Artwork · 15th century · Petrus Christus

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A Goldsmith in his Shop

Petrus Christus1449Oil on oak panel100.1 × 85.8 cm

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At a glance

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A goldsmith in a red robe weighs a ring on a tiny pair of scales, while a richly dressed young couple stand beside him and watch.
Petrus Christus, a painter working in Bruges, made it in oil on an oak panel in 1449.
Every ring, bead and passer-by in the mirror is painted so sharply you feel you could pick it up.

Reading the picture

4 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Look at the goldsmith's hands. He lifts the slim beam of the scales between his fingers, and in the left pan lies a ring set with a red stone. Under his other hand, small weights and coins are scattered on the counter. This is the very moment the ring is being weighed.
Now move to the display shelf on the right. A string of beads hangs there, red ones alternating with clear ones. Below it, three brooches ringed with pearls are pinned to a dark board, and a branch of red coral stands upright. In those days coral was a precious thing, believed to protect its owner from harm.
Zoom in on the round convex mirror at the right end of the counter. It reflects the square outside the shop and a row of gabled houses. Two men stand in front of them, and one has a hawk perched on his hand. With a single mirror, the painter pulls in the street on our side of the picture.
At the very bottom, on the front of the counter, runs a line of white lettering. In Latin it says that Petrus Christus made me in 1449. At the end is a small mark, a heart topped with a cross. The painting itself tells us who made it.

When it was painted

It is 1449 in Bruges, the busy trading city of Flanders. Petrus Christus has been a citizen here for five years. He bought his citizenship in 1444, three years after Jan van Eyck died in this same city.

Christus is often seen as the painter who carried van Eyck's patient, detailed oil technique forward. The convex mirror that pulls in the world outside the picture recalls van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait of 1434. Even the Latin line along the bottom, naming the painter and the year, follows a habit van Eyck liked.

For a long time this goldsmith had a halo. Because of it, people took him for Saint Eligius, the patron saint of goldsmiths, and the painting carried the saint's name. But the halo turned out to be a later addition by another hand. The museum removed it in 1993, and a working craftsman stepped out from behind the saint.

So who is he? Some scholars have suggested Willem van Vleuten, a Bruges goldsmith who worked for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. In 1449 the duke ordered a gift from him for Mary of Guelders, who was marrying James II, King of Scots. It is only a theory, but it fits the year on the counter.

Long after, the panel joined the collection of the Lehman family in New York. In 1975 it came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the Robert Lehman Collection.

Now look again at the goldsmith's head. There is nothing around his dark red cap. Once that golden ring was gone, the picture stopped being a legend and became a moment in a real Bruges shop.

The painter

Petrus Christus

1444–1476

All paintings by Petrus Christus →

More by the same painter

Portrait of a Carthusian1446

Hidden stories in this painting

Who Is Standing Outside the Goldsmith's ShopA small round mirror on a goldsmith's counter holds a whole street, and two men who seem to stand right where we do.

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find the red belt lying on the left side of the counter?
Why?Why would the painter add a mirror that shows the street outside, in a scene set inside a shop?
What about you?The young couple are watching a ring being weighed. When we choose a wedding ring or a gift today, which comes first for us, the price or the feeling behind it?

Same period