While conventionally hailed as a work of precise realism, the Ghent Altarpiece at Saint Bavo (otherwise known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) is as much a work of idealism. The Van Eycks carefully and skilfully crafted their realism within a sophisticated framework of symbolism. This balance is as much about the immanence of God in the earthly realm as about the grounding of the spiritual in the physical in the altarpiece’s aesthetic.
What Is the Ghent Altarpiece?
The Ghent Altarpiece is held up as an exemplar of the transition from the Medieval Period to the Renaissance. It is also cited by some scholars as the first great oil painting, a medium that would supersede the use of egg-based tempera throughout European art in the following centuries.
The Mayor of Ghent, Jodocus Vijd, and his wife, Lysbette, commissioned the altarpiece, and the initial work began by the early to mid-1420s. Vijd’s commission of the altarpiece was part of a larger plan for the restoration of the Cathedral of Saint Bavo in Ghent. The finished work is usually attributed to Jan Van Eyck but it was his brother Hubert who designed the structure of the altarpiece.
As Hubert died in 1426, Jan was left to complete the painting of the complex program of the work which is also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. There is a lot of scholarly disagreement on the question of attribution, there being little consensus on which of the elements of the painting are by the hand of Hubert and which by Jan. However, the vast majority of the work (which was finished and installed by 1432) was by Jan, given the date of Hubert’s early death in 1426.
The finished work is often remarked upon as a new artistic concern with the realistic depiction of the physical world. Certainly, this is true. Among Van Eyck’s concerns is the meticulous recording of the objects of the visible world with adept accuracy. However, this new realism in early Netherlandish art is tempered in Van Eyck’s painting by an idealistic worldview. This is nowhere more evident than in the Christ panel of the Ghent Altarpiece.
The Deesis
This article will focus on the Deesis of the altarpiece, more specifically, the panel that depicts Christ as God the Father as the central figure and symbol of the entire work. The Deesis is a traditional schema portraying Christ, usually enthroned, as ruler of all. He is conventionally flanked on either side by the Virgin and John the Baptist. Van Eyck adopts this as the focal point of the Saint Bavo altarpiece. The compositional arrangement of Van Eyck’s Deesis is mostly symmetrical—the bowed heads of Mary and John the Baptist mirror each other and their heads form the base of a triangle that subtends the head of Christ. This formally reinforces the sacred truth of the Trinity of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Another triangle occurs between the books of Mary and John the Baptist and the raised right hand of Christ. The books of scripture signify the Word of God, while Christ’s hand—in a gesture of blessing—is an enactment of the Word of God. Thereby the truth of the Word is borne out in a unity of sign and act. Also, Christ’s hand is a sign of transformation from spirit and divinity to flesh, of his Incarnation as mortal man to die for the atonement of human sin. John the Baptist’s right index finger touches the cross that doubles as a mark of the inscription introducing him as if to foreground this element of the New Testament story of salvation: Christ’s self-sacrifice as man.
The Christ enthroned here as Pantocrator (“ruler of all”) has a dual aspect. His asymmetrical face is a convention that dates at least as far as the early 7th century in Byzantine portrayals of the Pantocrator, as is evident in the Sinai panel of Saint Catherine’s. The double expression is to signify the amalgamation of Father and Son in the ultimate entity of the supreme deity. Amalgamations—of God/man and God the Father/God the Son—echo in the hands of Van Eyck’s Christ. His right hand is raised in a gesture of blessing, while his left firmly grips his scepter. Mercy and love counter-balance power and law.
This conjunction in Christ of divine status, and mortal being and suffering is the central theme of the Ghent Altarpiece and of Van Eyck’s vision of reality. The artist grounds his symbolic meaning in the precise painting of the objects of the world. The truthful, accurate depiction of the visible world balances with a pervasive symbolic significance. For Van Eyck, realism is the counterpart rather than the opposite or adversary of idealism. His objects (figures, gestures, motifs) mark the location of a confluence of punctilious earthly reality and the ultimate spiritual reality of God and the Word. Art historian Craig Harbison has written that in Van Eyck, “the surface of things is defined precisely, luxuriously, with enamel-like beauty…”
Van Eyck’s Realism and Symbolism
In conventional parlance, the terms “realism” and “idealism” are opposed, and considered mutually exclusive. F. Wellington Ruckstuhl has written of idealization that it is “to substitute a more beautiful and perfect—but still a natural—part for the imperfect natural part.” In this sense—and contrary to the prevalent belief—idealization and realism are complementary. For the “pure” realist, idealization is not so much the opposite of his/her method but rendered null by their ignoring of its dictates. For idealization, realism is the basis and material upon which its perfectionism works.
