Hugo van der Goes (1435-1482), the Flemish painter, occupies an important position in the century-long transition between medievalism and humanism, which occurred in Northern European art between 1425 and 1525.
Van der Goes explored the possibilities of portraying religious intensity through expressions of individual feeling - gestures and facial expressions - and far surpassed his predecessors in his ability to portray psychological complexities. Van der Goes's early life is obscure, but in 1467 he was accepted as a master in the painters guild of Ghent.
The paintings attributed to him from this time until 1474, when he painted his best-known work, “The Portinari Altarpiece” (Uffizi, Florence), were in the decorative, narrative Gothic style. In the Portinari Altarpiece, however, he introduced a distinction between the intellectual abstraction of the angels, which he painted in the Gothic style, and the human emotions exhibited by Saint Joseph, Mary, and the shepherds--the apprehensive Joseph; the sorrowing Mary; and the awestruck and wondering shepherds.
The altarpiece was commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, an Italian banker living in Bruges, for the Florentine church of San Egidio; its Italian destination was acknowledged by the inclusion of pieces of Italian majolica and Venetian glass in the foreground of the painting. It was enthusiastically received by contemporary Florentine painters, particularly Domenico Ghirlandaio, who borrowed Van der Goes's shepherds for his “Adoration of the Shepherds” (1485, Santa Trinita, Florence).
About 1475, Van der Goes entered the monastery of the Red Cloister near Brussels and became a lay brother. In his later years he became subject to increasingly severe attacks of depression, and his work took on a compulsive intensity, which can be seen in the “Death of the Virgin” (1480, Musee Communal, Bruges). This painting, in which the introverted and personalized mourning of each Apostle precludes unified composition, is nonetheless a masterful study of individual emotions. Van der Goes attempted suicide in 1481 and died insane the following year.