A New Attribution for the Madonna Enthroned in the Thyssen Bornemisza Collection

Een nader onderzoek van 'De drie Maria's aan het H. Graf' - een schilderij uit de 'Groep Van Eyck' in Rotterdam

Jan van Eyck (b. c. 1390–d. 1441), whose fame was international during his own lifetime and has never faded in the centuries since, was one of the most inventive and influential painters of all time. Born probably in the 1390s in or near Maaseik, his early years and training remain obscure. His career first comes into partial focus in the early 1420s, when he is recorded working in The Hague for John of Bavaria, Count of Holland. In 1425 he was employed by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (r. 1419–1467), one of the most powerful princes in Europe. Based mainly in Bruges, he served Philip and other prestigious patrons for rest of his life. The great esteem in which he was held by the duke and others, along with Jan’s unprecedented assertion of himself among inscriptions and images, made him an early model of the prized court artist, a role that would soon become more familiar in the Renaissance and after. Of the approximately two dozen paintings most confidently attributed to him, the earliest dated work is also the largest and most complex: the Ghent Altarpiece, completed 1432. Its inscription indicates that the project was begun by his brother Hubert (d. 1426), from whom no other surviving works have been confidently identified. The remaining paintings attributed to Jan van Eyck are altarpieces, smaller devotional pieces, and portraits. Lost works mentioned in early sources or echoed in variant paintings and drawings included more of the same, along with at least one genre-like image, of a woman at her bath. It has long been speculated that Jan’s early work may have included manuscript illumination, with the paintings of the Turin-Milan Hours at the center of this scholarship. In his 1550 Lives of the Artists, Vasari credited Jan van Eyck with the invention of oil painting, a claim widely repeated until it was disproven in the late 18th century. But fascination with the brilliant effects of van Eyck’s technique—and especially the novel depths of his realism—has never waned. Much of the 20th-century literature has probed symbolic and related dimensions of meaning in his realism. This interpretive scholarship on van Eyck and his Flemish contemporaries (chiefly Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden), associated especially with Panofsky’s conceptions of iconography, iconology, and “disguised symbolism,” became widely influential in 20th-century art history.

Although the use of labels in visual arts has millennia of practice, it was the brothers Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden who managed to intertwine verbal and visual aids in their work in such a unique way as are the sources of written texts that include prophecies, apocrypha, “Golden legend”, “Imitation of Christ”, the words of the Saviour, the apostles and the church fathers, personal mottos, and the works of ancient authors.The inscriptions and signatures in the works of the two masters of the Northern Renaissance are among the least studied problems. Many features of the inscriptions on the works by Van Eyck and Van der Weyden are close to each other and reveal different aspects of the viewer’s position, which is expected by the artists. The dialogues of Gospel characters manage emotions and direct the audience’s attention by means of a written text, scrolls with texts in the hands of the Sibyls and Angels create the effect of trompe-l’oeil, inverted writing responsesreminiscent of the “internal viewer” works. It should be noted that Van Eyck uses three languages — Greek, Latin, Flemish, as well as the letters of the Jewish alphabet, whereas in van der Weyden’s works only Latin letters have been found. And the most interesting fact is that Jan van Eyck often makes a viewer look into a picture tosee the text as part of embroidery on a dress or an inscription on a stone pedestal. On the other hand, Rogier van der Weyden often puts a text on floating ribbons (“banderole”), thereby creating an “interpretive gap”, which allows a viewer to reflect on the relationship between the visual and the verbal.

