, and St. Martin to the left. It was St. Martin who shared his cloak with the beggar, and here in the distance to the left—in compliment to the canon's generosity—is a beggar limping towards the group, asking alms. Notice the wood through which he walks. The subdued light beneath the thick foliage of the trees is admirably rendered. David "was the first painter to think of the shadow-giving nature of trees. Trees had for many years formed a favourite subject for backgrounds, but even by Memlinc they were rather conventionally rendered, one by one, not grouped into woods, and seldom brought into the foreground. Here we have a wood brought near us, with its domed canopy of foliage above, and its labyrinth of trunks buried in sylvan twilight below" (Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 298). Notice also the beautiful and elaborate work on the robes of St. Martin and St. Donatian. They are fully described in Mr. Weale's monograph referred to below. This will repay the most minute examination. The crimson-velvet cope of St. Martin is a masterpiece. The portrait of the donor is admirable.
The history of this beautiful picture, and of the changes and chances it went through before finding a permanent home in the National Gallery, is very curious. In 1501 a colleague of Richard van der Capelle (see 1432) and one of the executors of his will, namely, Canon Bernardin Salviati (illegitimate son of a rich Florentine merchant who traded or resided in Flanders), was secretary of the chapter of S. Donatian at Bruges. Having obtained leave to restore and embellish the altar of SS. John Baptist and Mary Magdalene, he commissioned Gerard David to paint the shutters of the reredos. These shutters, together with those of several other altar reredoses in the nave of the church, were, at the request of the sacristan, who complained that they were always breaking the wax candles, sold in a lot by order of the chapter in 1787 for an insignificant sum of money. What became of the others is not known, but the one before us was, as we learn from the letters of Horace Walpole, bought in 1792, by Mr. Thomas Barrett, of Lee Priory, Kent, and it figures in the catalogue of that collection as "a group of saints by John Gossart of Maubeuge." At the sale of the Lee Priory Collection in May 1859, it was knocked down to the late Mr. William Benoni White for 525 guineas. Sir J. C. Robinson drew Mr. Weale's attention to the picture, which he at once recognised as being the right-hand shutter of the reredos of Salviati's chantry altar. "I tried hard," says Mr. Weale, "but in vain, to persuade the late Sir Charles Eastlake to purchase it for the National Gallery, but Mr. White would not part with it for less than £1000. Oddly enough the latter, who bore the character of being a most penurious and miserly man, by his last will and testament proved a generous benefactor to the nation, and left this panel in July 1878 to the National Gallery" (W. H. James Weale: Portfolio monograph on Gerard David, 1895, p. 18).