EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The Spell of Gossaert

The Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) exhibition that was on at the Met in New York last year has now moved in truncated form to London’s National Gallery. There are  37 of his 63 extant paintings in London. The Met had 50.  Yet there is not only a difference in numbers but name too. The Art Newspaper reports that despite prolonged discussion the two museums could not agree on how to spell his name, the Metropolitan dropping the ‘e’ because it does not appear in his surviving signatures.  Nor can they agree on who painted the National Gallery’s Virgin and Child which used to be regarded as a late copy after Gossart’s (let’s be fair about the spelling) original. Newly cleaned the National Gallery believe it’s the real deal while the Met presented it as “a copy after Gossaert”. I suppose they added the ‘e’ here to soften the insult.

The show itself, which I saw in New York, does not live up to the hype. It was described in the press as the first major exhibition ever devoted to the artist and as the public unveiling of a great master previously known only to specialists. Well, he’s good and probably worthy of the title. His portraits are luminous and attention-grabbing but the rest, I’m sorry to say, is boring. He pales beside Dürer in every way so it was rather cruel of the curators to place some Dürer prints next to his works. He certainly aimed to surpass Dürer but, with the possible exception of the portraits, he never even came close. 

Go see it, nevertheless. It’s educational and is on until May 30th.