Portrait of Jean Gros (recto); Coat of Arms of Jean Gros (verso)

This portrait once formed half of a folding, portable diptych. The sitter—identifiable through his coat of arms, personal motto, and initials on the back of the panel—is Jean Gros, an administrator to the future Duke of Burgundy. This portrait depicts him at the outset of a successful career, during which he amassed a large fortune and led a privileged life. Rogier van der Weyden presented the half-length figure against a plain, dark background, which accentuates his features and his expressive hands. This gesture indicates that the sitter’s prayerful gaze was originally directed at another panel with an image of Mary and the infant Jesus, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tournai, Belgium; Gros’s coat of arms is on the back of that panel as well. This type of diptych, which was intended to suggest continuous prayer and to record the donor’s features, was probably first made for royalty around 1400, but Van der Weyden revitalized it in the mid-fifteenth century, creating similar diptychs for patrons at the highest level of the Burgundian court. In commissioning one for himself, Gros was displaying his ambition as well as his close associations with the duke and his retinue.