Biography

Hugo Van Der Goes:

South Netherlandish painter who represents a change in the realism and spirituality expressed in Flemish art, while synthesizing the influence of the artists of the previous generation.
It is thought that Hugo was born in Ghent, although he may have trained elsewhere. Similarities suggest that he may have been a pupil of Dieric Bouts in Louvain. He was enrolled as a master in the Ghent guild of painters in 1467 , under the sponsorship of Joos van Wassenhove , and in 1468 he went to Bruges to work on decorations for the wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. In subsequent years he had similar civic and ducal commissions in Ghent. In 1474 – 5 he was appointed dean of the painters' guild, and in 1480 he was asked to evaluate the Justice panels in Louvain, left unfinished on the death of Bouts.
Little evidence survives on which to base a chronology of Hugo's works, although a small diptych (Vienna, Kunsthist. Mus.) may be an early work. It depicts, unusually, the Fall of Man and the Deposition, the latter reminiscent of Rogier van der Weyden in its physical expressions of grief.
The only surviving authenticated painting is the Portinari altarpiece ( c. 1473 – 8 ; Florence, Uffizi), a massive triptych commissioned by the Florentine merchant Tommaso Portinari for S. Maria Nuova , Florence. The central panel shows the Adoration of the Shepherds, a scene witnessed by the patron's family and saints on the wings. The entire composition is unified by an extensive, wintry landscape containing distant narrative details. In contrast, the main figures are substantial and remarkably lifelike, the rustic shepherds as individualized as any portraits. The focus of this realistic scene is an intensely spiritual act of adoration of the naked Christ child, who lies upon the ground in a pool of light, surrounded by praying figures and a still life which symbolically alludes to his sacrifice.
Hugo's unique fusion of realism and visionary drama may derive from his own religious and mental state. By 1478 he had become a lay brother at the monastery of the Roode Kloster , near Brussels, and subsequently suffered from mental illness and delusions of damnation. The Death of the Virgin (Bruges, Groeningemus.), with its bleak setting and cold colours, is stark and melancholy. It might reflect the artist's own anguish towards the end of his life, sharing the grief of the apostles, who gaze out at us from the painting.