Jan Provoost, or Jean Provost, or Jan Provost (1462/5, Mons

Mons

Mons is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut, of which it is the capital. The Mons municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour , Jemappes, Ciply, Harmignies, Harveng, Havré, Maisières, Mesvin, Nouvelles,...

–January 1529, Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

) was a Flemish painter. He was one of the most famous Netherlandish painters

Early Netherlandish painting

Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...

 of his generation, a prolific master who left his early workshop in Valenciennes

Valenciennes

Valenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...

 to run two workshops, one in Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

, where he was made a burgher in 1494, the other simultaneously in Antwerp, which was the economic center of the Low Countries

Low Countries

The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....

. Provoost was also a cartographer engineer and architect. He met Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

 in Antwerp in 1520, and a Dürer portrait drawing at the National Gallery, London, is conjectured to be of Provoost. He married the widow of the miniaturist and painter Simon Marmion

Simon Marmion

Simon Marmion was a French or Burgundian Early Netherlandish painter of panels and illuminated manuscripts...

, after whose death he inherited the considerable Marmion estate.

The styles of Gerard David

Gerard David

Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color.-Life:...

 and Hans Memling

Hans Memling

Hans Memling was a German-born Early Netherlandish painter.-Life and works:Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is believed that Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden...

 can be detected in Provoost's religious paintings. The Last Judgement painted for the Bruges town hall in 1525 is the only painting for which documentary evidence identifies Provoost. Surprising discoveries can still be made: in 1971 an unknown and anonymous panoramic Crucifixion from the village church at Koolkerke was identified as Provoost's. It is on permanent loan to the Groeninge Museum, Bruges, which has several works of Provoost: a retrospective exhibition is scheduled for 2008–9.

Selected works

• Crucifixion ca 1495 Metropolitan Museum of Art
  Metropolitan Museum of Art
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
  
  
• Crucifixion ca 1500 Groeningemuseum
  Groeningemuseum
  The Groeningemuseum is a municipal museum of Bruges, Belgium.It houses a comprehensive survey of six centuries of Flemish and Belgian painting, from Jan van Eyck to Marcel Broodthaers...
  
  , Bruges
• The Virgin in Glory, ca 1524 Hermitage Museum
  Hermitage Museum
  The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...
  
  
• The Last Judgment Detroit Institute of Arts
  Detroit Institute of Arts
  The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
  
  
• Virgin and Child, attributed, National Gallery, London
  National Gallery, London
  The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
  
  
• Last Judgment for the Bruges town hall, 1525 Groeningemuseum
  Groeningemuseum
  The Groeningemuseum is a municipal museum of Bruges, Belgium.It houses a comprehensive survey of six centuries of Flemish and Belgian painting, from Jan van Eyck to Marcel Broodthaers...
  
  , Bruges
• Saint John the Baptist and a Canon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes
  Valenciennes
  Valenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...
  
  

External links

• Artcyclopedia: Jan Provoost (list of works on-line)
• Gallery of images