School of Petrus Christus
Southern Netherlands · Early Netherlandish painting
The story
This entry is not a person. It stands for the Louvre's label 'school of Petrus Christus', which the museum gives to a small panel, a Lamentation over the dead Christ painted in the southern Netherlands around the middle of the 15th century. The phrase points to an unnamed painter working close to Christus, the leading master in Bruges after Jan van Eyck.
The panel has passed from name to name. It was first given to Hans Memling of Bruges, then to the Brussels master Rogier van der Weyden, to the German engraver Martin Schongauer, and to the Leuven painter Dieric Bouts, to his pupil and to his son. At the exhibition of Flemish painting held in Bruges in 1902 it hung as a Christus, and the Louvre bought it in 1951 as his original. Today the museum keeps his name at one remove and shows the panel in a Richelieu wing room devoted to painting for the open market.
