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Christmas - Hugo van der Goes Portinari Altar
The Portinari altar by Hugo van der Goes
by H.R. Rookmaaker
In the 1470’s the wealthy Florentine art dealer Portinari, who maintained tight trade relations with Flanders, commissioned the renowned artist van der Goes of the Southern Netherlands to create an altar depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds. The altar would be placed in a Florentine church.
This altar is one of the largest masterpieces of Dutch fifteenth-century art. The central panel alone measures about three meters in width. This artwork made a deep impression on Florentine artists. Especially the landscapes depicted on the side panels strongly influenced artists like Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi.
Let’s take a closer look at the painting. The figures standing around Mary and the Child she is worshiping form a large circle, creating an excellent and well-organized composition. The details have been painted with great precision. Notice, for example, the still life with flowers in the foreground.
The scene looks so true to life that it makes one think the artist saw it with his own eyes. Actually, it is quite likely that he did see it, because during the fourteenth century this part of the biblical story was often dramatized in the so-called ‘mystery plays’. During this same period (to focus for a moment on a very specific detail) there was a change in the way angels’ garments were depicted. Prior to this time they were usually dressed in a sort of timeless white cloth, but during the time of van der Goes they were more often dressed in heavy, brightly-coloured priestly clothes, richly embroidered in gold. It is almost certain that the theatre costumes of those mystery plays inspired them.
We must point out that portrayals of the Adoration of the Shepherds first made their appearance in the fourteenth century. During that time people began to consider and meditate on the details surrounding the life of Christ. Mysticism placed great value on this. In this connection, the work of Psuedo-Bonaventura, a Franciscan from the late thirteenth century, is very important. His book Meditationes vitae Christi, which contains meditations on the life of Christ, did not deal first of all with theological dogmas and treatises, as was common in the scholarship of that day, but it spoke to the heart. The author sketched the biblical scenes realistically and colourfully, inserting many details which are not included in the Gospel stories but come from the author’s imagination. The book contained many dialogues which lent themselves perfectly to adaptation for the stage, and it had a great influence on the poets who wrote the mystery plays.
Pseudo-Bonaventura for example described Mary as leaning against a pillar just prior to giving birth; consequently such a pillar makes its appearance in every depiction of the Birth of Christ or the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Magi. It can also be found in the painting by van der Goes. According to legend the stable where Jesus was born was a remnant of the ruins of David’s palace in Bethlehem. It is a legend that likely emerged in an effort to explain the pillar that keeps cropping up in the Nativity scenes, though no one really remembered where it originated.
Another remarkable tradition is the portrayal of an ox and a donkey in the stable. We find them already in the nativity scenes from previous centuries, scenes which are completely different from the ones we are discussing and even pre-date the apocryphal Gospel which emerged around AD 600 known as ‘Pseudo-Matthew’. In the fourteenth chapter of that book we read: ‘The ox and the donkey worshipped him,’ thus fulfilling the prophecies in Jeremiah and Habakkuk. We probably find the origins of this tradition in the earliest Church Fathers, who used the Septuagint translation of Jeremiah 1:3 and Habakkuk 3:2 in connection with the birth of Christ.
The fifteenth-century depictions of the events surrounding Christ’s birth are thus strongly influenced by a mysticism which in turn strongly influenced the popular piety of the time. This moderately mystical thought world still lives on today. We find it, for example, in the idea
which often comes up in Christmas songs that we should pray at Jesus’ cradle, that we should kneel before the Child.
When you look at this painting, you need no further support for the idea that such influences caused the artist to portray the story as he did. The fact that the people are dressed in the contemporary clothing of his day also supports this. Furthermore we should remember that fifteenth-century people did not yet have a modern understanding of history and for them the anachronisms were not so glaring.
Apart from that one might ask oneself whether events really could have appeared like this. For example, would Mary really have knelt down in prayer before her child? The gospels record nothing about shepherds kneeling down beside the Christ child either; that is only said of the Magi, and the newer translations prefer to record that they ‘paid him homage’.
I will leave it at this, even though I have said far too little about this absolutely gorgeous painting, e.g. one could devote an entire article to the wonderful characterization in the faces of those shepherds.
Originally published in Dutch in Calvinistisch Jongelingsblad 6, 34, 1951.
Published in English in M. Hengelaar-Rookmaaker (ed.): H.R. Rookmaaker:
The Complete Works 4, Piquant – Carlisle, 2003. Also obtainable as a CD-Rom.