The Flanders Panel

“It’s no trouble.” Alvaro sat back in his chair, took a tin of tobacco from a drawer in the desk and started filling his pipe. “Logically, the lady by the window, with the inscription BEATRIX BURG. OST. D. can only be Beatrice of Burgundy, the Duke’s consort. See? Beatrice married Ferdinand Altenhoffen in 1464, when she was twenty-three.”

“For love?” asked Julia with an enigmatic smile, looking at the photograph. Alvaro responded with a brief, rather forced smile of his own.

“As you know, very few marriages of this kind were love matches… The wedding was an attempt by Beatrice’s uncle, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to create closer ties with Ostenburg in an alliance against France, which was trying to annex both duchies.” Alvaro looked at the photograph and put his pipe between his teeth. “Ferdinand of Ostenburg was lucky though, because she was very beautiful. At least, according to what the most important chronicler of the time, Nicolas Flavin, said in his Annates bourguignonnes. Your Van Huys seems to have thought so too. It appears she’d been painted by him before, because there’s a document, quoted by Pijoan, which states that Van Huys was for a time court painter at Ostenburg. In 1463, Ferdinand Altenhoffen assigned him a pension of £100 a year, payable half at the feast of St John and the other half at Christmas. The same document contains the commission to paint a portrait, bien au vif, of Beatrice, who was then the Duke’s fiancee.”

“Are there any other references?”

“Loads. Van Huys became quite an important person.” Alvaro took a file out of a cabinet. “Jean Lemaire, in his Couronne Margaridique, written in honour of Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Low Countries, mentions Pierre de Brugge (Van Huys), Hughes de Gand (Van der Goes) and Dieric de Louvain (Dietric Bouts), together with the person he dubs the king of Flemish painters, Johannes (Van Eyck). The actual words he uses in the poem are: ‘Pierre de Brugge, qui tant eut les traits utez’, which translates literally as ‘he who drew such clean lines’. By the time that was written, Van Huys had been dead for twenty-five years.” Alvaro carefully checked through some other cards. “And there are earlier mentions too. For example, inventories from the Kingdom of Valencia state that Alfonso V the Magnanimous owned works by Van Huys, Van Eyck and other painters, all of them now lost. Bartolomeo Fazio, a close relative of Alfonso V, also mentions him in his De viribus illustribus liber, describing him as ‘Pietrus Husyus, insignis pictor’. Other authors, particularly Italians, call him ‘Magistro Piero Van Hus, pictori in Bruggia’. There’s a quote in 1470 in which Guido Rasofalco mentions one of his paintings, a Crucifixion, which again has not survived, as ‘Opera buona di mano di un chiamato Piero di Juys, pictor famoso in Fiandra.” And another Italian author, anonymous this time, refers to a painting by Van Huys that has survived, The Knight and the Devil, stating that ’A magistro Pietrus Juisus magno et famoso flandesco fuit depictum.“ He’s also mentioned by Guicciardini and Van Mander in the sixteenth century and by James Weale in the nineteenth century in his books on great Flemish painters.” He gathered up the cards and put them carefully back into the file, which he returned to the cabinet. Then he sat back in his chair and looked at Julia, smiling. “Satisfied?”

“Very.” She’d noted everything down and was now taking stock. After a moment, she pushed her hair back and looked at Alvaro curiously: “Anyone would think you’d had it all prepared. I’m positively dazzled.”

The professor’s smile faded a little, and he avoided Julia’s eyes. One of the cards on his desk seemed suddenly to require his attention.

“It’s my job,” he said. And she couldn’t tell if his tone was simply distracted or evasive. Without quite knowing why, this made her feel vaguely uncomfortable.

“Well, all I can say is, you’re still extremely good at it.” She observed him with interest before returning to her notes. “We’ve got plenty of references to the painter and to two of the people in the painting.” She leaned over the reproduction and placed a finger on the second player. “But nothing about him.”

Alvaro was busy filling his pipe and didn’t reply at once. He was frowning.