The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos

For the first time in twenty-four years and only the second time in their history, two masterpieces of early Netherlandish painting commissioned by the Carthusian monk Jan Vos are reunited. 

These works, The Frick Collection’s Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos, commissioned from Jan van Eyck and completed by his workshop, and The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara and Jan Vos (known as the Exeter Virgin, after its first recorded owner), painted by Petrus Christus and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, are shown with a selection of objects that place them in the rich monastic context for which they were created. The exhibition explores the works’ patronage, function, reception, and spiritual environment, offering a focused look at devotional practices in Bruges during the mid-fifteenth century. 

In 1441, Jan Vos was elected prior of the Bruges Charterhouse of Genadedal, an important monastery patronized by the dukes of Burgundy and some of Bruges’s foremost patrician families. Vos commis­sioned at least four works during his decade-long tenure at the helm of the prestigious charterhouse, but only the Virgin and Child and the Exeter Virgin survive today. The panels both achieve remarkable monumentality while incorporating myriad minute details.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Image: Jan van Eyck and Workshop, The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth and Jan Vos, ca. 1441–43. Oil on panel , 8 5/8 × 24 1/8 in. The Frick Collection, New York

      

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog, The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan Van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos, explores the creation, patronage, and function of the Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus paintings in their rich Carthusian context.   The Carthusian order was one of the most austere strands of late medieval monasticism. In apparent contradiction to this asceticism, Carthusian monasteries became remarkable repositories of art, a material accumulation often attributed to lay patronage. However this explanation overlooks the ways in which the Carthusians themselves commissioned and used images for their daily devotions and liturgy, as well as their commemoration. The story of Jan Vos and his patronage of Jan van Eyck and Petrus Christus fundamentally informs our understanding of the role played by images in shaping monastic life and funerary strategies in late medieval Europe. 

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