Juan de Flandes

Hispano-Flemish, active 1496 - 1519

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Flemish painter (c.1460-c.1519)

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A young woman sits wearing a voluminous, long, royal-blue dress to our right and a winged angel wearing a white robe stands looking at her with one arm raised to our left in this vertical painting. The people nearly fill this composition and both have pale, ivory-white skin. In the lower right quadrant of the painting, the woman’s body faces us, and she looks up and to our left with dark eyes. She has an oval-shaped face with a long, delicate nose and her small, pink lips are closed. Her wavy, light brown hair falls over her shoulders and down nearly to her waist. Her blue garment is edged with gold. Her cloak is fastened at the neck with a gold chain, from which hangs an amethyst-purple stone set into a pendant with pearls. The cuffs of her blue robe are lined with fur over crimson-red sleeves beneath. The blue robe puddles on the floor around her and the corners of two pillows—one gold and one scarlet red, each with a fat tassel—behind her suggest she sits on the cushions. She holds a thick book with red and black text and gold edges open in her lap, resting on a silvery blue cloth with tassels at the front corners. A white dove hovers with wings outstretched over her head, and is surrounded by a white halo deepening in several concentric rings to aquamarine blue. Along the left edge of the painting, the angel’s body is angled to our right and the head tips toward the woman. The angel’s right hand, on our left, is raised high overhead. In the other hand is a long gold staff, almost as tall as the angel. The angel’s blond hair falls in ringlets to the shoulders, and the nose and mouth are delicate. The flowing white robe is cinched at the waist, and it has a wide collar like lapels, with a round purple stone fastened like a brooch at the throat. A jeweled head piece has a dark stone set in gold at the center flanked by a row of alternating white and pink flowers to either side. The wings are rose pink along the top edge, pale turquoise along the center, and icy blue along the bottom. A bright emerald-green cloth hangs on the cream-white wall behind the angel, and brick shows through what appears to be lost plaster over the woman’s head to our right. The door of a cabinet behind the woman is ajar and a rounded urn holding tall, white lilies sits on the surface above.
Juan de Flandes, The Annunciation, c. 1508/1519, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.22

The Annunciation

Juan de Flandes · c. 1508/1519 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.22

A pale, light-skinned woman holding a baby sits to our left in front of stone ruins as one man kneels and two men stand to our right in front of a landscape in this vertical painting. The woman wears a long, navy-blue coat trimmed in gold, and sits with her body angled to our right. Her light brown hair is parted in the middle and covered by the hood of her robe. She lowers her eyes toward a pale, naked, baby boy with curly blond hair, who leans back against her on a white cloth on her lap. She supports the baby’s side with her right hand and her left caresses his head. A man wearing a golden turban-like cap and a crimson-red, voluminous robe lined with white kneels on the dirt ground in front of the baby, and looks down and off to the side with dark eyes. The man has pale skin, a hooked nose, and jowls. A sword with a gold hilt hangs at his side and a round, white shield is slung over his shoulder. He holds a golden box open toward the baby. Two more men stand behind him. Cut off by the edge of the panel, the man on our right has brown skin, a flat nose, full, projecting lips, and he faces our left in profile. He wears a golden crown on short brown hair, and a large, teardrop-shaped pearl hangs from the ear we can see. His turquoise-blue robe is shaded with petal-pink in the shadows in the folds, and it partially covers a gold chain. He holds a gold-encrusted, jeweled orb in his hands. Beyond him, to our left, a man with pale, peach-colored skin stands facing and looking at us. He has a brown beard and his curly hair is covered by a crown set into a crimson-red, jeweled hat. He wears a gold, brocade robe over a navy-blue garment, and a large jewel pendant hangs from a thick gold chain around his neck. He points with a white gloved hand toward the woman and baby and, in his other, holds a gold vessel with a stem and foot like a wine glass. Behind the woman and to our left, a horned ox looks out toward us from under an arch in the stone ruins. Trees grow in the background and above, a golden star is encircled with bands of gold and blue, with rays extending toward the scene below. Nearby, a white and gray bird perches on the top of the ruins. In the background behind the men, two pairs of men on horseback and one man attending to one of the horses gather in a grassy landscape below a pale blue sky. The pair to our left have pale skin and the pair to our right have brown skin.
Juan de Flandes, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1508/1519, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.24

The Adoration of the Magi

Juan de Flandes · c. 1508/1519 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.24

