About this
work
Object details
- Title:
- Saint Christopher
- Date:
- 1490
- Dimensions:
- 115 × 72 cm
- Inventory number:
- 29
More about this work
The giant Christopher is wading through a river in the foreground. He is wearing a blue tunic and a pink cloak, and is supporting himself with a forked staff. The Christ Child on his shoulder, with an aureole around his head, is making a gesture of blessing. There are rocks on the left, and in the entrance to a cave is a hermit with a lantern. On the right there is a wide coastline in the glow of the setting sun. A distant city can be glimpsed between the rock and Christopher.
The 13th-century Legenda aurea tells the story of the heathen giant Christopher, who wanted to work for ‘the most powerful ruler in the world’. He first served a Christian king, but when that king made the sign of the Cross because he was scared of evil, Christopher went to work for the devil instead. Satan, in his turn, showed that he was scared of a cross by the side of the road. A hermit told Christopher that he could get to know the all-mightiest ruler of the Cross, and could serve him by carrying people over the deep water. One night a child appeared who wanted to get to the other side of the river, but weighed as heavy as lead. Christopher managed to get to the other side with great effort and the aid of the hermit’s lantern. He had not only been carrying the Christ Child but also the sins of the world that Christ bore on his shoulders.
Christopher, which in Greek means ‘Christ-bearer’, was a popular saint and guardian of travellers in the late Middle Ages. His gigantic figure often stood as a statue or painting at the entrance to a church. That might also have been the function of this work. Christopher’s protection was invoked against sudden death by people who could not receive the Last Sacrament, which is why his image was often seen in infirmaries and hospitals. The painting may also have belonged to one of the many charitable institutions in the city before they were disbanded in the period of the French occupation. Various meanings can be attached to Christopher’s attribute of the staff. For example, Christ commanded him to plant it in the ground, and the next day it bore young shoots. That is referred to in the painting by the tree growing above the cave. Massijs’s later friend Erasmus rejected the forms of superstition of the kind that were attached to Christopher.
Friedländer (1971) dated the picture around 1490, early in Massijs’s oeuvre, on the evidence of visual elements that originated in Dirk Bouts’s shop, who worked in Leuven, Massijs’s birthplace. For instance, he drew attention to the resemblance to St Christopher on the right wing of Bouts’s so-called Pearl of Brabant (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. no. WAF 76). Silver (1984) agreed with him, and also saw similarities to figures of the saint by the Master of Catherine of Cleves and Jan van Eyck.
The comparison of Massijs’s St Christopher to earlier models demonstrates that the dynamism of his work has gained immeasurably from the fact that the saintly giant is walking straight towards the viewer. That creates a greater sense of recession into depth, as a result of which the saint is consistent with the typological changes that the dominant figure underwent at the end of the 15th century. The composition itself also reinforces the dynamism. Whereas St Christopher has high rocks on both sides in the versions by Van Eyck, Bouts and Memling, Massijs replaced that passage on the right with a charming, low-lying coastal landscape. The direction that that gives the composition, from top left to bottom right, is further accentuated by Christopher’s staff.
The Christ Child’s gilded aureole, though, looks archaic, but the beautiful landscape under the glow of the setting sun is surprising and new. The coastal view is closely related in style to the type of landscape that became dominant in Antwerp in the first quarter of the 16th century: the world landscape. Massijs also demonstrated his interest in that type in other works. In addition, he worked with Joachim Patinir, the specialist Antwerp landscapist, the originator of the world landscape as an independent genre.
The 13th-century Legenda aurea tells the story of the heathen giant Christopher, who wanted to work for ‘the most powerful ruler in the world’. He first served a Christian king, but when that king made the sign of the Cross because he was scared of evil, Christopher went to work for the devil instead. Satan, in his turn, showed that he was scared of a cross by the side of the road. A hermit told Christopher that he could get to know the all-mightiest ruler of the Cross, and could serve him by carrying people over the deep water. One night a child appeared who wanted to get to the other side of the river, but weighed as heavy as lead. Christopher managed to get to the other side with great effort and the aid of the hermit’s lantern. He had not only been carrying the Christ Child but also the sins of the world that Christ bore on his shoulders.
Christopher, which in Greek means ‘Christ-bearer’, was a popular saint and guardian of travellers in the late Middle Ages. His gigantic figure often stood as a statue or painting at the entrance to a church. That might also have been the function of this work. Christopher’s protection was invoked against sudden death by people who could not receive the Last Sacrament, which is why his image was often seen in infirmaries and hospitals. The painting may also have belonged to one of the many charitable institutions in the city before they were disbanded in the period of the French occupation. Various meanings can be attached to Christopher’s attribute of the staff. For example, Christ commanded him to plant it in the ground, and the next day it bore young shoots. That is referred to in the painting by the tree growing above the cave. Massijs’s later friend Erasmus rejected the forms of superstition of the kind that were attached to Christopher.
Friedländer (1971) dated the picture around 1490, early in Massijs’s oeuvre, on the evidence of visual elements that originated in Dirk Bouts’s shop, who worked in Leuven, Massijs’s birthplace. For instance, he drew attention to the resemblance to St Christopher on the right wing of Bouts’s so-called Pearl of Brabant (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. no. WAF 76). Silver (1984) agreed with him, and also saw similarities to figures of the saint by the Master of Catherine of Cleves and Jan van Eyck.
The comparison of Massijs’s St Christopher to earlier models demonstrates that the dynamism of his work has gained immeasurably from the fact that the saintly giant is walking straight towards the viewer. That creates a greater sense of recession into depth, as a result of which the saint is consistent with the typological changes that the dominant figure underwent at the end of the 15th century. The composition itself also reinforces the dynamism. Whereas St Christopher has high rocks on both sides in the versions by Van Eyck, Bouts and Memling, Massijs replaced that passage on the right with a charming, low-lying coastal landscape. The direction that that gives the composition, from top left to bottom right, is further accentuated by Christopher’s staff.
The Christ Child’s gilded aureole, though, looks archaic, but the beautiful landscape under the glow of the setting sun is surprising and new. The coastal view is closely related in style to the type of landscape that became dominant in Antwerp in the first quarter of the 16th century: the world landscape. Massijs also demonstrated his interest in that type in other works. In addition, he worked with Joachim Patinir, the specialist Antwerp landscapist, the originator of the world landscape as an independent genre.
Acquisition history
bequest of: ridder Florent van Ertborn, 1841
Copyright and legal
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