The Altar of Our Lady (Miraflores Altar)

In 1445, King Juan II of Castalia bequeathed to the Charterhouse of Miraflores, near Burgos, a work depicting the Nativity, the Lamentation, and the Appearance of the risen Christ to Mary. This donation is mentioned in the now lost “libro del becerro”, the registry of documents of the charterhouse. Here is also mentioned that the work had been painted by the great and celebrated “Magistro Rogel”. This early source is fortuitous, for it supplies a terminus ante quem for the date of execution, and
names the donor, the artist, as well as the work’s intended place of display. In fact, it is the sole contemporary source that links an existing work with the name Rogier van der Weyden. The altarpiece therefore dates from the middle of Rogier’s career; he had settled in Brussels in 1435, and developed during the 1440s into a painter who was in demand throughout Europe. The slender, memorable figures of the present triptych continued to have an impact on Netherlandish art well into the 16th century.
The three individual panels, each organised around a delimited perspectival space, portray major stations of the lives of Mary and Christ, and vividly illustrate the intimate relationship between mother and son. Shown on the left is the adoration of the newborn saviour, who lies naked on a white sheet on Mary’s lap. The aged Joseph, seated on a footstool, dozes; manifestly, he is excluded from the close bond between mother and son. Serving as a backdrop to the scene is a precious cloth of honour, which separates the scene from the vaulted Gothic chamber.
The second picture opens onto an expansive landscape within which the Cross stands on a rise. Mary holds her dead son, stricken with sorrow, and is supported by Saint John the Evangelist and Joseph of Arimathea. In the third picture, the risen Christ stands before his mother, who is startled out of her grief. Each of the three panels is framed by an archivolt with rich sculptural decoration, which complements the main scenes. Hovering at the apex of each panel is an angel, who holds a
crown and a scroll which extols Mary’s various virtues in relation to the respective scene. She is dignified to receive the three crowns, for she is the most worthy and unblemished, the most devout during Christ’s sufferings, as well as the most persevering. The texts embroidered on the borders of Mary’s cloak also underscore the Mariological ideas of the work. They are drawn from the Magnificat, the song in praise of Mary from the Gospel of Saint Luke. An unusual detail in these pictures is the ochre-coloured framing of the portals, which at first glance recalls wooden construction. In reality, however, such a material is hardly conceivable – any more than an architectural backdrop that is painted brown. Rogier van der Weyden plays here with various levels of reality. Very probably, the brown of the portals took up the tones of the original frame, which has been lost. Huib van Hove (1814–65) depicted this frame – albeit on a tiny scale – in a watercolour that dates from 1842,
and was executed when he portrayed the paintings owned by the Netherlandish King William II as they hung at that time in the Gothic Hall in The Hague (fig. left). In 1850, after William’s death, his collection was auctioned off, and the Miraflores Triptych was purchased for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. Kathrin Dyballa | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting – Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019