In the stone ruins of a building, a woman, Mary, kneels with her hands in prayer over a thin-limbed baby lying in front of her in this vertical painting. There is a man behind Mary, to our left, two more in a field to our right, and a winged angel in the upper right corner. They all have pale skin. Mary’s unbound blond hair falls over her shoulders. She wears a celestial-blue dress, and her teal-blue cloak is edged with gold. Her body is angled to our right, and she looks down her straight nose at the baby near her knees. The nude baby has blond curls and a chubby tummy and cheeks. An ox and an ass look down at the baby from behind a stone trough to our right. The man behind Mary wears a forest-green cap and scarf over a tomato-red robe. One hand rests on a staff, and he looks up at the angel in the top right corner. An owl looks down at the man from atop the stone ruins, near the top left corner. Two men recline and about a dozen white sheep lie on low hills in the near distance to our right. One of those men sleeps and the other holds up both hands as he looks into the sky. The angel in the top right corner emerges from a petal-pink and pale yellow halo against a star-strewn blue sky. The angel wears rose pink and has dark pink wings. A scroll held across both arms reads, “GLO” and “INECELSIS DEO.”  
Juan de Flandes, The Nativity, c. 1508/1519, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.23

The Nativity

Juan de Flandes · c. 1508/1519 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.23

A young, bearded man wearing only a white loincloth stands facing us in a pale blue river with a man to one side and a winged angel to the other in this vertical painting. They all have pale or tanned skin and tawny-brown hair. The man at the center, Jesus, stands knee-deep in the placid water with his hands together in prayer. He looks off to our left, his hollow eyes set above a drooping mouth. To our left, a man kneels on the rocky riverbank and trickles water from his hand onto Jesus’s head. That man wears a fawn-brown robe under a raspberry-red cloak. He is bearded with curly brown hair, and he has dark circles under his eyes and a downturned mouth. The winged angel stands to our right on a flat stone, closer to us. Gold and pink wings rise vertically along the right edge of the composition. The angel wears voluminous white robes and holds a marine-blue garment in both hands. A white dove hovering over Jesus’s head is surrounded by a halo edged with teal, pea-green, and pink rings. A bearded man wearing a tiered, jeweled crown looks down from a round opening in the ice-blue sky above the dove. He holds one hand up in blessing and holds an orb topped by a cross in the other. About ten fish nibble at the rocks near Jesus’s feet in the river, which winds through a pale green field to a town of turrets and towers in the distance.
Juan de Flandes, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1508/1519, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.25

The Baptism of Christ

Juan de Flandes · c. 1508/1519 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.25

To our right, a man with a long, pointed beard, wearing a fawn-brown, hooded robe, walks toward a second bearded man, to our left, wearing a cobalt-blue robe and sitting on a stone slab in front of a deep landscape, in this vertical painting. Both men have pale skin and brown hair. The man to our right faces our left in profile, and has two sharp, bone-white horns curving back from the top of his head and a claw-like, webbed foot protruding from under the hem of his monk’s robe. He has a prominent, hooked nose, sunken eyes, and he seems to look ahead, into the distance. He clutches a strand of large beads hanging from his waist with his right hand, farther from us, and holds a round, loaf-sized stone in his other hand. The body of the seated man, to our left, faces us but he turns to look off to our right with dark eyes. His left hand, to our right, rests in his lap and his other hand is raised, palm facing the walking man. Rocks and boulders lie on the ground between and around the men. Behind them, a grassy meadow dotted with tiny white flowers slopes down to a line of trees with olive-green leaves, tucked beyond the hill. One tall, spindly tree grows behind the horned man and a bird perches, wings spread, on the top. A steep, rocky cliff rises behind the seated man, to our left. Two strokes of light blue and pale beige suggest two people standing atop the cliff. Beyond, a city with tan-colored stone buildings and blue mountains are hazy in the distance. Atop a tower in the city, the pair of men appear again, with the man in brown gesturing down and the man in blue looking on. Three more birds fly across the sky, which deepens from a misty white near the mountaintops in the background to azure blue along the top edge of the panel. The surface of the painting has visible long, mostly vertical cracks throughout.
Juan de Flandes, The Temptation of Christ, c. 1500/1504, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1967.7.1

The Temptation of Christ

Juan de Flandes · c. 1500/1504 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1967.7.1

Bibliography

1887

  • Justi, Carl. "Juan de Flandes. Ein niederländischer Hofmaler Isabella der Katholischen." Jahrbuch der königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen (Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen) 8 (1887): 157-169.

1962

  • Bermejo, Elisa. Juan de Flandes. Madrid, 1962.

1963

  • Folie, Jacqueline. "Les oeuvres authentifiées des primitifs flamands." Bulletin de l'Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique 6 (1963): 241-244.

1967

  • Vandevivere, Ignace. Primitifs flamands. Corpus. La cathédrale de Palencia et l'église paroissiale de Cervera de Pisuerga. Brussels, 1967.

1979

  • De Coo, Josef, and Nicole Reynaud. "Origen del retablo de San Juan Bautista atribuido a Juan de Flandes." Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueologia 52 (1979): 125-144.

1986

  • Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1986: 123-124.