THE SAINTE-BAUME PAINTED BY JOACHIM PATINIER

JOACHIM PATINIER (1483-1524)

La Sainte-Baume (1,148m -3,766ft)

 France (Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur)

  1. In The Rest on the flight to Egypt, oil on wood panel, Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid 

2. In Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy, "atelier de...", oil on wood panel, Kunsthaus Zürich

The Mountain
The Sainte-Baume massif has two summits, of the same altitude : the Joug de l'Aigle (Eagle Jug) and the Signal des Beguines (1,148m - 3,766ft). The massif also includes on its western flank the highest point of the Bouches-du-Rhône: the Pic de Bertagne (1,042 m - 3,419 ft), a majestic rocky outcrop dominating the western slope of the massif. The Sainte-Baume is a Provençal massif in the South-East of France, which extends between the departments of the Bouches-du-Rhone and the Var on an area of ​​45,000 hectares over 35 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide and has a 13.3-kilometer-long peak line. It is the most extensive and highest of the Provençal mountain ranges, located about twenty kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, close to cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Toulon.
The exceptional character of the site is the presence of a developed beech forest preserved for centuries and the cave of Saint Mary Magdalene, a major Christian pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages. In Occitan Provençal, the name Santa Bauma comes from the presence of a cave (bauma / baumo in Provençal), which in the Christian tradition was occupied by Mary Magdalene for thirty years in the first century, after it had landed at the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and evangelized Provence.  She was buried in the crypt of the basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.
In the pre-Christian era, the Sainte-Baume is already the sacred mountain for the people living in Massilia (nowadays Marseilles): high place of worship of the fecundities, and in particular of the goddess Artemis of Ephesus. Around 60, Lucan, a Latin poet, mentions a certain "sacred wood" near Massilia ... Around 415,  the cave of Mary Magdalene began to be a famous place of pilgrimage and at the same period, Saint Jean Cassien founded a first priory on his return from Egypt.  In 816, Pope Stephen VI, then, in 878, Pope John VIII went there. As on 22 July 1254, the king of France Saint Louis (Louis IX) visited Sainte-Baume on his return from the Crusade. In 1279, Charles II of Anjou, king of Sicily and count of Provence, carried out the excavations and discovered the relics of Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin, in a crypt buried under the Benedictine priory dedicated to the saint. A marble tomb is identified as that of Mary Magdalene. In addition, a scroll of parchment explains that the relics were buried at the beginning of the eighth century in order to protect them from the Saracen invasions that raged in the country.  In 1288, after six years of detention in Barcelona, ​​Charles II can implement his project to build a basilica to shelter the relics. Finally, on June 21, 1295, he obtained from Pope Boniface VIII a pontifical bull, which entrusted to the young order of the Dominicans the charge of the holy places: the basilica of Saint-Maximin and the cave of Sainte-Baume. In 1332, on the same day, Philip VI of Valois, King of France, Alfonso IV of Aragon, Hughes of Cyprus, and John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, came and pray in the cave. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, popes, kings and princes went on pilgrimage to the grotto, one of the most famous in Christendom.
Geologically, the formation of the Sainte-Baume massif has the same origin as the Pyrenean fold. These formations are attributed to the displacement of the Iberian peninsula in relation to the European plate. It begins to detach itself 120 million years ago and begins a vast movement of rotation, then digging the Pyrenean sulcus. 65 million years ago, the movement changed: the Iberian peninsula collided with the European plate, which caused the formation of the Pyrenees. The south-east of France, then propelled northeast of a hundred kilometers, undergoes deformations, one of the most important of which is that of the massif of Sainte-Baume.

About the paintings 
In the paintings presented here, the mountain with houses various constructions, including a circular building with dome, seems freely inspired by the Sainte-Baume in Provence, a site which was from the Middle Ages, for all Christian Europe, an important place of pilgrimage. Evoked in several of Patinier's paintings, the Sainte-Baume becomes the main motif of The Rest on the flight to Egypt  (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) and , of course, for the Landscape with Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy (Kunsthaus, Zürich).

The painter 
Joachim Patinier, also called Patenir  was a major Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Netherlands. Patinier was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter.  He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinier's important contribution to Western art.
There are only five paintings signed by Patinier, but many other works have been attributed to him or his workshop with varying degrees of probability. The ones that are signed read: (Opus) Joachim D. Patinier, the "D" in his signature signifying Dionantensis ("of Dinant"), reflecting his place of origin. The 2007 exhibition at the Museo del Prado in Madrid contained 21 pictures listed as by Patinier or his workshop, and catalogued a further 8 which were not in the exhibition.
Patinier was the friend of not only Dürer, but with Quentin Metsys as well, with whom he often collaborated. The Temptation of St Anthony (Prado) was done in collaboration with Metsys, who added the figures to Patinier's landscape. His career was nearly contemporary with that of the other major pioneer of paintings dominated by landscape, Albrecht Altdorfer, who worked in a very different style.
Patinier's immense vistas combine observation of naturalistic detail with lyrical fantasy. The steep outcrops of rocks in his landscapes are more spectacular versions of the group of very individual formations just around his native Dinant but also of sacred mountains of the time like the Sainte- Baume ; these became a part of the world landscape formula, and are found in the works of many painters who never saw the originals. His landscapes use a high viewpoint with a high horizon, but his grasp of aerial perspective is far from complete. He uses a consistent and effective colour scheme in his landscapes, which was influential on later landscape painting. The foreground is dominated by brownish shades, while "the middle ground [is] a bluish green and the background a pale blue", creating an effective sense of recession into the distance; "When combined with the frequently hard-toned browns, greens and blues that alternate with significant areas of white, a sense of impending doom is created by the threatening clouds, the capricious and sharply pointed contours of the rocks and the crowding together of natural elements."
Examples of his work include The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Prado, who have four Patinier, including two signed ones), The Baptism of Christ (one of two in Vienna), St. John at Patmos (by or with his workshop, National Gallery, London), Landscape with the Shepherds (Antwerp), and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt  (Museo Nacional del Prado Madrid ; National Gallery of Art, Washington),  Saint Mary Magdalene in ecstasy (Kunsthaus, Zürich).  There is also a triptych attributed to him called The Penitence of St. Jerome.