thumb|260px|The Annunciation. The [[Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium|Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, version of the central panel, at one time attributed to Jacques Daret, a pupil of Campin's. This panel was painted earlier than the New York version and may be the original.]]

The Mérode Altarpiece (or Annunciation Triptych) is an oil on oak panel triptych, now in The Cloisters in New York. It is unsigned and undated, but attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Robert Campin and an assistant. The three panels represent, from left to right, the donors kneeling in prayer in a garden, the moment of the Annunciation to Mary, which is set in a contemporary, domestic setting, and Saint Joseph, a carpenter with the tools of his trade. The many elements of religious symbolism include the lily and fountain (symbolising the purity of Mary), and the Holy Spirit represented by the rays of light coming through from the central panel's left-hand window.

The central panel was completed after 1422, likely between 1425 and 1428, it is thought by a member of Campin's workshop. An earlier version, now in Brussels, may be Campin's original panel. The outer wing panels are later additions by a workshop member, probably on request by the donor who sought to elevate the central panel to a triptych and place himself in the pictorial space. They contain views of the city of Liège, in today's Belgium.

The triptych is a founding and important work in the then emerging late Gothic, Early Netherlandish style, and has been described as a "milestone between two periods; it at once summarizes the medieval tradition and lays the foundation for the development of modern painting".

Dating and attribution

The attribution of the New York triptych has been the subject of wide scholarly debate. It seems to have been completed the same year as the Ghent Altarpiece, in 1432, making the painter a contemporary of Jan van Eyck. which may represent the original version by Campin.

Campbell is not convinced by the association with Flémalle group, and thus Robert Campin. He describes the Mérode as "incoherent in design", lacking Campin's usual trait of spatial continuity, as found in the Seilern Triptych.

The panels are in good condition, with minimal overpainting, glossing, dirt buildup, or paint loss. They are almost entirely in oil, and establish many of the inventions that were to make the technique so successful and adaptable over the following centuries. The serenity of the works is achieved, in part, through the dominance of pale, opaque white, red, and blue hues. The size of the panels and the at times minute attention to detail are similar to the focus of contemporary miniatures, as seen in the two illuminated manuscripts in the central panel. The colors in the upper part of the central panel are dominated by the cool grays of the plaster and the brown of the timber wall, while the lower half is mostly of warmer and deeper brownish greens and reds. Art historians suggest that the success of the panel is due to the contrast between the warm reds of the Virgin's robe and the pale blue hues of the archangel Gabriel's vestment.

left|thumb|220px|Detail with the Virgin reading a book of hours

The panels' perspective is unusually steep and unevenly distributed. The angle of the table, in particular, is illogical. Art historian Lorne Campbell describes these distortions as "disturbing".

It shows the moment before the traditional Annunciation scene, when Mary is still unaware of the presence of Gabriel.

The Christ Child flies down towards Mary from the left oculus, signifying her impregnation by God the Father. He gazes directly at her and holds a cross. The folding table contains a recently extinguished candle,

The white lily in a Tuscan earthenware jug

The right hand half of the back wall holds three windows, one of which contains a lattice screen. The sky visible through the windows is a later addition, which was painted over an earlier gold ground. The armorial shields are also later additions. The door presents a continuity oddity; although it can be seen opening into the Virgins room from the left panel, no such door entrance is visible in the center panel. Addressing this, the art historians Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen suppose that the donor is "imagining that she has entered into his house. From without, he has opened the door; with his own eyes he beholds the Mother of God and petitions her for a family".

The attendant dressed in a festive outfit is by a later artist; perhaps it was added after the donor's marriage. The left-hand space contains an unlocked entrance leading to a minutely detailed street scene. The panel is the more striking as the door leading into the Virgin's chamber is wide open, hugely presumptuous for even a mid-fifteenth century commission, and suggesting access to the gates of heaven.

The donors are identifiable as bourgeoisie from nearby Mechelen, and are documented in Tournai in 1427, identifiable from the coat of arms in the stained glass window of the central panel.

The altarpiece was commissioned either by the businessman Jan Engelbrecht, or the Cologne-born merchant Peter Engelbrecht and his wife Margarete Scrynmaker. Engelbrecht translates from German as "angel brings", while Scrynmaker means "cabinet maker", the latter perhaps influencing the choice of Joseph in the right hand panel. Isaiah's words were intended as incentatory and revolutionary, were followed by a treatise for the salvation of Israel, and protested against an Assyrian king he considered boorish and vainglorious.

Joseph is presented as a relatively old man in that it represents an imagined but literal capture of the Devil, said to have held a man in ransom because of the sin of Adam. In some scripts, Christ's naked flesh was served as bait for the devil; "He rejoiced in Christ's death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was, in turn, his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death."

Irving Zupnick suggested in 1966 that the object in the painting was not a mousetrap but a carpenter's plane. To prove that wrong, John Jacob of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, had a replica made of the trap in the same year and actually caught a mouse in his Gallery with it, even though the trap depicted in the painting was apparently not fully completed.

The background contains a cityscape, probably fictitious, showing the spires of two churches, one of which is now lost, the churches of St. Pierre (left) and Sainte Croix (right) in Liege.

Iconography

left|thumb|340px|Detail of the center panel

The iconography contains complex religious symbolism, although their extent and exact nature is debated – Meyer Schapiro pioneered the study of the symbolism of the mousetrap, and Erwin Panofsky later extended, or perhaps over-extended, the analysis of symbols to cover many more details of the furniture and fittings. Similar debates exist for many Early Netherlandish paintings, and a number of the details seen for the first time here reappear in later Annunciations by other artists.

The symbolic elements in the central panel mostly relate to the Annunciation, the Mass and the sacrament of the Eucharist. Mary sits on the floor to show her humility. The scroll and book in front of Mary symbolize the Old and the New Testaments, and the roles Mary and the Christ child played in the fulfillment of prophecy. The lilies in the earthenware vase on the table represent Mary's virginity. Other symbols of her purity include the enclosed garden (Hortus conclusus), The basin may represent both the purity of Virgin, and the cleansing of the Christian act of baptism.

In the right-hand panel, Saint Joseph, a carpenter, has constructed a mousetrap symbolising Christ's trapping and defeat of the devil, a metaphor used three times by Saint Augustine: "The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death." The iconography of the right-hand panel has been studied in detail by Russell. He shows that the object that Joseph is working on is a scandalum or stumbling block, a spiked block that gashes the legs of a punishment victim who walks with it hanging from a cord around his waist. Joseph's joinery instruments are displayed in a consistently unnatural manner, suggesting they were planned to fit a specific agenda; for example, the joinery instruments on the table are arranged to represent the three crosses of Christ and the two thieves.

Provenance

Its early history is obscure. The triptych was owned by the aristocratic Belgian Arenberg and Mérode families from 1820 to 1849 before reaching the art market, and has been in the collection of the Cloisters, New York, since 1956. Until its acquisition, it had been in private collection for many years and thus inaccessible to both scholars and the public. Its purchase was funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and was described at the time as a "major event for the history of collecting in the United States".

Notes

References

Sources

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