Stealing the Mystic Lamb Read Online Free PDF

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.

    Portrait of the patron’s wife, Elisabeth Borluut
    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.

    The centerpiece of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is found in the lower central panel of the open altar and is the most important element to understanding the work as a whole. This panel alone measures 134.3 by 237.5 centimeters (4.4 by 7.8 feet) and spans the width of three other panels. Its subject is taken from the Revelation of Saint John the Evangelist, the last book of the New Testament.
    The scene is set in a vast, idyllic flowery meadow embowered by trees and hedges. Here van Eyck’s inordinate patience and attention to detail are on full display. Most of the plants, bushes, and trees are depicted with enough accuracy as to be identifiable to botanists. This cannot be any real field, as the combination of plant life, running the gamut from roses to lilies to cypresses to oaks to palm trees, could not coexist in one natural habitat. There is no sunlight, but rather the Holy Spirit, as a white dove, emanates light and bathes the scene in a midday glow. As is written in the Revelation of Saint John, “I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove.”
    The scene is viewed from on high, looking down at the sweep of meadow filled with hundreds of figures. Basic perspectival lines draw our eyes to the sacrificial altar at the center, on which stands the Lamb of God, Agnus Dei , to which the attention of everyone in the meadow, save one individual, is directed.
    On the central panel’s two penduli—swaths of red velvet draping down the side of the altar—is written Ihesus Via and Veritas Vita , “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” also a quote from the Gospel of John. Scroll down the center of the panel, and we