page_title: Enguerrand Quarton
section_title: The Virgin of Mercy
hierarchical_section_title: Enguerrand Quarton / The Virgin of Mercy
caption_attribution_description: English: Donated by the Cadard family. A February 1452 contract specified that both Quarton and Pierre Villate would work on the piece, but art historians have struggled to detect two hands in the works as it exists, although Dominique Thiébaut suggests some of the sheltering figures are weaker than the rest of the work, and by Villate. One possibility is that Villate was responsible for a predella now lost.
context_page_description: Enguerrand Quarton was a French painter and manuscript illuminator whose few surviving works are among the first masterpieces of a distinctively French style, very different from either Italian or Early Netherlandish painting. Six paintings by him are documented, of which only two survive, and in addition the Louvre now follows most art historians in attributing to him the famous Avignon Pietà. His two documented works are the remarkable Coronation of the Virgin and The Virgin of Mercy. Two smaller altarpieces are also attributed to him.
context_section_description: This work, also known as the Cadard Altarpiece after the donor, uses a motif that is most often found in Italian art, and was developed by Simone Martini a century earlier. The painting has the same plain gold background as the Avignon Pietà, which by this date was unusual, although it also appears in what is now the best-known version of this theme, completed just a few years earlier by Piero della Francesca. The scale of the figures is hieratic; The Virgin and Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist tower over the donor and his wife, who are themselves slightly larger than the faithful sheltered by the Virgin's robe. The contract of February 1452 specifies that both Quarton and Pierre Villate will work on the piece, but art historians have struggled to detect two hands in the works as it exists, although Dominique Thiébaut suggests some of the sheltering figures are weaker than the rest of the work, and by Villate. One possibility is that Villate was responsible for a predella now lost.
  A recently discovered document of 1466 orders some painted or stained glass for the Town Hall of Arles from a "maître Enguibran" living in Avignon. He may have had help from Pierre Villate, who is documented as fulfilling many commissions for glass, and was also a party to the contract for the Virgin of Mercy. Hardly any work certainly his survives, but it is clear he had a considerable reputation in his day. He was younger than Quarton, but already a master of the Guild in 1452.
caption: The Virgin of Mercy, 1452, Musée Condé, Chantilly, Oise
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