J. L. Ward. Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck's Paintings

Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck's PaintingsAuthor(s): John L. WardSource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 15, No. 29 (1994), pp. 9-53Published by: IRSA s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483484Accessed: 20/10/2008 09:31

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JOHN L. WARD

Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck's Paintings

The view that disguised or concealed symbolism was a fundamental feature of Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth century was widely accepted for the first two decades after the appearance of Panofsky's book, Early Netherlandish Paint- ing, which remains the fullest exposition of the concept.1 Since then, however, it has fallen into such disrepute that by 1988 Barbara Lane could write, "most writers would probably agree that early Netherlandish painters made no effort to 'disguise' this symbolism, which was perfectly apparent to educated viewers."2

The growing rejection of Panofsky's thesis has occurred without a thorough analysis of its implications or value, which neither Panofsky himself nor his followers provided. Because Panofsky's book diluted his original concept in presenting disguised symbolism as a general characteristic of early Nether- landish painting, the potential implications of his intuitions for an understanding of Van Eyck's symbolism have never been fully recognized. The present study follows Panofsky's earli- est approach to disguised symbolism in considering both its meaning and expressive effect. But an attempt will be made

to provide an analysis of the function of symbolic disguise, one that takes into account the kind of symbolic complexity discussed in Panofsky's book and that identifies hitherto unnoticed symbolic relationships in Van Eyck's work. It will be argued that the visual effect and the symbolic meanings were designed by Van Eyck to be as inseparable as possible and that disguising symbols was a deliberate strategy to create an experience of spiritual revelation. This was achieved by using certain configurations of symbols that, when their significance is discovered, appear to enact the meanings they symbolize.3

Panofsky had first presented the concept of disguised symbolism in 1934 in his article "Jan van Eyck'sArnolfini Portrait."4 There he observed that the concealment of symbols as ordi- nary objects in that picture "impresses the beholder with a kind of mystery and makes him inclined to suspect a hidden significance in all and every object."5 He emphasized that this did not mean

that the observer is expected to realize such notions consciously. On the contrary, the supreme charm of the picture-and this applies to the creations of Jan van Eyck in

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JOHN L. WARD

1) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin?, Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Reunion des Musees Nationaux.

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DISGUISED SYMBOLISM AS ENACTIVE SYMBOLISM

general-is essentially based on the fact that the spectator is not irritated by a mass of complicated hieroglyphs, but is allowed to abandon himself to the quiet fascination of what I might call a transfigured reality.6

Panofsky's explanation is ambiguous, since his claim that the presence of disguised symbols leads the viewer "to suspect a hidden significance in ... every object" conflicts with his claim that the effect of symbolic meaning occurs unconsciously. Nevertheless, it seems quite clear that he regarded the symbols as encouraging "quiet fascination" rather than methodical deciphering.

In Early Netherlandish Painting, written two decades later, although he continued to focus his analysis of disguised symbolism on the pictures of Van Eyck, Panofsky upgraded his concept to the status of a fundamental tendency of fifteenth century Netherlandish painting, with precursors as early as the Trecento.7 Symbols were now said to need disguising in response to the increasingly naturalistic depiction of space and light, which had made the presentation of explicit symbolic images no longer credible. Panofsky's language suggests that the disparity was resolved by replacing traditional symbols with analogous objects more suited to the depicted context-such as the substitution of the ewer and basin in Campin's Merode Altarpiece for the "well of living waters"8- a strategy that also made them less readily apparent as symbols. But the primary purpose of the disguise was said to be the reconciliation of symbolic meaning and naturalism, not intentional concealment from the viewer.

This account of disguised symbolism is not easily reconciled with the earlier one. By 1953 Panofsky had identified a complex set of symbolic relationships that seemed to require conscious recognition and deciphering rather than a subcon- scious awareness and passive fascination. In Early Nether- landish Painting he suggested that in Van Eyck's Washington Annunciation the inverted stylistic chronology of the church's three levels symbolically represents the self-revelation of the Trinity in the Incarnation [Fig. 3].9 And he detected a literally concealed symbolism in Gabriel's placement over Aries, the zodiac sign for the time of the Annunciation, and in the Virgin's location on her own sign, Virgo.10 Since both signs were covered by the figures' robes, recognition of the symbolism required that the zodiac's sequence be reconstructed from the visible signs. As with the inverted architectural chronology, the mind must consciously recognize the presence of these relationships for them to have any effect. But although the examples of disguised symbolism identified in Panofsky's book seem to demand active decoding rather than quiet fascination, he offered no revision of his earlier account of the

effect on the viewer. His focus on symbolic complexity tempted scholars to search for further symbols, while the purpose and effect of the symbols' disguise remained un- explained and vulnerable to the multiple attacks directed against it.

These challenges have come from scholars with diverse views. On one side the possibility of disguised symbolism is questioned. It is said that the symbols were all familiar to fifteenth-century viewers and appear disguised to modern viewers only because the meanings became lost.11 A more recent attack from the other side argues that most fifteenth- century viewers were not acquainted with the subtleties of church doctrine, since attendance at Mass was infrequent and most religious paintings of the period were painted primarily to provide intense, mystical experiences or as a plea for a particular benefit from God or a saint, ranging from eternal salvation to the granting of a child.12 These scholars doubt that any complex disguised symbolism would have been com- prehensible to the donors, or to most viewers, of religious paintings. They regard the more complex level of symbols discovered in these works as the inventions of modern scholars out of tune with fifteenth century Netherlandish experience. In short, one side contends that the symbolism could not have been disguised because it was so familiar, whereas the other side argues that complex disguised symbolism would not have been used because it would not have been recognized or understood. Both sides join in questioning the purpose of disguising whatever symbolism they recognize as present.

In contesting the existence of disguised symbolism, critics generally ignore rather than attack the explanation for its use given by Panofsky in Early Netherlandish Painting that disguised symbolism resulted from the effort to reconcile traditional symbolic meanings with the greater naturalism achieved by fifteenth-century painters.13 Most of the objections appear to be raised against the implication, never actu- ally stated in Panofsky's book, that the symbols' disguise is meant to conceal their meaning from some or all viewers.14 Many critics of the concept would probably agree to the use of the term "embedded" to characterize much of the easily interpreted symbolism-such as Old Testament scenes with familiar typological meanings, carved on column capitals or thrones that are set into the pictorial space.15 Embedded symbolism may be obvious to one familiar with the culturally assigned meanings once the symbolic objects or details are noticed, but capable of being initially overlooked because the images are relatively small, in the background, or in shadow. By contrast, other items continue to function in fifteenth-century Netherlandish pictures as explicit or overt symbols, by

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2) Jan van Eyck, (The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin), detail. Photo: Reunion des Musees Nationaux.

their foreground position, which declares their significance- as does the position of wheat and flowers in Hugo van der Goes' Portinari Altarpiece-by their proximity to a saint, or by being flagrantly inappropriate to their context-as is the ox in the study in Rogier van der Weyden's St. Luke Drawing the Virgin.

A further obstacle to productive discussion of disguised symbolism has been the wide acceptance of Panofsky's claim that van Eyck's symbolism became the model for symbolism in Netherlandism painting until the end of the century. The position argued here is that, on the contrary, in attempting to transcend the purposes of embedded symbolism Van Eyck's use of symbolic disguise to delay recognition was relatively short-lived and had little influence.

