Fragment from Christ Carrying the Cross: Saint John the Evangelist

c. 1500

Jean Hey (Master of Moulins; Netherlandish, active in France, c. 1480-c.1504)

Scientific imaging techniques, which can reveal information that lies below or has been removed from the surface layers of a painting, have determined that Saint John the Evangelist and the Mourning Virgin were once part of the same painting, Christ Carrying the Cross. Infrared reflectography revealed drawn strokes of Christ’s curling hair at the lower right of the Saint John panel. X-radiography shows that the top of the cross, still visible in the Saint John panel, occupied the lower left of Mourning Virgin before being scraped away and overpainted. The original work may have been repurposed to create multiple paintings of single, expressive devotional figures.

Status: On View, Gallery 202
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jean Hey, (the Master of Moulins)
Title: Fragment from Christ Carrying the Cross: Saint John the Evangelist
Place: Netherlands (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1495–1505
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 27.3 × 20 cm (10 3/4 × 7 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1937.1000
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/25749/manifest.json

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places, Oxford, 1932, p. 141; rev. ed., Italian Pictures of the Renaissance:Central Italian and North Italian Schools, vol. 1 (London, 1968), 83.
Christian Hornig, Cavazzola (Munich: W. Fink, 1976), 124, no. C4.
Martha Wolff, “Reconstitution d’une scène de la Passion peinte par le Maître de Moulins,” Revue de l’art, no. 147 (2005), 58–66, figs. 4–6, 11.
Martha Wolff in Martha Wolff et al., Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 2008), 23-30, ill.
Martha Wolff et al., Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France (New Haven and London, 2011), 130, ill.
Yann Quero, Le Maître de Moulins: Peintre de quatre reines de France (Toulous: Éditions Arkuiris, 2022), 403-21.
Bruno Amiot, “Le commanditaire du Saint Maurice de Jean Hey,” Revue de l’art, no. 219 (2023), 8-17, fig. 3.

Paris, Galeries nationales, Grand Palais, France 1500: entre Moyen Age et Renaissance, 2010–11, no. 70b.
Art Institute of Chicago, Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France, Feb. 26-May 30, 2011, cat. 61.

M. Guggenheim, Venice, by 1892 [according to receipt in Art Institute Archives; sold to Martin A. Ryerson (d. 1932), Chicago, June 1892 [receipt cited above.]; by descent to his wife Carrie Hutchinson Ryerson (1859–1937), Chicago, 1932 [Last Will and Testament of Martin A. Ryerson, Died August 11, 1932, copy in Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago]; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1937.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Fragment from Christ Carrying the Cross: Saint John the Evangelist

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Dimensions

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.