In 1999 it will be approximately 600 years since the birth of Rogier van der Weyden (Doornik ca. 1398/1400 - Brussels 1464) as Rogier de la Pasture. Although he was one of the greatest artists of the 15th Century, and certainly the most renowned alongside Hans van Eyck, it was not until 1972 that a modern scientific catalogue of his works appeared, compiled by Martin Davies. Since then so much detailed research has been carried out covering historical, iconographic, typological, stylistic and technical aspects as to necessitate renewed consideration of this artist. The fragmented new knowledge was begging for a new synthesis and a brand-new critical catalogue. The biography was given a new twist as a result of interesting recently discovered Doornik documents, since Van der Weyden was working in his birth town of Doornik until at least the age of thirty-five. This period can therefore no longer be dismissed as insignificant, hypothetical or simply as an apprenticeship prior to the artist making his breakthrough in Brussels and - under his Dutchified name - becoming that indelible figure in the modern Western history of art. Closer analysis of style and technical execution shows the role of the studio to be particularly significant. As the heir to his teacher Robert Campin, who also ran a successful painting business with various assistants, Van der Weyden must also have led such a multiple person studio, where the larger works in particular were created through a sort of division of labour. In this regard one can consider Van der Weyden to be a precursor of Rubens. Distinguishing the artist's hand from that of the assistants has become one of the book's aims. To a greater extent than was previously possible, quality criteria have thereby removed the work of well-trained followers from the oeuvre. The catalogue of the painted work which may be considered part of his own oeuvre is consequently limited to 36 pieces. As an introduction to the discussion of that oeuvre, a short chapter also covers the problem of distinguishing the hand in Robert Campin's studio, which has led to a partial reattribution of that Doornik work. The picture of Van der Weyden as a draughtsman was virtually non-existent until recently. Recent IRR research has revealed how paintings were prepared in his studio. In this book, this drawing is considered as part of the studio practice, and not so much as artistic autograph. Furthermore, an attempt is made for the first time to propose a small body of design drawings which have been attributed to followers up until now as autographs of the great Doornik-Brussels master. Van der Weyden interpreted humanity's personal instinctive identification with the holy figures and events, with the mystical content. Using a previously unseen and apparently paradoxical synthesis of religious emotion and a clear and sharp objective realism in the depiction he created lifelike, strictly composed icons onto which the devout believers of the 15th century could project their passionate relationship with Christ and Mary in suffering and love. In order to guide readers in and immediately submerge them in the tonality of that new expression and style, the book opens with an elaborate essay on the greatest of his surviving masterpieces, the Prado's Descent from the Cross.

Reviewed by: Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism Tianna Uchacz Craig Harbison, Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2011) 317 pp. Twenty years after the first publication of Craig Harbison’s Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism comes this updated and expanded version of the popular text. Harbison’s commitment to his original argument and its format are reflected in the decision to leave the chapters of the first edition untouched (but for a handful of minor changes), which allows earlier incarnations of this book to remain almost as useful. The second edition, however, includes a new preface, an extended afterword, and an updated bibliographic commentary as a means of integrating the last twenty years of Eyckian research into the book. In the core chapters, Harbison presents a string of intimate readings of Van Eyck’s works, concentrating on the artist’s images of the Virgin and Child. Harbison situates Van Eyck and his patrons in a liminal space of their own design, negotiating between a variety of oppositions: convention and innovation; institutional religion and private devotion; spirituality and worldliness; sincerity and irony; humility and self-promotion. Harbison reads details of Van Eyck’s paintings to reveal instances of intentional slippage between these opposing categories. It would seem that Van Eyck and the patrons that he so carefully presented brought a measure of pragmatism to the construction of these images; dependent as their fortunes were on power politics in courtly and ecclesiastical circles, patrons like Nicolas Rolin and George van der Paele commissioned works that can sometimes be read to show a deep-seated skepticism about the authority of received social and religious structures and strictures. Harbison consciously and patiently attempts to orient his readers away from art historical currents that would see Van Eyck’s panels as pictorial manifestations of complex religious doctrine, since such views deny the primacy of the visual (accordingly, the Ghent Altarpiece gets short shrift). Rather, Harbison asserts that the personal circumstances and histories of Van Eyck’s patrons can help explain the idiosyncratic details of the artist’s panels. Van Eyck’s distinctive brand of realism creates visually convincing yet idealized worlds that reflect the personal needs and aspirations of the individuals who commissioned the works. The most noteworthy features of the second edition of Harbison’s book are its new preface and its afterword. The latter recapitulates and extends the arguments made in the earlier chapters while taking into account some of the notable Eyckian scholarship of the intervening two decades. Harbison draws on technical analyses of Van Eyck’s work, using infrared reflectograms to support his claim that the artist’s positioning of his holy figures and his portrait sitters was contrived and subtly adjusted to create and emphasize psychological connections. Harbison next uses research into Van Eyck’s feigned stone frames and textual inscriptions in and around the paintings to further his thesis concerning the artist’s playfulness—such experimentations emphasize Van Eyck’s interest in cultivating meaningful ambiguities around time, materiality, and local history. Finally, a few dense and hurried paragraphs mention newly uncovered biographical information about Van Eyck’s sitters that bear on Harbison’s [End Page 204] interpretations. The near list-like presentation gives a good sense of the unresolved yet evolving questions concerning the artist’s patrons. However, it reads at times like an anonymized version of Harbison’s bibliographic commentary and is one of the few instances where minor revisions to the original chapters might have been preferable. Harbison’s afterword precipitates a new section in the bibliographic commentary, and it is among the back pages of the book that some of the more recent Eyckian scholarship is explicitly acknowledged. In turn, this expansion is reflected in the addition of seventy-five sources to the bibliography itself. Harbison’s new preface reflects on the critical reception of the first edition and reiterates the author’s unwavering mission to move Eyckian scholarship away from elaborate theologically minded iconographic readings. The author acknowledges that the decision to annotate the text with a running bibliographic commentary rather than endnotes left the book open to criticism and has excluded it...

