What is the name of the person shown in blue clothing in Robert Campin's Madonna?
The panel is the smallest extant work by van der Weyden and follows the tradition of a Madonna Lactans, with significant differences. Christ is dressed in a red garment, as opposed to the swaddling he usually wears in 15th-century Virgin and Child portrayals. This is one of two exceptions where he is fully clothed; the other is Robert Campin's Madonna in Frankfurt, where he is shown in blue clothing. Mary's unbound blond hair falls across her shoulders and down across her arms. Showing the influence of Campin, it is brushed behind the ears. She wears a crown as Queen of Heaven and a ring on a finger as the Bride of Christ. Reinforcing this, the blue colour of her robe alludes to her devotion and fidelity to her son. The folds of her dress are reminiscent of the lengthy, crisp, curved intertwined gowns of Gothic sculpture.The pictorial space is bathed in soft light, probably an influence from Jan van Eyck. The light falls from the right, throwing shadows of both Mary and the Child's heads on the left wall of the niche. The Virgin and Child are shown seated in a small Gothic chapel or oratory projecting from a wall and opening onto a lawn. The painting pays very close attention to small realistic detail; for example, there are four small holes above each arch, likely to hold scaffolding.
As with other early van der Weyden depictions of the Madonna, her head is slightly too large for her body. Her dress is creased and almost paper-like. However, the description of her lap contains inconsistencies also in Campin's Virgin and Child before a Firescreen; it appears to lack volume and is if she had only one leg. This seems to reflect an early difficulty both with foreshortening and in the depiction of a body under clothing.The chapel is unrealistically small compared to the Virgin; van der Weyden's intention was to emphasise the Virgin's presence while also symbolically representing the Church and the entire doctrine of the Redemption. The panel is one of three surviving of van der Weyden's in which both Madonna and Child are enclosed in this way. However it is unusual in that the niche exists as a separate feature within the picture, compared to the two other works where the enclosure is coterminous with the edge of the painting, almost as part of the frame, a reason why it is thought to predate The Madonna Standing.There are symmetrical differences between the left- and right-hand sides of the painting. This is most noticeable with the buttress, where the receding edges are over half again the size of those on the front sides. In addition, the breadth of the buttress contradicts the spatial depth of the much tighter space inhabited by the Virgin and Child. This is a technical issue with foreshortening Campin also struggled with, but which van der Weyden resolves in his mature work.
Christ