Barthelemy d'Eyck
( fl 1444–69). Netherlandish painter, active
in France. The son of Ydria Exters ‘d’Allemagne’ (d
1460) and the stepson of Pierre du Billant, he is first
recorded on 19 February 1444 as a witness with
Enguerrand Quarton in Aix-en-Provence and described as
‘magister Bartolomeus de Ayck pictor’, inhabitant of
Aix. From c. 1447 he was ‘peintre et varlet de
chambre’ at the court of Rene I, King of Naples (reg
1438–42) and Duke of Anjou (reg 1434–80). Between
1447 and 1449 Barthelemy worked at Rene’s chateau of Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhone) in a room close to the
Duke’s own apartments. There his activities may have
included supervising fellow artists, providing designs
and perhaps painting the ceiling decoration of the Royal
Apartments in the east wing of the chateau (de Merindol).
In 1451 Barthélemy travelled in the Duke’s entourage to
Guyenne, and in 1456 he was at Angers, which he visited
on a number of other occasions. Existing accounts show
that Barthelemy was responsible for paying painters and
illuminators, purchasing materials for manuscripts and
obtaining gold to be made into jewellery for Rene’s
second wife, Joanna of Laval. The last document relating
to Barthelemy is dated 26 December 1469, when he
received wages for himself, three servants and three
horses. The high esteem in which he was held may be
deduced from Jean Pelerin’s third edition of his
treatise De artificiali perspectiva (Toul, 1521),
which ends with a French poem mentioning a ‘Berthelemi’
together with Jean Fouquet, Jean Poyet and Coppin Delf.
There are attempts to identify Barthelemy d'Eyck with the Master
of the Aix Annunciation.
Master
of the Aix Annunciation
( fl 1442–5). Painter active in France. He is named after
a panel of the Annunciation (Aix-en-Provence, Ste
Marie-Madeleine; see fig.). The painting has been connected with a
series of wills executed on behalf of the draper Pierre Corpici (b
?1388; d before ?1465), an inhabitant of Aix. In the earliest
surviving will, dated 9 December 1442, known only from a copy made
by Henri Requin (Labande), Corpici expressed a wish to be buried in
Aix Cathedral and bequeathed 100 florins to pay for an altarpiece
depicting the Annunciation or the Virgin Annunciate. The painting
was to have a supercelo (crowning panel) and a scabelo
(predella) and bear both the Corpici arms and the sign of his shop.
Although not a contract, the will is quite specific regarding the
subject-matter of the altarpiece. There is no mention, however, of
it being a triptych with wings nor of the name of the artist who was
to execute the work. On 5 January 1443, Corpici was granted
permission by the cathedral chapter to construct an altar (destr.
1618), which was located to the right of the entrance of the west
choir (built c. 1285–c. 1425). A further will of 14
July 1445 reiterates Corpici’s desire to be buried in the cathedral;
no reference is made to the altarpiece in this document, suggesting
it was completed by this date. Further wills of 13 February 1449, 19
April 1458 and a final one of 8 November 1465 refer to the ‘altar of
the Annunciation’, indicating that the altarpiece was
installed by then. It has been suggested that the Aix
Annunciation was originally a triptych, with Isaiah
(Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) as the left wing, with St
Mary Magdalene Kneeling on the reverse, and Jeremiah
(Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.) as the right wing, with Christ on
the reverse; a Still-Life with Books (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.)
was originally at the top of the Isaiah panel. The
association of these lateral panels has been disputed
(Hochstetler-Meyer). By 1551 the Annunciation seems to have
lost its crowning panel and predella, and in 1618 it was moved from
the Corpici altar to the Espagnet family altar in the cathedral
baptistery; it was transferred to the sacristy of Ste
Marie-Madeleine between 1791 and 1818. Numerous attempts have been
made to identify the artist of the Annunciation or determine
his nationality. An early attribution was to the Neapolitan Niccolo
Colantonio on the basis of the resemblance to his St Jerome in
his Study Removing a Thorn from the Lion’s Paw (Naples,
Capodimonte), but this has long since been discounted. The painter
of the Annunciation was a near contemporary of the Master of
Flemalle, Jan van Eyck, Stephan Lochner, Konrad Witz and Lukas
Moser, and the painting bears a stylistic relationship with the work
of these artists, for example with Witz’s SS Catherine and Mary
Magdalene in a Church (Strasbourg, Mus. Oeuvre Notre Dame) and
with the Annunciation (Madrid, Prado) attributed to the
Master of Flemalle, although whether the relationship is due to
direct influence or common prototypes is unclear. Comparisons have
also been drawn with the work of the sculptor Claus Sluter, for
example his Weepers from the tomb of Philip the Bold
(Dijon, Mus. B.-A.) have been compared with the Prophet
panels. The Annunciation is stylistically conservative, and
the diversity of theories as to its origins is the result of its
eclectic character. Whether the painter was Netherlandish,
Burgundian, Provençal or from further afield is a matter of
conjecture. He has been tentatively identified with several artists
including the Provençal Jean Chapus and three Flemish artists active
in Provence: Guillaume Dombet, Arnoul de Cats [Arnolet de Catz] (
fl 1430–35) and BARTHELEMY D’EYCK.
