(b ?Verdun; fl 1181–1205). French goldsmith. His known works indicate that he was one of the leading metalworkers of his day and an early exponent of the classicizing styles around 1200 that formed a transition between Romanesque and Gothic. In his two dated signatures, NICOLAUS VIRDUNENSIS (1181) on the enamel decoration of the former pulpit in Klosterneuburg Abbey, Austria, and MAGISTER NICHOLAUS DE VERDUM (1205) on the Shrine of the Virgin in Tournai Cathedral, the artist gave as his place of origin Verdun, in Lorraine, an area that in the 12th century had close economic and cultural links with the Rhineland, Champagne, the Ile-de-France and the metalworking centres of the Meuse. A more ambiguous signature, NICOLAUS DE VERDA, was on the pedestal of one of a lost pair of enthroned, silver-gilt statuettes in Worms Cathedral representing St Peter and the founder Queen Constance, the wife either of Emperor Henry VI (m. 1186; d 1198) or of Emperor Frederick II (m. 1209; d 1222). The spelling Verda may perhaps be a defect or a copyist’s error. The theory that Nicholas spent his last years as a citizen of Tournai, or had a son there of the same name (Cloquet), was based on mistaken evidence: the reference to a ‘namesake’ dates from 1318, not 1217, and concerns not a painter on glass (voirier) but a furrier (vairier).

• Nicholas of Verdun
  • attributions
    • Allegory, §III, 2: Medieval: 12th and 13th centuries
    • Cologne, §IV, 1(iv): Cathedral treasury
  • paintings
    • Gothic, §IV, 5(viii): Painting: Holy Roman Empire, c 1300–c 1400
  • pupils
    • Hugo d’Oignies
  • works
    • Austria, §III, 1(ii)(b): Gothic panel paintings
    • Austria, §IX, 1(i): Gold and silver, before 1700
    • Belgium, §IV, 1: Sculpture, before c 1400
    • Cologne, §II, 2: Art life and organization, AD 457–1200
    • Gothic, §VI, 1(iii): Champlevé enamels: Upper Rhineland
    • Klosterneuburg Abbey Treasury
    • Muldenfaltenstil
    • Reliquary, §I, 4: Ottonian and Romanesque
    • Romanesque, §VI, 3: Metalwork: Low countries
    • Romanesque, §VII, 2: Enamels: Meuse region and Rhineland
    • Tournai, §2: Art life and organization
    • Typological cycles, §2: 12th century and later