INTRODUCTION

Whereas technical investigations of early Netherlandish paintings developed after World War II, the study of patronage has a much longer tradition, one that goes back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Already at this early stage of scholarship, knowledge of the patron of a picture was considered to be important for understanding its historical significance. In 1833 the artist Ernst Forster sold Rogier van der Weyden's Medici Virgin [FIG. 148] to the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt. In his correspondence with the museum's director, Philipp Veit, prior to the delivery of the panel, Forster pointed not only to the beauty, but also the historical value of the panel:

Forster was evidently aware of the late medieval tradition of depicting patrons with attributes enigmatic to the modern viewer. The figures to the right of the Virgin in the painting are not portraits of members of the Medici family, however, but images of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The attribute of the first is a urinal, that of the second a spatula for the application of salve. Because Cosmas and Damian were patron saints of physicians and also the Medici family, a connection between the panel and the Florentine banking family remains quite possible.

More interesting for our present concern than whether Rogier's painting has anything to do with the Medici is Forster's effort to identify the patron on the ground of a coat of arms and attributes held by the figures. This method is still valid, but there are sometimes other clues, such as inscriptions. These can be rather extensive texts, like the quatrain on the Ghent Altarpiece, which describes the circumstances of the painting's genesis [SEE CHAPTER 1, p. 52]. Likewise, genealogical research and the reconstruction of the work's provenance (the succession of its former owners) can shed valuable light on the patrons.