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This painting was left with the Museo del Prado in February 2011
for the purposes of study and possible acquisition.
Following its arrival at the Museum we proceeded to carry out technical analyses.
The information provided from these tests allowed us to see that beneath the overpainting
was the figure of a kneeling donor protected by his patron saint,
who could be identified as Saint Agnes due to the presence of the lamb.
The next step was to try to identify the donor and to research
and consequently suggest who the artist might be.
This was complicated given that there are very few surviving examples of early French painting
and most are anonymous or by different artists.
From the outset and despite the presence of the overpainting,
it was evident that no other known works resemble this one or could be by this artist.
Identifying the donor was an even more complex task.
On the sleeves of his clothing there were some gilded leaves.
Initially, it was difficult to see what sort of leaves they were from
the X-radiographs and Infra-red reflectographs and we thought
they might be oak leaves but this did not prove a promising line of research.
I realised that it might be useful to try to discover
who had Saint Agnes as their patron saint.
One possibility was the Visconti, Dukes of Milan.
Gian Galeazzo Visconti had a daughter named Valentina who,
in 1399, married Louis I d’Orléans,
Louis de Valois, the son of the French king Charles V.
I continued to investigate in order to see if there was
any relation between Saint Agnes and the French monarchy
and whether Saint Agnes was the patron saint of Charles V of France.
At this point I started to wonder if the figure under the overpainting
was Louis de Valois, 1st Duke of Orléans, but I could not prove this
as the information I had at this moment was not sufficient to identify him.
Some months later, however, when looking at manuscripts of the period
I found a miniature that depicted a king with three youths, almost boys,
dressed in green with leaves on their clothes.
The information provided by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France stated that they were
“the three sons of Louis d’Orléans, as they have the nettle leaf emblem on their clothes.”
I realised that I had hit upon the key to identifying the donor.
The next step was to identify his emblems and to see if there was any portrait
or image that could give us an idea of Louis’ features.
This was the height of the International Gothic period
and all the existing portraits of him are not reliable ones.
I found some miniatures that included depictions of him
but in all of them he is shown with his head covered
by a hat that does not reveal his hair.
One of his most distinctive features was his receding hairline
and high forehead but these could not be seen in the miniatures,
although they did show a nose and chin similar to the ones in this panel.
There is no doubt that this was Louis d’Orléans
due to the nettle leaves, which functioned as if he were wearing a label stating
“I am Louis d’Orléans”.
The subject of The Agony in the Garden is a relatively uncommon
one in contrast to other episodes from the Passion of Christ,
which are often depicted
in art and which frequently include donor figures.
I therefore set out to find other examples,
including later ones, of this subject with a donor.
In Tournai cathedral there is a carved stone relief of around 1433
of this subject with a kneeling donor who is Jean de la Wastine, protected by Saint John the Baptist.
Given that this is a funerary monument intended to preserve the memory
of the donor it had to be considered whether
the present panel was made in a similar context,
in others words, after the death of Louis d’Orléans.
Reinforcing this idea was the fact that he carries a scroll
inscribed with the opening words of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus,
which is characteristic of funerary descriptions.
This suggested that it was not Louis who commissioned
this work towards the end of his life, from 1405 onwards,
but that it was commissioned by his widow Valentina Visconti
or by his son and heir Charles d’Orléans after Louis’ death,
just as they commissioned his tomb in the church of the Celestines in Paris in 1408.
For this reason I have dated the work to between 1405 and 1408.
With regard to the painting’s technique,
both the Infra-red reflectography and the stratigraphic samples
provided a great deal of new information for us to continue
our researches and also for the purposes of the work’s restoration.
The X-radiography and Infra-red reflectography showed how the panel is made up.
The fact that Baltic oak is used implies a work of high cost
as this added to the price. This is also the case with the blue used for the sky
and for other elements in the work as
it is lapis lazuli, which thus increased the price of the work a great deal.
With regard to the X-radiographs,
the important issue was to see how the under-drawing was done.
It is applied in a confident manner with few changes,
defining most of the details, outlines and folds.
Interestingly, these folds are drawn by hand in straight lines
but they are not transcribed as such on the surface as here the artist
used curved lines in a way typical of the International Gothic style.
There are also a few lines that create modelling,
indicating that the artist was also interested in giving his figures a sense of volume.
In general, the under-drawing is important in this work.
With regard to the iconography, I noted earlier
that this is a relatively uncommon subject in terms of the inclusion of the donor
and this example is unique in the way the subject is represented.
Firstly, because of the long, narrow format and because two superimposed planes
had to be used due to the focuses of attention selected by the artist:
firstly, the Apostles, who accompanied Christ to the Mount of Olives
and are seen here asleep, and secondly,
Christ in the presence of God the Father.
The artist had to reduce the scale
of the figures and the way he depicted the Apostles
is very different to the way we see them in other depictions,
probably as a result of the patron’s wishes.
Saint James, for example, who is normally shown dressed as a pilgrim
(sometimes with his pilgrim’s shell)
is here shown with his back to the donor and his sword,
perhaps to emphasise the noble status of Louis d’Orléans himself.
Saint Peter is shown in the background,
whereas he is normally given more importance
and is located in the foreground with the keys that are his traditional attributes.
It is in fact Saint John who is given more importance here,
and furthermore his figure has been reworked
by the artist as there are changes in the underdrawing:
various adjustments have been made to the eyes and the face
and the position of the face and head has been tilted upwards.
If this panel is compared to other surviving examples of the period it can be seen that,
most unusually, the sky is depicted.
It is not that it never appears
but it is sometimes replaced by gilding or by a type of brocade effect.
This sky has a huge blaze of 10-pointed stars
as the artist was unusually interested in depicting space in order to gain pictorial depth.
Manuscript illumination was particularly innovative
with regard to these advances in the depiction of space, and this is the first example
of a panel painting that attempts to equal the progress made in that field of painting.
The artist reveals himself as very unusual within the International Gothic style,
in a context undoubtedly associated with Louis d’Orléans,
in other words an elite, courtly and very Parisian environment
with no influence of Flemish or Burgundian painting.
This artist is much more elegant and stylised,
in a way typical of Parisian International Gothic.
It has not been possible to identify the artist of this panel due to a lack of any documentation.
The only information that we have to identify him
is the connection with Louis d’Orléans and his family.
We know that Louis had an artist in his service
named Colart de Laon, who was his painter and valet de chambre
and then held the same positions with Louis’ son, until 1411.
It is possible that this is a work by Colart de Laon
who began his career in the 1370s and was reaching the end of it in 1411.
Colart was certainly associated with the International Gothic
and he could certainly have painted a work of this type.
To sum up, we are in the presence of a work that was completely unknown
until the present time and which is extremely important,
not just because of the very small number
of surviving Early French paintings but also because of its uniqueness,
its aesthetic merit – which is enormous,
bearing in mind the advanced nature of the composition,
which has parallels in manuscript illumination –
and its connection with a figure of the importance of Louis d’Orléans.
This panel provides us with the only known image of the Duke,
who was a quintessential man of his day:
described as the ideal prince in contemporary literature, a lover of art,
protector of great writers such as Eustache Deschamps (who was
another of his valets de chambre) and Christine de Pisan,
and a trendsetter who, according to his inventories,
spent immense amounts of money on wearing the fashions of the day,
just as we see him here in his sumptuous houppelande
with its gold nettle leaf ornaments that adorn the sleeves.
The Museo del Prado has had the great good fortune
to be able to add this work to its collections
as it is undoubtedly one of the most important discoveries
within the field of Early French painting in many years.