The fundamental controversy concerning disguised symbolism may then be summed up in the following questions. First, is all "disguising" the inadvertent by-product of embed- ding symbols in a naturalistic context, or has it some further purpose? Second, if the disguise was intended, from whom were the symbols disguised? And third, how far should a

search for symbols be pursued? The short answers to these questions advanced here are that Van Eyck had a specific purpose for symbolic disguise: to delay rather than to prevent recognition; that he wanted any viewer who made a sustained effort to contemplate his pictures and who combined a general familiarity with the Christian doctrine of salvation with some knowledge of traditional symbolic imagery initially to overlook, and eventually to discover, much of the symbolism; and that, given the complexity of symbolic relationships in Van Eyck's pictures and strong evidence of his desire to create works in which, as Panofsky wrote, "all reality is satu- rated with meaning,"16 overinterpretation is less of a danger than overlooking some of Van Eyck's devices to create a reality in which the spiritual can be glimpsed through the material. The function of most of these pictures as an aid to meditation made it advantageous for Van Eyck draw no firm line between specifically intended meanings and those projected on the work by viewers-so long as they continued in the spirit of the more clearly intended meanings. This is in keeping with St. Augustine's counsel concerning an attempt to recognize a reference to the Trinity in the Biblical account of Creation: "Let each one, then, take it as he pleases; for it is so profound a passage, that it may well suggest, for the exercise of the reader's tact, many opinions, and none of them widely departing from the rule of faith."'7 Nevertheless, every effort has been made to test the validity of interpretations by gaug- ing their consistency with the approaches evident in his other work, the degree to which they harmonize with the character and ideas conveyed by the picture's visual organization and execution, and the availability of the ideas to Van Eyck.

The thesis advanced here is that, in addition to making use of overt symbols and easily recognized embedded ones, in six of his most important paintings Van Eyck devised symbols to be discovered only during the process of prolonged meditation, with the intention of producing an experience of mystic revelation. I contend that symbolism of this kind, although it had some precursors and influenced a few works, was the product of a relatively short-lived attempt by Jan van Eyck to push the medium of oil painting to its limits in trying to make spiritual meaning immediate and vivid. Whereas Panofsky and his followers have been attacked for reading into Van Eyck's paintings a complex program of symbols, it is my claim that the symbolic intricacy is even more complex than previously supposed-but also that the symbolism is conceived primarily in visual terms that provide the means for its disguise and, para- doxically, offer the best proof of its presence in the coherence and expressive power they contribute.18

Disguised symbolism as understood in this article is not used to restrict its audience to a few initiates, schooled in

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the more recondite doctrines and symbolic imagery of scholastic writers. Rather it is used to transcend the limits of visual description in two ways. The first method is to delay awareness of underlying meanings to produce a more vivid experience upon recognition-as if the picture revealed to the meditating viewer a glimpse of a profound spiritual meaning beneath the material reality. The effect is not one of deciphering hieroglyphs, but of witnessing the picture sponta- neously transform itself. Not all of Van Eyck's symbols operate at this level; he also employed the more usual kinds of overt and embedded symbols. The three levels are not sharply separated, but shade into one another. This interaction contributes to the second purpose of disguise: to invite the viewer to discover meaning at ever-deeper levels and to remain always in doubt whether the full meaning has been discovered.

The term "disguised symbolism" is defined much more narrowly in the present article than it was by Panofsky, for whom it applied to any symbol that seemed appropriate to the naturalistic context in which it was presented. As used here, the term is restricted to subjects or configurations that have been designed so as to delay recognition of their symbolic character, in order to create an expressive effect of revelation and transcendence during the process of meditation.19

It should also be noted that the kind of symbolism discussed in this article occurs in only six of Van Eyck's own works. In the religious pictures datable after 1436-the Virgin and Child in Frankfurt, the Dresden triptych, and the Virgin and Child with a Fountain and St Barbara in Antwerp-there are only vestigial traces of the kind of dynamic symbolic interaction described here. The smaller size of the works and Van Eyck's assessment of the patron and his interests may have had something to do with this. Given the difficulty of contriving new disguised symbols to express essentially the same concept with very similar subject matter, Van Eyck may also have decided that he had exhausted the most interesting possibilities and that the whole method was in danger of be- coming a formula. Or he may have discovered that the disguises worked only too well and that much of his carefully planned symbolism went unappreciated by his patrons or by other viewers.

I propose to test the foregoing characterization of Van Eyck's symbolism against a number of configurations in his paintings that force the viewer who notices them to regard them either as expressive symbolic interactions or, if not, then necessarily as places where pictorial structure becomes un- intentionally garbled. A good starting place is with the positioning of the bridge in The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin [Figs. 1, 2] so that it appears to spring from Christ's blessing

3) Jan van Eyck, (The Annunciation)), National Gallery of Art (Andrew R. Mellon Coll.), Washington. Photo: museum.

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JOHN L. WARD

4) Jan van Eyck, ((The Annunciation), detail. Photo: museum.

gesture, as has been recognized by various scholars.20 Either one agrees that this conjunction is deliberate and that, as Purtle observes, "the bridge acts as the visual transmission of the Child's blessing to the opposite side of the river and the zone of the donor,"21 or one must dismiss it as an unintended error. What is irrefutable is that the ambiguity would have been as noticeable in the fifteenth century as at present and that, once seen it would have appeared as it does now: either significant or distracting. Furthermore, it must be insisted that the effect of the bridge extending the infant's gesture is available even to viewers who do not recognize the blessing sign that he makes. On the other hand, this conjunction is not immedi-

ately obvious. I had been familiar with the painting for many years before (independently of other scholars) I noticed it22- but when I did, it was as if the space had abruptly collapsed and the bridge had sprung forward to attach itself to Christ's

fingers. The effect was one of seeing the picture come alive to enact the transmission of Christ's blessing to the chancellor. This effect was delayed because I disregarded the con-

figuration for many years as a chance conjunction resulting from my viewing position. It was made possible by the newly deepened space and infinite richness of Van Eyck's pictorial world, which so thoroughly separates the foreground and

background that past and present viewers alike have not al-

ways recognized the extent of the symbolic interplay between these zones. In short, Van Eyck's use of disguised symbolism in the context of a heightened naturalism breathes new vital-

ity and authenticity into outworn symbols. By itself, the bless-

ing gesture symbolizes Christ's forgiveness and (through his sacrificial death) his endowment of Rolin with eternal life. But the sudden perception that the bridge springs from Christ's

fingertips toward the Chancellor enacts the concept of salvation for the viewer.

Still, this conjunction might seem like a chance arrangement were it not for the presence of other such symbolic jux- tapositions in Van Eyck's pictures. For example, the placement of the lilies behind the footstool in the Washington Annunciation [Figs. 3, 4] is such that only the edge of the vase that holds them is visible. The footstool and lilies are squeezed together into an ambiguous juxtaposition that must be re-

garded as either ineptly incoherent or significant. I have previously argued that the lilies appear to spring from the point of convergence of Capricorn, the sign for December, and the footstool, a symbolic throne prepared for the Infant Christ, representing at once his royal earthly throne as the descen- dent of King David and his heavenly throne placed above the

signs of the zodiac on the floor. I argued that they issue forth in fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy concerning the flower that will grow from the root of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1-2).23 The ar-

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5) Jan van Eyck, uGhent Altarpiece), detail, Church of St. Bavon, Ghent. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

rangement is a brilliant symbolic invention that, by causing the lilies to seem to burst forth miraculously in association with Christ's throne and birth sign, express the life-giving potency that his incarnation and sacrifice bring. To reject some such symbolic reading of this conjunction of stool, lilies, and zodiac sign, one is compelled to conclude that it is accidental and that the unprecedented obscuring of the vase and the resultant ambiguity concerning the lilies' source have no particular purpose, but are a clumsy oversight.

A third such conjunction occurs in the exterior of the Ghent

Altarpiece, where the tail of the "g" of the word "gracia," spo- ken by Gabriel, appears to curl against a petal carved on the capital of the column behind it [Fig. 5]. Since the paired columns, by their essentially Romanesque design and black shafts

(as well as by the decoration of the capitals, which associates them with the "lily-work" carved in the capitals of Solomon's

temple [I Kings 7:19]) are meant to symbolize the Old Testa- ment and Mosaic Law, the effect is that the word "gracia" represents the moment that the era "sub lege" gives way to the era "sub gracia," as the curling tail of the "g," which echoes the form of the capital petal, appears to spring to life, as if released from the stone.24 At the same time, the lilies that the

angel holds cross over the capitals and replace the carved

petals with real flowers. The suggestion is that the carved lily petals of the capitals represent the promise of the era of grace, prophesied and symbolized typologically by Old Testament events and at this moment fulfilled by living flowers and the word "gracia." Again, the precise alignment of the "g" and

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JOHN L. WARD

6) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin in a Church)), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemildegalerie. Photo: Jorg P Anders, Berlin.

