Geertgen tot Sint Jans

Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1465–c. 1495) was an Early Netherlandish painter who worked in Haarlem. No contemporary record of his life survives; the earliest account is Karel van Mander's of 1604, which makes him a probable pupil of Albert van Ouwater, and a seventeenth-century engraving names Leiden as his birthplace. He was attached to the house of the Knights of Saint John in Haarlem, perhaps as a lay brother, which gave him his name, and he died there, probably still in his twenties. Of the altarpiece he painted for the Knights, only one wing survives, sawn into two panels now in Vienna; the rest was destroyed in the siege of Haarlem in 1573. Between twelve and sixteen paintings are attributed to him, oil on oak panel and mostly of New Testament subjects. His Glorification of the Virgin contains some of the oldest pictures of musical instruments known from the Netherlands. Here: Nativity at Night.