Introduction to “The Complete Paintings of the Van Eycks”

“Jan van Eyck was the greatest artist of the early Netherlands school. He held high positions throughout his career, including court painter and diplomat in Bruges. So outstanding was his skill as an oil painter that the invention of the medium was at one time attributed to him, with his brother Hubert, also a painter. Van Eyck exploited the qualities of oil as never before, building up layers of transparent glazes, thus giving him a surface on which to capture objects in the minutest detail and allowing for the preservation of his painting colors. Nowhere is this better displayed than in this portrait of Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca and a frequent visitor to Bruges, and his wife Giovanna Cenami. The signature on the back wall – ‘Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434′ – and his reflection in the mirror has led many to believe that he was a witness to their marriage. The carving of Saint Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth, on the bed, and the presence of the dog – a traditional symbol of faithfulness – accentuate the marital theme.”

He was born somewhere around 1390 in the village of Maaseyck near Maastricht. Between 1422 and 1424, he was employed as a painter by John of Bavaria, Bishop of Liège; the next year, 1425, his famous relationship with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, began. As court artist and equerry, he moved to Philip’s court at Lille. Few such cases of mutual serendipity adorn the history of Renaissance patronage: instead of treating his artist as something between a jongleur and an artisan, as the Medici in their off moments were apt to do, Philip was moved to declare that he “would never find a man so much to his taste, or such a paragon of science and art.” For eleven years, Jan van Eyck worked in an atmosphere of gracefully reciprocated admiration. He worked, not only for Philip, but for wealthy Italians resident in the Netherlands, such as Giovanni Arnolfini; his fame spread rapidly to Italy, whose humanists called him the “onore della pittura” and “il più grande pittore del nostro tempo”; Vasari wrongly credited him with the invention of oil painting. His intimacy with Philip the Good is strikingly indicated by the diplomatic missions (whose object, insofar as it can be discovered, was to negotiate marriages for the Duke) that Jan van Eyck undertook on his behalf: to Spain in 1427, to Portugal and England in 1428, and another, perhaps to Prague, in 1436. There was one thing, apart from Jan’s social position and professional contacts, which this extensive travel must have benefited: his prodigious visual memory. Jan van Eyck was almost unique among northern – or, for that matter, Italian – artists of the early quattrocento for his virtuosity as a recorder of historical style. When he paints a Romanesque capital (as in The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin) he gets it right: it is not a Gothicization of Romanesque. The stained glass window and niello pavement inlays in the Washington Annunciation exactly preserve what must have struck him as their primitive crudeness. It is typical of Van Eyck that this should have been so. No painter has ever been more preoccupied with artifacts with the exact way a square cut ruby is set in its flange to the rim of a crown or pearls are sewn to the hem of a robe, with the joints in an arch, the dull sheen of pewter or the luster of polished silver, the pin in an iron door hinge, the binding of a missile or the angular wooden soles of a pair of discarded chopines. In a lesser artist, this preoccupation might become fetishistic. In Jan van Eyck, it does not. Each of the refined and sumptuous objects with which his world was populated is both concrete and self transcending; or so we instinctively feel. Why?”

“We may look for the answer in the hypothesis that Jan van Eyck pushed the problem of representation in art further than any artist had done before, or has since. Put baldly, this problem is: how much exact information can I load into a painting before suggestion takes over from fact? Total reality is unpaintable, because it is infinite. One can make approximations in paint which produce this or that illusion, but below a certain scale the approximations turn into shorthand microscopic reality cannot be rendered with a pasty, sloppy, granular substance like powdered minerals mixed in oil. William Blake’s “eternity in a grain of sand” was no visionary fancy, but a sober fact about matter.”

“Jan van Eyck’s extraordinary achievement rests on the fact that he did the opposite. In his paintings, he extended detailed information about things far past the ordinary limits of scrutiny; his eye acted “both as a telescope and as a microscope”, and it left us with too much, not the suggestive too little of other realist art. Who, allowed to look into the room where Arnolfini and his bride hold hands in their private sacrament, would even notice what Van Eyck saw, or bring to it the obsessed and simultaneous focus he imposed on every object, large or tiny, far or near – the grain in those fractionally uneven floorboards, the differences of texture and springiness between the lapdog’s hairs and the fur of Arnolfini’s robe, the limp silk tassels of the beads hanging on the wall and the stiff bristles of the twig broom – which repeats their shape on the other side of the mirror? Only with great difficulty – one might almost say, only by a strenuous act of the imagination – can you make the green and gold brocade behind the Ince Hall Madonna become paint at all. A fifteenth century writer praised Van Eyck for his landscapes, which seem to stretch “for fifty miles.” The point is that such a way of presenting the world as a visual whole has no more to do with the way we see it than, say, Leonardo’s quick frozen notations of eddies in a mill race. Distance blues out the colors of objects, alters their tones and fuzzes their contours. We do not perceive everything within a given field with equal and perfect clarity; we scan and select. Jan van Eyck’s realism is not a metaphor of natural or human vision. He painted the world as if everything in it were both knowable and perfectly known; his aim (to paraphrase Panofsky again) was not representation, but reconstruction. His art is a harmony parallel to nature: “Myself will I remake” and the world, too. Thus, Van Eyck’s paintings realistic were creative in an almost hubristic way, for its object was to suggest God’s perceptions in creating the universe: to see things from the standpoint of absolute knowledge which is uniquely God’s possession.”

“Thus each object, each face and body in Jan van Eyck’s work is spiritualized by its almost total detail: his scrutiny goes beyond the concrete and waits for our symbolic imagination to catch up with it. The objects themselves are charged with symbolism; Jan van Eyck’s attitude to nature was medieval in that he seems to have regarded each created thing as a symbol of the workings of God’s mind, and the universe as an immense structure of metaphors. The casual eye is apt to read the Arnolfini betrothal portrait as a piece of genre, which looks forward to Vermeer and the Dutch intimists. But the probability is that Van Eyck designed it as a web of disguised symbols, intending to make a familiar com parison between the sacrament of marriage and the ideal relationship of the Virgin Mary as bride of God. The mirror on the wall, which is explicitly turned into a religious object by the ten scenes of Christ’s passion set in its frame, is a symbol of candor and purity; the little dog, an image of marital faithfulness – and so on. Spiritual states are externalized in objects. Even the fantastic splendors of marble, gold, glass and brocade in The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin are allegorized. The picture is one of the most aggressively confident celebrations of the belief that riches are a proof of virtue that has ever been painted; Chancellor Rolin has the wealth and contacts to arrange a private audience with God and His mother, and the angel holds the crown over Mary’s head with the faint, obsequious smile of a salesman at Cartier’s. Yet this image is, quite obviously, a variation on a more ancient one, that of the Virgin in her hortus conclusus, surrounded by attributes of purity and grace (the lily, the aromatic shrubs, the peacocks), remote from the mundane life of the city below the loggia.”

“By such means of vision and symbolism, Jan van Eyck temporarily did away with the division between secular and religious works of art. All nature is sacramentalized by the sheer intensity of his gaze.”

Oil: developing a new painting medium

The van Eycks started their careers as manuscript illuminators. The often miniature detail and exquisite rendering found in van Eyck paintings such as the Annunciation reveal a strong affinity with this art form. However, the single factor that most distinguishes the van Eycks from the art of manuscript illumination was the medium they used.

For many years Jan van Eyck was wrongly credited with the “discovery of painting in oil”. In fact, oil painting techniques was already in existence, used to paint sculptures and to glaze over tempera paintings. The van Eycks’ real achievement was the development–after much experimentation–of a stable varnish that would dry at a consistent rate. This was created with linseed and nut oils, and mixed with resins.

The breakthrough came when Jan or Hubert mixed the oil into the actual paints they were using, instead of the egg medium that constituted tempera paint. The result was brilliance, translucence, and intensity of painting colors as the pigment was suspended in a layer of oil that also trapped light. The flat, dull surface of tempera was transformed into a jewel-like medium, at once perfectly suited to the representation of precious metals and gems and, more significantly, to the vivid, convincing depiction of natural light.

