Madonna in the Church
Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–40, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. At first thought an early work by Jan, it is now definitively attributed to Jan and believed to be a later work.
About Madonna in the Church in brief
Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–40, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. At first thought an early work by Jan, it is now definitively attributed to Jan and believed to be a later work. The panel was acquired for the Berlin Gemäldegalerie in 1874. It was stolen in 1877 and soon returned, but without its original inscribed frame, which was never recovered. It is now thought to have been completed c. 1438-40, but there are still arguments for dates as early as 1424–29. Today it is widely considered one of vanEyck’s finest paintings. The attribution reflects the progression and trends of 19th and 20th-century scholarship on Early Netherlandish art. In the early 21st century, Jeffrey Chipps and John Oliver Smith placed it between 1426 and 1428. However, following research from Meyer Schapiros in the late 1970s, Otto Pächt judged the work as probably a 1437-1437 work. A similar treatment of an interior in the 1434 Portrait of Arnolfo Arnolfini was given a similar treatment in the 1994 edition of Van Eyck’s Saint Barbara Churchs study of the 1437 Portrait. The painting’s dimensions are small enough to be almost miniature, with reduced portability and increased portability. At 31cm × 14cm, the painting’s size is consistent with most 15th- century devotional diptychs, with a reduced size and reduced portable size.
It has been described as one of the finest works of art by Millard Meiss, who wrote that its ‘splendor and subtlety of of light is unsurpassed in Western art.’ The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral’s windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary’s virginal purity and God’s ethereal presence. In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Near-contemporary copies by the Master of 1499 and Jan Gossaert pair it with two very different right-hand images: one is of a donor kneeling in an interior setting; the other is set outdoors, with the donor being presented by St Anthony. Both painters made significant alterations to the composition, which may have brought the image more up to date with contemporary styles, but the copies have been described as ‘spiritually if not aesthetically disastrous to the original concept’. As with the pages ascribed to Hand G in the Turin-Milan Hours manuscript, the panel was attributed to his brother Hubert van Eycks. For a long period it was seen as originating from the early 1430s. By 1912 the painting had been definitively attributed to Jan in the museum catalogue.
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This page is based on the article Madonna in the Church published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
