Dirk Bouts the Elder
1616 - 1671
Dieric Bouts, also spelled Dirk, Dierick and Dirck was a Netherlandish, Northern Renaissance painter.
Dirk Bouts was born in Haarlem and was active in Leuven (Louvain), where he was city painter from 1468. Very little is actually known about Bouts' early life. Known is that he was greatly influenced by Jan van Eyck and by Rogier van der Weyden, under whom he may have studied. He is first documented in Leuven in 1457 and worked there until his death in 1475.
Dirk Bouts was among the first northern painters to demonstrate the use of a single vanishing point (as illustrated in his "Last Supper"). His work has a certain primitive stiffness of drawing, but pictures are highly expressive, well designed and rich in colour.
Bouts' earliest work is the "Infancy Triptych" in the Prado (Madrid), dated to about 1445. "The Deposition Altarpiece" in Granada (Capilla Real) probably also dates to this period. The Louvre "Lamentation" (Pietà) is another early work.
"The Last Supper" and "Justice" Panels are the works known to be definitely done by Bouts and they are his major works. They display an understanding of Italian linear perspective. Scholars have also noted that Bouts's "Last Supper" was the first Flemish panel painting depicting the events of the Last Supper.
The remaining panels from the "Last Judgment" Altarpiece (datable to 1468-70) and the "Martyrdom" of St. Erasmus Triptych (before 1466) are also fairly secure attributions. After this, he turned to the larger commission for the Justice Panels (1470-75), which occupied him until his death in 1475. He completed one panel and began a second.
Many of Bouts' authentic works are small devotional panels, usually of the Virgin and Child. In the realm of portraiture, Bouts expanded upon the tradition established by Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Petrus Christus.
Dirk Bouts was married twice and had four children. His two daughters went to convents, and his two sons became painters who carried the Bouts workshop into the mid-16th century. Little is known of the elder son, Dieric the Younger, although he appears to have continued in his father's style until his early death in 1491. The younger brother, Aelbrecht (or Albert), did likewise, but in a style that is unmistakably his own. His distinctive work propelled Boutsian imagery into the 16th century.
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