Jan van Eyck, The Lamb of God central panel of worship, 1432 by Natasja Tollenaar

About "Jan van Eyck, The Lamb of God central panel of worship, 1432"

by Natasja Tollenaar

About the artwork

The main, central panel of this painter's well-known polyptych. The oak-painted painting The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is a large and intrinsically complex early 15th-century Flemish polyptych. The work was commissioned by the Ghent citizen-merchant Joos Vijd, dating between 1430 and 1432, and was written by the Van Eyck brothers. It was conceived as an altarpiece for the Vijd chapel in the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent.

On the lower central panel, persons are grouped in circles who worship the Lamb. We notice the professors, the holy women and the church fathers, who themselves are painted very precisely, but in perspective do not seem to float correctly by bushes on the grassy surface. In this panel one does not apply the precise Italian line perspective, but the atmospheric perspective, where space suggestion is created by evenly blurring the color, shape and texture closer to the horizon.

An imaginary vertical axis runs through the panels that God the Father, the Holy Spirit (a dove in a semicircular halo), the sacrificed and bleeding Lamb (God the Son) successively intersect, symbolizing the Trinity. The bottom row of panels are horizontally connected by a high horizon line, so that all images are in bird's eye view. This thoughtful composition lends the work an internal dynamism and ensures that the parts are bonded.

Jan van Eyck (Maaseik ?, c. 1390 - Bruges, West Flanders July 9, 1441) was a painter from the county of Loon, who from 1366 fell under the Prin