Campin, Robert (käm`pĭn), 1378–1444, Flemish painter who with the van Eycks ranks as a founder of the Netherlandish school. This artist has been identified as the Master of Flémalle on the basis of three panels in Frankfurt-am-Main said to have come from the abbey of Flémalle near Liège. Campin was active in Tournai, having become a citizen of that city in 1410 and the dean of the painters' guild in 1423. To him have been attributed the Mérode Altarpiece in the Cloisters, New York City, a Nativity in Dijon, the Annunciation and Marriage of the Virgin in Madrid, the Madonna of Humility in London, and a number of other panels in various collections. His works are characterized by a robust and highly developed realism and concern for the details of daily life, which constituted an important stage in the stylistic progression leading to the art of Jan van Eyck. It is believed that Roger Van der Weyden was apprenticed in Campin's workshop.

Bibliography

See E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (1953); M. S. Frinta, The Genius of Robert Campin (1966).

Campin, Robert

(born c. 1378, Tournai, Fr.—died April 26, 1444, Tournai) Flemish painter. He is identified with the Master of Flémalle on stylistic grounds. Documents show that Campin was a master painter in Tournai in 1406; two students are listed as entering his studio in 1427: Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Daret. Campin's principal surviving works are two large panels of an altarpiece once believed to have come from a nonexistent Abbey of Flémalle. The famous Mérode Altarpiece, a triptych of the Annunciation formerly regarded as his masterpiece, is now thought to be by a member of his workshop or circle. Characterized by a naturalistic conception of form and a poetic representation of the objects of daily life, Campin's work marks the break with the prevailing International Gothic style and prefigures the achievements of the painters of the Northern Renaissance. Despite much uncertainty about his life and work, he was one of the most important and influential Flemish artists of the 15th century.