Two Portraits by Pierre Spicre

Abstract

The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. contains two portraits of capital significance in the history of French medieval painting. Up to now these portraits, representing Hugues de Rabutin and his wife, Jeanne de Montagu, have been attributed to the Maitre de St. Jean de Luz, an attribution to which Fernand Mercier, the eminent director of the museum of Besancon also agrees. Le Maitre de St. Jean de Luz (Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, April 1930). Now they ought to be given back to their recently discovered author, Pierre Spiere, whose painting falls in with the great tradition of such fifteenth century artists as Fouquet, the Maitre de Moulins, and Nicolas Froment. The fact that obscurity often surrounds the personality and the works of the painters of this period only serves to increase interest in this new master whose entire career is known to us. (J. Bacri, Pierre Spicre peintre bourguignon du XVc siecle, Gazette des Beaux Arts, April 1935.)