{"id":2762,"date":"2020-01-21T15:46:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T20:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/?p=2762"},"modified":"2020-01-30T11:01:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T16:01:22","slug":"the-ghent-altarpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/the-ghent-altarpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghent Altarpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution <\/em>
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK)
February 1 – April 30, 2020<\/p><\/div>\n

Hubert (died 1426) and Jan (1390?-1441) van Eyck created the wonderful paintings whose centerpiece is \u201cThe Adoration of the Lamb,\u201d completed in 1432. Peter and Linda Murray offer a description of this central panel as follows:<\/p>\n

In the NT the vital words are those of the Baptist (John 1:29, 36), when he recognizes Jesus as the Christ: \u2018Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.\u2019 These are the words of the AGNUS DEI, said daily in the Mass, always with the invocation \u2018have mercy on us, give us peace\u2019. In Rev. (Apoc) 5:6, 12; 12:11; and 22:1, the stress is on salvation emanating from the Lamb, since amid the Beasts and the Elders \u2018stood the Lamb as if it had been slaughtered\u2019 and \u2018the river of water of life flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb\u2019. This is the theme of van Eyck\u2019s Adoration of the Lamb<\/em>, where the pilgrims approach the altar on which stands the Lamb with blood flowing from his breast into a chalice. (Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 388)<\/p>\n

The painstaking work of restoration of the panels began in 2012; this is described in “Realism and Revelation”<\/a> in The Wall Street Journal,<\/em> from which I quote:<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, the most recent phase of the restoration was unveiled, including the large front panel showing a bleeding lamb on an altar, surrounded by Christian martyrs, Jewish prophets and pagan writers. The panel\u2014from which the altarpiece takes an often-used title, \u201cThe Adoration of the Mystic Lamb\u201d\u2014has been transformed by its cleaning, with the lamb\u2019s face revealed to have an intelligent, nearly human expressiveness.<\/p>\n

The Ghent Museum of Fine Arts will have an exhibit, \u201cVan Eyck: An Optical Revolution,\u201d from February 1, 2020. The Museum’s website<\/a> offers an introduction to this masterpiece of the Belgian Cathedral of San Bavo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hubert (died 1426) and Jan (1390?-1441) van Eyck created the wonderful paintings whose centerpiece is \u201cThe Adoration of the Lamb,\u201d completed in 1432. Peter and Linda Murray offer a description of this central panel as follows: In the NT the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2784,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions\/2784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/lawrencefrizzell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}