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
Louvre, 73 whereas a similar one is seen in the Infant's hand in the Madonna of the Frick Collection. 74 Firmly rooted in the Eyckian tradition, book illumination also adopted the motif of the gleaming crystal ball. 75 One of the earliest easel painters who adopted the motif was Petrus Christus, 76 and the crystal orb soon became a popular and almost inevitable attribute of the Salvator Mundi. Some exceptions, however, occur, the most famous being Rogier's Braque Triptych, where Christ holds an orb of metal. 77 THE PROBLEM OF TYPE The formula seen in the Budapest panel, namely the cropping of the body in line with the knees, is unusual in the Netherlandish iconographie tradition of the Salvator Mundi. However, figures of similar length had a firm tradition in Italy from the mid14th century onwards. One of the early examples is the life-size figure of Christ in Andrea Orcagna's altarpiece in the Strozzi chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. 78 The first painter to adopt the knee-length formula in portraiture was a Northerner, namely Justus van Ghent, when painting a historical series of uomini famosi in the Urbino palace, commissioned by Federigo Montefeltre in the 1470s. This series contains twenty-eight images, half-length representations as well as knee-length ones. 79 Justus may have borrowed this formula from Giovanni Santi, whom he worked with when in the court of Urbino. 80 In turn, it may have been the works of Justus that were to provide a source of inspiration to the subsequent generations of artists adopting the knee-length 73 Ibid., frontispiece illustration. 74 M. W. Ainsworth, Petrus Christus. Renaissance Master of Bruges, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1994, 72-7. 75 The examples of the motif of the crystal globe in Netherlandish books of hours, reflecting an Eyckian source of inspiration, was discussed by Kovács, op. cit. (cfr. n. 29), 106-7. 76 Such crystal globes are seen in the Exeter Madonna, the Madonna in our Museum (inv. 4324), that in the Prado, and in the Holy Family in Kansas City. Cf. Ainsworth, op. cit. (cfr. n. 74), 102-6, no. 7; 12630, no. 11; 142-5, no. 14; 170-6, no. 20. 77 The motif of the metal globe recurs in a tondo, painted by a follower of Memling at the end of the 15th century (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Michael Friedsam Collection, inv. 32.100.54). The source of this representation must have been the Braque Triptych. De Vos, op. cit. (cfr. n. 25), 344, Al 2. Cf. Kovács, op. cit. (cfr. n. 29), 105, fig. 5. 78 Cf. Mader - Hoffmann, op. cit. (cfr. n. 13), 42. 79 See, for example, the representation of the young Solomon holding a book in his right and a long sceptre in his left. Friedländer, op. cit. (cfr. n. 24), III. [Dirk Bouts and Joos van Ghent), pi. 112, fig. 103. Cf. De Patoul - Van Schoute, op. cit. (cfr. n. 50), 403-9. A number of these panels are now in the Louvre, Paris, whereas the rest are preserved in the Galleria Nazionale délie Marche, Urbino. Contrary to the images cropped at the breast or the waist, this formula made possible the distinction between standing and seated figures. Cf. L. Campbell, Renaissance Portraits. European Portrait Painting in the I4th, 15th, and 16th Centuries, New Haven-London 1990, 54-61. 80 Santi showed a particular preference towards the knee-length formula in his representations of the Madonna (see, for example, his Sacra conversaziones in Gradara, Rocca; Montefiorentino, Convento; Urbino, Galleria Nazionale délie Marche; or Fano, Pinacoteca). Cf. R. Varese, Giovanni Santi, Fiesole 1994, figs. 111-4.
