which can be traced to the influence of PARACELSUS. He
himself influenced Jakob BOEHME. Although his writings,
and those ascribed to him, were not published until 20
years after his death, they circulated widely in manuscript
during Weigel’s lifetime.
Wert, Giaches de (1535–1596) Flemish composer
Wert went to Italy as a child to sing at the court of the
marchese della Padulla at Avellino near Naples. By 1558
he was in the employ of Count Alfonso Gonzaga at Novel-
lara. He sang in choirs in Parma and Milan, and from 1565
until his death was maestro at the Gonzaga chapel of Sta.
Barbara in Mantua. He also traveled to Augsburg and
Venice, and is known to have had associations with the
Este court in Ferrara in the 1570s and 1580s. Wert was a
prolific composer; numerous Masses, motets, and Magni-
ficats survive, but his most celebrated compositions are
his MADRIGALS. A strong influence on MONTEVERDI, he
published 13 madrigal collections, often with texts of a
high quality, declamatory in style and with the three upper
voices frequently emphasized; these were written for vir-
tuoso court singers, and in particular the renowned Fer-
rarese female singers, the concerto delle donne.
Weston, Elizabeth Jane (Westonia) (1582–1612)
English-born poet, linguist, and scholar, who gained a
considerable reputation in Continental Europe
Her family were forced to flee abroad because of her fa-
ther’s debts and settled in Bohemia. After he died in 1597,
Elizabeth and her mother appealed to Emperor Rudolf II
and other influential figures for assistance. By this time
Elizabeth had attracted attention for her scholarship. Flu-
ent, in English, German, Czech, Greek, and Italian, she
wrote prose and verse in Latin and translated Aesop’s
ables. She corresponded with English and European
scholars, many of whom rated her work highly and com-
pared it with that of leading neo-Latin poets. In 1602 one
of her patrons, at his own expense, published her verse at
Frankfurt an der Oder as Parthenicon Elisabethae Joannae
Westoniae, virginis nobilissimae, poetriae florentissimae, lin-
guarum plurimarum peritissimae; there were several subse-
quent editions. Around the same time she married a
lawyer, Johann Leon. She died in Prague.Weyden, Rogier van der (1399/1400–1464) Nether-
lands painter
Rogier is first heard of in 1427 as the student of Robert
CAMPIN. In 1432 he entered the guild of his native Tournai
but by 1435 had already moved to Brussels where he set-
tled permanently. Rogier attracted commissions from nu-
merous patrons, both within the Netherlands and abroad,
and was civic painter of Brussels. None of his paintings is
exactly dated and his oeuvre presents numerous attribu-
tional problems, as he had many followers. Rogier’s earli-
est surviving work, such as the Louvre Annunciation, was
strongly influenced by Campin. Later, the Boston St. Luke
Drawing the Virgin incorporates motifs borrowed from Jan
van EYCK. The Madrid Descent from the Cross (second half
of the 1430s) is probably the artist’s greatest work. In this
composition, Rogier compressed ten nearly life-size fig-
ures within a gilded niche, simulating the appearance of a
sculptured altarpiece of polychromed wood.
In 1439–41 Rogier worked on the four panels of his
only secular narrative cycle, The Justice of the Emperor Tra-
jan and Count Herkinbald, which decorated Brussels town
hall until their destruction in 1695. The artist’s fame had
already spread to Castile by 1445, when King John II do-
nated his altarpiece of the Virgin (now in Berlin) to the
Charterhouse at Miraflores near Burgos. Rogier painted
the enormous Last Judgment altarpiece in the hospital
founded by Nicholas Rolin at Beaune, near Dijon, during
the late 1440s. With its gold background, sculptural asso-
ciations, and emotional intensity, it is closely comparable
with the earlier Descent from the Cross. In 1449–51 Rogier
was executing commissions for the Este of Ferrara and, in
1450, he visited Rome. Shortly after his return home, he
executed two altarpieces for the Medici, the Frankfurt
Madonna and Child with Four Saints and the Uffizi En-
tombment. Rogier’s Braque triptych in Paris reinterprets aWWeeyyddeenn,, RRooggiieerr vvaann ddeerr 5 50011Hans (II) Weiditz Weiditz’s careful observation of living
plants is exemplified in this woodcut of a pasque flower
(Pulsatilla vulgaris) for Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones.