The Large Round Pietà by Johan Maelwael will leave Paris for the first time in 55 years. The panel will make its first appearance in the Netherlands for the exhibition that honors the first Northern Netherlandish painter: Johan Maelwael.
For the first time, paintings attributed to Johan Maelwael (Jean Malouel, Nijmegen, ca. 1370 – Dijon, 1415) and his workshop will be exhibited alongside medieval art treasures, illuminated manuscripts, precious metalwork and sculpture. Paintings attributed to Johan Maelwael and his contemporaries Jean de Beaumetz, Colart de Laon and Henri Bellechose will be juxtaposed not only with the sculptures by André Beauneveu, Claes Sluter and Claes van Werve, but also with the richly decorated illuminated manuscripts of the famous Limbourg brothers.
The centerpiece of the exhibition will be La Grande Pietà ronde from the collection of the Musée du Louvre. This Lamentation of Christ, painted for Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1363-1404), combines the subject of the Suffering Christ with that of the Holy Trinity. The round panel, preserved in a pristine condition, is one of the rare works attributed to Johan Maelwael to have survived. Purchased by the Louvre in 1864 it has never left Paris since 1962. Other exceptional loans will come from, among others, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The exhibition Johan Maelwael takes place in the Rijksmuseum from 6 October 2017 until 7 January 2018. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with contributions of Rob Dückers, Elisabeth Ravaud, Pieter Roelofs, Victor Schmidt, Matthias Ubl, and others.