"Lambertus pictor" in the Saint-Denis church accounts of 1533: new developments

The Saint-Denis altarpiece has been widely admired, commented and studied for a long time. Its conservation in the church, even after a new main altar in baroque style was placed in the choir, is an indication of the importance this work had acquired throughout time. Its painted wings were especially appreciated and were attributed to Lambert Lombard, Liège’s most renowned Renaissance painter, as early as the beginning of the 18th century. But this attribution has been discussed passionately, especially since the 1970’s. At the centre of these debate, we find a document dated 1533, discovered in 1958, naming a “Lambertum pictorem” working for Saint-Denis collegiate church. But this mention needs to be reconsidered and contextualised. This publication aims to present the content of this document and to dissect its meaning in the context of the making of the altarpiece, to which it has been related since its discovery. A new transcription will be provided and new archival material will be unveiled in order to shed a new light on this document as well as to give new paths to reconstruct the processes at work in the making of the altarpiece.