Dr. Laurinda Dixon

Jan van Eyck (c. 1400 –1441) is honored as the father of Northern Renaissance painting. His unique and revelatory works were sought, emulated, and praised universally in both Italy and Northern Europe. Van Eyck’s style encompasses all the key elements of northern painting that would predominate from the fifteenth century onward. His embrace of nature, supreme command of optics, and photographic exactitude transmuted his paintings into mirrors of reality. His painted portraits were said to live and breathe like their human counterparts, as they present themselves in a new three-quarter view of the face, very different from the traditional Italian profile format. Van Eyck was the first to paint in oil on panels, and also the first to break the boundaries of medieval anonymity by signing his works. His astonishing technique was enhanced by deep hidden meanings that, when decoded, reveal the many cultural and devotional contexts of the time. These lectures will dissect some of Van Eyck’s most famous works, with the aim of seeing the world through the eyes of a fifteenth-century viewer.

Lecture 1: The Ghent Altarpiece
The magnificent Ghent Altarpiece, which consists of many individual panels hinged together, bears the first reference to Jan van Eyck, along with his older brother Hubert. Distinctive in its large scale, complex symbolism, photographic realism, and use of oil paint, this work inspired artists worldwide for centuries. Art historians still debate the division of hands between the two van Eyck brothers and the fine points of its complex iconography.

Lecture 2: The Marian Paintings
Religious devotion in the fifteenth century was centered around the Virgin Mary. In her role as mother of God and paragon of female virtue, she assumed new relevance in art. Van Eyck presents her as both humble and exalted, as the Virgin Annunciate and seated on the throne of heaven. His Marian paintings employ rich symbolism that supports the Virgin’s liturgical role as mother of the Church.

Lecture 3: The Portraits
Van Eyck was renowned for the living realism of his portraits, which present the sitter not in the traditional Italian profile pose, but for the first time in a three-quarter facial view. Many of his portrait subjects gaze outward, directly engaging the eyes of the viewer for the first time in art. Van Eyck surrounded his hyper-realistic faces with encrypted clues to their identities – symbols and texts meant to be decoded by the viewer.
Alfred Acres, Jan Van Eyck: Within His Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2023)