Sacred Realm: Religious Painting from about 1420 to 1500 The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment, ca. 1430 Jan van Eyck (act. by 1422, d. 1441) and Assistant Oil on canvas, transferred from wood Inscribed: (on frames) verses from Isaiah, Revelation, and Deuteronomy; (within pictures) verses from Matthew and Revelation Fletcher Fund, 1933 (33.92a, b) These two pictures, juxtaposing Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of humankind with the Last Judgment at the end of time, are early works by Jan van Eyck, the most famous painter in fifteenth-century Europe and the artist who, more than any other, defined the boundaries of realism. The Crucifixion is presented as an eyewitness account, set against a distant landscape astonishing for its depth and subtlety of description. By contrast, the Last Judgment is organized hieratically in three tiers, with the scale of the figures manipulated to indicate their relative importance. The panels were intended as deluxe objects for private devotion and could be folded and taken from place to place. Jan was court painter to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, and these pictures could have been commissioned by a member of the court circle—perhaps the man dressed in an ermine-trimmed coat and extravagant blue headdress at the right, looking out at us from beneath the cross on which Christ is crucified. The frames are original and bear inscriptions from the Old and New Testaments that served as the points of departure for narrative details and enrich the theological references. Around the panel that shows the Crucifixion are verses declaring that Christ "is brought as a lamb to the slaughter" and "made his grave with the wicked . . . and he bare the sin of many." The verses surrounding the Last Judgment describe how "death and hell delivered up the dead . . . and the sea gave up the dead which were in it" and announce "I will spend mine arrows upon them." The Last Judgment was painted in the upper half by an assistant. From Van Eyck to Bruegel Home | Next Page

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