Rogier van der Weyden

Born in the Tournai region of Belgium, Rogier de le Pasture, known as Rogier van der Weyden or Rogier de Bruxelles, is considered one of the greatest Flemish painters of the 15th Century, among contemporaries like Jan van Eyck (1385 – 1441). His vigorous, yet subtle and expressive painting in popular religious conceptions had considerable influence on European painting. This was not only in France, but in Germany, Italy and Spain.

Van der Weyden’s style was followed closely by painters such as Hans Memling (1430 – 1494), although it is not proven that he was a direct pupil. Van der Weyden also had great influence on the German painter and engraver Martin Schongauer (1448 – 1491), whose prints were distributed all over Europe since the last decades of the 15th century. Indirectly Schongauer's prints helped to disseminate Van der Weyden's style.

His first known training is noted in the Tournai workshop of Robert Campin (1375 – 1444), working alongside Jacques Daret (1404 – 1470), though some doubts to this exist. After van der Weyden settled in Brussels he began a prosperous career that would make him one of the most famous painters in Europe at the time he died in 1464. His most famous paintings were the four vast panels with the Justice of Trajan and the Justice of Herkenbald, painted for the 'Gulden Camere' (Golden Chamber) of the Brussels Town Hall. Van der Weyden’s work now in the Uffizi Gallery is, Entombment of Christ, from his Deploration before the opened grave, a work possibly commissioned by Cosimo de Medici from Florence.