This chapter is part of a larger investigation into Jan van Ruusbroec's role in shaping and embellishing the vibrant, visual exegesis of two of the most innovative artists of the northern Renaissance, Rogier van der Weyden and Robert Campin. The remainder of the chapter considers the gazes and gestures of St. John and the Virgin Mary, which operate as additional meditative prompts in the Escorial Crucifixion , bolstering the significance of Christ's 'twice-dyed' veil of blood. The chapter also presents the devotional exercise of gazing, as prompted by both Rogier and Ruusbroec. Gazing at the panel, the Carthusians may have pondered Christ's Eucharistic entrance into the Old Testament Holy of Holies to celebrate the Christian mass with his own blood, and in a complementary way, they may have reflected on his sacramental presence in the spiritual tabernacle of their own hearts. Keywords: Carthusians; Christ's twice-dyed veil of blood; Escorial Crucifixion; Jan van Ruusbroec; Old Testament; Rogier van der Weyden; St. John; Virgin Mary

SUMMARY The conservation treatment of The three Marys at the tomb (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), previously attributed to the ‘Van Eyck group’, was concluded in 2012. The restored panel was presented at the exhibition The road to Van Eyck , at which the attribution was refined to “Jan van Eyck (?)” in the catalogue of the same name. The painting was loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent in 2020, where it was included in the exhibition Van Eyck: An optical revolution and attributed to Jan van Eyck (d. 1441). However, the accompanying catalogue attributed the painting to “Workshop of Jan van Eyck”. The author Larry Silver described the panel as an Eyckian work that has been associated with Jan van Eyck’s early period and excluded from his oeuvre with equal frequency. This confusing situation prompted the present, largely historiographical study, in which the earlier arguments for and against attributing the panel to Jan van Eyck have been brought together. The point of departure is the most recent substantive publication on the painting, in which Van Asperen de Boer and Giltaij attributed it to the “Van Eyck group” ( Oud Holland 1987). Their conclusions are compared with those of earlier and later researchers, with the unpublished conservation report from 2012, and with research into the Ghent Altarpiece , in which Jan van Eyck’s hand has been securely demonstrated. The article argues that the ‘status quaestionis’ regarding Jan van Eyck’s work, and specifically The three Marys at the tomb , does not justify the museum’s alteration of the attribution. The panel’s painting technique and underdrawing do indeed display ‘Eyckian’ characteristics, suggesting an author in the circle of the Van Eyck brothers, but its iconography indicates that it was created after 1455. Dendrochronological analysis would permit this later dating. Depending on how it is defined, attribution to the Van Eyck group, as suggested by Van Asperen de Boer and Giltaij, can be sustained, but an ‘anonymous follower’ – possibly a painter who had previously worked in Van Eyck’s workshop – cannot be ruled out. This would explain both the work’s stylistic affinities and its inferior quality.

