Frans Pourbus l'Ancien à Tournai
Les panneaux peints pour l'abbatiale Saint-Martin.
Histoire, iconographie, style, technique, restauration
The Passion of Christ and the Life of Saint Martin
In the early 1570's, a young painter based in Antwerp, Frans Pourbus, received an important commission for the abbey church of Saint Martin in Tournai, which had been sacked by the iconoclasts in 1566: the execution of two series of paintings on wood panels representing the Passion of Christ and the Life of Saint Martin.
Born in Bruges around 1545, Frans Pourbus was the son of the painter Pieter Pourbus. He learned his trade from Frans Floris. He painted portraits, but also large ensembles intended to decorate altars or stalls, in Bruges, Ghent, Oudenaarde and Dunkirk. His reputation as a talented painter preceded him to Tournai, where his father-in-law, Cornelis De Vriendt, known as Cornelis Floris II, worked on the construction and decoration of the rood screen of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
The panels that came out of Pourbus' workshop for Saint-Martin survived the vicissitudes of time: the reconstruction of the abbey church under the reign of Louis XIV and the troubles of the revolutionary period.
After the disappearance of the abbey, they found a home in the
episcopal seminary founded in 1808 by the bishop of Tournai,
François-Joseph Hirn.
From 2012 to 2015, they underwent
conservation at KIK-IRPA. Today, they are on display in the treasury of the seminary, where visitors can admire them in all their
newfound splendour.
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