Robert Campin (Valenciennes (France) c. 1375 - Tournai (Belgium) 26 April 1444) now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle (earlier the Master of the Merode Triptych, before the discovery of three other similar panels), was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance.

While the existence of a highly successful painter called Robert Campin is relatively well documented for the period, no works can be certainly identified as by him through a signature or contemporary documentation. A group of paintings, none dated, have been long attributed to him, and a further group were once attributed to an unknown "Master of Flémalle". It is now usually thought that both groupings are by Campin, but this has been a matter of some controversy for decades.

A corpus of work is attached to the unidentified "Master of Flémalle," so named in the 19th century after three religious panels said to have come from a monastery in Flémalle. They are each assumed to be wings of triptychs or polyptychs, and are the Virgin and Child with a Firescreen now in London, a panel fragment with the Thief on the Cross in Frankfurt, and the Brussels version of the Mérode Altarpiece.

Campin was active by 1406 as a master painter in Tournai, in today's Belgium, and became that city's leading painter for 30 years. He had attained citizenship by 1410. His fame had spread enough by 1419 that he led a large and profitable workshop. He had an extra-marital affair with a woman named Leurence Pol, which led to his imprisonment. Campin, however, was able to maintain his public standing and workshop until his death in 1444.

The early Campin panels show the influence of the International Gothic artists the Limbourg brothers (1385–1416) and Melchior Broederlam (c. 1350 – c.1409), but display a more realistic observation than any earlier artists, achieved through innovations in the use of oil paints. He was successful in his lifetime, and the recipient of a number of civic commissions. Campin taught both Rogier van der Weyden, named in these early records as Rogelet de la Pasture, a French version of his name) and Jacques Daret. Campin was a contemporary of Jan van Eyck, and they are recorded as meeting in 1427. Campin's best known work is the Mérode Altarpiece of c. 1425–28.

Life

left|thumb|320px| [[Seilern Triptych|The Seilern Triptych, c. 1425. One of two of Campin's surviving triptychs.]]

left|thumb|320px|[[Mérode Altarpiece|The Mérode Altarpiece, attributed to the Master of Flémalle or workshop, .]]

left|thumb|320px|Descent from the Cross, probable workshop copy of a lost triptych.

Campin first appears as settled in Tournai from the archives of 1405–06, as a free master of the guild of goldsmiths and painters, and there has been a lot of speculation about his origin and birthplace which is actually unknown, although he is sometimes listed as having been born in Valenciennes. In 1408 he had purchased the house that he had been leasing since 1406 near the Tournai Cathedral. In 1410, he bought full citizenship. Records show a large number of commissions from individuals and guilds, as well as from ecclesiastical and civic authorities. Campin owned several houses, purchased city bonds and invested in mortgages. After restoration of the oligarchy of full citizens, the leaders of the guild regime, including Robert Campin, were brought to court. Campin was ordered to make a pilgrimage to Saint-Gilles and pay the fine. The central panel shows his debt to the sculpture of the time (Campin was known to have polychromed several statues). After this, he painted the Marriage of the Virgin (Museo del Prado, Madrid) and Nativity (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon) around 1420–1425.

Around 1425–1428 Campin painted the Mérode Altarpiece, a triptych (three paneled paintings) commissioned for private use. The Annunciation occupies the central panel. The Archangel Gabriel is shown approaching Mary, who sits reading. She is depicted in a well-kept middle-class Flemish home. Several works attributed to Robert Campin may be seen in the Hermitage, including diptych panels depicting The Holy Trinity and The Virgin and Child. Other works are displayed in the Prado, and the London National Gallery. Campin also collaborated with other artists, e.g. with Jean Delemer in creating (presumably painting) two wooden sculptures of the Annunciation currently in the Church of Saint Quentin, Tournai.

Selected works

<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" perrow="3">

File:Los Desposorios de la Virgen, por Robert Campin.jpg|The Marriage of Mary, c 1420

File:La Anunciación, por Robert Campin.jpg|Annunciation, 1420–1425

File:The Nativity Robert Campin.jpg|Nativity, c. 1420. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

File:Robert Campin 009.jpg|Virgin and Child, before 1430

File:Robert Campin - The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen (National Gallery London).jpg|The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen, 1440

File:RobertCampin-Trinity.jpg|Holy Trinity, c. 1433–35

</gallery>

References

Sources

  • Campbell, Lorne. The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings. National Gallery, 1998.
  • Davies, Martin. "Netherlandish Primitives: Rogier van der Weyden and Robert Campin". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, volume 71, number 414, 1937.
  • Foister, Susan; Nash, Susie. Robert Campin: new directions in scholarship. London: National Gallery, 1996
  • Jacobs, Lynn. Opening Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
  • Hagopian, Annne. "Thoughts, Old and New, on the Sources of Early Netherlandish Painting". Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, volume 16, No. 2/3, 1986.
  • Thürlemann, Felix. Robert Campin: A Monographic Study with Critical Catalogue. Prestel, 2002.
  • Centre for the Study of Fifteenth-Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège List of works
  • Gerard David: purity of vision in an age of transition, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Campin (see index)
  • Period Rooms in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a fully digitized text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on The Campin Room located in The Cloisters (pp. 33–39).
  • Christopher D. M. Atkins, “Christ and the Virgin by Robert Campin (cat. 332),” in The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works, a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication