Gerard David

He was born in Oudewater, now located in the province of Utrecht. His year of birth is approximated as c. 1450–1460 on the basis that he looks to be around 50 years in the 1509 self-portrait found in his Virgin among the Virgins.Hand, 63{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2163980|title=Gothic Art|publisher=Peebles Press International|year=1974|isbn=0-85690-033-8|editor-last=Lesberg|editor-first=Sandy|location=New York|chapter=Glossary of Gothic Art|oclc=2163980|orig-year=1966}} He is believed to have spent time in Italy from 1470 to 1480, where he was influenced by the Italian Renaissance. He formed his early style under Albert van Oudewater in Haarlem, and moved to Bruges in 1483, where he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1484.Ainsworth (1998), 93

File:Gerard David - The Annunciation (The Angel and the Virgin).jpg

Upon the death of Hans Memling in 1494, David became Bruges' leading painter. He became dean of the guild in 1501,Ainsworth (1998), 2 and in 1496 married Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the goldsmiths' guild.Cuttler, Charles D. "Northern painting from Pucelle to Bruegel". Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. 190 David was one of the town's leading citizens.Additional documents were presented by Hans J. van Miegroet, "New Documents Concerning Gerard David" The Art Bulletin 69.1 (March 1987:33–44).

Ambrosius Benson served his apprenticeship with David. Around 1519 they had a dispute over a number of paintings and drawings which Benson had collected from other artists. David refused to return the materials because Benson owed him a large debt.Harbison, 73 Benson sought legal recourse in court and after he won, David was condemned to a prison term.Nash, 168, 193Scheller, Robert W. Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (c. 900 – c. 1470). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995. p. 79.

He died on 13 August 1523 and was buried in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges.{{Cite web |title=Gerard David :: Biography |url=https://www.virtualuffizi.com/gerard-david.html |access-date=11 August 2021 |website=Virtual Uffizi Gallery |language=en-US}}

David's surviving work mainly consists of religious scenes. They are characterised by an atmospheric, timeless, and almost dream like serenity, achieved through soft, warm and subtle colourisation, and masterful handling of light and shadow.Ridderbo et al., 157 He is innovative in his recasting of traditional themes and in his approach to landscape, which was then only an emerging genre in northern European painting. His ability with landscape can be seen in the detailed foliage of his Triptych of the Baptism and the forest scene in the New York Nativity.

Many of the art historians of the early 20th century, including Erwin Panofsky and Max Jakob Friedländer saw him as a painter who did little but distill the style of others and painted in an archaic and unimaginative style. However today most view him as a master colourist, and a painter who according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, worked in a "progressive, even enterprising, mode, casting off his late medieval heritage and proceeding with a certain purity of vision in an age of transition.""[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gera/hd_gera.htm Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523)]". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 February 2013

In his early work David followed Haarlem artists such as Dirk Bouts, Albert van Oudewater, and Geertgen tot Sint Jans, though he had already given evidence of superior power as a colourist. To this early period belong the St John of the Richard von Kaufmann collection in Berlin and the Salting's St Jerome. In Bruges he came directly under the influence of Memling, the master whom he followed most closely. It was from him that David acquired a solemnity of treatment, greater realism in the rendering of human form, and an orderly arrangement of figures.{{sfn|Konody|1911}}

He visited Antwerp in 1515 and was impressed with the work of Quentin Matsys, who had introduced a greater vitality and intimacy in the conception of sacred themes. Together they worked to preserve the traditions of the Bruges school against influences of the Italian Renaissance.

File:Rothschild Prayerbook - Crop2.jpg, {{Circa|1500}}–1520]]

The works for which David is best known are the altarpieces painted before his visit to Antwerp: the Marriage of St Catherine at the National Gallery, London; the triptych of the Madonna Enthroned and Saints of the Brignole-Sale collection in Genoa; the Annunciation of the Sigmaringen collection; and above all, the Madonna with Angels and Saints (usually titled The Virgin among the Virgins), which he donated to the Carmelite Nuns of Sion at Bruges,"Flemish and German masterpieces from the National Gallery". National Gallery, London, 1920. 169 and which is now in the Rouen museum.Campbell, 20{{sfn|Konody|1911}}

Only a few of his works have remained in Bruges: The Judgment of Cambyses, The Flaying of Sisamnes and the Baptism of Christ in the Groeningemuseum, and the Transfiguration in the Church of Our Lady.{{sfn|Konody|1911}}

The rest were scattered around the world, and to this may be due the oblivion into which his very name had fallen; this, and the fact that, some believed that for all the beauty and the soulfulness of his work, he had nothing innovative to add to the history of art.{{sfn|Konody|1911}}

File:Gerard David - The Marriage at Cana.jpg, {{Circa|1500}}. Louvre]]

Even in his best work he had only given newer variations of the art of his predecessors and contemporaries. His rank among the masters was renewed, however, when a number of his paintings were assembled at the seminal 1902 Gruuthusemuseum, Bruges exhibition of early Flemish painters.{{sfn|Konody|1911}}

He also worked closely with the leading manuscript illuminators of the day, and seems to have been brought in to paint specific important miniatures himself, among them a Virgin among the Virgins in the Morgan Library, a Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon in the Rothschild Prayerbook,{{cite web|title=Release Announcement |url=http://www.christies.com/about/press-center/releases/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=6809 |publisher=Christie's |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131213233031/http://www.christies.com/about/press-center/releases/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=6809 |archive-date=13 December 2013 |url-status=live}} and a portrait of the Emperor Maximilian in Vienna. Several of his drawings also survive, and elements from these appear in the works of other painters and illuminators for several decades after his death.T. Kren & S. McKendrick (eds), Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, Getty Museum/Royal Academy of Arts, pp. 344–365, 2003, {{ISBN|1-903973-28-7}}

Less known but also of high quality are the works of David found in Spanish public collections. The Prado Museum in Madrid owns a table "Rest on the flight into Egypt" resembling the one in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The Prado also holds another two Works by the painter, one of them only attributed.{{Cite web|url=https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/artista/david-gerard/8f80636c-b720-4d00-977c-c9ec49b99c69?searchMeta=gerard%20david|title=David, Gérard – Colección – Museo Nacional del Prado|website=www.museodelprado.es|access-date=4 November 2019}} Another one of the Spanish capital's Museums, The Thyssen-Bornemisza holds a "Crucifixión"{{Cite web|url=https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/david-gerard/crucifixion|title=The Crucifixion|website=Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza|language=en|access-date=4 November 2019}} from 1475.

At the time of David's death, the glory of Bruges and its painters was on the wane: Antwerp had become the leader in art as well as in political and commercial importance. Of David's pupils in Bruges, only Adriaen Isenbrandt, Albert Cornelis, and Ambrosius Benson achieved importance. Among other Flemish painters, Joachim Patinir, Jan Mabuse and the Master of the Plump-Cheeked Madonnas were to some degree influenced by him.{{sfn|Konody|1911}}D. Martens, 'Le Maître aux Madones Joufflues: Essai de monographie sur un anonyme brugeois du XVIme siècle,' Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch LXI, 2000, pp. 112-115, 141, n. 23, figs. 1, 6, 15 {{in lang|fr}}

David's name had been completely forgotten when in 1866 William Henry James Weale discovered documents about him in the archives of Bruges; these brought to light the main facts of the painter's life and led to the reconstruction of David's artistic personality, beginning with the recognition of David's only documented work, the Virgin Among Virgins at Rouen.Weale, Gerard David, Painter and Illuminator 1895; the Virgo inter Virgines appears in a 1527 inventory of the Carmelite convent of Sion at Bruges.

{{See also|:Category:Paintings by Gerard David}}

File:Gerard David - The Nativity.jpg|The Nativity, c. 1490, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

File:Gerard David - Lamentation - Google Art Project.jpg|Lamentation, c 1495–1500. National Gallery, London, UK

File:Gerard David - The Judgment of Cambyses, panel 1 - The capture of the corrupt judge Sisamnes.jpg|The Judgment of Cambyses, 1498. Groeninge Museum, Bruges. Center panel

File:Doopsel van Christus, circa 1502 - circa 1508, Groeningemuseum, 0040009000FXD.jpg|Triptych of Jean des Trompes, 1505. Groeninge Museum, Bruges

