Van Eyck Exhibition At The Louvre; And More

We are fans of the early 15th century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck and of the early Flemish and German masters generally. Memmling, Rogier van der Weyden, Martin Schongauer, Bosch, Brueghel, et al. In fact, we'll be spending nearly a week in Bruges and Ghent soon just to see some of them again. The Louvre had recently cleaned and restored its major van Eyck holding, The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, and to celebrate the achievement, created a special exhibition concerning it. Something we couldn't miss. There's a fine video on the painting and restoration here. And with English subtitles too.

Chancellor Rolin was the principal administrator for
the Duchy of Burgundy, which then included the Flemish
lands; van Eyck's patron and employer

And there it is...by no means a large painting, but as detailed and colorful and 

luminous as anything you'll ever see...and from the early 15th century, using unheard-of 

materials and techniques....

Details, details, details...apart from inventing,

pioneering, and perfecting oil painting, van Eyck 

remains unsurpassed in detail work too

Closer up of a bit of the landscape, which is fairly
incredible for the time

Hi-tech mega close-ups in the exhibition

There are some great mega-close-up sites on van Eyck's masterpiece,
the Ghent Altarpiece, on the web; impressive, fascinating stuff; what
you're looking at in the painting is hardly postage-stamp size

The exhibition included also several paintings by contemporaries
or followers; also several more by van Eyck; above is an interesting
copy of a generations-later van der Weyden painting of St. Luke,
patron saint of artists, making a sketch of the Madonna and Bambino,
breast-feeding; note similarity to Chancellor Rolin...

Bosch's Ecce Homo, late 15th century

Petrus Christus (great name!), Virgin and Child with
Saint Barbara and Peter Vos, 1450

Studio of Robert Campin, Nativity, 1430

Another Petrus Christus, Virgin and Child, 1450

Van Eyck, The Lucca Madonna, 1437

Van Eyck, Portrait of Badouin Lannoy, 1431, another
prominent figure in the court of the Duke of Burgundy
 

Van Eyck's Annunciation, something we never miss
at the National Gallery in DC

Detail...

Last look...

OK, so you can't go to the Louvre for just one painting; can you?!
Here is another 15th century painting, one of Ucello's Battle of San
Romano depictions

Anonymous, 15th century portraits of Giotto, Ucello, Donatello,
Manetti, and Brunelleschi

We have always been fans of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a 16th
century Italian painter whose works adorn museums in Vienna,
Paris, Madrid, and more; the Louvre has copies-by-the painter
of the Four Seasons series, which Holy Roller Emperor
Maximilian ordered made and sent to his royal bud August
of Saxony way back when; the four had been cleaned and
restored recently and just re-hung during our stay here... 

What they looked like before the restoration...sometime
after the copies were sent to August of Saxony, someone
painted leafy borders around them--probably to match the
sofa, we speculate--and the restoration removed the
borders to match the originals