Figures affected by goiter were only sparsely depicted by Peter Paul Rubens and Albrecht Dürer among Flemish artists, because obvious goiter was not common in regions such as the Netherlands and Belgium. However, the recent observation of two figures with a goiter elegantly depicted by Rogier van der Weyden has raised our interest in this topic. When taking a close look at the paintings of this Flemish Renaissance painter, it is interesting to note that 16 portrayed subjects show an abnormal profile of the neck with swelling, suggestive of a presumptive medico-artistic diagnosis of goiter. Van der Weyden travelled to Italy where he soon acquired great fame and was second only to the other Flemish painter of the time, Jan Van Eyck. It is very likely that in Italy he had the opportunity to look at several female figures depicted with goiter, which may have influenced his paintings. Van der Weyden was appreciated because of his style to mix realistic details with idealized softened features to increase the beauty and appeal of his models. It is also likely that the integration of the goiter may have been part of the Renaissance tendency toward a more realistic and precise representation of subjects. The fact that in almost all cases the goiter was a low-to-moderate grade enlargement of the thyroid may confirm our speculation that perhaps the painter used the same model or the template derived from one model for subsequent paintings.

The article examines the orders that Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor of the Duke of Burgundy, made in two main painting workshops of the southern Netherlands in the first half of the 15th century: “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, created by Jan van Eyck in 1435, and “The Last Judgment”, made by Rogier van der Weyden about ten years later. The article is relevant because of the need to reconstruct different layers of the viewer’s perception of the above-mentioned works, taking into account the fact that their original location was different from the current one. The church of Notre-Dame du Châtel, which kept the “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, was demolished during the Great French Revolution. Although the hospital in Beaune, for which “The Last Judgment” was intended, has survived to this day, however, the polyptych by R. van der Weyden is not currently displayed in the space of the Rolin Chapel. Such alteration in the placement of altar compositions increases the numbers of barriers to reading the paintings’ iconographic programs. The novelty of the article lies in examining the history of the Chancellor’s orders, his biography, as well as the political, social and religious context of the era in order to highlight the semantic layers in the works by Jan van Eyck and R. van der Weyden. The method of receptive aesthetics may help to analyze how the altars ordered by N. Rolin were perceived by ordinary church visitors, hospital patients, as well as the Chancellor himself and his wife. The article examines the existing hypotheses concerning the symbolic meaning of specific objects and figures on altars from the point of view of the difference in the perception of donators and other viewers of these works. The devotional projects implemented by Nicolas Rolin in Autun and Beaune are accompanied by the Chancellor’s political and social message to his enemies at the court.

