Der Gottesstaat als Vedute. Jan van Eycks "Madonna des Kanzlers Nicolas Rolin"

Abstract

This essay makes the first ever attempt at linking the form and content of Jan van Eyck's Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin (Paris, Musee du Louvre) to a fundamental and uniform iconographical concept. The landscape and scenic bipartition of the painting clearly evidences St. Augustine's De civitate Dei as being its central theological reference. The essay examines its influence on all pictorial and compositional elements of the painting. A particularly fruitful aspect in this respect is the important role which St. Augustine's writings played at the court of the Duke of Burgundy in the 15th century. The author identifies St. Augustine's historical theology, and above all his doctrine of grace, as determining aspects of the Louvre painting.