In the past, we’ve discovered Caravaggio’s “moving hand,” ascertained the composition at an atomic level of Vermeer's "pearl earring," and figured out why art experts fell for those creepy "zombie forgeries." Today, bluehammer and I direct your attention to the mystery of The Melun Diptych.
A couple of months ago, bluehammer introduced me to these two paintings, which I had never seen before. My initial reaction was to tilt my head to the side like a dog trying to understand French.
Who is that lady? Why was she painted like that? Most importantly, why does The Melun Diptych—painted in 1452—look like it could have graced the cover of Rocket! Magazine in 1950? How did the artist arrive at this ethereal Science Fiction look 564 years ago?
Those are our mysteries.
About The Melun Diptych and Its Artist.
Jean Fouquet painted The Melun Diptych around 1452 in the Gothic style. He was a court painter for Charles VII and Louis XI and was a master of many arts, including portraits, miniatures, medallions, sculptural design, large pieces such as The Melun Diptych and especially manuscript illuminations. He traveled to Italy to study with the Italian masters.
The paintings are called The Melun Diptych because they were originally placed as an intended pair in the Church of Notre Dame in Melun, France. The diptych included a medallion that was attached to the hinged pair, created by the artist himself and showing his portrait. The medallion is now displayed in the Louvre.
The left or, ahem, normal panel depicts King Charles VII’s treasurer (the person who commissioned the painting) kneeling next to Saint Stephen, who is holding a rock, the latter representing his martyrdom by stoning. This panel shows a keen eye for perspective, and this evidences Fouquet’s visit to Italy to view their Art. The panel is normal looking, except that it was unbelievably well done for 1452.
The claim of “unbelievably well done” for the time cries out for some perspective. Jean Fouquet painted The Melun Diptych the same year that Leonardo da Vinci was born and twenty-five years before Michelangelo’s birth. They had just started construction on Machu Picchu, and Galileo’s first discovery would occur about 130 years later.
That left panel is almost unbelievable. The right panel mocks the believable.
The right panel depicts the Madonna and Child surrounded by brightly colored red and blue Cherubim. Wikipedia describes the Madonna and Child as pale, but we think it is more than that. Some say the colors of red, white and blue were meant to represent the “heraldic colors of the king.” As for the Virgin, it
is believed to be an idealized portrait of Agnes Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII, who died two years earlier. Sorel was considered by many at the time to be ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ and therefore an obvious choice … to model the Virgin.
Others suggest that the Virgin might have been modeled after the patron’s wife, Catherine Bude, as the diptych was hung near her tomb. Both of these ladies died at an early age and around the same time, shortly before Fouquet painted The Melun Diptych. Still others claim that there may be a missing painting, making the entire threesome a triptych. This is a minority opinion.
Is It Proof that Earth Was Visited by Aliens?
Some people believe that our planet has already been visited by aliens. They look for proof wherever they can find it. Here is our artist's conception of the possibly "missing panel" of The Melun “Triptych” :
The image on the right is the work of Science Fiction Hall of Famer Frank R. Paul.
Like an answer to an SAT question—when they give you two examples in a progression and ask you to fill in the blank with the most likely third item—what we came up with was alien fantasy. Could that possibly be true? Nah. But it’s fun to speculate, isn't it?
We took this brief (but fun) detour to highlight and praise the “otherworldly” appearance of the paintings. Now, let’s get back to our investigation.
Does It Look Like Other Madonna and Child Paintings from that Era?
Nope. That would be the simple answer to our mystery. But thanks to the google, we've looked at over one thousand paintings of the Madonna and Child from the 13th to the 16th Century to find something—anything—similar. An exemplar or a precursor may exist, or may have existed, but we haven't found it. This may be the closest in terms of subject, ability and elan:
The Baptism of Christ
That’s the Wilton Diptych, and it was painted by an unknown artist around 1395. Nobody in it appears to be made of marble, but it does have some Gothic as well as otherworldly attributes, including the bizarre background and the brightly colored angels.