The attribution of monuments of Polish sculpture of 17th century, among them the Koludzki family chapel, makes a serious issue. It is been barely touched upon in the literature and scarcely illustrated. The attribution of decoration of the chapel and the portal leading to its interior has not been confirmed by the sources. It has been attributed to two leading personalities of the art of sculpture on Polish territory: Sebastian Sala and Wilhelm Richter. The characteristic feature of the workshop mounting the elements of the chapel interior was not so great precision, however the architectonic elements represent quite high level of workshop skills. The surface of sculptures had been finished in various ways or had reacted to destructive factors differently. In the set of sculptures and bas-reliefs one can notice distinct differences in the way and level of precision of cutting the stone and the skill of the chisel, finishing the shapes and forms, anatomical correctness and relation to the surrounding space. The figures of apostles had been chiselled to soft, streamlined forms, and create the impression of being created by a hand accustomed to working in material softer, than stone. Particular forms fluently flow one into another and there in no precise division lines. The sculpture does not much interact with the surrounding space. Some effort had been made to individualise the faces. Similar softness of finish, with a tendency towards imprecise cutting can be noticed in the figure of crucified Christ. His face expresses a drama, the body has been treated in a summary way, only the chest, more sculpted at the sides creates light-and shade effects. The figures of little angels in the crowning seem to repeat the pattern once worked out in the workshop in versions dependent on the skills of particular sculptors. They characterise with clear imperfectness of form and its soft finish. They demonstrate the lowest artistic quality in the entire set of sculptures and basreliefs of the chapel furnishing. Place at the highest location, less visible, they have been left in more or less draft form. They are dominated by bulging, as if swollen shapes. Quite well rendered anatomy characterises the sculpture of crucified Christ, surely modelled after some painted or engraved pattern. The forms are chiselled quite softly, as if in a painter’s manner, they seem liquid. In the group of soldiers surrounding the open grave their elaborate poses draw the attention as well as the suggestive rendering of the anatomy of musculature and perspective foreshortenings. Soft finish of forms characterise also the bas-relief of the vernicle as well as the winged heads of the putti. The above remarks allow to make a statement, that in the works on architectural and sculpted furnishing of the Koludzki family chapel participated different people, that characterised with diverse technical skills and uneven artistic level. Basing on the analysis of formal features of sculptures and bas-reliefs one can distinguish the input of diverse (three?) makers. One of them represents soft, pattern-like forms related with the shape of the used block of stone (mainly fi gures of the Apostles). The second is characterised with higher level of artistry, boldness of chiselling and anatomical correctness (the figure of crucified Christ). The third one liked to employ perspective foreshortenings and eagerly sculpted details of artefacts or musculature (soldiers of the Resurrection group). Sculpture of the portal reveals the hand of a master accustomed to shaping forms different, than those encountered in the interior of the chapel – rigid, boldly and precisely chiselled. Perhaps then it is worth asking the question: do one deals here with a multi-stage work with different masters and workshops employed? The answer is as follows: one rather deals here with one workshop and the activity of apprentices of diversified skills and abilities. Any further conclusions as to the question of attribution of the chapel requires detailed formal analysis of the remaining monuments essential for such reckoning, such as the portal leading to the chapel, 4 other portals in the Gniezno cathedral that sources attribute to Richter; the works of Sala confirmed by sources (the tombstone of Opalinski family in Sierakow and the Oppensdorf family in Glogowek). The problem “Richter or Sala” still awaits its fi nal solving. Also the dependences between the furnishing of the Koludzki family chapel, the Mourning of Christ Retable in St. Nicholas Church in Gdansk and Princess Anna Wasa memorial in Our Lady’s Church in Torun in particular. One should pay attention to questions vital for the conducted research, that is to the workshop works’ mode and the execution of masonry. Both monuments reveal different way of execution of figural sculpture. The quality of Torun monument is much better, which may be the effect of employing a sculptor of special, higher skills to work on the royal foundation. However in both cases one can notice similar mode of working – careless treatment of less visible parts or leaving them entirely unfinished, as well as a specific treatment of smaller details of sculptures or those more exposed to destruction, that had not been entirely carved off the block of stone. The question that arises in this case is whether and to what extent the same workshop could have been employed to execute both monuments? Taking into consideration the similarity of architectonic structure of Torun portal (ca. 1636), the Gniezno Retable (before 1652) and the Mourning of Christ Retable in Gdank (1662) one can risk a hypothesis, that the design prepared for Princess Wasa memorial in the circle of artists related with the royal court (Ghisleni?), has been exploited by the workshop working on its’ execution also to execute the other two works mentioned above. However the further form the original model, the stronger manifested the features of Northern art. The very much probable answer to the question of what workshop has been subject of the analysis can be: one of the Gdansk workshops, perhaps of Wilhelm Richter, which can be confirmed or excluded only by similarly conducted analyses based on a direct inspection of each monument and rich digital photographic documentation.

