A headboard tondo: The Virgin and Child

The Virgin and Child stand out against a gold ground extending to the mouldings of the original frame, which forms part of the same piece of wood as the main part of the panel. The Virgin, in three-quarter profile, leans to the left, pressing her cheek to that of the Child, whom she bears in her arms. Her features are somewhat stylised: rounded eyes, a straight, somewhat strong and short nose, a well-defined mouth and full cheeks. Her forehead is clear and her centrally-parted hair falls in gentle waves onto her shoulders, partly concealing her left ear. A fold of her hemmed red mantle covers her head, and she wears a chemise covered by a deep green robe with a rounded neckline enhanced by a double stripe. Mary holds her Child in a close embrace, supporting him with her long, slender-fingered hands. Jesus is represented naked, simply wrapped in a sheet. He caresses his mother’s chin with his left hand, twisting around in her arms and playing with his foot with his right hand.

This composition is a precise mirror image of a prototype established by Rogier van der Weyden and known through a panel in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.¹ Rogier’s composition itself appears to have been inspired by the Cambrai Madonna, an Italo-Byzantine icon brought from Rome to Cambrai in 1440 by the canon Fursy de Bruille.² At that time the picture was regarded as having been painted by Saint Luke himself, and it immediately became the object of fervent devotion. Bequeathed by the canon to Cambrai Cathedral in 1450, it was solemnly installed in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in 1451. “Notre-Dame de Grâce de Cambrai”, which was believed to have miraculous properties, attracted numerous pilgrims, including the Dukes of Burgundy Philip the Good in 1457, Charles the Bold in 1460 and King Louis XI of France in 1468, 1477 and 1478.³ The special aura of the image is also attested to by the many copies it prompted. In April 1454, the Count of Étampes commissioned three copies of it from Petrus Christus,⁴ and the cathedral chapter in Cambrai ordered twelve copies from Hayne of Brussels.⁵

Rogier van der Weyden doubtless had first-hand knowledge of the Cambrai Madonna, which was the object of especially widespread veneration in the Burgundian milieu. Moreover, he was commissioned in 1455 by Jean Robert, Abbot of Saint Aubert in Cambrai to paint a triptych; the work was delivered in 1459 but is now lost.⁶

Rogier’s interpretation of Notre-Dame de Grâce is essentially focused on the tight framing and half-length depiction of the Virgin and Child, the cheek-to-cheek motif and the latter’s gesture of reaching for her chin. He transposes the Italo-Byzantine Virgin of Tenderness into a naturalist style entirely typical of the Flemish art of his time. The artist also accentuates the Child’s gesticulation, devising a torsion motif so that while caressing his mother’s chin with the left hand he uses the right to grasp his foot.

Several copies of Rogier’s composition are known, painted by the Master of Saint-Giles or his workshop.⁷Friedländer also mentions another copy painted by an anonymous Flemish artist.⁸

This unpublished tondo is a mirror image of Rogier van der Weyden’s composition, adapted perfectly to the circular shape of this kind of panel. As in the versions attributed to the Master of Saint Giles, the artist has here transposed the Holy Couple onto a gold ground, which was already becoming unfashionable at the end of the 1400s. There can be no doubt that the painter deliberately opted for the category of images made for worship and judged capable of working miracles.

Julius Held was the first to investigate the function of this kind of small circular picture with a similar format and the depiction of a simple, concise devotional subject⁹. He pointed out that most of them, like the one studied here, were painted on relatively thick wood panels that included the original frame, and thus had all the features of an independent work made for personal devotion. The study of Flemish painted interiors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led him to establish that it was customary to hang this type of small tondo, painted or carved, at the head of a bed, within the canopy. The circular form, which recalled that of a mirror, invited the faithful to identify themselves with the sacred figure. These small-scale tondi were the only decoration on the inner side of the bed structure, placed against the attached part of the curtain at the head of the bed. A perfect illustration of this custom is found in the Annunciation attributed to the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden in the Musée du Louvre¹⁰.