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SIMON MARMION OR "THE MASTER OF THE ALTARPIECE OF SAINT-BERTIN" :
A PROBLEM IN ATTRIBUTION *
I
The name of Simon Marmion was introduced into art historical literature eighty years ago by the well-known French scholar, Chrétien Dehaisnes (1). In 1892, he published a modest volume entitled Recherches sur le retable de Saint-Bertin et sur Simon Marmion (2). In this book, he summarized the archival references to the artist and put forward the theory that it was very probably Marmion who painted the rather obscure and partially destroyed altarpiece made for the Abbey of Saint-Bertin at Saint- Omer in the north of France (Berlin, Staatliche Museum and London, National Gallery) S. Misc. Lyna, PL 80. However, the Altarpiece of Saint- Bertin is not signed nor is there any direct documentation connecting it to the name of Marmion — Dehaisnes' attribution was based upon a series of speculations. Today, this attribution is particularly in need of re-assessment because a considerable number of panels and illuminated manuscripts have been linked stylistically to the Altarpiece. An artistically and historically significant group of works has thus been isolated, and its interpretation is crucially affected by whether we attribute it to Marmion or to an anonymous master.
As early as 1903, Reinach (3) discovered a large and sumptuously decorated manuscript of the Grandes chroniques de France (Leningrad, Publ. Libr. Saltykov-Scedrin, Erm. fr. 88; S. Misc. Lyna, PL 83-84) which contains ninety miniatures, executed by several different artists, one of whom is certainly the same master who painted the Altarpiece. Winkler (4), in the 1920's, listed a group of nineteen manuscripts which he associated with the style; most importantly, the illustrations at the end of a large and os-
* See Edith Warren Hoffman, "Simon Marmion Re-considered", Miscellanea F. Lyna t. XXIII), 1969, p. 243-271 and pi. 80-98.
(1) The name of Simon Marmion seems to have been mentioned for the first time by Alfred Michiels in his Histoire de la peinture flamande, 2nd éd., Paris, 1866, III, p. 379, 396 f. ; but it was Dehaisnes' work which-made the artist commonly known to scholars.
(2) Chrétien Dehaisnes, Recherches sur le retable de Saint-Bertin et sur Simon Marmion, Lille and Valenciennes, 1892.
(3) Salomon Reinach, "Un manuscrit de Philippe le Bon à la Bibliothèque de Saint-Pétersbourg", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 3rd per., XXIX, 1903, p. 265-278 ; XXX, 1903, p. 53-63 and 371-380 ; and idem, Un manuscrit de la bibliothèque de Philippe le Bon à Saint-Pétersbourg (Monuments et mémoires, Fondation Eugène Piot, XI), Paris, 1904.
(4) Friedrich Winkler, Die flâmische Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1925, p. 39-40.
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