Italian master Piero della Francesca painted the holy as especially white-colored in his Baptism of Christ (c. 1445-1460). His Madonna della Misericordia (c. 1448) is an otherworldly giant. In his travels in Italy, Fouquet was believed to have met with Piero della Francesca, and that could explain the very pale-skinned holy images.
In our searches, having looked at a lot of ugly baby Jesuses from the Byzantine to the Baroque, this is as close as we’ve come to The Melun Diptych. The Wilton Diptych and della Francesca’s paintings each have attributes that can be found in The Melun Diptych, but their “wholes” do not equal the futuristic final impression that Jean Fouquet was able to render.
So, what was Jean Fouquet doing?
Could the Artist Have Painted (or been inspired by) a Marble Statue?
That's what I believed when I first saw the right panel of the diptych. There are marble statues of the Madonna and Child that look similar to The Melun Diptych, at least in terms of color and texture. Here, let me give you some examples:
Michelangelo at left; Regnault in center; Melun Diptych without background “noise” on the right.
As additional evidence of this, look at the left (normal) panel of the diptych. We can see that the artist is very skilled and could paint human-like skin, showing appropriate coloration and texture, if he desired that effect. The Silver Surfer did not exist (at least in our reality) back in 1452.
Robert Baldwin is a professor of Art History at Connecticut College. He published a commentary about Fouquet’s Melun Diptych on the internet, which included these remarks:
“[Fouquet] also applied an Early Renaissance, hyper three-dimensionality to the figures, throne, jewels in the ‘Gothic’ panel. Instead of angel silhouettes forming a flattened, otherworldly background, Fouquet’s red and blue cherubim stand out with sharply delineated volumes more like polished marble. In this way, he remade the disembodied forms of late medieval visionary art into a Renaissance visual experience grounded in a tangible physical reality.”
(emphasis added). We think the professor is fishing in the right pond!
During our research we came across the best evidence of this proposition. The tomb of Agnes Sorel includes a marble sculpture of her. Does she look familiar? Not only do we have a marble likeness of our Melun Diptych as far as texture and color, but a match in terms of facial features, including the heavy lidded eyes, the high (and rather large) forehead, the largish nose, and the chin. The tomb sculpture even includes a beaded crown with the same ringlet or “frontlet” underneath and to the front:
Atop the tomb of Agnes Sorel you will find this sculpture.
It should be noted that marble will change color through the years. What we see today might not be the glossy finished product that existed when it was sculpted. Our research turned up this clue: “[Marble] is significantly less weather-resistant than granite, and does not handle well as it absorbs skin oils, causing staining.”
Another clue sits on top of the head of Agnes Sorel. The tomb sculpture shows her wearing a crown. The fact that she is depicted wearing a crown is significant because our research discovered that, during her lifetime, Sorel refused to wear a crown. She was offered the title of Duchess and refused that as well. Yet, her tomb sculpture shows her wearing one. Her doppleganger in The Melun Diptych is also wearing one. Coincidence?
But Here’s the Curveball (and There’s Always a Curveball)!
It can’t be this easy, and it’s not. The paintings were placed near the tomb of Catherine Bude, the wife of the patron. It would make sense to use her likeness for the Virgin Mary versus the mistress of the King, no? This is supposedly a picture of Catherine Bude, kneeling between her mother and sister:
There is a distinct resemblance between her and the Madonna in The Melun Diptych, including the heavy-lidded eyes, the high forehead and the pointy chin, but in this painting she is shown in an act of devotion. Agnes Sorel, on the other hand, was depicted like this in print and paint:
Our research discovered that Agnes Sorel was known for her fashion sense, including the habit of leaving one breast exposed while she walked about the King’s court. She bore the King three children while at court from the age of 20 to 28, so she had a ready excuse. (Note: The painting of Agnes Sorel above was done in the 1500s, long after Sorel and Fouquet had died.).
Moreover, we question the provenance of the painting of the kneeling Catherine Bude. It apparently came on the market for the first time in the last couple of years, attributed to an unknown painter. It was supposedly owned by a French family, which wanted to remain anonymous. It was offered at auction by Sotheby’s in 2012, but was then withdrawn. An Art critic first mentioned the painting in 1990. A lot of red flags there.
Would It Be “Christanly”?