Van Eyck’s inspired observations of light and its effects, executed with technical virtuosity through this new, transparent medium, enabled him to create a brilliant and lucid kind of reality. The invention of this technique transformed the appearance of painting.

America’s Women Artists in 18 – 19 centuries

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, American women artists did not get a fair deal in the male dominated art world. Only with the exception of Mary Cassat, Cecilia Beaux and Georgia O’Keeffee, most American women artists were ignored. In a recent study conducted, it has been estimated that about forty percent of all the artists in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s were women. Most of these women artists had undergone art training from some of the greatest masters of the time. There was a remarkable change in the American art painting techniques after 1860. Many artists who were well off went to Europe for instruction and inspiration. America at that time did not have much opportunities for training to women artists and therefore Europe which had more sophisticated system of learning and training, was a better alternative to them. Most of the women artists learned from masters in Paris. They studied and copied the masters at Louvre and also got themselves enrolled for private instructions in the art colonies of Barbizon, Grezsur-Loing, Pont-Aven, Concarneau and Giverny. These gave them opportunity to develop their artistic proficiency, under the guidance of the masters. However, even in Europe, sexual discrimination remained the norm as it was in America. Women were not admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Though they were accepted in the private Academie Julian, the tuition fees were almost double from that of men. Also classes for women were not so frequently conducted in comparison to male students. Discrimination of women artists continued in America till the 1890s. During the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, only about 10 percent of the art work of women artists was put up as exhibits. However this figure gradually increased and in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, 1915, the exhibits of the work of American women artists were more than thirty percent of the total exhibits. Women artists in America gradually took their place in the entire major art exhibition in America and also won a good share of medals and trophies for their artistic output. But in spite of all the credentials and honors, there was still discrimination against women artists as few of their artworks were selected for permanent collection in the American Museums in the country. However, many professional women artists started demanding equal rights in the art schools. The women artists of America were also influenced and inspired by the French Impressionists in the nineteenth century. These artists began to paint with more vibrant spectrum applied in short strokes, paying close attention to the effects of the sunlight and shadow. But these women artists did not imitate their French counterparts, but developed their own individual painting techniques. By the beginning of twentieth century, another revolution was waged in the art world. This transformation occurred with the emergence of “The Eight,” which was dedicated to capturing the conditions of modern urban experience. This realistic attitude toward the images and concerns of everyday life is amply demonstrated in a portrait of the famous actress Lois Fuller by Theresa Bernstein, one of the “Philadelphia Ten,” and in the Red Hat by Elizabeth Clay Fisher. Elizabeth Clay Fisher, a student of Robert Henri, imbued Red Hat, a portrait of a young girl, with the coloration and style of her tutor. American women artists began to assert themselves and also explore the modern aesthetics in art after the 1913 Armory Show. A famous painting in canvas the “Sailboat” by Elizabeth Miller Logingier reveals the precisionists influences made on the women artists of America.

In other Art Forms

Detail of the stage scenery of the Teatro Olimpico, as viewed through the porta reggia of the scaenae frons.

Trompe-l’œil has long been used in set design, so as to create the illusion of a much deeper space then the actual stage. A famous early example is the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, with Vincenzo Scamozzi’s seven forced-perspective “streets” (1585) which appear to recede into the distance.

Trompe-l’œil is employed in Donald O’Connor’s famous “Running up the wall” scene in the film Singin’ in the Rain (1954). During the finale of his “Make ‘em Laugh” number he first runs up a real wall. Then he runs towards what appears to be a hallway, but when he runs up this as well we realize that it is a large trompe-l’œil mural. More recently, Roy Andersson has made use of similar techniques in his feature films.

Another variant of trompe-l’œil is matte painting, a painting techniques used in filmmaking where parts of a complicated scenery are painted on glass panels which are mounted in front of the camera during shooting of the scene. This was for instance used in early Star Wars movies.

