From Patron to Spectator: Chancellor Nicolas Rolin’s Orders in the Workshops of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden

Abstract

The article examines the orders that Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor of the Duke of Burgundy, made in two main painting workshops of the southern Netherlands in the first half of the 15th century: “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, created by Jan van Eyck in 1435, and “The Last Judgment”, made by Rogier van der Weyden about ten years later. The article is relevant because of the need to reconstruct different layers of the viewer’s perception of the above-mentioned works, taking into account the fact that their original location was different from the current one. The church of Notre-Dame du Châtel, which kept the “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, was demolished during the Great French Revolution. Although the hospital in Beaune, for which “The Last Judgment” was intended, has survived to this day, however, the polyptych by R. van der Weyden is not currently displayed in the space of the Rolin Chapel. Such alteration in the placement of altar compositions increases the numbers of barriers to reading the paintings’ iconographic programs. The novelty of the article lies in examining the history of the Chancellor’s orders, his biography, as well as the political, social and religious context of the era in order to highlight the semantic layers in the works by Jan van Eyck and R. van der Weyden. The method of receptive aesthetics may help to analyze how the altars ordered by N. Rolin were perceived by ordinary church visitors, hospital patients, as well as the Chancellor himself and his wife. The article examines the existing hypotheses concerning the symbolic meaning of specific objects and figures on altars from the point of view of the difference in the perception of donators and other viewers of these works. The devotional projects implemented by Nicolas Rolin in Autun and Beaune are accompanied by the Chancellor’s political and social message to his enemies at the court.