Conférence : Lucas Vanhevel, « Mushrooms in the Autumn of the Middle Ages. On the mushroom details in the Berlin Middelburg Altarpiece and associated Early Netherlandish Nativity pieces, 1448–1530 », Berlin, Kulturforum Berlin, 11 juillet 2022, 16h
Rogier Van Der Weyden’s Middelburg Altarpiece, now at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, features a tiny detail that escaped centuries of observation and research: fifteen small mushrooms on the roof of the nativity manger, clustered in two groups mirrored equidistantly over the central axis of the central panel. In his presentation, Lucas Vanhevel documents the repeated occurrence of this tiny visual motif in Early Netherlandish Nativity paintings between 1448 and 1530, and investigates the possible reasons...