The psychology, we believe, favors Agnes Sorel as the model for Fouquet’s Virgin versus Catherine Bude. While it was fashionable to have your picture painted standing next to martyred Saints in front of the Virgin, would it have been “Christianly” to have your likeness used for the Madonna that would adorn your own tomb? Does that seem a bit presumptuous to you? Other royal figures, even mistresses, had their faces used as models for Mary, but those paintings weren’t destined to hang next to the tombs of the models.
Professor Robert Baldwin notes that pinpointing Agnes Sorel as the model for the Virgin in The Melun Diptych is “speculation as no visual or documentary evidence proves or disproves this assertion.” He observes that Catherine Bude is a candidate according to some scholars. Although the professor acknowledges that it is an open question, he seems to lean in favor of Agnes Sorel. You can see for yourself.
A Conversation with Professor Baldwin.
I contacted Professor Baldwin, and he proved to be as knowledgeable as he was generous with his time. In our conversation, the professor noted that it was not surprising to find the Virgin in tombs, as she "protects Christians," while Christ was usually seen in Last Judgments, “sending people to Hell.” He also noted that painting a woman as the Virgin was "the highest tribute" one could pay to her.
Marble Versus Snow.
Professor Baldwin introduced me to the Romance of the Rose, which was "the number one or two book in the late Middle Ages," possibly only behind the Bible. The book was a “courtly encyclopedia,” and it prescribed that snow white was the color of beauty, not so much marmoreal (marble-like) white. "Ancient Greek vases showed women as white figures, men as black."
The professor went on to note:
“While the marmoreal whiteness of Fouquet’s Madonna may have been partially inspired by the tomb statue of Sorel, her smooth, white features make more sense as a conventional metaphor for the beauty of the courtly lady which was routinely praised for its snow-white, swan-white, and marble-white complexion in late medieval and Renaissance literature. In this sense, Fouquet’s Madonna/Sorel is so white not because the artist slavishly copied a statue but because he deployed a conventional metaphor for aesthetic, moral, and spiritual perfection.”
The professor graciously provided a virtual library of literature from the middle ages to prove his point about the use of snow- and swan- and marble-white skin to exemplify beauty and chastity. His last email to me stated that “the idea that Fouquet copied a marble statue to get his marble look is in my view not convincing.” (Underline in original).
A very important bit of wisdom from the Professor was that "either/or" distinctions are frequently wrong. This is especially true when two or more ends can be served while doing one thing. I believe that Fouquet was inspired by the marble statue of Agnes Sorel in painting his Virgin, that he wanted to show beauty, and that he wanted to render an ethereal look. We have put the images side by side and will let you decide:
What Looks Sci-Fi to Us, Today, Was Just “Fashion” Back Then?
It is true that the puffy shirts of Saint Stephen and the patron were fashionable at the time. Also, being a pale beauty was desirable, and women, for some reason, plucked their forehead hair to give themselves more forehead! It is also quite likely that the ringlet underneath the Virgin’s crown is a “frontlet,” used to hold the crown on her head.
Fouquet’s Madonna appears to have full lips, but he has painted her with lipstick covering only a part of them. This gives the Virgin what looks like rosebud lips. Was this also fashionable at the time?
But, there’s pale, and then there’s marble. These are marble-colored immortals. Moreover, although the other fashion statements do tend to show a futuristic look, even if they did not exist in the painting, it would still seem otherworldly. In other words, the stylish French fashion of the day does play a role, but doesn’t come close to explaining what we see.
Conclusion.
We believe that we have solved our first two mysteries: The painting of the Virgin is that of Agnes Sorel based on the sculpture on Sorel’s tomb. Also, the painting is an idealized reproduction of that marble sculpture. Of course, on this count, Professor Baldwin tends to disagree with us.
As for the third mystery, our best guess is that the “otherworldly” appearance of the painting took shape because of the elaborate costumes and conventions of the day, because Fouquet used the white color to show beauty, and because he viewed or actually worked on the marble sculpture of the beautiful Agnes Sorel. Remember, he was also a sculptural designer. Jean Fouquet wanted to bring her back to life after an untimely death at an early age.
And he did.