Fictional trompe-l’œil is featured in many Looney Tunes, such as the Road Runner cartoons, where, for example, Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel on a rock wall, and the Road runner then races through the fake tunnel. This is usually followed by the coyote’s foolishly trying to run through the tunnel after the road runner, only to smash into the hard rock-face. This sight gag was employed in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

On Chicago’s Near North Side, a 16-story 1929 apartment hotel converted into a 1981 apartment building, was used by Richard Haas for trompe-l’œil murals in homage to Chicago School architecture. One of the building’s sides features the Chicago Board of Trade Building, intended as a reflection of the actual building two miles south.

Trompe l´oeil, also known as illusion art painting techniques, is also used in contemporary interior design, where illusionary wall paintings experienced a Renaissance since around 1980. Significant artists in this field are the German muralist Rainer Maria Latzke, who invented in the 90′s a new method of producing illusion paintings, the Frescography and the English artist Graham Rust.

History in painting

Although the phrase has its origin in the Baroque period, when it refers to perspective illusionism, use of trompe-l’œil dates back much further. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical trompe-l’œil mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room.

A version of an oft-told ancient Greek story concerns a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis (born around 464 BC) produced paintings realistic so convincing, that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. He then asked his rival, Parrhasius, to pull back a pair of very tattered curtains in order to judge the painting behind them. Parrhasius won the contest, as his painting was of the curtains themselves.

With the superior understanding of perspective drawing achieved in the Renaissance, Italian painters of the late Quattrocento such as Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) and Melozzo da Forlì (1438–1494), began painting illusionistic ceiling paintings, generally in fresco, that employed perspective and techniques such as foreshortening in order to give the impression of greater space to the viewer below. This type of trompe l’œil illusionism as specifically applied to ceiling paintings is known as di sotto in sù, meaning from below, upward in Italian. The elements above the viewer are rendered as if viewed from true vanishing point perspective. Well-known examples are the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua and Antonio da Correggio’s (1489–1534) Assumption of the Virgin in the Duomo of Parma. Similarly, Vittorio Carpaccio (1460–1525) and Jacopo de’ Barbari (c.1440–before 1516) added small trompe-l’œil features to their art painting techniques, playfully exploring the boundary between image and reality. For example, a fly might appear to be sitting on the painting’s frame, or a curtain might appear to partly conceal the painting, a piece of paper might appear to be attached to a board, or a person might appear to be climbing out of the painting altogether—all in reference to the contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. In a 1964 seminar, the psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) observed that the myth of the two painters reveals an interesting aspect of human cognition. While animals are attracted to superficial appearances, humans are enticed by the idea of that which is hidden.

Perspective theories in the 17th-century allowed a more fully integrated approach to architectural illusion, which when used by painters to “open up” the space of a wall or ceiling is known as quadratura. Examples include Pietro da Cortona’s Allegory of Divine Providence in the Palazzo Barberini and Andrea Pozzo’s Apotheosis of St Ignatius on the ceiling of the Roman church of Sant’Ignazio.

The mannerist and Baroque style interiors of Jesuit churches in the 16th and 17th-century often included such trompe-l’œil ceiling paintings, which optically ‘open’ the ceiling or dome to the heavens with a depiction of Jesus’, Mary’s, or a saint’s ascension or assumption. An example of a perfect architectural trompe-l’œil is the illusionistic dome in the Jesuit church, Vienna, by Andrea Pozzo , which is only slightly curved but gives the impression of true architecture.

A fanciful form of architectural Trompe-l’œil is known as quodlibet which features realistically rendered paintings of such items as paper-knives, playing-cards, ribbons and scissors, apparently accidentally left lying around, painted on walls.

Trompe-l’œil can also be found painted on tables and other items of furniture, on which, for example, a deck of playing cards might appear to be sitting on the table. A particularly impressive example can be seen at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, where one of the internal doors appears to have a violin and bow suspended from it, in a trompe l’œil painted around 1723 by Jan van der Vaart. The American 19th century still-life painter William Harnett specialized in trompe-l’œil. In the 20th century, from the 1960s on, the American Richard Haas and many others painted large trompe-l’œil murals on the sides of city buildings, and from beginning of the 1980s when German Artist Rainer Maria Latzke began to combine classical fresco art with contemporary content trompe-l’œil became increasingly popular for interior murals.