Petrus Christus is first mentioned in the record of those purchasing Bruges citizenship, which he acquired on 6 July 1444. He was described in the record of this transaction as a native of Baerle, which probably meant the town of Baerle-Duc on the present Belgian-Dutch border. He continued to be mentioned in Bruges documents after 1444. He and his wife were listed as new members of the Confraternity of the Dry Tree, which they joined by 1463. The last reference to him in Bruges is dated 19 March 1472. [Hand, John Oliver, and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1986: 41.]
Since the 1986 publication of the NGA systematic catalogue, Maximiliaan Martens discovered in the accounts of the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Snow in Bruges that the painter's wife paid his dues for the administrative year 1475/1476 and that the confraternity paid for a portion of the cost of a funeral mass for Petrus Christus. The accounts thus establish that Christus died sometime between 2 September 1475 and 19 December 1476. [Ainsworth, Maryan W., with contributions by Maximiliaan Martens. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994: 19, 209.]
Bibliography
1926
Pächt, Otto. "Die Datierung der Brüsseler Beweinung des Petrus Christus." Belvedere 9/10 (1926): 155-166.
1953
Panofsky, ENP 1953.
1972
Upton, Joel M. "Petrus Christus." Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1972.
1974
Schabacker, Peter H. Petrus Christus. Utrecht, 1974.
1986
Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1986: 41.
1994
Ainsworth, Maryan W., with contributions by Maximiliaan Martens. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994: 19, 209.
1998
Campbell, Lorne. National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools. London, 1998: 104.
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