Jan van Eyck - The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele
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On a recent visit to Belgium to see the famous Ghent Altarpiece, also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, we took the opportunity to look at another of Jan van Eyck’s works hanging in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges. The Altarpiece was such an overwhelming work in its scope and scale that it was difficult to absorb in one sitting, let alone do justice to it in a short blog piece, so The Virgin and Child provides an easier entrée to the art of this incomparable Northern Renaissance artist. I don’t mean to suggest that the artistry it manifests is in any way inferior to the Ghent work – there is just less subject matter to this one, but what a dazzling achievement it is nevertheless!
I have written about the Madonna and Child motif previously in my piece about the almost contemporaneous work, Fra Angelico’s San Marco Altarpiece, but this work displays a different sensibility at play even if its devotional purpose was similar.
With humbly downcast eyes, Mary sits enthroned on a richly carpeted dais, cloaked in the sumptuous red folds of a jewel-edged mantle. She holds the infant on her knee, her garment protected by a white cloth under his bottom. The child holds a posy of flowers in his left hand, symbolising his mother’s purity, while he rests the other on the wing of a parrot, the feather-unruffledness of which makes it seems equally at home in the care of the Virgin. Its head and eye are turned towards the two figures on the right, simultaneously acknowledging their presence while receiving the divine touch of the Christ-child. The parrot seemed a strange creature to include until I read that its exoticism may hark back to the prelapsarian Garden of Eden and so is emblematic of innocence, but it is also clearly a bird uniquely gifted with the apparent power of speech and so may symbolise here the earlier and often depicted episode in Mary’s life, the Annunciation. This was the moment when she was made aware that she was to become the mother of Christ, a message delivered to her by the archangel Gabriel.
On either side of Mary’s throne and appearing level with her hands, we see two marble carvings. Their trompe l’oeil depth-conjuring effect is to make us forget that this is a flat painting. On the left we see Cain in the act of murdering his brother Abel and on the right Samson pulling open the jaws of a lion. These ‘sculptures’ (we also see Adam and Eve respectively below each) legitimizes the New Testament Madonna and Child story in narrative succession to the more ancient scriptures.
The inclusion of the portly and white-surpliced kneeling figure on the right is a tribute to van Eyck’s patron, Joris van der Paele, a wealthy churchman who commissioned the painting and whose coat of arms appears in each corner of its frame. Approaching the end of his life, he is unflatteringly portrayed with sagging jowls, his skin blemished and sallow. The painted wrinkles and the veins that pulse under the skin of his almost bald head are remarkably well-observed. Van Eyck shows the cleric-benefactor’s features with almost forensic realism as a way to convince us of the unflinching truth of his depiction and by then positioning him so close to the divine central figures, the artist gestures at a piety and holiness that implies its equivalent worthiness of credence. The priest holds a bible to his chest with his left hand and while the right hand turns over its pages, he pinches a pair of spectacles between his thumb and forefinger. Glasses were a technological innovation that had only appeared in Flanders early in the fifteenth century, and here they indicate their owner as a man of the world as much as a man of God, and one determined not to let failing sight deprive him of the word of The Almighty.
On the far right, doffing his helmet and making an introduction of the prelate to Mary, stands the martial and curly-haired figure of St. George, his standard casually held in the crook of his arm. The detailing in his armour and chainmail is astonishing in its verisimilitude. Viewers need to peer extremely closely to convince themselves that the sheen and reflectance of its materials is made from paint. St George cuts a remarkably irreverential figure, presenting the priest to the mother of God as if he were some courtier at the secular palace of a prince rather than in the hallowed presence of the divine. His eyes seem unfocused and his expression uncertain, going through the chivalric motions encumbered by so much heavy and frankly here unnecessary plate, clumsily treading on the edge of the priest’s vestment.
On the left stands the grumpy-looking St Donatian, the patron saint of Bruges. Martyred (beheaded) at the hands of the Romans towards the end of the third century, he is shown carrying a small wheel with lit candles mounted around its circle. This is a reference to the legend that as an infant he was thrown into the river Tiber and only rescued from drowning after Pope Dionysius quick-thinkingly threw a wheel into the water so that the poor child could cling to as a life ring. The long trailing cope that he wears outshines even Mary’s cloak. Van Eyck’s meticulous rendering of its gold brocade is surely unparalleled in Renaissance art. Its red lining echoes the colour of Mary’s mantle (a reminder of the blood he spilled for his faith), while his bejewelled mitre mirrors its gem studded trim. Its as if Donatian has overstepped the dressing-up mark, upstaging her sartorially. Even his crozier seems OTT, held upright by a gloved hand over which yet more jewels ring his fingers. The work is pre-reformation of course, but I do think that the contrast between St. Donation’s dress and Joris van der Paele’s acts, in the work at least, as a deliberate rebuke to the luxurious lifestyles that some in the church flaunted.
The perspective lines formed by the carpet, the receding columns, and the positioning of the figures in attendance, together with the centrality of mother and child, focusses our attention on their unfeasible physical presence. The almost hyper-realistic depiction of Joris, George and Donatian helps us recall that while the presence of infant Jesus, the son of God no less, should be a matter of deep awe and astonishment, he was also human. This hypostasis is where our gaze is directed, albeit negotiated through the motherhood of Mary who occupies the median and most elevated position with her offspring a little off to the left.
The painting’s mind-boggling detail is a reminder too that its making must have been as much an act of devotion on the part of the artist’s as it was intended to inspire in others. It rewards the closest examination. For the best super-closeup view head to the Musea Brugge website where you can zoom right in. There are dozens of instances that surprise you. Just a couple of examples: notice the trailing threads that protrude from the edges of the carpet, and while you are there, look at the slight grubbiness of the ceramic tiles it sits on. These are again reminders for Christians that although Jesus was the son of God, he dwelt amongst us in our imperfect world and the painter felt it to be a sacred duty to represent that world as honestly and minutely as he could in every aspect of its particularity.
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