Virgin and Child with Saints (van der Weyden)

The drawing has a loosely sketched background and shows, from left to right: an unidentified bishop saint with mitre and crosier making a blessing gesture; a narrow gap with a few wavy vertical lines suggesting a start at the outline of a further kneeling figure; a barefoot bearded figure in a rough robe identified as Saint John the Baptist; a seated Virgin holding on her lap the Christ-child who leans to the right, looking at a book; and holding the book, a kneeling beardless male identified as John the Evangelist.

[5] Art historian John Ward notes that the altarpiece was one of van der Weyden's first masterpieces, created early in his career when he was still heavily influenced by Robert Campin.

Campbell believes that after the removal of the background detail "it looked sufficiently like a genre piece to hang in a well-known collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings".

The figure may represent Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and from both the angle of her cloth and the fact that the river behind her would be parallel to that in the exterior of the London panel it can be assumed that she was kneeling.

[4] Some art historians, including Martin Davies and John Ward,[11] have been slow to allow the Catherine panel as part of the altarpiece, though it is undoubtedly by van der Weyden or a near-contemporary follower.

[12] The Stockholm drawing contains a narrow blank gap to the right of the bishop with a few indistinct lines that could represent the lower profile of the kneeling figure of Saint Catherine.

Although none of the faces in the three surviving panels match any in the drawing, a 1971 reconstruction by art historian John Ward—which combined all of the works into a composition of a central Virgin and Child flanked by six saints—is widely accepted.

The Stockholm drawing's original location or history before the 19th century is unknown, except that the verso shows a surviving carving of the Virgin and Child attributed to a Brussels workshop from about 1440.

The Stockholm drawing, attributed to the Master of the Coburger Rundblätter, possibly shows a portion of the altarpiece. The kneeling figure to the far right is probably Saint John the Evangelist , some of whose red drapery can be seen in the London fragment. [ 1 ] Mary's position on the lower right hand corner (out of view in this image) is guessed at by Ward from van der Weyden's positioning of similar figures in other works. [ 2 ]
Head of Saint Joseph (fragment). 21 cm × 18 cm (8.3 in × 7.1 in). Museu Calouste Gulbenkian , Lisbon. This panel is thought to show Saint Joseph , whose body is visible to his upper arm in The Magdalen Reading .
Head of a Female Saint (Saint Catherine?) (fragment). 21 cm × 18 cm (8.3 in × 7.1 in). Museu Calouste Gulbenkian , Lisbon. A possible representation of Saint Catherine of Alexandria , it is of lower quality than the other two known fragments, indicating that it was probably completed by members of van der Weyden's workshop.
Rogier van der Weyden , The Magdalen Reading , 62.2 cm × 54.4 cm (24.5 in × 21.4 in). Date unknown but possibly 1435–38. Oil on oak panel. National Gallery , London.