Csornay Boldizsár - Hubai Péter szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 96. (Budapest, 2002)

KOVÁCS, ZOLTÁN: A New Representation of the Salvator Mundi from the workshop of Quentin Massys

representations of God the Creator;

17 and half-length and bust-type images of the authentic image of Christ, the Holy Face, based on Byzantine prototypes.

18 The subject was represented in several different formats in the Low Countries, each stemming from a different iconographie tradition based on the earlier representational types mentioned above. Standing, full-length images seem to have chronological precedence, the earliest surviving Netherlandish examples dating from around 1400 or the early years of the 15th century.

19 An illuminated manuscript in the Staatsarchiv in Wiesbaden, coming from the abbey of Arnstein a. d. Lahn but made somewhere else around 1410, contains one of the earliest Netherlandish representations of the Salvator Mundi.

20 The text in the manuscript is a collection of mystical writings from the 14fth century and around 1400, predominantly anonymous, in Middle Netherlandish. The manuscript is decorated with thirty-four drawings, most of which are independent from the text. The illumination is a fine example of the soft style of the period prior to the appearance of the Van Eyck brothers and reflecting Sienese influence. The title leaf was decorated by the so-called Third Master, who represented the Salvator Mundi standing between two trees, full length, raising His right in blessing, and holding a globe surmounted by a tiny cross in His left (fig. 41).

21 The scroll beside the Saviour is inscribed Ego sum via Veritas et vita. In the miniature that introduces the chapter beginning Prières pendant la Messe at pour la communion in the Turin Book of Hours, the same inscription appears in the open book held in the left hand of a standing figure of Christ.

22 Classifying it as a representation of the Salvator Mundi, Otto Pacht suggested that images analogous to this type could be found among the miniatures in illuminated Bibles of the early 15th century. He proposed that the standing, full-length type of the Saviour may have had some kind of connection with the figures of Christ as described in Creation narratives: 17 Above all, those representing the Creator standing, full length, and holding a globe in His left hand can be regarded as possible formal sources of the Salvator Mundi iconography. The tradition of these will be discussed at some length later in the article. 18 Cf. Ringbom, op. cit. (cfr. n. 10), 171-2. 19 A standing, full-length iconographie type of the Salvator Mundi, holding an open book in His left hand and with a globe laying at His feet, can be found in works of Catalonian origin dating from earlier in the 14th century. The cult of Christus Salvator was particularly strong and popular in Catalonia. Cf. G. Llompart. Longitudo Christi Salvatoris. Una aportación al conocimento de la piedad popular catalana medieval, Analecta sacra tarraconensia 40 (1967), 93-115, plates 1-2. 20 An approximate contemporary to the drawing in the Wiesbaden manuscript, a miniature in a book of hours made in Utrecht and Brugge between 1400-1415 shows Christ as the Salvator Mundi standing between Saint Anthony and Saint Christopher, raising His right in blessing and holding a globe surmounted by a cross in His left. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliothek, Ms 77L45, fol. 174v. Cf. M. Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the mid-l6th Century, Leuven 1999, 200, pi. 34. 21 The decoration of the manuscript was published by Dittmar Heubach in 1925 (Grisaillen und Federzeichnungen der altflämischen Schule aus einer niederländischen Bilderhandschrift vom Jahre 1410, Strassburg 1925, 56, Taf. 1/1.). For a detailed discussion of the texts and drawings in it, see M. Renger, The Wiesbaden Codex B 10 and Netherlandish Art around 1400, Diss. Harvard University, Cambridge (Mass.) 1985. 22 Heures de Turin. 45 feuillets à peinture précédents des Très Belles Heures de France, duc de Berry, ed. A. Chatelet, Turin 1967. The miniature was destroyed in a fire in 1904.