books0977: The Magdalen Reading (fragment of an altarpiece),...

books0977:

The Magdalen Reading (fragment of an altarpiece), c.1435-1438. Rogier van der Weyden (Flemish, 1400-1464). London National Gallery.

The fragment has been described by Campbell as “one of the great masterpieces of fifteenth-century art and among Rogier’s most important early works.” It has been linked to two small heads in the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), of Saint Catherine and of St Joseph. It is now widely believed that these three fragments came from the same large altarpiece depicting the “Virgin and Child with Saints.” Before 1811, this altarpiece was carved up into these three fragments.