The fascinating problem of Northern Renaissance influence upon Pre-Raphaelite art and literature deserves a full-length treatment. For the moment, it is necessary to point out that the evidence for this crucial 1849 visit to Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Bruges, and Ghent appears in Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I, 192-3 and the more detailed (and often more tantalizing) letters Rossetti wrote to his brother, Collinson, and other members of their circle (see Letters, I, 59-88). The various volumes of Les Primitifs Flamands permit one to determine what works Hunt and Rossetti could have seen when they do not specifically mention them, and Edouard Michel's catalogue raisonné of Flemish works in the Louvre is often particularly helpful in indicating that certain works, such as the Annunciation by Rogier van der Weyden, have been continually on view since their appearance in the Louvre (Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures Flamandes du XVe et du XVIe Siècle [Paris, 1953], p.273).
Martin Davies's invaluable volumes of Les Primitifs Flamands, which cover the holdings of the National Gallery, London (Antwerp, 1953-4), reveal that only Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (purchased in 1842) was available to the Pre-Raphaelites before their trip abroad. Van Eyck's Man with a Turban was purchased in 1851 and Hugo van der Goes's Nativity in 1854. The first great exhibition of the Flemish masters in nineteenth-century England appears to have been the 1857 Manchester exhibition, and at least ten works shown then eventually became part of the collections of the National Gallery; one of which, the Bouts Virgin and Child, was presented by Queen Victoria in 1863. Approximately twenty important Flemish works were acquired by the National Gallery in the 1860s, and these included works by Campin, Van Eyck, Bouts, David, Memlinc, and Van der Weyden. What is perhaps most interesting about these dates is that they suggest that, as important as was the Flemish influence upon the Pre-Raphaelites, it was the Pre-Raphaelites themselves (and their obvious predecessors, Dyce, Maclise, and Mulready) who created the taste for Northern art in England!
One must also emphasize that Hunt and Rossetti, who studied and even purchased the engravings of Dürer and others, did not always sharply distinguish between early Flemish and later German work. In the following pages, when trying to suggest possible sources for Hunt's iconography, I have concentrated upon those works which we know he saw first-hand in the early years of the Brotherhood, though a fuller treatment would necessarily have to take into account his continuing knowledge of Northern art. One effect of my intentionally conservative use of examples is that I have not made reference to such obvious sources of typological symbolism as the framing devices of the Miraflores altarpiece in Berlin and the Petrus Christus Nativity in Washington.
Last modified December 2001