Rogier van der Weyden
The painter of Flemish grief.
Rogier van der Weyden was the city painter of Brussels. His Descent from the Cross portrays grief with an intensity that influenced the whole of Europe.
Rogier van der Weyden was born around 1399–1400 in Tournai in present-day Belgium, under the French name Rogier de le Pasture. He was apprenticed to the painter Robert Campin and became a master in 1432. A few years later he moved to Brussels, where he adopted the Flemish form of his name and became the city’s official painter.
His most famous work is The Descent from the Cross of around 1435, now in the Prado in Madrid. It was commissioned by the crossbowmen’s guild in Leuven. The figures are almost life-size and crowd into a shallow, gilded shrine reminiscent of a carved altarpiece. The Virgin swoons in a pose that mirrors the dead Christ. Tears run down the cheeks. The picture was copied and imitated all over Europe. Another major work is the vast Last Judgement in the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Beaune in Burgundy, commissioned by Chancellor Nicolas Rolin.
Van der Weyden built on Jan van Eyck’s oil technique but was less interested in surfaces and detail. His strength lay in emotion and composition. The figures have sharp outlines and clear, rhythmically arranged lines, and their grief is both dignified and profound. He was also a skilled portraitist. His Portrait of a Lady in Washington shows a reserved, quiet beauty. The large paintings of justice in Brussels Town Hall were destroyed during a bombardment in 1695.
He was married and had several children, and his son Pieter also became a painter. In 1450 he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and the journey may have made him known to Italian patrons. None of his works is signed, so attributions rest on documents and stylistic comparison. He died in Brussels in 1464.
In the second half of the 15th century he was probably the most influential painter in northern Europe. His expressive figures and compositions spread through copies and pupils to Germany, Spain and Italy.