Enguerrand Quarton, Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, c.1460, tempera and gold on walnut wood, 162 × 218 cm. Musée du Louvre
Enguerrand Quarton (also Charton, or Charonton) (c.1410 – c.1466) was a French painter and manuscript illuminator whose few surviving works are among the first masterpieces of a distinctively French style, very different from either Italian or Early Netherlandish painting. Six paintings by him are documented, of which only two survive, and in addition the Louvre now follows most art historians in giving him the famous Avignon Pietà.
Quarton was born in the diocese of Laon in northern France, but moved to Provence in 1444, possibly after working in the Netherlands. There he worked in Aix-en-Provence, Arles in 1446, and Avignon, where he was based from 1447 until his death there in about 1466. Provence at that time had some of the most impressive painters in France, to judge by surviving work at any rate, with Nicolas Froment and Barthélemy d'Eyck, who both appear to have collaborated with Quarton. All were influenced by both Italy and the Netherlands to varying degrees.
The Pietà, where the dead Christ is supported by his grieving mother, is one of the most common themes of late-medieval religious art, but this is one of the most striking depictions. The curved back form of Christ’s body is highly original, and the stark, motionless dignity of the other figures is very different from Italian or Netherlandish depictions. Before the painting was generally attributed to Quarton, some art historians thought the painting might be by a Catalan or Portuguese master. The bare background landscape falls away to a horizon broken by the buildings of Jerusalem, but instead of a sky there is plain gold leaf with stamped and incised haloes, borders and inscriptions. The clerical donor, portrayed with Netherlandish realism, kneels to the left. The painting came from Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, just across the Rhône from Avignon, and is sometimes known as the “Villeneuve Pietà”.
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