Mysterious works of Jan van Eyck presented in New York Automatic translate

NEW YORK. In Belgian Ghent, there is one of the most significant examples of Western medieval painting - the altar of Jan van Eyck, painted for the Cathedral of St. Bavon in 1432. On its twelve panels (one is a copy, instead of stolen), Jesus, Mary and John the Baptist are depicted, angels kneeling before the sacrificial lamb. The realism that the artist was able to achieve in this work was made possible thanks to his improved technology for the preparation of oil paints.

For many centuries, the crystal precision of paintings Jan van Eyck causes numbness in observers. A contemporary Belgian artist, Luc Tuimans, in an interview with Udo Kittelman in 2007, said: “After the Flemish primitivists, and the main among them, Jan van Eyck, any artist can only be an amateur.”

About two dozen paintings belong to van Eyck, most of them are in the collections of major museums in Europe and the United States. And each of these works is no less expressive and mysterious than the altar in Ghent. New exhibition in Museum of the Metropolitan (Metropolitan Museum of Art) invites everyone to see this.

Ian van Eyck - Crucifixion and the Last Judgment

For the first time in history, the diptych “The Crucifixion and the Last Judgment”, located in the museum’s permanent exhibition, and the drawing associated with it, rented from the Museum Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, will be presented for the first time in history.

These works of art are curious about their spatial organization. In the upper part of the Last Judgment, we see the figure of Jesus sitting in a scarlet cloak on the royal throne of paradise. Near his feet are the apostles, cardinals and kings, lined up in geometric order and standing extremely tight. In the center of the picture we see our planet, over which the archangel Michael has spread his rainbow wings. Still below is hell, over which Death itself reigns in the form of a sprawling skeleton. Hell is as disordered as paradise is ordered. Having looked closely, among the sinners in the hellish depths you can find a priest who is easily recognized by the white miter.

The three-dimensional space of the Crucifixion is structured with the help of an aerial perspective characteristic of proto-renaissance. Around Jesus hanging on the cross we see horsemen in turbaned and fur hats, one of which pierces the right side of Christ with a spear. In the background, we see Mary, whose face is almost completely hidden by a blue mantle. In the background, over the mountains, the moon rises. By the way, the first exact images of the lunar surface are attributed to Jan van Eyck.

The drawing, which arrived for the exhibition from Rotterdam and so similar to the Crucifixion, was discovered in 1971, at the sale of real estate in Groningen. A local psychiatrist drew attention to his resemblance to the famous painting and paid 10 guilders for it (about $ 5). The drawing is not a copy of the picture, in shape it is closer to the square, however, it depicts the same moment of Christ’s agony.

According to experts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is possible that the drawing was made by van Eyck, or at least in his workshop. The drawing is made with the same care that characterizes all the paintings of van Eyck. If the drawing was not made by the artist himself, then his unknown author tried to adhere to the van Eyck style.

Some technical details confirm the version that the drawing was made by van Eyck or his team. Looking carefully at the face of the Virgin in the picture, we see him wrinkled and suffering. In the picture, that part of the face that is visible from under the mantle does not have any wrinkle marks. But if you look at the diptych in infrared light, it becomes obvious that Maria’s face was also covered with wrinkles, but later the artist removed them.

Scientific analysis also sheds light on the relationship between the two parts of the diptych. Its parts were carved from a single piece of wood, and the traces found along the edges mean that the paintings were actually the side parts of the triptych, the central panel or sculpture of which has been lost today. Experts also believe that The Last Judgment was written with the participation of van Eyck in his workshop, while the artist worked on the Crucifixion alone.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru