Portrait of a Carthusian

Petrus Christus's Portrait of a Carthusian from 1446, now in the Metropolitan Museum, is signed and dated — making it one of the few securely documented works in his relatively uncertain oeuvre. The Carthusian monk is shown in his distinctive white habit with the parapet and fly that were standard devices in Flemish portraits of this period — the fly on the parapet was a visual pun asserting the painting's illusionistic reality. The trompe-l'oeil fly and parapet, borrowed from Van Eyck's Portrait of a Man in a Turban, placed Christus in explicit dialogue with his predecessor's innovations while demonstrating his own mastery of the Flemish tradition's core device of perfect visual illusion.

Christus creates a strikingly geometric composition with the monk's cowl forming bold angular shapes, while the famous trompe-l'oeil fly on the painted frame demonstrates the Netherlandish fascination with optical illusion and pictorial reality.