Bernard van Orley
Bernard van Orley, also called Barend or Barent van Orley, Bernaert van Orley or Barend van Brussel, was a versatile Flemish artist and representative of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, who was equally active as a designer of tapestries and, at the end of his life, stained glass. Although he never visited Italy, he belongs to the group of Italianizing Flemish painters called the Romanists, who were influenced by Italian Renaissance painting, in his case especially by Raphael.
He was born and died in Brussels and "served as a sort of commissioner of the arts for the Brussels town council". He was the court artist of the Habsburg rulers. He was extremely productive, concentrating on the design of his works, and leaving their execution largely to others, in the case of painting, and entirely so, in the case of the tapestries and stained glass. This he may have learned from Raphael, whose workshop in Rome was unprecedentedly large.
Due to his reliance on workshop execution, his many surviving works vary considerably in quality. Many drawings, mostly studies for designs for tapestries and stained glass, also survive. He or his workshop would have produced full-scale cartoons for the tapestries, but these were normally lost in the course of weaving, when they were cut into strips. The prevalent subject matter of his paintings are religious scenes and portraits, and he painted only a limited number of mythological and allegorical subjects. His portraits mostly depict members of the Habsburg dynasty and were produced in multiple versions by his workshop. The subject matter of his tapestries was more varied, reflecting the normal range of that medium, from biblical cycles to allegories, battle and hunting scenes.
His father had been a tapestry designer in Brussels, and several of Bernard's descendants were artists. A number of them were still active in the 18th century.
Family
His family came originally from Luxembourg, descendants from the Seigneurs d'Ourle or d'Orley.His branch of the family then moved to the Duchy of Brabant, where his father Valentin van Orley was born as an illegitimate child. Bernard and his brother Everard were both born in Brussels.The painted wing panels of the sculpted Saluzzo retable are attributed to Valentin van Orley, describing the Life of St. Joseph. The retable itself is Gothic in style, but these wing panels already show some characteristic of the Renaissance style. The panels of the Life of St. Roch in the Saint James' Church, Antwerp have been ascribed to Everard van Orley.
In 1512 Bernard van Orley married Agnes Seghers; in 1539, shortly after Agnes' death, he married Catherina Hellinckx. He had nine children. His four boys followed in the footsteps of their father and also became painters.
Apprenticeship
It is sometimes presumed that Bernard van Orley completed his art education in Rome in the school of Raphael, however there are no reliable sources to prove this. At that time, there were only a few painters with some renown in Brussels, such as Van Laethem and painters from the Coninxloo family. It is therefore much more likely that he was initially taught in the workshop of his father, an obscure painter whose name appears as "master" in the "Liggere" of the Guild of St. Luke of Antwerp and who had several pupils.Bernard van Orley received his knowledge of the Renaissance style from engravings and the Raphael Cartoons for tapestries of scenes from the Acts of the Apostles that were present in Brussels between 1516 and 1520; they are now in London. They were made to be woven into tapestries for Pope Leo X by Pieter van Aalst.
Paintings
One of his earliest signed works dates from 1512: the "Triptych of the Carpenters and Masons Corporation of Brussels", also called the Apostle Altar. The central panel is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the side panels in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. It recounts the lives of two apostles Thomas and Matthew. It was originally commissioned for a chapel in the Church of Our Lady of Victories at the Sablon in Brussels.In his early works he continued the traditions of Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and their followers, but then he gradually began integrating the Italianate motifs of the Renaissance, representing figure types and the spatial relationship such as found in the works of Raphael.
Around 1514–1515, he painted The Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, part of an altarpiece for the Benedictine abbey church of Marchiennes, likely commissioned by its abbot, Jacques Coëne. The panel painting depicts the beheading of John the Baptist, with Salome dancing at the Feast of Herod in the background. It is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
In 1515 he was asked to take over the commission of a triptych for the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross in a chapel in the Sint-Walburga church in Veurne. He finished and delivered it in 1522. The left panel is on display in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. The front shows Saint Helena meeting the pope in an architectural setting of Renaissance buildings and Italianate motifs. The back is a grisaille painting of Christ falling under the Cross. The right panel is on display in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin, showing Charlemagne receiving the relics of the Passion.
From 1515 on, he and his workshop received many orders for portraits, including from the royal family and from people connected to the court. In 1516 he painted seven portraits of Charles, who had just become King of Spain, and portraits of his brother Ferdinand, the later King of Hungary, and his four sisters.
The 1516 painted copy of the Shroud of Turin, commonly attributed to Albrecht Dürer, is also sometimes attributed to Bernard van Orley. By 1517 he was recognized as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke.
On 23 May 1518 he was appointed as the official court painter to the Regent of the Netherlands Margaret of Austria, replacing Jacopo de' Barbari.
In this position, he became the head of an important workshop, making him one of the first entrepreneurial artists in Northern Europe. With this workshop he produced paintings and, especially after 1525, became a leading designer of tapestry cartoons and stained glass windows. He held this position until 1527 when he, his family and several other artists, fell into disgrace because of their Protestant sympathies. The family fled Brussels and settled in Antwerp. Five years later, he returned to Brussels when he was reinstated by the new Regent of the Netherlands, Maria of Austria. After his death in 1541, he was succeeded as court painter by his pupil Michael Coxcie.
Among his most important paintings is the Triptych of the Virtue of Patience, also called the Job altarpiece, commissioned in 1521 by Margaret of Austria to illustrate a poem she wrote about the virtue of patience. The interior panels represent the trials of Job, while the outer panels recount the parable of Lazarus and Dives. This triptych is completely by the hand of Bernard van Orley. He must have been especially proud of his work as he signed it twice and added his coat of arms as well as his monogram BVO and the motto 'ELX SYNE TYT'. This relates to his artistic opinion that an artist should be a man fully integrated in his time.
The same museum houses another triptych by the same painter: The Haneton Triptych. This triptych was commissioned by Philippe Haneton, first secretary in the Secret Counsel of Charles V. The middle panel depicts a poignant pietà against an archaic golden background, painted in a very personal style with influences of the Flemish Primitives and Albrecht Dürer. Bernard van Orley was, together with Jan Gossaert, among the first to introduce strong musculature in Flemish paintings. The left panel shows Philippe Haneton and his sons, and the right panel his wife and her daughters.
The triptych The Last Judgment, was commissioned by the almoners of the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp in 1525, is one of his best works in its originality and mastery. The paintings in grisaille on the back were executed by Peter de Kempeneer, who was, at that time, an apprentice in the van Orley's workshop.
The Altarpiece of Calvary in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Bruges, dates from 1534. It was commissioned by Margaret of Austria originally for the funeral monument in the church of Brou in Bourg-en-Bresse in Burgundy. The side panels were finished much later by Marcus Gerards the Elder and brought to Bruges by Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands under king Philip II of Spain. The central part represent the Calvary, the left panel the Crown of Thorns, the Scourging of Christ and Christ carrying the Cross. The right panel depicts the Pietà and the Limbo of the Just.
His portraits were more subdued and thoughtful, such as his portraits of Charles V and Margaret of Austria. He usually represents his subjects in a seated static position, their expressionless faces without much psychological depth or feelings. His workshop produced several copies of these portraits, especially the portraits of Charles V and of Margaret of Austria. They were offered as gift to visitors or courtiers.
He usually represented saints in a full-length portrait, such as his Mary with Child and John the Baptist, with a background of an open colonnade, a baldachin or a set of trees. This type of composition can be found in many 16th-century paintings.
Bernard van Orley often signed his paintings, especially in his early period before 1521, with the coat of arms of the Seigneurs d'Orley: argent two pallets gules. It had been contended that these are the signature of his father Valentin.
When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1520 to be present at the coronation of the new emperor, Charles V, he called Bernard van Orley "the Raphael of the Netherlands". Dürer, who stayed as a guest in van Orley's house between 27 August and 2 September 1520, also drew a portrait which some scholars identify as van Orley. Dürer had a profound influence on van Orley who in his later works tried to find a synthesis between Dürer and another Renaissance master, Raphael.
Some important pupils of van Orley were Michael Coxcie, Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Pieter de Kempeneer, who continued in the style of Romanism. Other pupils, such as Lancelot Blondeel and Jan Vermeyen continued in the painter-designer tradition of their master.
Together with Jan Gossaert and Quentin Matsys, Bernard van Orley is regarded as one of the leading innovators of the 16th-century Flemish painting, by adopting the style and manner of the Italian Renaissance. His paintings are executed with great care to minute details and stand out by their brilliant colours.