The Early Haarlem School of Painting

Abstract

At the present time there are about fourteen paintings that can be attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans.1 None of these paintings bears a signature or a date, but the authorship of two panels in Vienna is attested by reliable documents of the early seventeenth century. These two paintings, the Lamentation and the Legend of the Relics of St. John the Baptist (Figs. 1 and 2)—the front and back sides of the right wing of Geertgen's altarpiece for the Knights of St. John in Haarlem—are, therefore, the key works in a study of the artist's style or a recovery of his oeuvre. The Lamentation was a very famous composition in Haarlem. It was copied several times. The sixteenth century painter Jan Mostaert was commissioned to paint portraits of the Haarlem burgher Speyart van Woerden and his wife on the wings of a triptych with a copy of Geertgen's Lamentation as a central panel. A fine wooden sculpture group from the late fifteenth century, now in the Rijksmuseum, repeats the figures of Christ, Mary, and Mary Salom...