Stealing the Mystic Lamb Read Online Free PDF Page B

come to a fountain, the Fons Vitae
or Fountain of the Water of Life, symbolic of the celebration of Mass, out of which flows endless grace for the faithful. The painted water streams out of the fountain through a gargoyle-mouthed drain that suggests that the water might even flow out of the painting itself and spill onto the stone altar beneath it, transcending the boundary between the painted reality and the chapel in which the viewers of the painting stand. Around the stone edge of the octagonal fountain (the base of which should recall the painted plinths on which stand the two Saint John statues on the other side of this very panel) is carved Hic Est Fons Aque Vite Procedens De Sede Dei + Agni : “This is the Fountain of the Water of Life proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb,” a quotation from the Book of Revelation.

    The central panel of The Ghent Altarpiece , referred to as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
    Angels with jewel-colored wings kneel in prayer around the Lamb on the altar, carrying the instruments of Christ’s passion: the cross, the Crown of Thorns, and the column at which he was flogged. Their white robes resemble those worn by altar boys, who would participate in the Mass held
in the chapel beneath the painting. Even the multicolored wings of the angels have a symbolic origin. Two stories relate the colorful wings of birds to Catholic iconography: The origin of one is based on the misconception that a peacock’s flesh does not decompose after death. The peacock was, therefore, associated with the body of Christ, resurrected before it had a chance to decompose. The other reference is to a different colorful bird—the parrot. Another odd rationale for Mary’s having been a pregnant virgin ran: If a parrot can be taught to say “ Ave Maria ,” then why can’t Mary be a pregnant virgin? This sort of pregnant logic pretty well silenced the questioning masses back in the Middle Ages and, as porous as the argument may sound today, resulted in the depiction of parrots in religious painting throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
    The angels in the garb of altar boys swing censers, spreading powdered incense over the Lamb. The censers are caught in midair. The central scene is a snapshot, a frozen moment of action. In the Renaissance, particularly in Italy, painters preferred to depict their figures in stable, geometric poses that suggested calm, sculptural, eternal permanence. In the Baroque period, two centuries after van Eyck painted, particularly those artists who emulated Caravaggio favored dynamic, unstable tableaux, portraying figures at the moment of highest drama and movement—a cup falling off a table, a head peeling off of a severed neck. Van Eyck provides the High Renaissance stability in every element of his central painting, save for those swinging censers, which forecast Baroque dynamism, there to remind us that it is a moment we see, not an unmoving eternity.
    The field is filled with figures. As is written in Revelation 7:9-10, the “great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindred, and people, and tongues” surround the Lamb of God in the fields of paradise. In the case of this painting, the great multitude can be numbered. To be precise, there are 46 prophets and patriarchs (if you count heads and hats), 46 apostles and clergy (if you count portions of tonsured heads), 32 confessors (the sum total of tonsures and mitres), and 46 female saints (counting faces and variously colored head gear)—170 total individuals, plus 16 angels.

    Each figure, particularly those from the foreground groups (the prophets and patriarchs in the left foreground and the apostles and clergy to the right) are painted with identifiable portrait faces. In most contemporary Italian paintings, portraits of individual patrons aside, figures such as saints were portrayed in a generic manner, with few if any distinguishing features beneath their beards. But van Eyck has