Gerard David (c. 1460 - 13 August 1523) was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known.
He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges.
Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.
Life
He was born in Oudewater, now located in the province of Utrecht. His year of birth is approximated as c. 1460 on the basis that he looks to be around 50 years in the 1509 self-portrait found in his Virgin among the Virgins. He spent his mature career in Bruges, where he was a member of the painters' guild. Upon the death of Hans Memling in 1494, David became Bruges' leading painter.
He moved to Bruges in 1483, presumably from Haarlem, where he had formed his early style under Albert van Oudewater, and joined the Guild of Saint Luke at Bruges in 1484. He became dean of the guild in 1501, and in 1496 married Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the goldsmiths' guild. David was one of the town's leading citizens.
Ambrosius Benson served his apprenticeship with David, but they came into dispute around 1519 over a number of paintings and drawings Benson had collected from other artists.
Because of a large debt owed to him by Benson, David had refused to return the material. Benson pursued the matter legally and won, leading to David serving time in prison.
He died on 13 August 1523 and was buried in the Church of Our Lady at Bruges.
David had been completely forgotten when in the early 1860s he was rescued from oblivion by William Henry James Weale, whose researches in the archives of Bruges 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.
Style
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.
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.
Although 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".
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 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.
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.
Works
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, and which is now in the Rouen museum.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
Legacy
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 Isenbrant, Albert Cornelis and Ambrosius Benson achieved importance. Among other Flemish painters, Joachim Patinir and Jan Mabuse were to some degree influenced by him. | © Wikipedia
Gerard David (Oudewater, 1460 circa - Bruges, 13 agosto 1523) è stato un pittore Olandese.
Seguì la linea artistica di Hans Memling, per le intonazioni, l'abilità di ritrarre un microcosmo umano, trasportandola su un livello di maggiore rigore e asciuttezza.
Vita
Nacque a Oudewater, adesso localizzata nella provincia di Utrecht. Si trasferì a Bruges nel 1483, presumibilmente proveniente da Haarlem, luogo nel quale aveva già formato un suo stile artistico giovanile sotto la direzione di Albert van Oudewater.
Ha esercitato la sua carriera a Bruges, dove divenne membro della gilda, nel 1484, e dopo la morte di Hans Memling, avvenuta nel 1494, ottenne il ruolo di maestro.
Nel 1496 sposò Cornelia Cnoop, figlia del decano della gilda degli orafi.
Morì il 13 agosto 1523, quando ormai era uno dei più noti cittadini di Bruges; le sue spoglie vennero sepolte nella chiesa di Nostra Signora.
Opere
Nei suoi primissimi lavori, David ha seguito le impronte degli artisti di Haarlem, quali Dieric Bouts e Geertgen tot Sint Jans, dimostrando, sin da allora, una maggiore energia e originalità nell'impostazione dei colori. Nel primo periodo belga, studiò e copiò i capolavori di Jan van Eyck, di Rogier van der Weyden e di Hugo van der Goes. Tra le opere giovanili l'Adorazione dei Magi agli Uffizi (1495 circa).
In seguito venne a contatto con il maestro Memling, che più di ogni altro lo seguì nel suo percorso evolutivo e creativo. In età matura, un altro grande esponente della pittura fiamminga, Quentin Massys, attuò una certa influenza su David, nell'occasione della sua visita ad Anversa, dove restò impressionato dalla enorme vitalità della concezione delle tematiche sacre. Non è un caso che la Pietà dipinta da David, conservata alla National Gallery londinese, la realizzò sotto questa suggestione.
L'artista aveva già ottenuto, a quel punto della carriera, un discreto successo con una serie di quadri, come le Nozze mistiche di santa Caterina (National Gallery), il Polittico di San Gerolamo della Cervara (galleria Brignole-Sale a Genova), l'Annunciazione (Collezione Sigmaringen) e la Madonna con angeli e santi (Musée des Beaux-Arts di Rouen)
Soltanto un numero ridotto di opere, tra le quali spiccano il Giudizio di Cambise e la Trasfigurazione, è rimasto a Bruges, mentre tutto il resto è sparso in giro per il mondo. Il motivo si può ricercare nell'oblio in cui è incappato il suo nome nonostante il livello alto della sua arte.
Resta da sottolineare il fatto che, negli anni della carriera di David, la città di Bruges e i suoi pittori erano considerati un punto di riferimento per l'arte mondiale, inoltre le località fiamminghe vissero, allora, un'epoca d'oro anche dal punto di vista commerciale e politico.
Gli elementi fondamentali della sua pittura, un po' più aperta alle innovazioni rispetto a quella del suo maestro Memling, sono stati una nitida severità negli schemi, un buon numero di nuovi caratteri psicologici e formali, una tendenza paesaggistica anticipante Joachim Patinir, il criterio di raggruppare o isolare i personaggi, il gusto dei costumi fantasioso, la forma, la liricità interiore e la descrizione fisica dei personaggi. | © Wikipedia
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