Petrus Christus’ “Our Lady of the Dry Tree”. A Note on the Influence of the Veneration of Images on Early Netherlandish Painting

Abstract

Petrus Christus’ painting of “Our Lady of the Dry Tree” depicts the Virgin standing in a bifurcated leafless tree. According to the generally accepted interpretation, this remarkable iconography was derived from Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pelerinage de l’Âme, an allegorical tract written around 1330. Christus’ painting is, however, not based on an allegorical program, nor on notions derived from allegory. It represents a venerated cult image, which was known by the name of “Our Lady of the Dry Tree” because it was originally suspended from a dead tree. A confraternity was founded in her honour. The image was placed over an altar in her own chapel in the Franciscan monastery in Bruges, at some point before 1396. No later than 1463, Petrus Christus became a member of the confraternity of “Our Lady of the Dry Tree”. The iconography of his painting conveys a fairly accurate idea of the setting of the image upon or above its altar, for it is most likely that it was indeed placed in the fork of a leafless bough or branch or tree. Similar cases have been documented. The paper is not published in these proceedings, but will appear in an extended version in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LX, 1997.