File:Gerard David - God the Father.jpg|God the Father 1506, Louvre, Paris

File:Gerard David - Altarpiece of St Michael (Central panel).jpg|Altarpiece of St Michael c. 1510. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

File:Gerard David - Virgin and Child with Four Angels - WGA6036.jpg|Virgin and Child with Four Angels, c. 1510–1515. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

File:Gerard David Le Christ au jardin des oliviers.jpg|Agony in the Garden, c. 1510–1520.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, France

File:Gerard David - Salvator Mundi, c. 1500, Cat. 330.jpg|Salvator Mundi, {{Circa|1500}}, Philadelphia Museum of Art

File:Gerard David - Madonna and Child with the Milk Soup - Google Art Project.jpg|Madonna and Child with the Milk Soup, c. 1515. Oil on panel, 25 x 29 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium{{Cite book |last=Zuffi |first=Stefano |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/ocm53441832 |title=The Renaissance: 1401-1610: the splendor of European art |last2=Hyams |first2=Jay |last3=Seppi |first3=Giorgio |last4=Pauli |first4=Tatjana |last5=Scardoni |first5=Sergio |date=2003 |publisher=Barnes & Noble Books |isbn=978-0-7607-4200-6 |location=New York |oclc=ocm53441832}}

File:Gerard David - The transfiguration.jpg|Transfiguration of Christ. Church of Our Lady, Bruges

File:Gerard David - Adoration of the Kings - Google Art Project.jpg|Adoration of the Kings, 1515–1523, National Gallery, London

File:Rust tijdens de vlucht naar Egypte, Gerard David, 16de eeuw, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 47FXD.jpg|Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Gerard David, 16th century, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

File:Gerard David - Christ on the Cross - Google Art Project.jpg|Christ on the Cross, 1480–85, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

File:Gerard David, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie - Bildnis eines Goldschmiedes (wahrscheinlich Jacob Cnoop, der Schwiegervater Davids) - GG 970 - Kunsthistorisches Museum.jpg|Portrait of a Goldsmith, 1500s, Kunsthistorisches Museum

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• Ainsworth, Maryan Wynn. [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/75339/rec/1 Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition]. NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998. {{ISBN|0-87099-877-3}}
• Ainsworth, Maryan Wynn; Christiansen, Keith. From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009. {{ISBN|0-87099-870-6}}
• Campbell, Lorne. The Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Paintings. London: National Gallery, 1998. {{ISBN|0-300-07701-7}}
• Harbison, Craig. "The Art of the Northern Renaissance". London: Laurence King Publishing, 1995. {{ISBN|1-78067-027-3}}
• {{EB1911|wstitle=David, Gerard|volume=7|page=861|first=Paul George|last=Konody|author-link=Paul George Konody}}
• Nash, Susie. Northern Renaissance art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. {{ISBN|0-19-284269-2}}
• Ridderbos, Bernhard; Van Buren, Anne; Van Veen, Henk. Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. {{ISBN|0-89236-816-0}}

{{refend}}

{{Commons-inline}}

• {{cite web |title=The Virgin Among The Virgins |date=29 May 2013 |url=http://mbarouen.fr/en/oeuvres/the-virgin-among-the-virgins |publisher=Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222013738/http://mbarouen.fr/en/oeuvres/the-virgin-among-the-virgins |archive-date=22 February 2014 |url-status=live}}
• [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gera/hd_gera.htm Gerard David | The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
• [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/david_gerard.html Gerard David at Artcyclopedia]
• [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/74278/rec/1 Fifteenth- to eighteenth-century European paintings: France, Central Europe, the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain], a collection catalog fully available online as a PDF, which contains material on Gerard David (cat. no. 20-22)
• [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll10/id/75339 Gerard David : purity of vision in an age of transition], a collection catalog fully available online as a PDF
• [http://stichtinggerarddavid.nl/ Gerard David Foundation (Dutch)]

{{Gerard David}}

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Category:1460s births

Category:1523 deaths

Category:Dutch Renaissance painters

Category:Early Netherlandish painters

Category:16th-century Flemish painters

Category:Manuscript illuminators

Category:Painters from Bruges

Category:People from Oudewater