Devotional Portraits of Guilds and Confraternities in Early Netherlandish Painting: Between Cohesion of Identity and Expression of Religiosity

Devotional portraits – best known as ‘donor portraits’ – are an important phenomenon in Early Netherlandish painting. The fifteenth century in particular saw a marked change in the popularity and diversity of religious paintings that include people portrayed in prayer. Whereas during the fourteenth century, this kind of painting was the preserve of the most powerful of patrons (kings, princes, dukes, etc.), during the fifteenth it becomes increasingly popular amongst the nobility, the emerging middle classes and the clergy. The incentives of those who commissioned devotional portraits are complex: the driving forces are often a mixture of profound piety and a desire to assert one’s social position. By having themselves represented at prayer, the people portrayed hoped to ensure their salvation and to express their devotion to Christ, the Virgin and the saints. Furthermore, through the depiction of sumptuous clothes, jewels, mottos and coats of arms, they also use their portraits to emphasise their identity and their social status at the heart of society. The extant corpus of Early Netherlandish paintings (1400-1550) that include devotional portraits comprises no less than 663 items and is characterised by a great variety of forms (polyptychs, triptychs, diptychs, independent panels) and of ways of inserting the portraits in the work (on the outer wings, on the inner wings, on the same panel as the religious scene). Whereas most of the people portrayed usually appear as part of a family, in a couple, alone or as a member of a religious community, several paintings depict members of guilds or confraternities in prayer. These images are not common but they are interesting for the fact that most of them present a similar iconographical structure and the same localisation of the portraits in the work. Commissioned by the guild of the carpenters and the coopers of Brussels, the Triptych of Saints Thomas and Matthias by Bernard van Orley (Brussels, KMSKB) is a fine example of this kind of ‘corporative altarpiece’. Indeed, they take generally the form of a triptych, which depicts the legend of the patron saint on the central panel and the inner wings, while the outer wings represent the members of the guilds in prayer in front of a hieratical figure of their preferred saint. While most of the guilds and confraternities opted for this type of altarpiece, the portrayal of the group can vary: the guild can appear as a whole, by bringing out the leader in the group or by depicting the leader alone. Furthermore some guilds decided to commission other kind of altarpieces. As this paper will show, these variation bear special meanings. By focusing on the compositional and iconographical structures of these paintings that include devotional portraits of guilds or confraternities and on their implications on the meanings of the image, this paper will show that the ‘corporative altarpiece’ formula carries out two specific functions in the life of the guild: on one hand, praising the patron saint of the group and thus expressing the group’s piety and, on the other hand, reinforcing the identity of the association. The altarpiece thus acts on a devotional, as well as on a social level.