Robert Campin Dutch painter Country: Netherlands

Biography of Robert Campin

Robert Campin, also known as the Flemish Master and the Master of Merode Altarpiece, was a Dutch painter. He was born around 1380 in Tournai, Netherlands. According to preserved documents, Campin was the teacher of the famous Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Daret, who were mentioned as his students from 1427 to 1432.

In 1909, Jules Destrée suggested that Campin could be the author of a group of works whose origins remained unknown for a long time. These works shared many similarities with Jacques Daret's altarpiece and early works by Rogier. This led Destrée to propose the hypothesis that this group of paintings could have been created by a master who worked several years earlier and possibly taught Daret and Rogier van der Weyden. Some contemporary researchers have attempted to attribute these works to the early period of Rogier's career. However, they are somewhat coarser in their painting technique, have a more contrasting use of light and shadow, and their figures are not as aristocratic in character as Rogier's later works.

The group of works attributed to Campin includes four fragments of altarpieces, which are now housed in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Three of them are believed to come from the Flemish Abbey, from which the author of these fragments received the name Flemish Master. The attribution of the triptych, previously owned by the Countess of Merode and located in Tongerloo, Belgium, gave rise to another nickname for the artist - the Master of Merode Altarpiece. Currently, this altarpiece is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Campin's brushes also created the Nativity of Christ in the museum in Dijon, two panels of the so-called Werl Altarpiece, housed in the Prado, and about 20 other paintings, some of which are only fragments of larger works or contemporary copies of long-lost works. Robert Campin passed away on April 26, 1444.