This latter attitude is the case in Van Eyck’s painting. In the Ghent Altarpiece’s Deesis, he balances meticulous detail within an archetypal system of gesture, text, and presence that amounts to an unchanging monumentality befitting the revelation of God’s eternal omnipotence. For him, the figures and objects of the world have a reality. But also, his painting makes use of symbolism tied to his objects. In his conflation of realism of style and symbolism of import, the signified or symbolized phenomena and entities of religion participate in a reality parallel to that of the physical world.
Van Eyck’s symbolism is a tidying or fitting of the “crooked timber” of observed earthly reality into a system of signs. Despite its thorough realism in the representation of details of shading, reflection, texture, and form, the Ghent Altarpiece—and especially the Deesis of the upper register—relates a scheme of the organization of symbolic elements that are fixed, immoveable, and exalted. The artist eliminates chance, event, and the accidental. In this, his realism complements the depiction of an idealized realm that is static and eternal.
This realm is self-sufficient, and the object of the references is painted in a heightened realism that relates both idealized signs and material reality. Van Eyck’s realism, therefore, differs from a realism of pure physical immediacy, self-referentiality, and local incident without system. The artist conflates the real and the ideal in the pictorial sign. His method is in concert with the literal root of the word “symbolism,” which is the Greek sumballo, which means “I put together.”
In the central upper panel, Christ’s scepter, and the crown at his feet both intensify God’s power and draw a distinction. The scepter’s sway is over the crown, suggesting that all earthly royalty is subject to divine law and made trivial. The richly painted metals and gemstones form floral and vegetative shapes. Van Eyck is painting the craft of goldsmithing, with both this medium and that of painting aspiring to natural forms. In one way this is realism: the artist’s goal in these details is the portrayal of foliage and flowers through painting metals. In another way, his displacement of these naturalistic forms, via painting, into metalwork and jewels takes these forms out of the natural processes of bloom and decay. This establishes a monumental timelessness that is the hallmark of idealism, and which symbolises the eternal reign of God.
Van Eyck paints a plenitude of realistic details that dazzle the eye and mind with their variety and luster. Not only each object and figure but each facet, form, and modeled contour of surfaces, faces, and flesh tones entails meticulous attention and minute skill. Each local moment becomes a perfected ideal and a necessary part of a hierarchical order that culminates in the beneficent gesture and expression of Christ as “lord of lords.” Each flower, gem, and wrinkle is painted in a confluence of the real and the ideal. The real occurs in the specificity of detail, while the ideal consists in the seeming immutability of these details.
The composition is a profusion of details in the sense of abundance, but not in the sense of extravagance. There is plenty but not too much. However, an open-ended organic scene does not describe the altarpiece, much less the Deesis. The composition, for all its detail, is a closed, sophisticated, and symbolic system—a realized ideal and an idealized world. The entire work is a panorama of faith, glory, nature, and the supernatural that is self-contained.
The Deesis itself is in an idealized supernatural realm that is also a near-obsessive exercise in realistic detail. An example of this is Van Eyck’s lending to the Trinity or the unity of the deity a specifically described individual figure with wrinkles, carefully modulated flesh tones, and a humanized physiognomy or character.
For all the variety of detail and the opulence of style, the work symbolizes unity—whether it be that of the Trinity in God the Father or Christ as the living embodiment of the Word. Even in the crimson of Christ’s robe, there is a coincidence of event and faithful commemoration, it being symbolic of both the Passion and the Eucharist.
John the Baptist’s index finger is surmounted by the cross to Christ’s right. This detail places the Deesis in time as a reminder to the congregation of Saint Bavo of Christ’s sacrifice for humanity. However, within the context of the Deesis, it is also “outside time,” as the Deesis signifies the eternal status of God and his relation to humanity. Therefore, this detail is both real and almost practical in terms of the reminder, and ideal, relating the divine mystery and power.
