Ghent Altarpiece: Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb, 2024

We'd visited the Ghent Altarpiece twice before, in 2013 and 2015, but thanks to some interpretive signage at the MSK, the AR experience in the cathedral, a very helpful docent, and other researches, this was easily our best-informed visit. The Altarpiece has moved from the west end of the cathedral now to one of the starboard chapels, where it's displayed in the usual bomb-proof/hermetically-sealed glass enclosure. (It's easily the most stolen/attempted stolen of all major art works). You can't get up close to it at all, unlike the van Eycks at the Louvre, the Groeningemuseum, the National Gallery, or elsewhere. It's so utterly massive, however, that your distance from it doesn't seem to matter that much. When the van Eyck brothers decided to do the world's first oil painting, introducing unheard-of materials and techniques, they decided to go big. Really big. A dozen large panels, front and back, some nearly life-size. The color and detail and realism are so incredible, you forget that the work was completed in 1432. In Italy, Masaccio had just died, and they were still struggling to free themselves of International Gothic, paintings that looked more like Byzantine mosaics, still painting in fresco and tempura and gold-leaf halos. It would be a generation or two, or three, before Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, or Michaelangelo were born. Also Columbus. But I digress. There are van Eyck sites and articles all over the web, most notable being Closer to Van Eyck. The Lamb in one billion pixels. Incredible stuff. 1432.

Probably my best full frontal for 2024; as you can see, the new display
frame prohibits a fuller view, at least for my skills and lens; at the end of
the post is my best shot from 2013; for comparison

Lower left: the Just Judges and Holy Knights; the former

is a copy of the panel stolen in 1934 and never recovered

Lower right, Holy Hermits, Pious Pilgrims (St. Christopher

leading the way)

Detail from above; no two faces alike; many identifiable
from their attributes, etc.

Now in the upper register, which currently is undergoing

restoration at the MSK--the paintings you see here are very high

resolution photographs of the originals--this is the Angelic Choir

Sky Daddy

Queen of Heaven

St. John, interceding; I haven't found anything in the
scholarly corpus (which is vast), but I'd bet what St. John
is reading from is an identifiable text; the Altarpiece is covered
in inscriptions and allusions...sort of a Finnegans Wake of
visual art

Angelic Organist and Choir; and Eve; note Cain bonking
Abel in the grisaille above her

Back to the lower register, closer-upper of the Adorable Lamb

Virgins, Martyrs...but note especially the landscape above them;
also the martyrs waving their palm frond attributes...

Visitors can wander around behind the display to see the
outermost of the back panels; above, Judocus Vyd, who,
with his wife (below), commissioned the painting for their
chapel in St. Bavo's

Lysbette Borluut; aka Mrs. Vyd (?); probably she had the money,
which would have been considerable

Parthian shot

Now, at the docent's urging, we are in the Vyd/Borluut chapel, where
the Altarpiece spent its first seven centuries, looking at a huge display
showing all the back panels, mostly grisaille, but some in full color

All folded up: what you'd see when not in use for masses, etc.

Annunciation and Insemination; note again the distant landscape

Digital full frontal

Thank you, Judocus and Lysbette

My 2013 full frontal (Adam and Eve were already at the MSK)