Saturday, 31 May 2025

{The Northern Renaissance [continued (7)] – Symbolism of Jan van Eyck}[5th May 1991]

[Redbook9:262][19910505:1200g]{The Northern Renaissance [continued (7)] – Symbolism of Jan van Eyck}[5th May 1991]


19910505.1200

[continued]


‘Although Jan van Eyck made exceedingly important excursions in the field of portraiture, his large-scale work remained tied to the fundamentally religious context of most 15th century patronage. The remarkable realism with which he and his contemporaries depicted their subjects endowed the often hackneyed old motifs of Christian art with a pervasive new force. As reality became saturated with symbolism, so new devices were introduced to express ever more complex and exact layers of meaning. Thus the fall of light through a crystal vase of sparkling water could evoke the mystery of the Virgin Birth; or the accurate distinction between a Romanesque colonnade and a flamboyant Gothic portal express the supersession of the Old Testament by the New. The iconographic richness which this intimate relationship between form and content engendered remains one of the supreme achievements of 15th-century Northern art.’

*



* – ibid [Encyclopaedia of Visual Art 4:] 663

[Immediately followed in source text & in ms by extract in next ts entry]



[continued]


[PostedBlogger3105for04062025]


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.