Immanence
The subject matter of the Deesis is necessarily ideal. Also, its execution by Van Eyck can be seen in conjunction with this as realism pushed to the boundary of excess, magic, and mystery. Thereby, Van Eyck’s realism is difficult to distinguish from his idealism. In fact, there seems to be an immanence in the work. The lightly concealed symbolism animates the real material objects of the pictorial world. At the same time, depicted reality is a means to the comprehension of symbolism, sacred truths, and faith.
This immanence, being immanence, pervades the image. The symbol is embedded in the real, God is manifest in the physical world, and divine truth is revealed by the symbol. Van Eyck here reifies (makes into a thing) the symbol, while he has infused the objects of the world with spirituality. There is a balance, convergence, or synthesis of the real and the ideal. They are co-existent. Rather than the ideal transcending the real, as Craig Harbison argues, both are equally present and significant, each enhancing the meaning of the other.
The overriding metaphor for the Ghent Altarpiece, and particularly in the central Christ panel, is the Incarnation of Christ. The analogy of Christ as a mortal man and as an ideal spiritual entity maps onto Van Eyck’s own technical and conceptual achievement: the perfect balance of the real and the ideal. According to Harbison, Van Eyck transfigures the visible world to transcend it. However, Van Eyck does not treat the earthly world as dispensable in this way. His realism is symbolic, intimating the divine through the physical. However, his realism is integral and undetachable from his idealism.
Van Eyck evidently revels in the complexity and brilliance of the objects of the world, which he places in an equilibrium with his conceptual symbolism. The altarpiece reveals a bi-partite reality made one. Just as the divine became flesh, the artist’s vision of the world combines with a vision of the sacred. The physical is no more transcended in his symbolism than the divine is compromised by the Incarnation of Christ.
Another title of the Ghent Altarpiece is The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The relevant biblical source for the attributes and significance of the Lamb of God is the Book of Revelation. Revelation 4:11 tells us that for God’s pleasure, things “are and were created.” The minor aside is enlightening when considering Van Eyck’s mystical vision for the altarpiece. He paints worldly objects lovingly, analogously to God’s pleasure. But his realism also deploys much vibrant color and subtle light, as if he is pointing to these objects as the residue of the creative hand of God in a further conflation of realism and idealism.
Just as Van Eyck is the master of his symbolically charged pictorial world, Christ is the fleshly symbol of sacred truth and the ultimate reality of the power of the deity. Along with the ultimate spiritual truths, Van Eyck captures with meticulous reportage of the visible world to the extent that the variety and richness of the realistic portrayal verges on the surreality of divine immanence in the earthly sphere.
Art historian Erwin Panofsky has written that in early Flemish painting Medieval symbolism and modern realism are “so perfectly reconciled that the former has become inherent in the latter.” This is never so appropriate than with reference to the Ghent Altarpiece and its immanence of the ideal and spiritual in the worldly and the physical. For Van Eyck, the spirit inhabits the material object. The physical world and its artifact—the image itself—are redeemed by the blessing right hand of God as the culmination of the image and of salvation.
On the upper left of the Christ panel is the inscription Vita Sine Morte in Capite (“life without death in his face”). The inscription is as much an attribute of Van Eyck’s painting of Christ’s head as of Christ. Christ’s eyes glow and seem alive, while the face is the scene for Van Eyck’s near-miraculous working of shadows. This together with his subtly blended flesh tones exemplifies the motto and proffers his realistic representation as a lasting monument to his faith. Christ’s expression is muted—the lips are closed, the face in serenity. Yet, somehow, Van Eyck reveals an awesome self-assured power in the face, despite the constraint of the required impassivity.
Crowe and Cavaselle noted that another painting of Jan van Eyck, the Arnolfini Marriage, has “transparent shadows.” For the Christ in the Ghent Altarpiece, this is equally evident. It is a technical feat that captures the wonders of the Christian faith and salvation here. Shadow as sin and unbelief contrasts with God as the “light of the world,” and with Van Eyck’s painting of light as emergent through the shading, the journey of the soul to salvation evinces—all in the face of God. Yet again, the theme of the imminence of the ideal in the real is discernible.
