MORTON, ROBERT (1430?–1497?)
Composer documented as a “chappellain angloix” at
the Burgundian court chapel choir from 1457 to June
1475, though until 1471 he occupied the relatively
humble position of “clerc” within that institution. He
was certainly a priest by 1460; and he was still alive in
March 1479, when he resigned the parish of Goutswaard
Koorndijk in the diocese of Utrecht. There seems a
good case for identifying him with the Robert Morton
who had studied at Oxford, later becoming master
of the rolls (January 1479) and bishop of Worcester
(1486–97), under the patronage of his brother, Cardinal
John Morton. His Burgundian career coincides with the
years when the family was in political diffi culties; his
disappearance from the continental records just precedes
the real political career of Bishop Robert Morton, and
it coincides with a diplomatic visit to Burgundy by the
newly reestablished John Morton.
Twelve songs are ascribed to Morton. Four are of con-
tested authorship. But the other eight, all setting French
rondeau texts, include two of the most widely copied and
quoted songs of their generation: Le souvenir de vous
me tue (fourteen sources) and N’aray je jamais mieulx
quej’ay (fi fteen sources). His Il sera pour vous combatu,
built over the famous L’homme arm– tune and perhaps
one of the earliest known settings of it, pokes fun at a
colleague in the Burgundian choir, Simon Le Breton,
possibly on the occasion of his retirement in 1464. The
anonymous rondeau La plus grant chiere que jamais
describes a visit to Cambrai by Morton and another
famous song composer, Hayne van Ghizeghem.
Morton’s music appears in none of the few surviving
English song sources, but it is in continental manuscripts
copied as far afi eld as Florence, Naples, the Loire Valley,
and Poland. The theorist Tinctoris praised Morton as one
of the most famous composers of his day.
Further Reading
Primary Sources
Atlas, Allan, ed. Robert Morton: The Collected Works. Masters
and Monuments of the Renaissance 2. New York: Broude,
1981.
Secondary Sources
Emden, Alfred B. A Biographical Register of the University of
Oxford to A.D. 1500. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957
Fallows, David. “Morton, Robert.” NGD 12:596–97.
David Fallows
MOSER, LUCAS (fl. ca. 1431/1432)
The reputation of the painter Lucas Moser rests on a
single work, the altarpiece with scenes from the life
of Mary Magdalene in the former chapel of the Virgin
(now the parish church) in Tiefenbroon, near Pforzheim
in southwestern Germany. An inscription dates the
work 1431 or 1432—the last digit is hard to read with
clarity—and names “Lucas Moser, painter from Weil,”
a nearby town, as its author. Apart from this brief men-
tion, nothing is known of the artist’s life or career, and
attempts to link him with documentary mentions of
painters named Lucas in this area and with other works
have not been widely accepted. Even the attribution of
the Magdalene altar to Moser was disputed in a highly
controversial book on the altarpiece published by Ger-
hard Piccard in 1969. Considering the inscription as a
nineteenth-century forgery, Piccard assigned the work
to a follower of the Sienese painter Simone Martini and
argued that it had been made for the church of the Mag-
dalene at Vézelay in Burgundy. Piccard’s book, which
received much publicity in advance of its publication,
occasioned numerous rebuttals afterward, many of them
based on new art historical or technical work. Current
consensus holds that the inscription is not modern; that
the altarpiece was made for its present position, where
its unusual shape refl ects that of the wall painting un-
derneath, which it replaced; and that the coats-of-arms,
which may have been added very slightly later, represent
the patrons of the work, Bernhard von Stein and his wife,
Agnes (Engelin) Maiser von Berg.
The central part of the altarpiece is occupied by epi-
sodes from the life of Mary Magdalene as told in the
Legenda aurea. At the left, the saint and her companions,
set adrift by pagans in a rudderless boat, approach the
coast of Marseille, portrayed here in a recognizable
view. In the center, the saint’s companions are asleep
below, while in the attic room above, the Magdalene
appears to the ruler’s wife in her sleep to ask her to
intervene with her husband on behalf of the Christians.
In the fi nal scene, angels deliver the saint, clothed only
in her hair after long years in the desert, to a church
where the Bishop Maximinus administers her the last
rites. In the unusual arched upper panel, the Magdalene
washes the feet of Christ, while bust-length fi gures
representing Christ as the Man of Sorrows in the midst
of the Wise and Foolish Virgins fi ll the long, horizontal
predella below. On feast days the unusually narrow
wings would have been opened to reveal the siblings of
the Magdalene, Saints Martha and Lazarus, painted on
their insides, fl anking a sculpted fi gure of the Magdalene
(now replaced) at the center of the shrine.
Moser’s style provides some clues to his early train-
ing. His individualized head types, exceptional interest
in detail, and use of disguised symbolism indicate
knowledge of Flemish painting. Charles Sterling sees
Moser as “a close follower of Robert Campin” and
notes particularly the use of a continuous background
across the four scenes of the center of the altarpiece,
a device the Fleming had used as early as about 1420
(1972: 19–22). Sterling also suggests the infl uence ofMORTON, ROBERT