Paintings which use poetic material and illustrate the meanings of the poetry are called ”Pictures on Poetry.” These paintings sometimes are given colophons.This essay focuses on three works showing basic kinds of Sung pictures on poetry: the ”Kui-ch'u-lai-t'u” illustrating Tao Yuan-ming's ”Kui-ch'u-lai-hsi tz'u”; the ”Ch'i-chi-t'u” illustrating a line from Tu Fu's poem ”Hsi-wei Wei Yen hua Shuang-sung-t'u ke” (”The song written playfully for Wei Yan's painting 'The Twin Pines'”) which reads, ”The lonely rest of Hu Monk at the roots of the pine”; and the ”Yang-kuan-t'u” illustrating Wang Wei's setting in ”Sung Yuan-erh shih An-hsi.” From the original poem depicted in the painting, the mode of representation and perspective of the image of the original poem, and the way the colophon interprets and explicates these two, we can gain a better understanding of the creative process of these works of art.In the author's view, the scroll of the ”Kui-ch'u -lai-t'u” seems to continue the style of narration from the Six Dynasties period. When one views the scroll, as it unrolls before one and then disappears into the other roll, the random series of spatio-temporal structures and narrative from beginning to end makes the graphic dimension resemble writing. The colophon is like searching for an ideal in the course of the imaginary journey on the paper. This experience relieves the pain of ”the mind subservient to the body” and so is a process of purification.As for the ”Ch'i-chi-t'u” of Tu Fu, although the excerpted line takes the Ch'an monk under the pine tree as its subject, the picture is not called ”Picture of a Monk at the Pine.” Clearly the picture on poetry implies a cultural demand that its topic be bound up with the literary background in order to comprehend the meaning of the picture. Having been excerpted and tempered by the painter, ”Ch'i-chi-t'u” becomes a work that is spatio-temporally frozen yet inexhaustible in its meaning. In particular, Su Shih's phrase ”Pu-fang huan-tso Wang-ch'uan-shih” further associates the ”Ch'i-chi-t'u” with the poetry of Wang Wei in order to complement the imaginary landscape and try to make it totally satisfying.The appreciation and inscription of ”Yang-kuan-t'u” is another kind of philosophical wisdom. Wang Wei's poem ”Sung Yuan-erh shih An-hsi” has become part of the yue-fu tradition. It has become a song sung at the end of banquets, to send off guests. Li Kung-lin also painted it as a picture. Having been thus transferred and interpreted, it became a cultural code rich in significance. Besides dwelling on the sadness of departure and separation, the regrets of travel into foreign territories, and the remoteness of the Yang Pass where this incident took place, the Sung colophons to ”Yang-kuan-t'u” further think about the difficulties of human life, observing that ”human affairs are inconstant, then we must take leave.” It offers the hope of overcoming the bitterness of separation through sublimation. It is true that the major theme of ”Yang-kuan-t'u” is seeing loved ones depart. However, the visual experience of the graphic expression is after all not the same as the actual vicissitudes encountered by different individuals. And this visual experience is in turn different from the literary works about farewells and departure. Thus we can see the unique literary quality of colophon poetry on the paintings.The author also adopts three steps followed by western scholars of iconography to study artistic significance, in order to survey the way people view art and write colophons for it. We see that traditional episodes important for the literary arts are the creative sources for the pictures on poetry. Different cultural-historical circumstances can be represented to show their symbolic meanings, and the colophons to the pictures on poetry demonstrate that in the process of ruminating over them, they become endowed with graphic symbolic value; this is the crystallization of the wisdom of discarding the old and accepting the new.

