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Robert Campin and/or The Master of Flémalle
Chronolgy
This panel painter--really a workshop--presents a number of problems. We have a group of fine paintings, unsigned and undated but stylistically related. And we have a fine bunch of documents about a Tournai painter named Robert Campin, who unfortunately left no signed or otherwise documented works. Do the paintings and the biographical documents belong together? Maybe.
Anyway, here's what we know about Robert Campin:
ca. 1375/80: Born in Valenciennes.
1406: Becomes master painter in Tournai.
1408: Buys a house in Tournai.
1410: Acquires Tournai citizenship, and is appointed "painter in ordinary" to the city.
1423: Revolt of the craftsmen's guilds in Tournai: guilds take over the City Council. Campin's involvement very minor, but as Dean of the Guild of St. Luke (the painters), he has automatic membership in the revolutionary Council, 1425-27. The bourgeoisie seize control of the Council again in 1428, deprive Campin of his official functions and start picking on him for "mildly un-Tournasian " activities, as Panofsky put it.
1425: Rogelet de la Pasture (is this R. van der Weyden? Or not?) and Jacques Daret are apprenticed to Campin. Both become masters in the guild in 1432.
1432: Campin is arrested for "living in concubinage" with a mistress ["engagingly named Leurence Polette"--E. Panofsky]. He is sentenced to be banished from the city for one year, and to go on a pilgrimage to St. Gilles. His sentence is commuted and reduced to a moderate fine by the personal intervention of Jacqueline of Bavaria, Holland and Hainaut (whose own morals were the subject of a lot of speculation.)
N.B.: 1432 is also the year when Daret and Rogelet became masters. Does this mean the two took mastership--which was expensive--in order to run the workshop during Campin's banishment? Maybe.
1444: Campin dies, April 26.