Scenes from the Life of St Bertin (detail)

religious

Guillaume Philastre, Bishop of Toul and Abbot of St Omer, commissioned the artist in 1453 to paint the wings for an altar-shrine which he donated to the monastery church in 1459. Here this precious work remained until the French Revolution, when the shrine disappeared in the wave of iconoclasm, but the wings were saved. As the altarpiece was destroyed, the original form it took remains uncertain.

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Scenes from the Life of St Bertin (detail)

About the Artist

Simon Marmion

1420 – 1489

Franco-Flemish manuscript illuminator and painter. In 1449-54 he was at Amiens, where he may have been born, and he was a member of the Tournai guild in 1468, but the greater part of his working life was spent at Valenciennes. He had a great reputation in his day, but no works certainly from his hand survived. The main work attributed to him is the retable of St Bertin (1459, most of it in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, fragments in the National Gallery, London). His style was very tender, with delicate, almost pastel colouring, and does not belong to the mainstream of either French or Netherlandish art.

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