Weyden, Rogier van der

(ca. 1400-1464)

   The Flemish Renaissance painter Rogier van der Weyden (Roger de la Pasture) was born in Tourna n 1399 or 1400. His father was a cutler, but little is known of the early years of his life. He was a pupil of Robert Campin, the Master of Flémalle, who had been taught by Jan van Eyck. On 1 August 1432 he secured his accreditation as a master painter, and, married to a woman from Brussels, he departed soon afterward for the city that would remain his base for the rest of his life.

   Van der Weyden established a large studio and secured much success in earning considerable sums paid by town officials for his paintings. The most renowned work, which won for him the title of official painter of Brussels bestowed by town authorities in 1436, was the Tableaux de Justice (Tableaus of justice), which was displayed in the Hôtel de Ville and which was destroyed in the bombardment of 1695. His altarpiece Descent from the Cross (ca. 1438), in the Esco-rial in Madrid, remains the most famous of his works, which are often difficult to attribute since he did not sign his paintings. In 1450, he traveled to Rome, and it is likely he completed several works while in Italy.

   Master Rogier exerted a profound influence on contemporary painting due in part to his use of apprentices, who spread his style across Europe, and to his practice of fashioning detailed models of his subjects. In his paintings, he demonstrates the ability to express maximum action within disciplined structure and depict intense emotion in a groundbreaking way while drawing on a concern to portray the psychological truth of the figures.

   Representative works attributed to van der Weyden include The Entombment Madonna with Four Saints, and the Braque Triptych (ca. 1450), Man with an Arrow (ca. 1452), Francesco d'Este (ca. 1455), and Portrait of Charles the Bold (ca. 1457). Rogier van der Weyden died on 18 June 1464. A Brussels school of painters, a legacy of his studio, included artists Colijn de Coter and Vrancke van der Stockt, among others.