The Space Between Image and Word: The Journey from Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross to Walter Verdin's Sliding Time Diane Apostolos‐Cappadona Prolegomenon: the new space initiated in Leuven In October 2009, I traveled to the Belgian city of Leuven, site of the renowned Catholic University and famed for its connections with the Flemish master, Rogier van der Weyden (1400‐1464), to see the special retrospective Rogier van der Weyden (1400‐1464): Master of Passions. Having been challenged by the visual pleasures and symbolic conundrums found in his presentations of Mary Magdalene, I encountered an astounding surprise in this presentation of his works that celebrated both his art and the opening of the new M, Museum Leuven. As earlier art historians—including Erwin Panofsky, Moshe Barasch, and Leo Steinberg—have noted Rogier was a magisterial creator of archetypes. For me, his synchronization of the symbolism of the human body—gestures, postures, and figuration—with biblical narrative created an expression of the best in Christian art that is visual exegesis combined with what I identify as “the space between.” Surrounded by such beautiful and stimulating paintings, it was extraordinary that Rogier's theological complex and painterly intense works found a new “life” and perhaps a contemporary receptivity through the unexpected format of video art. Walking into the semi‐darkness of the large room, I was initially transfixed by the way in which the ten central figures of Rogier van der Weyden's masterpiece, The Descent from the Cross (1435: Museo del Prado, Madrid; Fig. ), suddenly took on a new life and yet enveloped me with familiarity. Unexpectedly, the reality of the interaction between the characters in this religious drama broke free from their places within the framed golden box into a new world order, and despite our many hours together, the painting and its familiar cast of characters suddenly came forth with new meanings. Click for larger view View full resolution Rogier van der Weyden, El descendimiento (Descent from the Cross; full view). Courtesy of Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (P2825). While I tried to concentrate on the whole as the sum of its ten parts, and then vainly on the individual parts, the intellectual exercise failed as the abstracted elements, especially those of Mary Magdalene, overtook my sensibilities and I was transferred to another level of being‐in‐the‐world: that level of consciousness in which the fundamental etymology of the aesthetic became a living reality with the emphasis on the senses as plural, compound, and complex. Sitting there entranced by the vivid colors and dramatic forms, I entered into the rhythm of the calming but continuous pace of slow movement as I was enveloped by what I perceived initially as a freedom from intellectual thinking, from the limitations of the mind, in order to experience the power of this moment, the power of art. When Walter Verdin's video installation, Sliding Time had passed its course—the seven minutes required for the images to move in a carefully orchestrated manner vertically and horizontally across each figure simultaneously—I found myself not ready to leave but rather I was entranced, almost to the level of being “rooted” physically and emotionally in “my” place (Fig. ). Click for larger view View full resolution Walter Verdin, Sliding Time (full view). Museo Nacional del Prado/John Geleyns/Walter Verdin ©2009. Courtesy of Walter Verdin. Watching Sliding Time pass from one seven‐minute cycle into another, and over the next four days, often not even recognizing except for the sound of the bell that the cycle had been completed (or re‐started), I found myself eager to re‐enter the space which those plasma screens controlled, to get closer and closer with each viewing until I was almost within Sliding Time by the afternoon of my second day in Leuven. My emotions ran the gamut from quiet solitude to poignant encounter to moments close to tears or recoiling from physical pain to an internal and quiet serenity. Further, there were those inevitable breakthrough moments when a fold in one of the Magdalene's garments, the muscles in her contorted arms, the luminescent tears dripping slowly from her eyes, or perhaps...

The way we experience space has a direct relationship to the way we perceive it, as evidenced by the ways that space has been represented in painting throughout history. My research is concerned with the representation of space in contemporary painting. Contemporary experiences of space through new media screens offer painters a unique challenge that requires them to think about representing space in new ways. My research focuses on the role of the window in painting, a device that has confirmed painters’ preoccupation with representing space on a two-dimensional plane. I provide an historical overview that establishes the window as an important spatial and metaphorical concern within painting. I draw a connection between the window and Plato’s cave as a frame of representation. In the context of this research, ‘space’ refers to a painterly space which includes both illusory space and actual physical/material space. Whereas Gilles Deleuze defines these different kinds of space as either ‘haptic’ or ‘optic space’, I use the term ‘unstable space’ to describe that which occurs when both ‘haptic’ and ‘optic space’ coexist on a picture plane. In considering Plato’s cave as a window or frame of representation, I recognise the demarcation of key spatial and representational concepts related to the window in painting. As with Plato’s cave, the window demarcates binary opposites that have structured much subsequent thinking about art, such as interiority/exteriority, nature/culture, illusion/reality. Through Plato’s theories, I specifically draw attention to the dualist structure of his belief system that posits tensions between interior and exterior, reality and illusion, nature and culture. I establish the term ‘unstable space’ through examining the theories of Deleuze and Jacques Derrida that deconstruct Plato’s writing. Their theories offer a means by which to construct new meanings within the space of painting, as they emphasise the instability of the binaries afforded by Plato’s philosophy and instead suggest the possibilities of multiplicity. The contemporary ‘windows’ of media screens significantly shift the metaphor of the singular window to the multiplicity of windows within windows. This multiplicity reflects the way we currently experience space and the effect this has on the thinking of space in contemporary painting practice. In this way, painting’s material dimension and illusory space can be explored not in terms of binary oppositions but as complementaries. Having traced the development of the window as an important representational device in painting, I propose that the window can be used as a mechanism to explore the ‘unstable space’ through painting. This space operates between spatial and representational theory. Through the analysis of specific works of art by contemporary artists chosen as exemplars in the field of painting, I argue that the unstable space can be created solely in the medium of paint. My research extends understandings of space as represented within the limits of a two-dimensional surface. The representation of space within my painting practice results from my reimagining of the window as an unstable space, my exploring of the perception and representation of ambiguous space, and my engaging with pictorial illusion through abstraction. Explicitly, the studio research found that the screen or window was able to act as a metaphor for the body and as such effectively articulate the experience of interiority and exteriority, surface and figure, ground and distance.

