Saint Dymphna by Goossen van der Weyden – An Up-to-date Princess

Abstract

In 2020, two major exhibitions brought to Tallinn by the PhoebusFoundation, the largest private art collection in Belgium, opened atthe Art Museum of Estonia. While the exhibition at the KadriorgArt Museum exhibited numerous works from the Golden Age of theFlemish painting, the exhibition at the Niguliste Museum made theDymphna altarpiece from the Goossen van der Weyden workshop(ca 1505) its focus. The altarpiece was dismantled in the 19th centuryafter which the panel depicting the decapitation of Dymphna was lost.The exhibition was accompanied by a monograph reflecting on themajor topics connected to the Dymphna altarpiece and presentingthe results of the conservation work carried out between 2017 and2020. One of the aspects the book considers is the material culturerepresented in the Dymphna altarpiece.The clothing and textiles of the protagonists receive special attentionin the monograph, for example when questions such as if the garmentsworn by the princess and the king are fashionable or out of dateare raised. This article explores this question taking the portraitsof Habsburg and Castilian princesses painted in around 1500 andnot used for comparison in the monograph as its point of departure.In this paper I propose, that the clothing and accessories ofprincess Dymphna are modelled on the image of contemporaryHabsburg-Castilian princesses, and that such modelling has politicalimplications. The role of Antwerp as a merchant city must also notbe forgotten in this context, as the appearance of luxury objects in anartwork is in direct correlation with the city’s milieu of merchandise,luxury production, and the marketing of the city.