Derick Baegert was one of the most important painters of the Lower Rhine-Westphalian region in the last third of the 15th century as the director of an extensive workshop.
Derick Baegert was born around 1440 in Wesel. His parents were already working as a painter: His father Johann Baegert (died around 1477) was mentioned in a calculation of the city of Wesel, his mother Neesken von Birt worked between 1464 and 1477 several times as a painter for the Weseler main church of St. Willibrordi. Derick Baegert in turn and his son, the painter Jan Baegert, can be found in the city accounts of Wesel, the church accounts of the Calcarea parish of St. Nicholas and in the accounts of the Kalkar Annenbruderschaft between 1476 and 1502. Due to a misinterpretation, a large part of Baegert's work in older research has been associated with the names "Victor and Heinrich Duenwege".
Among Baegert's main work is the created between 1470 and 1476 Altarretabel in the former Dortmunder Dominican Monastery Church, the present Propsteikirche. Its stylistic proximity to northern Dutch book and panel painting suggests that Baegert was temporarily working in one or more Utrecht workshops. He received suggestions from there regarding a high number of motifs and forms. Presumably due to the changed political situation in Utrecht around 1470 he could have decided to move to Wesel. Wesel was an important trading and transshipment point for the Rhineland, Westphalia and the entire Hanseatic League a great importance,
In spite of a uniform landscape ground with a very high horizon line extending over the middle panel and the side wings, the scenes in the Altarpiece in Dortmund do not take a direct relation of content or form to each other. Determining a figure wealth, with the "Holy Family" on the inside left wing, on the central panel of a vielszenige "Crucifixion" and on the right inside wing of the "Adoration of the Magi are visualized"
Baegert's brainstorming is influenced by the important Old Dutch painting. The image figures, which act relatively statuary, are not convincingly integrated into the landscape. The strong color remains very uniformly concentrated on the main colors red and green. Baegert succeeds in achieving a high degree of liveliness through the most varied physiognomies of men in particular. Also integrated is a portrait of the founder and prior of the Dortmund Convention, Johann von Asselen, who presumably also is responsible for the program of the outside with the four religious saints together with Christ Salvator and three altar cartridges. The recent research seeks to prove that DukeJohn I of Cleves had donated the altarpiece an image Memoria for klevisch-Brandenburg dynasty. Probably Baegert has inserted a self-portrait in the narrative act - it may be the earliest artist portrait in northwest German panel painting. Even in later panel paintings he seems to have used his portrait as a signature.
In 1477 the painter was commissioned with a no longer preserved altarpiece for the Wesel Mathena Church. Around 1484/1492 he created for the Kalkarer Annen Brotherhood the St. Anne's altarpiece "The Holy Family" (formerly St. Nicolai, Kalkar, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerp) .At the same period, the only signed by him panel "Luke paints the Madonna", which originally formed the middle section of a triptych. The same works are the altarpieces "Nativity" and "Crucifixion of Christ" and the double-sided panels "Prayer on the Mount of Olives" / Cross bearing and Flagellation "/" Beweinung "(all LWL-Landesmuseum for Art and Cultural History, Münster). His order dated 1493 to paint the Weseler court panel "Eidesleitung" (Municipal Museum Wesel - Galerie im Centrum).
As his last work the Hochaltarretabel for the Cologne he St. Laurence Church is claimed, whose panels are today in Munich (Old Pinakothek), Brussels (Musée royaux des Beaux - Arts de Belgique), Bruges and Nuremberg are kept.
Especially the inclusion of contemporary portraits in the Christological image program as well as the topographically accurate reproduction of real buildings increase the viewing experience and the reenactment of the salvation event for the beholder. Baegert's style, which is further followed by the Old Dutch painter Robert Campin (1375-1444), Roger van der Weyden (1399 / 1400-1464) and Derick Bouts (1410 / 1420-1475), is characterized by an initially very compact, linear flat figure structure determined in front of spacious landscape. Enjoyment of rich, decorative detail and an excellent reproduction of different materials are further characteristics.