The Ghent Altarpiece, a jewel of Gothic art painted by the van Eyck brothers in the fifteenth century, is particularly noteworthy for its use of an innovative dilution of oil, giving it a realistic scope that is particularly conducive to iconodiagnostic hypotheses. For the first time in the literature, we are taking a medical look at this masterpiece, and more specifically at the representation of its patron, whose identity is well known: Joos Vijd, a powerful notable from the town of Ghent, in modern-day Belgium. A vascular turgidity of the temporal artery, which can be suggestive of temporal arteritis, Hertoghe's sign and a slight ear crease were observed. These signs might be vascular lesions accentuated by Vijd's age and attest to van Eyck's virtuosity and anatomic accuracy.

The Martenahuis in Franeker contains a special room whose walls and ceiling are decorated with vast paintings on canvas. Such fully painted rooms were very popular in the northern Dutch provinces from the last quarter of the seventeenth century and were called ‘painted rooms’ or ‘rooms in the round’. Owing to later additions and alterations, the painted room in the Martenahuis presents a disjointed picture today. The room’s original appearance has been reconstructed with the help of material-technical, art-historical and archival research. It transpires that all the elements of the room were meticulously coordinated with one another, which provides insight into the intentions of the client and the artists involved.The now white-painted flat wooden architectural elements were originally painted with a reddish-brown trompe l’oeil representation which, together with the paintings inserted into them, created the illusion of a richly decorated classical pavilion overlooking Arcadian landscapes. Technical research revealed – in contrast to what the literature had previously suggested – that all the landscape hangings, as well as the central ceiling piece and the eight original wainscot paintings, were part of a single series made especially for this room. Archival research has shown that the room came into being in or shortly after 1701, following the departure in August 1701 of the young Frisian stadholder Johan Willem Friso (1687-1711), who had stayed there while studying at Franeker University. The construction of the room was part of a large-scale renovation commissioned by the wealthy regent Suffridus Westerhuis (1668-1731), who had acquired the building in 1694. Various prints by the French architect Daniel Marot (1661-1752) served as inspiration for the room’s design. Those designs were all published before 1703. There are no elements dating back to Marot’s inventions from or after 1703, such as those included in his collected edition of 1712, whereas this is regularly the case in Frisian buildings built after 1703. As such, the painted room in the Martenahuis is one of the earliest examples of the Marot style in an upper middle-class mansion. The ambitious Suffridus Westerhuis presented himself as a modern and wealthy man of standing by having his house renovated in line with the latest architectural and interior design ideas. What’s more, the painted room he created directly mirrored Marot’s designs for Willem III (1650-1702) and his inner circle. One of the artists Westerhuis chose to do the landscape paintings in his reception room was the painter Jan van Bunnik (1654-1733), who created decorations for the palaces of the stadholder-king and for the country houses of his entourage. In seeking to align himself with the Republic’s highest echelons, Westerhuis was presenting himself as an administrator of high standing. Westerhuis took a keen interest in gardening and the study of nature, a highly appropriate pastime for a prominent figure at that time. As such, his choice of landscape hangings as wall decoration was quite apt. The contemplation of such landscapes was viewed at the time as a form of relaxation after onerous administrative duties. Architecture, paintings and client turn out to be inextricably linked in the Martenahuis room – a connection which, after having been concealed for centuries, has been brought to light by this recent research project.