It has been a while since I updated a museum blog. I was at the Met the other day, and I wanted to share a piece that has caught my eye: created in approximately 1512 to 1515, Joachim Patinir’s oil on wood triptych The Penitence of Saint Jerome highlights such enduring faith of Christ’s apostles. The work represents three saints, each in an iconic scene. In the left wing, Saint John baptizes Jesus Christ, with the Holy Father and the Holy Spirit illuminating above them. In the central panel, Saint Jerome shows penitence of his sins over a minuscule Crucifix as he is about to hit himself with a stone. In the right wing, Saint Anthony continues to pray as a group of demons emerges behind him. In the background of all three panels, a panorama of mountain, forest, farm, river, sea, and sky dominates the entire composition. Patinir employs a landscape in the composition to unite all three panels together and naturalistic depictions of the subjects to create a compelling illusion of reality, evoking a sense of intense awe and religious faith in the audience. With these artistic elements, Patinir guides the viewer through a visual pilgrimage in an idealized world devoted to Jesus Christ. Undergoing this journey, the viewer becomes a part of this world and through it connects with God.
First glance at the triptych, the viewer is immediately captured by the magnificent vista that spans across all three panels, so they pause and begin to examine the triptych. The open composition makes the audience feel as though this painted world continues beyond the painting. The grandness of it brings a sense of calmness and splendor. Patinir creates such an effect by placing a horizon line near the top of the composition, allowing the landscape to occupy more space and thus become more dominating in scale. He creates the horizon line through a juxtaposition of light and dark blue, attracting the viewer’s eye to an implied line that separates sky and earth. Here, the visual pilgrimage begins.
Continuing the journey, Patinir then utilizes implied lines, atmospheric perspective, and detailed brushstrokes to create a captivating illusion of reality. He guides the viewer through this expedition by employing implied lines throughout the landscape and towards the saints. In the top right corner of the central panel, rows of trees overlap, creating a zig-zagged line towards the intersecting valleys. These implied “S” shaped lines guide the viewer’s eyes to a flat land, where a thin road leads the viewer’s eyes to various symbols such as the lion, then finally arriving at Saint Jerome’s side. Following these lines, the viewer metaphorically goes through a pilgrimage in devotion to God. It slows down the viewer’s wandering eyes and allows the audience to take more time to reflect while going through a voyage.
To create a sense of depth in the vista, Patinir employs atmospheric perspective, where starting in the horizon, the scenery is in a pale and cold green, and in the midground, the hues become warmer until in the foreground with Saint Jerome, the meadow is in a lime green. The illusion of depth not only contributes to the sense of grandeur that the viewer feels when viewing the landscape but also creates a representational distance the viewer has traveled on the journey.
To make this devotional world even more compelling, Patinir renders the landscape in immense detail, creating various textures for different subjects. He depicts the grass in the background with large, flat areas of colours to create a soft and smooth appearance, while applying more details such as cracks in the earth and dried plants to the grass field in the foreground to emphasize the sense of depth through a variation in texture for the same subject. Further, the painted surface is smooth so that the viewer focuses more on the visual illusion rather than the materiality of the paint. Through creating this illusion of a real world and guiding the viewer through it, Patinir creates a visual metaphor of pilgrimage, and by undergoing such a representational journey, the viewer experiences the saint’s unshakeable devotion towards God that is able to endure through temptations, adversities, and distances.
Guided by the landscape, the viewer finally arrives at the saints’ side. After going through such a journey, the audience receives an immediate sense of fulfillment upon seeing the apostles. Patinir utilizes naturalism to portray these saints, creating vivid characters to which the viewer can connect with. Instead of dominating the entire picture plane, the apostles are much smaller, resembling the scale of a real human in a landscape, making them appear as though they are truly positioned in nature.
left: Jan van Eyck's Last Judgement Diptych where he uses hierarchy of scale to emphasize Jesus Christ
Not only so, instead of using hierarchy of scale to demonstrate Christ’s holiness and importance, Patinir paints Christ the same size as the saints. Through this, he portrays Christ as less of a divine god but more as a human-like figure with only several lines and a faint glaze of yellow to indicate his sacredness. The viewer thus comprehends his emotions and feels connected closer to him spiritually.
In addition to manipulating proportions, Patinir employs chiaroscuro to add dimension in the figures. He blends light and dark hues to portray Christ’s protruding rib cage and stomach. To add to this, Patinir portrays Jesus Christ standing in contrapposto, further portraying him as a natural, human-like figure. Seeing the holy figures so close to them in the foreground, with immense details, the viewer feels as though the apostles and Jesus Christ are truly in front of them, experiencing a kind of intimate veneration towards the saints and God.
Through the interactive relationship between the audience and the triptych, created with witty composition and masterful naturalistic depiction, Patinir promotes the viewer’s religious faith. He first impresses the audience with an overpowering sense of tranquility and greatness by a grand panorama of a holy world, then slowly guides their eyes through the illusional world he created with paint, holding the viewer to stay longer and examine at each miniscule detail. Immersed inside the vista, the viewer metaphorically goes through the journey of each saint, and through them, ultimately reaches God visually and spiritually.
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