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7) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin in a Church)), detail. Photo: Jorg P Anders, Berlin.

the capital may be dismissed as an accident. But now one must additionally explain or deny the consistency with which the three conjunctions discussed thus far create, when discovered, the effect of something springing to life, an animism linked in each case to the gesture of Christ or to the moment of his arrival in the world.

A fourth example of disguised symbolism that, by means of the surface conjunction of spatially separated forms, enacts the concept that it symbolizes is found in the Virgin in a Church in Berlin [Fig. 6]. One day, while studying a reproduc- tion of the picture, I noticed a bit of red in the only visible corner of the top part of the leftmost window. Denied a

glimpse of this window top by the curve of the frame, my eye

swept down the nave to find the top of each successive window hid from sight until I reached the most distant one [Fig. 7]. This abruptly revealed window top of intermingled red and blue flowers seemed to come forward in space, as if it had suddenly grown from the top of the crucifix in front of it. The fusion of images miraculously transformed the cross into the Tree of Life, reborn in Christ's death. The foliage growing from the cross in Masaccio's Crucifixion of 1426 [Fig. 8] em- bodies the same concept. But in Van Eyck's picture the con-

junction of the cross and colored glass allows the viewer to witness a spontaneous joining of the images, with the effect that the cross comes to life and sprouts flowers as one watches.

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JOHN L. WARD

8) Masaccio, ((Crucifixion)), from the Pisa polyptych, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. Photo: Soprintendenza per i B.A.S. di Napoli.

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9) Jan Gossart, ((The Virgin in a Church)), left wing of a diptych, Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome. Photo Arte Fotografica, Rome.

To deny that this conjunction and its effect were planned by the artist, one must again be prepared to argue that it is a clumsy error.25 Two artists who copied Van Eyck's picture recognized the tendency of the crucifix and colored section of the window to fuse together but failed to grasp Jan's purpose. One resolved what he mistook for pointless ambiguity by removing the color from the glass,26 while the other one shifted the crucifix to the left [Fig. 9]. But a survey of other early Netherlandish paintings makes clear how unlikely it is that Van Eyck's alignment is unintended: among the other numerous depictions of church interiors, some of which are quite similar to that in the Berlin painting, I found no crucifix that aligns ambiguously with a background element or an interior in which the upper window glass is more

deeply colored than the rest, and nowhere else is the upper section of the glass concealed in all nave windows but the one cen- tered in the apse.27 It is the combination of these three unique conditions that makes the effect of the conjunction in the Berlin

Virgin so compelling. Moreover, Van Eyck offers one further clue to show that the alignment is not accidental: each end of the cross terminates in three gilded leaves, a design that in itself refers to the idea of the Tree of Life.28 But what the gilded leaves

overtly symbolize is enacted by the colored flowers suddenly appearing to burst from the top of the cross. The promise of rebirth through Christ's death is fulfilled before the viewer's eyes by the unexpected fusion of images.

A fifth example of a surface conjunction of spatially separate forms that demands to be regarded as significant occurs in theArnolfiniMarriage Portrait [Fig. 10]. Immediately above the wrist of the bride is visible a carved benchpost finial in the

shape of a creature with a wide face, distended mouth, goatee, broad nose, heavy eyelids, pointed ears, and cloven hooves, whose general shape is mirrored by the carved lion behind him and whose expression echoes the menacing look of a second lion on the adjacent chair [Fig. 11]. Because of its neutral, brown color and its position in the dimmer part of the room, its conjunction with the bride's wrist on the picture surface does not invite attention, and few viewers probably ever notice the placement or, indeed, the demonic figure itself. Yet once recognized, the alignment is obvious, and the placement of such a figure at the very heart of the picture, menacing the bride and the exchange of wedding vows, cries out for explanation. Even if the conjunction of forms could be discounted

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JOHN L. WARD

10) Jan van Eyck, ((Arnolfini Marriage Portrait", National Gallery London. Photo: Trustees of the National Gallery, London.

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11) Jan van Eyck, <Arnolfini Marriage Portrait), detail. Photo: Trustees of the National Gallery, London.

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JOHN L. WARD

12) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin with Canon van der Paele?, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Photo: Stedelijke Musea, Bruges.

as an unfortunate error, some justification for the presence of this figure-an extraordinarily malevolent image to decorate a bridal suite-seems required.

Until recently few scholars mentioned the carving and only Harbison and Jansen-apparently independently-have recognized the spatial conjunction with the foreground figures.29 But Harbison's explanation-that it is an element of courtly humor, a playful reference to infidelity-is improbable. Not only is this

interpretation contradicted by the spiritual solemnity of the figures and the overall mood of the picture, it also necessitates accepting the possibility that any couple would choose to al- lude to their future marital transgressions in their wedding portrait. Is it likely that even persons schooled in the ways of courtly love would wish to publicly declare their less-than-honorable intentions to their spouse on the occasion of their wedding, especially when, as seems most likely, the occasion represented

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^ 'A .. a ,

13) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin with Canon van der Paele?), detail. Photo: Stedelijke Musea, Bruges.

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JOHN L. WARD

14) <Arabis alpina L.,, (Alpine Rock-cress), detail, showing fruiting stem (xl), flowering plant (xl), and seed (x5), from Stella Ross-Craig, Drawing of British Plants, London, 1949- 63, III, pi. 12.

the joining, not only of two individuals, but of two Lucchese merchant families for mutual honor and benefit? The complexity of the issues surrounding this painting prevent me from offering an explanation for the purpose of the demonic figure and its placement in the present article; here, I am concerned primarily with establishing that there are a significant number of conjunctions of spatially discrete images in various Van Eyck paintings that are sufficiently disguised to have been overlooked as symbolic by most modern scholars but too similar in structure and character to be dismissed as accidental.

The interplay of the Virgin, Child, parrot, and flowers in the center of Van Eyck's Virgin with Canon van derPaele once again confronts the observant viewer with a sharp choice [Figs. 12, 13]. Although the interaction is not spatially ambiguous, it must

ultimately be recognized as either curiously incoherent or deliberately designed to enact a complex symbolic meaning. Al- though the flowers have been described as a "nosegay" or "bouquet" held by Christ,30 the Virgin's fingers close on a single stem at a point beneath the bottoms of all of the other apparent stems. This single long stem reappears below her hand, issu- ing from the parrot's tail feathers. The stem held by the Virgin makes no sense if, as has been claimed,31 she is receiving a bunch of short-stemmed flowers from Christ. An explanation for the enigmatic exchange is provided by the small size and four-petal arrangement of the flowers, which identify them as members of the mustard family (cruciferae): what have been taken for short flower stems grasped by Christ must be siliques, slender pods characteristic of this family and indicative that the flowers are mustard, radish, turnip, or a variety of cress [Fig. 14].32 But while the flowers (which all appear the same in size and form) and the pods must grow from a common stem held by the Virgin, they have three colors: red, white, and a dark bluish color. Now, some cruciferae with siliques are white, yellow, pale lavender, or pink, but none is dark colored or bright red. Furthermore, no crucifera produces flowers of different color on the same stem. One must therefore conclude that the colors are symbolic: the red symbolizing Christ's love, shown in the shedding of his blood, the white his purity, and the dark his humility.33 And because Van Eyck has presented the flowers in dynamic interaction-as if they sprang from the parrot, were held out by the Virgin and grasped by Christ-the implication is that, in this visionary world that slips between levels of reality, the viewer witnesses the Holy Child accept the flowers and color them with his own virtues.

