Hugo Van Der Goes

Goes, Hugo Van Der 

Born circa 1435–40, probably in Ghent; died 1482, in the monastery of Roode Kloster, near Brussels. Dutch painter.

Goes worked mainly in Ghent until 1475, and then he worked in the monastery of Roode Kloster. He courageously and in an original manner developed the realistic tradition in Dutch painting of the first half of the 15th century, striving for unity of dramatic effect, sharpness of the individual characteristics of his subjects (frequently common people), and bold and vivid emotionality of images (The Adoration of the Magi, in the Hermitage, Leningrad; The Adoration of the Shepherds, also called the Portinari Altarpiece, approximately 1474–75, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; and The Adoration of the Magi and The Adoration of the Shepherds, in the National Gallery, Staatliche Museen, Berlin). The cool, saturated coloring of Goes’ works is unusually expressive, his landscape backgrounds are poignantly lyrical (The Fall of Adam, The Art History Museum, Vienna), and the portrait figures of his customers are sharply distinctive (in the Portinari Altarpiece and others). Here, Goes preserved in his works the angularity, broken rhythm, and conditionality of spatial and scale relationships. In his late painting Death ofthe Virgin (Municipal Art Gallery, Bruges) the images assume an extremely tense, restless character.

REFERENCES

Nedoshivin, G. A. “Portretnye obrazy Gugo van der Gusa i krizis rannego niderlandskogo Vozrozhdeniia.” Uch. zap. MGU, 1947, issue 126, book I.
Winkler, F. Das Werk des Hugo van der Goes. Berlin, 1964.