Jan van Eyck
The Mother of God and her child appear larger than life-size, as if floating on air, in the nave of a Gothic cathedral flooded with light. Everything radiates, glows, and sparkles like a precious stone: with exceptional artistry, Jan van Eyck uses colours of such intense vibrancy that the entire panel is suffused with a unique blaze of light. As the symbol of both God and the Virgin Mary, light is singularly important for this small-sized painting. But it is not sunlight, whose glow is depicted here. Considering the usual orientation of a church choir to the east, it is striking that the light shown comes from the north: What is meant is the eternal, the holy light. The divine comes to presence inside the church, and the Mother and Child group is a vision bathed in heavenly light. The real and the celestial are almost indistinguishable. Behind Mary, framed by two lit candles, is a statue looking just like the Virgin Mary as she stands in the cathedral. Far up in the choir, a crucifix rises up above the scene, protectively watching over brightly clad angels singing a song. The sculpture becomes a vision: Jesus, a baby secure in his mother’s arms in the foreground, foresees his sacrificial death in the picture’s background. The painting also gives the viewer a glimpse of a distant world, simultaneously close to reality and yet one step removed from it. Renowned scholar of iconography, Erwin Panofsky described it as looking through a microscope and telescope at the same time.
We present today's masterpiece thanks to Gemäldegalerie in Berlin <3
P.S. Compare here this amazing depiction of the Virgin Mary with another medieval one - the famous Ognissanti Madonna by Giotto!