To fully appreciate the role of the flowers in Van Eyck's painting, however, it is necessary to consider the significance of the prominently placed parrot, which, apart from the numerous works inspired by the Van der Paele Virgin, was a bird that was rarely included in paintings of the Virgin and Child.34 A number of scholars have recognized that the key to the parrot's meaning is its ability to speak, and more specifically, the medieval belief that parrots in the wild say "ave" as a greeting.35 On this basis the Domenican Franciscus di Retza (d. 1425) associated the parrot with the Virgin Mary by an extravagant leap of logic: "If a parrot can by nature say ave, why could not a pure virgin beget through an ave?"36 It is doubtful that Van Eyck knew di Retza's words, but he was probably aware of the traditional belief that parrots naturally said ave as a greeting. Al- though this belief would link the parrot with the Annunciation (with the parrot's greeting compared to Gabriel's), it is not immediately evident why Van Eyck, whose use of symbols was usually so coordinated and expressive, would place at the center of his picture a symbol so apparently uninstructive that, even

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when its connection with the Annunciation has been recognized, it has been variously identified as symbolizing the Im- maculate Conception, the Incarnation, the Espousal of Christ and Mary, and the Word of God.37 None has attempted to explain why Van Eyck would have made any of these proposed concepts the central symbol of this painting. Moreover, none of the proposed interpretations explain why Christ holds two symbolic objects or what relationship they have to each other.38

To understand Van Eyck's parrot fully, it is necessary to recognize the particular manner in which the Virgin and Child are presented in this painting. They are set off from the other figures by a carpet and cloth of honor that, by their colors and floral patterns, evoke associations with the Garden of Eden, in which the infant and his mother, flanked by small carvings of Adam and Eve, play the parts of the new Adam and the new Eve, the counterparts of the first couple, who undo the original sin and restore the faithful to the Garden.39 To emphasize the connection, the innocently naked infant is held on Adam's side, where he replaces the shamed Adam. It is the presence of the first parents in this picture and their relevance to the Annuncia- tion that provides the needed clue to Van Eyck's use of the parrot. When Gabriel began his announcement of Christ's In- carnation with "ave," it initiated the undoing of "Eva's" curse. Symbolically, the reversal of her name erased Eve's sin, as is implied in the second stanza of the most famous of all Marian hymns, "Ave maris stella":

Sumens illud Ave Gabrielis ore, Funda nos in pace, Mutans nomen Evae.40

Thus Van Eyck's parrot symbolizes the installation of the new Adam and Eve in Paradise. Suggestive as it is of the Garden of Eden by its verdant color and exotic origin, its precise significance is that in its greeting it brings the antidote for Man's sin, and this is the concept enacted by the flowers whose stem emerges from the parrot's feathers. Since they appear to grow from the bird, to be grasped by the Virgin and offered to Christ, they reenact the role, and counteract the effect, of the fruit with which the serpent (like the parrot, a speaking creature) tempted Eve and that she then gave to Adam.41 If the present interpretation of the forms is accurate, the Infant grasps the siliques, or fruit, of the cruciferae. The three colors of the flowers symbolize virtues that both Jesus and his mother share-love, purity, and humility-precisely the virtues that make Christ's birth and sacrifice possible and effective. Since these flowers are connected with the fruit grasped by the infant (given by the new Eve to the new Adam) and since their four-petaled arrange-

15) Author's drawing of the original arrangement of the hands of the Virgin and Child in Fig. 13, based on x-ray photos and visible pentimenti.

ment translates into living entities the form of the cross (an object of special devotion for the canon that is represented on the flag of his patron saint, embodied in the cross held by St. Donatian, and repeated in the carpet pattern),42 it follows that the transaction depicts the undoing of Man's Original Sin by Christ's willing sacrifice. And since Christ's hand extends past the Virgin's and both of their gazes-and that of the swivel- headed parrot-are directed toward Canon van der Paele, it also seems clear that the seedpods-the fruit of the plant- taken by the New Adam from the New Eve connect to the flowers that also symbolize the eternal life that is offered to the canon. The Child's floral gift thus summarizes the whole doctrine of salvation through grace.43

This interaction resolves a question posed by a fact not yet mentioned: the flowers were not part of the original design. Christ's hand was initially raised to acknowledge the canon, and the Virgin rested hers on the parrot [Fig. 15] Why, then,

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JOHN L. WARD

were the flowers added? The analysis given above suggests the answer. Although in the original design the central figures acknowledged the canon's presence, the parrot, the source of salvation, would have appeared withheld by its tilt away from him and by the hands surrounding it. By including the flowers and joining them by the stem to the parrot, Van Eyck found a means to extend to the donor the cure, growing from the parrot's "ave," for the sin of Eve, who is placed, appropriately, between him and the brightly colored center of the picture that symbolizes Paradise.

The interpretation offered above is consistent with the depicted structure of the flowers, the interplay of the gestures, basic Christian doctrines, and the needs and aspirations of the donor. Being old and in failing health, the canon had the painting executed in anticipation of his death, probably as a memorial to be placed over his tomb.44 It presents him as if, kneeling in prayer and meditation, he has a vision of being greeted by the Virgin and Christ in Heaven. As he watches, he sees Jesus offer him the flowers that signify the gift of eternal life and payment for his sins, the very gift most likely to reassure his anxious mind. That Van Eyck's symbolism requires careful observation to recognize is in keeping with the painstaking specificity of his work. The change in Christ's gesture affirms that the symbolic interplay was largely the creation of the artist and was revised in the process of painting in response to the expressive possibilities of the evolving image, rather than being a translation of a pre-arranged program. On the other hand, if the basic argument presented here concerning the presence of disguised, interactive symbolism is rejected, the connection of flowers of three colors, inappropriate for the species depicted, to a single stem held by the Virgin becomes inexplicable. If the visual interactions discussed here were not designed as expressive symbols, the artist, usually so knowledgeable, inventive, and meticulously observant, must be seen as unable to design the simplest narrative interaction coherently or to color flowers accurately.

The pictorial interactions in the six pictures discussed above, when recognized, create expressive symbolic enactments of fundamental Christian doctrines. More particularly, they consistently express the fulfillment of prophecies and promises of birth, rebirth, and release from death, often making use of flowers positioned in conjunctional, dynamically interactive relationships with other forms. Since all of them declare their symbolic character by the destabilization of spatial position or (in the Van der Paele Virgin) by the deviation from botanical normalcy, to deny that these symbolic meanings were consciously orchestrated, one must argue that the artist was merely inept. And since these symbolic clusters rely for their effect much more on their visual properties than

on the viewer's expertise in doctrinal complexities or arcane symbolism, it may be supposed that their general neglect by most scholars resulted from having regarded the iconography as something largely separate from the aesthetic experience of the work. Such a supposition would be not entirely accurate. Many scholars interested in iconography have demonstrated in their writings a lively awareness of the interplay between the symbolic meaning and expressive visual interactions in Van Eyck's art, not the least of whom was Panofsky himself. Yet all of the doctrinal ideas identified in this article as present in Van Eyck's pictures are well known to modern scholars. If they have nevertheless failed to recognize some of the more expressive symbolic interactions in Van Eyck's work as significant, it may well be because these relationships were designed so as to be discovered in the process of prolonged meditation by patrons hoping for some sign of the validity of God's promise of eternal life. Scholars may have been distracted from the experience of revelation that Van Eyck attempted to create by their assumption that he was essentially a craftsman, dutifully, if skillfully, complying with the desires of patrons or illustrating texts or symbolic programs designed by clerics, rather than viewing him as an artist who set out to surprise and delight his patrons and to test the limits of painting by creating a depicted reality not only possessing amazingly naturalistic light and textures, but one that also overcame the static nature of pictorial imagery through a disguised symbolism designed to unfold gradually in the process of meditation and to act out, in doing so, the promised passage from sin and death to salvation and rebirth.

