Melchior Broederlam

Melchior Broederlam , active c.1381-1409, Franco-Flemish painter. Broederlam was among the first practitioners of the International Gothic style (see Gothic architecture and art ). He was court painter after 1387 to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Broederlam attempted to place figures in perspective, as in his panels for Baerze's Retable (Musée de la Ville, Dijon).

Broederlam, Melchior (b Ypres, c.1350; d Ypres, c.1411). Netherlandish painter. For much of his career he was court painter to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and he also worked for his own native city of Ypres. Documents show that he was a busy and versatile artist, but his only surviving works are the painted outer faces of the wings of a triptych altarpiece carved by Jacques de Baerze for the Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon (see Sluter): on one wing are the Annunciation and Visitation and on the other the Presentation and Flight into Egypt (1394–9, Mus. B.-A., Dijon). They are among the first and finest examples of the International Gothic style, combining lavish decorative display with realistic touches that look forward to the later development of the Netherlandish School; the figure of St Joseph in the Flight into Egypt, for example, is represented as an authentic peasant. Erwin Panofsky describes Broederlam as ‘the greatest of all pre-Eyckian panel painters insofar as their work has been preserved’.