Stealing the Mystic Lamb (4 page)

The two central panels of the upper register show the open room in which the Annunciation takes place, with a view through the windows at the back to a contemporary, but unidentified, cityscape. Two women, known as the Erythraean and Cumaean sibyls, float above the room, in the same space occupied by the prophet Zechariah. A sibyl is an Old Testament female prophet, whose words were interpreted as foreshadowing the coming of Christ. Fragments of their prophecies are inscribed in swirling painted banners. The inscription on the banner of the Erythraean sibyl quotes from Virgil, a pagan Latin author dubbed by the church as one of the “good” pagans who, perhaps inadvertently, forecast the coming of Christ: “He speaks with no mortal tongue, being inspired by power from on high.” The Cumaean sibyl’s banner flows with a quotation from Saint Augustine: “The King Most High shall come in human form to reign through all eternity.”

Patterns involving clusters of three architectural elements refer to the Holy Trinity. One such may be found in the small trefoil, a window resembling a three-leaf clover, inside a sculptural niche crowned in a gothic pointed arch. Hanging in the niche is a bronze water pot above a shallow basin, a reference to the consecrated wine poured out at Mass. A towel
hangs in the sculptural niche. The decoration on the towel is reminiscent of the uniforms of altar boys. As with all altarpieces, this painting was literally meant for display above an altar, at which Mass would be performed. More than an object of beauty, it was also a meditative aid. Van Eyck cleverly inserted cross-references between the painted content of the altarpiece and the actual clergy performing Mass in front of it.

The bottom register of the closed altarpiece is, like the upper register, four panels across. The lower-middle panels depict Saint John the Baptist in the center left and Saint John the Evangelist in the center right. Both Johns are painted in a style called “grisaille”—a scaled monochrome, employed here to give the illusion that the painting is actually a stone sculpture. Van Eyck has not painted the two Saint Johns, but rather he has painted sculptures of the two Saint Johns.

An imaginary painted light source, coming from the top right of the panels, casts shadows behind the sculptural saints, indicating that they are, indeed, meant to be seen as statues in a shallow niche. Some art historians have suggested that van Eyck was the first painter to incorporate directed spotlighting, to create shadows and depth in such a way that painting could replicate sculpture, as in these two grisaille panels. This technique would be used almost universally in the Baroque period, a century and a half later. There is no extant earlier painting that incorporates the same effect, but given all of the works of art that have been lost over the centuries, it is difficult to declare art-historical “firsts” with certainty. Unless the galaxy of lost masterpieces is recovered from the ashes and hidden corners, the question marks remain.

Both of the painted sculptures of the Saint Johns stand on octagonal plinths. The dramatically rendered drapery of their garments is reminiscent of the unusually naturalistic drapery cut out of marble by Donatello in his Saint Mark sculpture, which, like his Saint George, decorates the exterior of Orsanmichele in Florence. This second visual link to Orsanmichele is a further clue to suggest that van Eyck may have traveled to Italy to admire the works of Donatello.

The Revelation of Saint John the Evangelist provides the theme of the central interior panel: the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The painted image of Saint John the Baptist carrying a lamb is of particular significance to the city of Ghent. The Baptist is the patron saint of Ghent. He is depicted on the earliest known seal of the city. The Lamb of God,
Agnus Dei
, the subject of
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
, is the image on the earliest known counter seal. A later city seal depicts John the Baptist carrying a lamb, as he does in van Eyck’s panel. Ghent’s wealth, having come primarily from the wool industry, is one reason for the symbolic use of a lamb in the city’s seal and iconography. Indeed, the original name of the church for which
The Ghent Altarpiece
was painted was the Church of Saint John. Its name was changed to the Church of Saint Bavo only in 1540, nineteen years before it was granted the status of cathedral, in honor of a local saint.

There was originally a predella to
The Ghent Altarpiece
, a strip of small square panels that ran across the base of the altarpiece. Documents from the time refer to the predella as depicting Limbo, but we know nothing more about it. The predella itself was irrevocably damaged when the altarpiece was badly cleaned by the painter Jan van Scorel, sometime before
1550. The bad cleaning resulted in the predella being discarded, placed in storage, and eventually lost. From the late sixteenth century on,
The Ghent Altarpiece
has remained incomplete.

Portrait of the patron who paid for
The Ghent Altarpiece
, Joos Vijd

Who paid for the creation of this altarpiece? Depicted on the far left and far right are the donors, who funded both the establishment of the chapel that houses the altarpiece and the painting of the altarpiece itself. On the far left panel is a portrait, wrinkled and accurate to life, of Joos Vijd (whose name was written a variety of ways, including the more exotic Jodocus Vydt), a wealthy knight and local Ghent politician. His wife, Elisabeth Borluut (sometimes spelled Burluut), is portrayed opposite him, also kneeling in prayer, in the far right panel. They are almost life-sized, painted as God made them, with none of the idealization employed by past artists, who would either “clean up” the less attractive aspects of those portrayed or paint them in a generic manner, bereft of identifiable characteristics. This warts-and-all portrait realism was another of van Eyck’s great innovations.

Van Eyck’s realism, described by the founder of modern art history, Jacob Burckhardt, as “supreme perfection at its very first attempt,” both displays his artistic skill and emphasizes the humility of the donors who were willing to be preserved for all eternity as they truly looked, without any painterly plastic surgery—even if they were not so humble as to refrain from including themselves in the painting that they commissioned to demonstrate their wealth and piety.

Portraiture as a distinct artistic genre arose in the first decades of the fifteenth century, a time when Humanism emphasized the importance of individual human life, and led to the commemoration and glorification of individuals—people who were neither kings nor biblical figures but instead aristocrats, clergy, merchants, intellectuals, and artists who believed their lives on earth had meaning and value. A portrait, either alone in a panel painting or with other donors’ images in a large religious work like this one, was a historical record, a way of preserving one’s name, likeness, and legacy.

Van Eyck began his portraits by sketching in silverpoint (literally drawing with a piece of silver) on paper in the presence of the sitter. The sketch would include the outlines of the face and the key lines of the facial features, shadowed with cross-hatching. He would make notes to himself in his native Mosan jargon (the dialect from the region of Maaseyck) in the margins of his silverpoint drawing about color, garment texture, and similar details. He would then transfer the drawing onto his gessoed panel using a mechanical enlargement technique to alter the size.

There were two common methods of mechanical transfer used by Renaissance artists. The first method involved drawing a grid over one’s sketch, and then drawing a grid with larger squares onto the support of the panel onto which one would paint. The artist could then copy the lines contained in each square of the grid over his sketch into the corresponding larger-scale square of his grid on the panel, enlarging the lines piece by piece. In the second method, the drawing would be placed over
the panel and pierced along the important lines, leaving a mark on the surface underneath the drawing. The resulting marks on the panel could be used as a reference point to draw lines around them in a larger scale on the panel itself. This is the method most likely used by van Eyck, as his only extant drawing contains marks of transfer.