II

The sharp loss of credibility suffered by the concept of disguised symbolism since Panofsky's death led to the decision to discuss selected examples of Jan van Eyck's use of disguised symbolism out of context in part I of this article. It seemed important to show that certain pictorial configurations in Van Eyck's pictures attract attention to themselves by means of their spatial disruptions and their dynamic, interactive character, thereby inviting viewers to regard them as significant even when their precise iconographic meaning is unknown-for if these configurations are not intended, they must be considered inept. To be sure, even the artist praised by Philip the Good as unexcelled in his art and sci- ence and by Bartolommeo Fazio as a man of culture45 occa- sionally produced relationships and effects that now seem

26


less than convincing. For example, the overly-large head of Chancellor Rolin seems to be cut out of another picture and attached to the kneeling figure in the Rolin Virgin. That the examples of disguised symbolism cited in part I of this article cannot be explained away as the fortuitous product of any such shortcoming is shown by their relationship to the overall pictorial structure and their interaction with other symbols, overt, embedded, and disguised, to create aestheti- cally satisfying enactments of fundamental concepts of Chris- tian salvation in which both methods and concepts, though subtly varied, are consistent throughout this group of works. An examination of this achievement is the subject of the second part of this article. Since I have discussed two of Van Eyck's paintings-the Annunciations in Washington and on the exterior of the Ghent Altarpiece-in an earlier article,46 and since the Arnolfini Marriage Portrait requires fuller con- sideration than the present space limitations permit, only the remaining three works discussed in the first part of this article will be considered here.

Of these pictures The Virgin in a Church in Berlin [Fig. 6] requires the least discussion. In the first part of this article it was argued that the red and blue colored glass visible in the top of the central apse window was designed to fuse visually and without warning with the top of the crucifix, so that it suddenly appears to be growing from it, enacting the idea that the cross on which Christ died miraculously has come to life and referring symbolically to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and in Heavenly Paradise [Fig. 7]. The primary issue left unanswered is whether this is an accident or, as main- tained here, a coherent part of the picture's general content.

Millard Meiss pointed to the relationship between the sculpture of the Virgin and Child in a niche of the rood screen and the similarly posed Virgin and Child that fills the church space and observed that, "as we contemplate these two figures in the shadowy interior we seem to witness a miracle of animation, a statue come alive."47 As he noted, the stylisti- cally later pose of the larger Virgin (the "Schoene Madonna" type of c. 1400 versus a thirteenth-century style) contributes to this effect. But the presence of two sculptural types, one monochromatic and the other in color, in itself encourages the notion of transformation, as does the more animated stance of the foreground Virgin. Furthermore, as various scholars have claimed, the reiteration, in the cylindrical folds of her gown, of the shapes of the colonettes of the compound pier beside her and the echo of the nave vault's curve in the hem of her robe invite the identification of the Virgin with the surrounding church, as if the building itself took its shape from her, or she from it.48 And the play of light on the upper story of the church and in two dappled patches on the floor that

symbolize the entry of Christ, the Lux Mundi, into the Virginal womb (its double form symbolizing the two-fold nature of Christ, the God-Man),49 transforms the stone from inert matter into something warm and alive, an effect attempted by no previous artist. In short, Van Eyck has created a magical world in which figures and objects appear to pass from one state to another and in which, as the winged singer standing beside a wingless singer in the choir demonstrates,50 the view of a sunlit church interior appears miraculously to transform itself into a vision of the Virgin and Child and an unstable, fleeting glimpse of Paradise. It is likely that The Virgin in a Church was originally a diptych with a kneeling donor in the companion panel gazed upon by the Virgin.51 The scene in the Berlin panel would then represent the unstable reality of the donor's vision, in which he saw the miraculous flowering of the cross as a promise of Paradise, a vision not merely depicted but designed to be directly experienced by the viewer.

In the Virgin with Chancellor Rolin [Fig. 1] the disguised symbolism is more complex than in the Berlin panel. It is reinforced by various levels of embedded symbolism and plays a more fundamental role in the pictorial structure of the work. Changes visible in X-ray photographs show that, as in most of Van Eyck's other paintings, the symbolic relationships were not fully worked out before the painting was begun but were developed and modified in the process of the work's realization.52 This fact, like the consistency with which Jan used certain symbolic structures and concepts, supports the view that, rather than simply illustrating iconographic programs developed by someone else, he was primarily respon- sible for his symbolism, which was conceived of in funda- mentally pictorial terms. Because Van Eyck's disguised symbolism is so much an extension of his pictorial structure and the basic themes it articulates, our analysis of the Rolin Virgin's symbolism will begin by examining this visual organization and its implications.

Structurally the Rolin Madonna is about separation and overcoming separation. The left and right sides are divided by a row of floor tiles, two black columns, and the river in the background. Mitigating this division, the Virgin's robe covers most of the central row of tiles, leaving the one fully visible receding row tilting toward the right side of the picture, as does the river and Rolin's body and praying hands. This expressed yearning toward Christ is reciprocated by the infant, who reaches out across one of the columns and appears to extend his fingers to touch the background bridge, which is transformed into a visual extension of his gesture and a symbol of his blessing-an image of the path to eternal life that reached toward the donor. Other motifs-the arches that frame the view, the chronological sequence of carved Old Testament

27

JOHN L. WARD

scenes moving from left to right, and the single patterned tile in the row leading to the visible column base, which indicates the presence of a row of concealed floor tiles with the pattern of the central receding row, but crossing them-link the two halves of the picture.53 But the picture is also divided in depth. The visual pathway from the foreground to the background is blocked by a crenelated wall beyond which the scale abruptly changes. To mitigate this disjunction the artist has depicted everything in the middle distance between the foreground room and the fortifying wall at a scale too small for its spatial position. Foreground and background are also linked by a figure who extends his body forward through a crenellation to gaze at the view below and acts, because of his position very near the center of the painting, as a microcosmic state- ment of the picture's general theme of overcoming separa- tions.

On the most fundamental level of narrative the chancellor is adoring the Virgin and Child and receiving Christ's blessing. Yet the detailed context complicates and enriches the implications of this simple transaction. As has been pointed out, the Virgin is not aligned with the room nor does the gaze of the donor quite focus on the figures before him.54 The building, with its Old Testament imagery, is neither explicitly a church nor a palace. The figures in the garden and the scene below link the principal figures with the physical world, yet the room is elevated above the world, and the material splendor of pearls, gold, glass, porphyry, and brocade are transformed by Van Eyck's use of the oil medium and seem to function precisely as precious stones were used by Abbot Suger-as a means of ascent from the material to the spiritual world. Van Eyck's magical world recalls Suger's words:

When-out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God-the loveliness of the many-colored stones has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an analogical manner.55

This is precisely the effect that Van Eyck creates. Rolin is praying before a vision-or at least a visualization-of the Virgin, which is not fully material.56 Indeed, the pose of the holy mother and child corresponds to the traditional sculptural type of the Sedes Sapientiae, which suggests, as Carol Purtle noted,

that Rolin may have been meditating before a sculpture that appeared to him to come alive, the same concept that Meiss recognized in the Berlin Virgin.57 The reference to a sculptural type places us in that shifting territory between the material and the transcendent in which Van Eyck loved to work. But we need not think that Van Eyck literally meant to suggest that Rolin was meditating before a sculpture. Heinz Roosen- Runge observed that the phrases and word fragments visible along the border of the Virgin's gown all come from the Psalms and Lessons of Matins in the Officium Parvum, popularly known as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and concluded that this is the text that Rolin is reading.58 The Virgin and Child would then be the images that came to mind as the words were read and that corresponded to them, although these images would naturally be shaped by the sculptures of the Virgin and Child that were familiar to him.59.

