science

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald rather than just read about it. In short: The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald was a set of four large panels painted by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden that decorated one wall of a court-room in the Town Hall of Brussels. They represented the Justice of Trajan, a Roman emperor, and the Justice of Herkinbald, a legendary Duke of Brabant.

Key takeaways

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald was a set of four large panels painted by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden that decorated one wall of a court-room in the Town Hall of Brussels. They represented the Justice of Trajan, a Roman emperor, and the Justice of Herkinbald, a legendary Duke of Brabant. The panels were intended as a reminder to judges to dispense impartial justice and were admired by generations of visitors, including Albrecht Dürer. They were destroyed when the city was bombarded by the French in 1695 and are now known only from descriptions and from a tapestry copy in the Historical Museum of Bern. The work is thought to have preoccupied van der Weyden for several years, and is believed to have been, in conception and execution, on a scale and breadth and skill to equal Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece. The panels were recorded and described in a number of sources until the 17th century; especially detailed are the inscriptions on the frames, which are likely the same as those contained on the edges of the tapestry.

Description

Each panel was about eleven feet in height, and together they spanned a distance of about thirty-five feet. The theme of the panels was justice safeguarded by divine intervention. The legends of Trajan and Herkinbald appear to occur together for the first time in 1308 in the Alphabetum Narrationum (Alphabet of Tales), a collection of over 800 tales attributed to Arnold of Liége (previously to Etienne de Besançon) arranged by themes and intended to be used as a basis for homilies. The theme Iustitia (Justice) included just these two legends, although the legend of Trajan is given in a slightly different version from that depicted in the paintings and tapestry. The first panel shows a widow begging justice from Trajan for the murder of her son, Trajan ordering the execution of the soldier accused by the woman (in the tale in the Alphabetum Narrationum, he offered the widow his own son as a replacement for her murdered son). The second panel depicts the story in the Golden Legend of Pope Gregory I's miraculous resurrection and conversion of Trajan, thus releasing him from Purgatory.

Gregory is shown holding Trajan's exhumed skull, in which the tongue has been miraculously preserved and thus able to utter the death sentence, demonstrating the justness of that sentence. Van der Weyden is known to have portrayed himself as a bystander in this scene. The third panel depicted Herkinbald on his deathbed slitting the throat of his nephew, who had committed a rape. The fourth panel showed Herkinbald miraculously receiving the Host, despite refusing to confess the slaying of his nephew as a sinful act. Both Nicholas of Cusa (in 1453) and Dubuisson-Aubenay (in the 1620s) mentioned that the work contained a self-portrait, generally thought to be faithfully reproduced in the 'Herkinbald slaying his nephew' passage.

Tapestry

The tapestry dates from about 1450. It measures 461 cm by 1053 cm (about 15 feet by 35 feet) and was probably woven in either Tournai or Brussels, two important centres of tapestry manufacture and both associated with van der Weyden. It is a wall tapestry, woven in wool, silk, and gold and silver thread. It was commissioned by George of Saluzzo on his appointment as Bishop of Lausanne in 1440. Saluzzo wanted a tapestry depicting scenes of justice for the courtroom above his chapter house. He apparently knew that van der Weyden had painted these scenes and ordered them copied. It was not an exact copy, but the earliest surviving work which depicts the scenes. In the passages depicting Pope Gregory I, one of the bystanders is more finely and carefully worked than the others, and this is almost certainly a copy of the self-portrait that van der Weyden had originally incorporated in his painting. It is one of only two self-portraits that survive, both as copies (of which the other has two versions), of van der Weyden. Campbell remarks it gives a better impression of van der Weyden's disdainful appearance than the other.

See also List of works by Rogier van der Weyden

References

Sources Banks, Mary Macleod, ed., Alphabet of Tales: An English 15th Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besançon (Early English Text Society Original Series 126, 127,1904, 1905 [Rpt. 200]). OCLC 781113 Campbell, Lorne. Van der Weyden. London: Chaucer Press, 2004. ISBN 1-904449-24-7 Campbell, Lorne & Van der Stock, Jan. Rogier van der Weyden: 1400–1464. Master of Passions. Davidsfonds, Leuven, 2009. ISBN 978-90-8526-105-6 Campbell, Lorne. Van der Weyden. London: Chaucer Press, 2004. ISBN 1-904449-24-7 Rothstein, Bret. Looking the part: ruminative viewing and the imagination of community in the early modern Low Countries, Art History, 31:1, February 2008, pp. 1–32 Stechow, Wolfgang. Northern Renaissance Art, 1400-1600: Sources and Documents, p. 9, at Google Books

External links Minarikova, Zuzana. "The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald". Suite101. ... the principal message in Rogier's work was judicial practice safeguarded by divine intervention. The subject matter was then appropriate choice for both, the Brussels aldermen and the Bishop of Lausanne. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) "The Justice of Trajan (from the Alphabet of Tales)". University of Michigan. Retrieved 24 September 2013. "The Justice of Herkinbald (from the Alphabet of Tales)". University of Michigan. Retrieved 24 September 2013.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald

In research: The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1450s paintings, Cultural depictions of Trajan, Lost paintings, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald in simple terms?

Why does The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald.