ABSTRACT

The church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande at Valenciennes (Nord) was another of the large buildings of northern France destroyed in the years following the French Revolution. We know the building only from documents, as the site has not been excavated and no fragments are known to have survived. It was an interesting variation on the trefoil plan, in which the chevet and each transept arm were polygonal in plan and surrounded by an ambulatory and gallery. As one of the most famous painters of his day, van Eyck had the special privilege of being a valet to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. His role as court painter extended into the realm of diplomacy, as van Eyck was one of Philip's emissaries to Spain between 1424 and 1430. By the Carolingian period, the Roman civitas Vermanduorum had been split into two parts, of which the one centered on the towns of Saint-Quentin and Peronne was alone called the pagus Vermanduensis.