However, as various scholars have pointed out, the time of day is shortly before dusk,60 an hour seemingly inappropriate for the Matins service, which, whenever it was celebrated, symbolized a nocturnal vigil.61 The landscape and the receding surfaces of the three arches framing it are lit from the right by sunlight angled just enough forward from parallel to the picture plane to be able to strike the edge of the wall next to Rolin's face. The direction of the light is also quite apparent in the difference between the illumination of the vineyard-covered slopes above the town at the left, which are still in full illumination, and the slopes beyond the city at the right, which have fallen into shadow. The orientation of the churches defines the direction of the exterior light as from the northwest, which is where the sun would set in the Netherlands during the summer months. Further on, a proposal will be offered for how the sunset can be reconciled with the Matins office. For the moment we must finish the job of noting the more significant visual interactions and their expressed effect.

If, in praying to Christ and his mother, the chancellor sees before him their living presences in a form resembling traditional sculptures, the surrounding world has also been affected by his meditation. Like Suger, Rolin finds himself neither on earth nor fully in Heaven, and even the exterior scene is carefully structured to reveal the full significance of the blessing that Christ extends to him. The background river separates two communities, a smaller one containing a single church and a large one with a multitude of churches [Fig. 16]. The bridge that joins them ends in a guard tower and drawbridge that make explicit their separateness as governmental entities and their relative importance. The subordination of the one city to the other, the skewing of the river banks toward the right, and the procession of a company of riders that moves across the bridge toward the large city all echo the relation-

28


16) Jan van Eyck, (The Virgin with Chancellor Rolinn, detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

29

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JOHN L. WARD

17) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin), detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

ship of Rolin and Christ in the foreground. These are, to be sure, representations of typical Netherlandish communities, so convincing that much scholarship has been devoted to iden- tifying them.62 But the relationships in the background invite the meditating viewer to see embodied in this everyday scene the theme of passage from the earthly life to the Kingdom of Heaven, the ultimate goal of Rolin's prayers. When the viewer abruptly experiences the conflation of the bridge with Christ's blessing gesture, this general theme is made particular and immediate: the viewer sees the picture suddenly convulse, as Jan's painted world of silent revery appears to come to life and the bridge of salvation springs from Christ's fingers. This virtual animation of painted images acts out the passage from one reality to a higher one, a theme that reverberates through-

out the many levels of the painting and, appearing as the conflation of the bridge and blessing gesture, seems to be a living proof of God's promise of life in Paradise.

The promise of salvation and rebirth is also conveyed by the imagery and narrative of the sculpture and its interaction with the figures. The small scale of the room results in the positioning of the relief carvings on the back wall just above Rolin's head, inviting comparison with the crown above the Virgin's head. But whereas the chancellor's head, larger and more in profile, is aligned with the walolin's head the first relief sculptures on it and seems confined by them, the Virgin's head exists in a darkened void, placed beneath a crown that defines its solidity and liberation from the wall plane and sculptures it obscures.

30


18) Jan van Eyck, <The Virgin with Chancellor Rolin?, detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

The imagery of the carved scenes that appear above Rolin begins with the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and ends with Noah's drunkenness [Fig. 17]. The choice of scenes emphasizes two concepts: Man's fallen nature and the promise of Christ's coming as redeemer. By beginning the visible scenes with the Expulsion, Van Eyck achieves an important expressive effect: the arch under which the scene is shown serves as the entrance to the Garden of Eden, from which we are visually excluded.63 The stone medium in which the scenes are portrayed thus becomes a metaphor for the hard, colorless, semi-existence of Man excluded from Para- dise and awaiting the coming of Christ, the Light of the World. St. Paul refers to the laws of Moses as "the ministration of death, engraved with letters upon stones" (II Corinthians 3:7),

in contrast to "the ministration of the spirit" (II Corinthians 3:8). In Van Eyck's picture Christ, in the form of a stone sculpture turned to flesh, assures Rolin of eternal life, while over Rolin's head, the expulsion of the First Parents from Paradise may be understood as having turned them from flesh to stone. Rolin's "crown" of stone therefore expresses the weight of original sin and his separation from God. On the other hand, Christ's Passion is prefigured in the Killing of Abel and the Drunkenness of Noah, so that the promise of salvation is present in these subjects.64

The Old Testament sequence of carvings resumes on the wall behind the Virgin with a scene so much in the shadow that its identity has provoked much disagreement [Fig. 18].65 But its resemblance to a carving in the Virgin with Canon van der

31

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JOHN L. WARD

19) Author's drawing of the cathedral visible in Fig. 16.

Paele (in both a robed figure kneels and offers a cup to an armored figure) confirm the subject as Abraham and Melchizedek [Fig. 23].66 The event is commented on by St. Augustine, who states that in it

first appeared the sacrifice which is now offered to God by Christians in the whole world, and that is fulfilled which

long after the event was said by the prophet to Christ, who was yet to come in the flesh, "thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek"-that is to say, not after the order of Aaron, for that order was to be taken away when the things shone forth which were intimated beforehand by these shadows.67

For St. Augustine, Old Testament events contained "hidden meanings" that the Christian scholar sought out, "holding firmly to the conviction ... that they must be understood as referring solely to Christ and his Church, which is the city of God."68 It is clear that Van Eyck employed Old Testament imagery in the spirit of St. Augustine's approach. The placement of Abraham and Melchizedek above the Virgin and Child equate the bread and wine given by Melchizedek with Christ's body and blood and present the event as a prefiguration of the Mass, which replaced the blood sacrifice required by the Law of Moses.

It has been objected, however, that the widespread use of typological symbolism rendered these meanings no longer hidden to anyone familiar with medieval manuscripts or stained glass windows.69 In fact, Van Eyck relied on familiarity with traditional symbols to alert the viewer to the fact that symbolic meanings are present in his work. But these meanings become so interwoven in the space and design of this picture that, on the one side, they appear to permeate the work and invite the viewer to search for ever less visible, though still familiar, meanings and, on the other hand, they unexpectedly spring to life and manifest themselves as revelations. In the case of the depiction of Abraham and Melchizedek, once it is identified its typological meaning is explicit, but its placement in the dark corner of the room and partial covering by the Virgin's shining crown not only delay recognition but permit it to participate in the reenactment of the moment "when the things shone forth which were intimated beforehand by these shadows."70 The Virgin's crown is visually the counterpart of the sculptural frieze over Rolin's head, and its placement over her head covers the Old Testa- ment scenes on her side, in effect freeing her from her position under them. Any informed viewer meditating on the sequence of carved images would recognize that the most likely candidate for the final covered scene is Moses Receiving the Law.71 Thus, the crowning of the Virgin symbolically transforms her into the Church-Ecclesia-as she appears in the Berlin Virgin in a Church and signals the replacement of the Old Testament Law of Moses and the blood sacrifice.72

That Van Eyck intended to emphasize the Virgin's role as Church is demonstrated by the cathedral visible by her shoul- der. The largest and most visible building in the city, it has

32


also been placed so that its form echoes that of the Virgin with her infant son on her lap [Fig. 19]. That is, one of the western towers is occluded by the foreground wall, so the other tower echoes the Virgin's erect torso, the crossing tower

repeats Christ's upright form, and the buttresses and chapels of the chevet resemble the shape of the Virgin's robe as it cascades over her knees. By this visual analogy Van Eyck creates not only a symbolic reference to a cathedral but also a living image of one.

The Virgin's form creates another visual effect as well. In

comparison to any of the Sedes Sapientiae prototypes or to Van Eyck's other seated Virgins, the Infant Christ sits far forward on the Virgin's lap, which is amorphous beneath her

sprawling robe. In sharp contrast to his other seated Virgins, only a small patch of blue gown is visible, and where the outer robe gathers around the Virgin's elbows in those pictures to set off the arms from the lap [Fig. 12], in the Rolin Virgin the

ample drapery provides few clues about the body it covers. If one nevertheless attempts to define the position of the

Virgin's body under the robe, it becomes evident that no nor-

mally-proportioned body beneath it could provide a lap for the infant Christ to sit on [Fig. 20]. Once again, to deny that this result was intended one must not only argue that Van

Eyck was disinterested in the accuracy of the anatomy beneath his drapery (which he clearly was). One must also claim that the artist was unaware of, or indifferent to, the remarkable disparity between this figure and drapery and those in his other pictures. And one must believe that the conse-

quences of this arrangement were also unplanned. The unique form of Van Eyck's Virgin and Child produces

several related effects. First, Christ's nakedness is emphasized by its contrast with the Virgin's enveloping robe, and the appearance of her detached hand reaching through its

parted borders creates the effect that the child is being pushed forward through the opening, with the accompanying suggestion that we are witnessing his emergence from the vir-

ginal womb.73 Although the orb that he holds, signifying his terrestrial power, and his posture like a king on his throne, have precedents among the Sedes Sapietiae figures, his naked body and the large cross surmounting the orb, positioned over his chest, do not.74 Van Eyck's emphasis on the double nature of Christ-a marriage of divine spirit to mortal flesh to

produce a being that was both God and man, both divine ruler and carnal sacrifice-relates conceptually to lines from Psalm 18, recited in the Little Office, which, based on visible fragments, can be assumed to fit in its entirety on the Virgin's hem: "He hath set His tabernacle in the sun. And He as a

bridegroom coming out of his bridechamber hath reoiced...."75 St. Augustine interpreted the words to apply to Christ, of whom

20) Author's drawing of a normally-proportioned body positioned beneath the Virgin's robes in Fig. 1.

he wrote that "he came forth from the Virgin's womb, where God contracted with human nature as it were the union of

bridegroom and bride."76 It is precisely this wedding of divine king and mortal child, of judge and sacrifice, that Van

Eyck shows us. The idea that the Virgin/Church holds up the Christ child as the substitute for the blood sacrifice of the Mosaic Law and the Synagogue is confirmed by the typological prefiguring in the scene of Abraham and Melchizedek above them that fades into shadows as its prophecy is fulfilled. But it is also indicated by the word fragment "LEVATA," excerpted from the text "Quoniam elevata est magnificentia tue, super coelos," and placed so that it curves into the infant's

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JOHN L. WARD

21) Author's drawing showing the position of the letters "LEVATA" on the Virgin's robe in Fig. 16.

back [Fig. 21].77 The idea suggested is that the holding up of the child is a visualization of the underlying significance of the Elevation of the Host, the moment when, according to the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the Communion wafer mystically becomes the body of Christ. Since in that moment Christ

appears to the congregation in the flesh (although marked by no outward change of appearance), it is equivalent to his be-

ing held out as a naked infant to the donor-but also to his

being raised on the cross to become the sacrificial offering distributed in the Mass,78 an idea implied by the cross he holds before him. The cleverly designed ambiguities in the arrangement of the Virgin and Child enables the infant Christ to sit enthroned on his mother's lap even as he appears to emerge from the opening in her robe and to be lifted upward and

forward, not only by the Virgin's hands but by the ballooning effect of the voluminous drapery. What one witnesses, then, is Christ in his full significance: as the sacrificial offering im- parted in the Mass to absolve the celebrant of his sin, he is held out towards the chancellor; as the divine king, he sits on the Throne of Judgment and extends salvation to Rolin through his blessing.

As Christ is lifted toward Rolin the motion will bring him in front of the dark column that his legs and raised arm already cover. The central columns are associated with the Old Testament and loss of eternal life by their connection to the wall decorated by Old Testament scenes, by their visual effect of blocking passage between the two background cities and between the chancellor and the Virgin and Child, and by their dark color. Christ as the dawning sun appears to be replacing the era of darkness, just as the crowning of the Virgin covers over the Old Testament scenes at the right. This is suggested by the last visible fragment on the Virgin's hem, "S SAC," part of the response, "Truly happy are you, O Holy Vir- gin Mary, and worthy of all praise. For from you has dawned the sun of justice, Christ, our God."79 And it is precisely the mystical marriage of Christ's spirit to the flesh of the bride/ mother, attested to by his appearance in the world, that brings about the dawning of the new era and symbolically transforms the Virgin Mary into the Church. That this concept was intended by Van Eyck is shown by his depiction of small rabbits squashed under the torus of the left column base [Fig. 16]. Paintings by Petrus Christus, one of which has a strong Eyckian connection, make explicit the idea conveyed here: like the monkey beneath the Romanesque column in the Metropoli- tan Museum's Annunciation and the men staggering beneath the weight of the columns supporting Adam and Eve in the Washington Nativity [Fig. 22], the rabbits, under columns associated with the Old Testament, represent sinful man before the coming of Christ, fatally burdened by the sins of his an- cestors.80 But Van Eyck expresses by his design the visual effect that the lifting forward of her son by the Virgin and the springing of the bridge from his fingers toward Rolin's praying hands will breach the last barrier and achieve the donor's salvation.

The interaction of the figures and architecture-here and in the other two paintings discussed made possible by the reduced scale of the architecture-suggests the presence of another symbolic concept: Christ, by appearing to be in the process of being set beneath a column associated with the Old Testament, becomes the foundation of the new edifice built on his sacrifice and grace, replacing the Synagogue, built on the Law. Thus he fulfills Isaiah's prophecy, "Behold I will lay a stone in the foundations of Sion, a tried stone, a corner-

34


stone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation" (Isaiah 28:16), a description that Peter saw as fulfilled in Jesus (I Pe- ter 2:4-9), whom he described (using the same mixed meta- phors as Van Eyck) as he "who hath called you out of darkness into his admirable light." Moreover, the words of Isaiah are suggested by the phrase "SYON FIRMATA SVM," appropriately placed on the hem as it falls to the floor.81

Among the remaining puzzles, the one that has most in- trigued scholars is the presence of the two small men on the parapet [Fig. 2]. Various explanations have been offered for who they are and why they are there-and for where, in fact, they are.82 Perhaps a clue to the puzzle can be discovered by answering another puzzle: why are the figures (as well as the garden and parapet) so much smaller than they should be for their spatial position? The discrepancy is huge. Based on the relative size of the foreground figures, if it is assumed that the surface on which the figures stand is level with the floor of the room, then more than a third of the standing man's figure should be above the horizon!83 Can such a remarkable deviation from visual reality be explained by Van Eyck's unaware- ness of, or disinterest in, Renaissance perspective theory?

A different way to put the question is to ask what expressive effect Van Eyck's arrangement creates. The small crenelated wall is almost exactly the same height as the band of carvings above Rolin's head, and the two figures set against the wall invite comparison with the them. But the figures' size also enables Van Eyck to place them in such a relationship to Christ's upraised arm and the connecting bridge that the reflected tower of the bridge reaches down to touch the head of the man leaning through the crenellation. The effect, then, is that Christ's blessing gesture extends also to this figure. The alignment of the column-like shape of the tower and its reflection above the outward-leaning figure reverses the oppressive effect of the architecture associated with the Old Testament that weighs down on Rolin and the rabbits and that symbolizes man's sin and damnation: the weightless reflected tower emanating from God's saving grace substitutes for the inflexible weight of the Law. And in Van Eyck's space, in which widely separated objects abruptly collapse together, it is perhaps not too improbable to see the figure as bending to receive Christ's reflected blessing and to drink this consecrated water and, with his companion, being turned, Pygmalion-like, from relief carvings in stone, like the Old Testament figures in the frieze above Rolin's head, into living beings. Moreover, small plants and flowers begin to erode the wall itself and symbolize a transformation from death to life, a transformation of the whole world into Paradise. That this is the intended implication is confirmed by one other detail: whereas the light in the landscape is parallel with the garden wall, the shadows

22) Petrus Christus, ((The Nativity), detail, National Gallery of Art (Andrew R. Mellon Coll.), Washington. Photo: museum.

cast by the small figures come from the direction of Christ, the Sun of Justice, as he issues from his mother's womb. And by the relatively uniform orientation of the visible churches it is clear that, as in his other paintings, in contrast to the direction of the natural light, the sacred light that strikes the two men comes directly from the North.84 The placement of the two figures near the geometric center of the painting and the

