Laura Gascoigne

An Uffizi Adoration that upstages even the Botticellis

It’s hard to take one’s eyes off this triptych by the shadowy Flemish master Hugo van der Goes, who lost his mind

'The Portinari Altarpiece’, c.1479, by Hugo van der Goes. Image: Bridgeman

Tourists who queue for hours outside the Uffizi to see Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and ‘Birth of Venus’ are sometimes surprised to find his world-famous paintings upstaged by the work of a non-Italian they’ve never heard of.

At three metres tall and five metres wide, Hugo van der Goes’s ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ – known as the ‘Portinari Altarpiece’ – is certainly imposing, but it’s not the size that impresses so much as the colour: beside the glow of its Flemish oil paint, Botticelli’s tempera looks pasty. Despite its modern medium, though, and the realism of its technique, this monumental altarpiece by Botticelli’s Netherlandish contemporary appears more gothic than renaissance in feeling. Its devotional power holds the floor; once in the room, it’s hard to take one’s eyes off it.

 The painter of this triptych commissioned for the church of Sant’Egidio at Santa Maria Nuova hospital is a shadowy figure. For years his name was forgotten and guidebooks to Florence misattributed his work to Andrea del Castagno, a Florentine artist who helped to decorate the church walls. Vasari tells a scurrilous tale about Del Castagno, accusing him of having murdered fellow muralist Domenico Veneziano out of jealousy over an oil-paint recipe (hard to believe, as Veneziano outlived him). But Vasari knew the author of the altarpiece, name-checking him in his Lives as Hugo of Antwerp ‘who executed the very beautiful picture which is in Santa Maria Nuova in Florence’. Vasari got the Flemish city wrong but the first name right, and his remains the only reference linking the artist (who never signed or dated his paintings) to a particular work.

Beside the glow of its Flemish oil paint, Botticelli’s tempera looks pasty

 For centuries all that was known about this mysterious Hugo was that he became a master in Ghent in 1467. Then in 1863 a Belgian archivist called Alphonse Wauters, delving into the records of the Red Cloister monastery near Brussels, made a discovery.

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