Robert Campin

Robert Campin, who lived from about 1378 to 26 April 1444, is now usually identified with the Master of Flemalle, earlier called the Master of the Merode Triptych. He was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance. While the existence of a highly successful painter called Robert Campin is relatively well documented for the period, no works can be certainly identified as by him through a signature or contemporary documentation. A group of paintings, none dated, have long been attributed to him, and it is now usually thought that both groupings of works are by Campin, though this has been a matter of controversy for decades.