Dieric Bouts (c. 1410/20–1475) spent his whole known career in Leuven, yet he remains one of the most elusive of the Flemish Primitives, usually filed away as a painter of silence. This catalog accompanied the largest gathering of his work ever assembled, and it sets out to see him differently: not as an artist in the modern sense, but as a maker of images working to the expectations of the patrons, clergy and scholars of fifteenth-century Leuven.
The exhibition at M Leuven brought together some 25 works by Bouts and his workshop with around 40 pieces from their historical context, and moved his Last Supper from Saint Peter’s Church to the museum for the occasion. In a deliberately radical move, the curators set his late Gothic panels beside the work of today’s image makers, filmmakers, game developers and sports photographers, to show how his visual strategies still speak to us.
Edited by Peter Carpreau, the Bouts specialist who served as curator of Old Masters at M Leuven, the book combines comprehensive essays with shorter texts on individual works. Contributors include Till-Holger Borchert, Stephan Kemperdick of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Valentine Henderiks, Didier Martens and Bart Fransen.
With some 200 illustrations, it is an essential reference for anyone interested in Early Netherlandish painting.
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