Bouts's earliest work is the Triptych of the Virgin's Life in the Prado, dated to about 1445. The Deposition Altarpiece in Granada probably also dates to this period, around 1450–1460. A dismembered canvas altarpiece—now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the J. Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery, Norton Simon Museum, and a Swiss private collection—with the same dimensions as the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament may belong to this period. The LouvreLamentation is another early work.
Documented works
The Last Supper is the central panel of Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, commissioned from Bouts by the Leuven Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in 1464. All of the central room's orthogonals lead to a single vanishing point in the centre of the mantelpiece above Christ's head. However the small side room has its own vanishing point, and neither it nor the vanishing point of the main room falls on the horizon of the landscape seen through the windows. The Last Supper is the second dated work to display an understanding of Italian linear perspective. Scholars also have noted that Bouts's Last Supper was the first Flemishpanel painting to depict the Last Supper. In this central panel, Bouts did not focus on the biblical narrative itself but instead presented Christ in the role of a priest performing the consecration of the Eucharistichost from the Catholic Mass. This contrasts strongly with other Last Supper depictions, which often focused on Judas's betrayal or on Christ's comforting of John. Bouts also added to the complexity of this image by including four servants, all dressed in Flemish attire. Although once identified as the artist himself and his two sons, these servants are most likely portraits of the confraternity's members responsible for commissioning the altarpiece. The Last Supper was the central part of the altarpiece in the St. Peter's Church, Leuven. The Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament has four additional panels, two on each side. Because these were taken to the museums in Berlin and Munich in the 19th century, the reconstruction of the original altarpiece has been difficult. Today it is thought that the panel with Abraham and Melchizedek is above the Passover Feast on the left wing, while the Gathering of the Manna is above Elijiah and the Angel on the right wing. All of these are typological precursors to the Last Supper in the central panel. After attaining the rank of city painter of Leuven in 1468, Bouts received a commission to paint two more works for the Town Hall. The first was an altarpiece of the Last Judgment, which exists today only in the two wings with the Road to Paradise and the Fall of the Damned in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, and a fragmentary Bust of Christ from the central panel in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. After this, he turned to the larger commission for the Justice Panels, which occupied him until his death in 1475. He completed one panel and began a second, both depicting the life of the 11th-century Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. These pieces can now be seen in the Brussels museum. The remaining two Justice Panels were never completed.
Devotional panels and portraits
Many of Bouts's authentic works are small devotional panels, usually of the Virgin and Child. An early example is the Davis Madonna in New York, excellent copies of which exist in the Bargello in Florence and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. This composition follows the formula of the miraculous icon of Notre-Dame-des-Grâces, which was installed in the cathedral of Cambrai in 1454. The Virgin and Child in the National Gallery is the largest and most ambitious of these Marian pictures. In the realm of portraiture, Bouts expanded upon the tradition established by Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Petrus Christus. His dated 1462 Portrait of a Man in the National Gallery is the first instance of a sitter shown in three-quarter view before a discernible background with a glimpse of the landscape out the window. Also widely attributed to Bouts is the Portrait of a Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which resembles some of the figures in the artist's late Justice Panels of 1470–1475. Other portraits associated with Bouts, such as those in Washington and Antwerp, are more problematic.
Other works
The Last Supper and Justice Panels are the only works known to be definitely done by Bouts. The remaining panels from the Last Judgment Altarpiece and the triptych The Martyrdom of St Erasmus are also fairly secure attributions. Aside from these, a number of other paintings have been attributed to him. These are: Christ in the House of Simon, Christ in the House of Simon and Nativity fragment with the Virgin at Prayer in the Staatliche Museen. The triptych the Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus, Virgin Enthroned with Four Angels, and an Annunciation. The National Gallery holds The Entombment, the Virgin Enthroned with St. Peter and St. Paul, and The Virgin and Child. Others are Saint James the Greater, Ecce Agnus Dei,, Moses before the Burning Bush, Bust of Christ, Virgin and Child, and a Resurrection in the Norton Simon Museum of Art. Two are in the Louvre – a Nativity fragment with St. Joseph and the Virgin and Child Enthroned in a Niche. Two Boutsian works in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich have perplexed art historians. One is the so-called Pearl of Brabant triptych, which writers as early as 1902 tried to separate from Bouts's authentic works. Recent research seems to refute this attempt. The other is a pair of panels from an altarpiece depicting the Passion—respectively showing the Betrayal of Christ and the Resurrection''. For a long time these were considered some of Bouts's earliest works, but dendrochronological evidence now places them around the time of his death in 1475. Schone's 1938 invention of a "Master of the Munich Betrayal" is a more appropriate attribution.
Children
Bouts was married twice and had four children. His two daughters went to convents, and his two sons became painters who carried the Bouts workshop into the mid-16th century. Little is known of the elder son, Dieric the Younger, although he appears to have continued in his father's style until his early death in 1491. The younger brother, Aelbrecht, did likewise, but in a style that is unmistakably his own. His distinctive work propelled Boutsian imagery into the 16th century.
