Portrait of a Carthusian by Petrus Christus in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2019

Portrait of a Carthusian,1446

Object Details

Artist: Petrus Christus (Netherlandish, Baarle-Hertog (Baerle-Duc), active by 1444–died 1475/76 Bruges)

Date: 1446

Medium: Oil on wood

Dimensions: Overall 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (29.2 x 21.6 cm); painted surface 11 1/2 x 7 3/8 in. (29.2 x 18.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Jules Bache Collection, 1949

Accession Number: 49.7.19

Christus places his sitter in the corner of a warmly illuminated room and enhances the quality of his "real" presence by the fly resting momentarily on the fictive frame. The leading painter of Bruges following Jan van Eyck's death in 1441, Christus moves beyond the flat neutral backgrounds of his predecessor's portraits. The illusionistic inscription underscores the verisimilitude of the portrait, declaring: "Petrus Christus made me in the year 1446."

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435896