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Adriane de Vos (d. 1509)

Master of the St. Lucy Legend.
Lamentation Triptych: Detail
with permission of
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Adriane was one of five children of Jacob de Vos and Isabel van der Stichelen to reach adulthood. Her father Jacob, like his son-in-law Donaes de Moor, was a successful merchant active in city government, serving as alderman, treasurer, and chef-homme in Bruges. When she and Donaes married is not known, and there is no record of their having had any children.

After her husband died in exile in Middelberg in the fall of 1483, Adriane petitioned and paid the town government for permission to bring his body back for burial in their parish church of Sint-Jacob, where he was interred sometime before 1486. It was she who made the various endowments to the Sint-Jacobskerk to support the wishes expressed in her husband’s will, which included a daily low Mass, two anniversary Masses, and two annual Masses “in discant” (that is to say “in polyphony”) on the feast days of their name saints. Adriane may well have approached the most well-known composer then active in Bruges, Jacob Obrecht, to request the composition of a polyphonic Mass to commemorate her husband on the feast day of St. Donatian. What role she played in the selection of the special cantus firmi embedded in the Mass is unknown, but it appears likely that it was she who communicated to the composer her husband’s particular charitable concerns, so eloquently expressed by Obrecht in the Dutch song Gefft den armen found in Kyrie II—for Obrecht probably never knew Donaes, who died before the composer came to work in Bruges.

In the donor portrait painted by the Master of the St. Lucy Legend on the right wing of the Lamentation Triptych, Adriane appears at least twenty years younger than her husband Donaes. She is slender, her skin has a youthful glow, and the hair peeking out from the edge of her headdress could be strawberry blond. Squirrel fur, a luxury only allowed the upper classes, trims her dark gown, and serves as an understated witness to her husband’s fur trade and their high social station. Her fashionably thinned eyebrows, long refined nose, and delicate full lips complete the impression of well-bred and well-off woman in the prime of life.

Adriane died on 22 March 1509, after more than twenty-five years of widowhood. If a polyphonic Mass in praise of her name saint Adrian was ever composed, by Obrecht or anyone else, it seems not to have survived.

Created by M. Jennifer Bloxam, Professor of Music | Williams College | Credits | Glossary