35

JOHN L. WARD

fact that the one touched by the reflected bridge has his back turned to us and is in the act of viewing the world below suggests his identity and a reason for his presence: he is the symbolic equivalent of the viewer gazing at Van Eyck's painted universe. Thus a viewer who meditated devoutly on the painting and witnessed its disguised meanings acted out before him would also see himself share in the blessing extended to Rolin. This conclusion would support the widely-held view that the man in the red turban is Jan van Eyck. With his raised hand echoing that of the Infant Christ, the creator of the depicted world is presented as the observer's companion and guide, sensed by him as an unseen presence.85

My approach to Van Eyck's symbolism assumes that, as an artist of extraordinary ability and expressive power, he or- ganized familiar religious images within naturalistic contexts in ways that produced complex visual correlations between them for the purpose of expressing fundamental Christian concepts as direct, dynamic revelations. If this is so, one test for the validity of symbolic interpretations of his work is the extent to which they participate in this visual expression of meaning. This test corresponds roughly to that proposed by Harbison to determine whether the small details in Van Eyck's paintings are part of a "preconceived symbolic programme."86 Harbison contends that in such a program we should find "something structural in the image that supports this. There should be some large compositional element, or interaction between elements in the work, which makes the meaning essential, integral, incontrovertible."87 He believes, on the contrary, that Van Eyck scattered symbolic references to religious doctrine throughout his religious paintings without much regard for "their precise sequential and theological meaning"88 and that he deliberately obscured forms and relationships to defeat a precise, programmatic reading. He views Van Eyck's pictures as mingling references to religion with imagery that reflects the circumstances, needs, and desires of the donor and artist.89

My approach to the Rolin Virgin's symbolism has been to show how the overall design and interaction between pictorial elements established the thematic concept that is elabo- rated in the symbolic significance of even the smallest details. I have argued that all of the pictures' sub-themes relate to passage from one state to another-from the Old Testa- ment to the New, from monochromatic stone to color and life, from sin to forgiveness, from death to rebirth, from earth to Heaven. It is precisely in the working out of this theme that the ambiguities mentioned by Harbison occur. The indeter- minacy of the setting permits the donor to visualize, or have a vision of, Heaven without physically being transported there. And just as Rolin is elevated to a higher, though unstable, level

of reality, so by creating spatial ambiguities Van Eyck transcends the static nature of pictures and permits the viewer, by suddenly observing shifts of space and meaning, to sense that he or she is witnessing a series of revelations.

Since Harbison regards the visual obscurity of the carved scene by the Virgin's crown as posing a dilemma for scholars who claim to see a coherent program of doctrinal meaning in this picture, it is useful to test the present interpretation against it. The obscuring of Abraham and Melchizedek by the appearance of Christ and his Church conforms well to Harbison's test for a coherent symbolic program: it is "something structural," an "interaction between elements in the work which makes the meaning essential, integral, incontrovertible."90 Moreover, the combination of the subject and treatment also contributes to the theme of passage from a lower to a higher state, which is the basic theme of the painting. And because of the importance of the subject to the painting's general meaning, Van Eyck left various clues concerning its identity. First, although difficult to see-certainly more so under its present yellowed varnish than when first painted-the kneeling figure holds a chalice or goblet as he does in the representation of the subject in the Van der Paele Virgin, an attribute not specific to any other proposed subject. Second, the subject continues the chronological sequence established by the carved stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah at the left: Abraham is the next significant Biblical figure after Noah and the only one from Genesis ever proposed. Third, the subject is a well-known typological antecedent for Christ as priest and sacrifice, as explicitly indicated by the subject's placement in the Van der Paele Virgin, as will be discussed further on. To leave the symbolic connection with Christ in no doubt, the soldier behind Abraham turns away from the meeting with Melchizedek and looks directly down at the holy child. The placement of the phrase "LEVATA," curving into Christ's back, a clear reference in this context to the Elevation of the Mass,91 supports the typological correlation, as does the Virgin's suspended crown, since the emergence of Christ into the world as priest and sacrifice, and the simultaneous transformation of the Virgin into Ecclesia fulfill and supersede the promise conveyed by the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek.

All in all, Van Eyck's ability to find expressive visual means to enact the fundamental Christian doctrines that he presents is the ultimate proof of the picture's meaning. In the process of prolonged meditation the still picture seems to come alive with its dynamic interactions. And in watching the passage from a static to a dynamic state the viewer has the experience not of decoding a work of great erudition but of ascending to a level of heightened consciousness at which the spiritual

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meaning of existence seems gradually to reveal itself in the visible world.

But although Van Eyck's symbolism contributes to a uni- fied expressive meaning, this unity does not result from the artist's fidelity to single textual sources or programs assigned by donors or devised by religious advisors. As Harbison points out, Jan's adherence to a program created by an advisor in the case of the Ghent Altarpiece produced a very different work,92 on the interior panels of which is none of the disguised, visually enactive symbolism found in his other major works. Moreover, numerous revisions in Van Eyck's painting, revealed by infrared photography and reflectography, demonstrate that the iconography was often modified in the process of creation, not fixed beforehand. For Harbison, such changes in the Rolin Virgin are explained by donor intervention and support his view that the symbolism is tailored to the donor's particular needs and interests. Thus the revision of Christ's gesture to one of blessing, and the elimination of a money bag hanging from Rolin's belt in the underdrawing are regarded as clear evidence that the patron insisted on the changes.93 But Van Eyck also altered the positions of the hands of Christ and St. George in the Van derPaele Virgin, the hands of Arnolfini and his bride in the famous double portrait, and those of Adam and Eve in the Ghent Altarpiece, in each case resulting, as in the Rolin Virgin in a more coherent and expressive meaning or effect.94 In view of the care Van Eyck gave to positioning hands and the contribution of Christ's blessing gesture to the Rolin Virgin's total meaning, the patron's intervention is not needed to account for the change. And since the purse Rolin wore was such a fixed part of his costume that he can be recognized by it in other pictures,95 is it not more likely that Van Eyck would have been troubled by its symbolic ambiguity (does it suggest largess or ostenta- tion?) and the way it distracted from the picture's primary meaning than Rolin would have been?

If Van Eyck did show the chancellor the underdrawing to give him an idea of how the picture would look, is it not more likely that he used the opportunity to convince his patron that the painting was better without the purse than that Rolin insisted on its removal? Although Rolin's inspection of the work at an early stage is entirely possible, the present theory that Van Eyck planned for the symbolic meaning to unfold in a series of revelations-above all for the benefit of the patron- and that this process relied on the symbolism's being initially overlooked suggests that the artist was largely left to carry out the work as he saw fit.96

Undoubtedly Van Eyck adjusted the symbolism and imagery of his painting to the needs and interests of his donors and attempted to present them as he believed they would

wish to be seen. The problem is how to confirm the presence of intended references to the patron's world and activities and how to determine his degree of supervision or interference. Since many of the connections that have been proposed between Van Eyck's patrons and imagery in his pictures cannot be validated by pointing to any structural properties that make these connections incontrovertible, in order to rise above the level of conjecture, their legitimacy must be determined by some other standard.

Two details that have been connected with Rolin do in fact appear to contribute to the picture's symbolic interplay of ideas and invite correlation with Rolin's documented activities. One of these is the church that is visible just above his praying hands.97 Its position makes it appear as an extension of his plea for God's mercy, with its steeple echoing the upraised hands, and in view of Rolin's long list of gifts to churches it is also easy to see it as an offering to God. Whether it represents a specific church that Rolin funded is problematic,98 but in view of Van Eyck's symbolic methods and its position above Rolin's hands it has a strong claim to a specific significance. This raises the possibility that Van Eyck devised the strategically placed church as a subtle and expressive symbol of Rolin's generous support of religion, a calculated substitution for the purse he wished to delete.

The second detail associated with Rolin is the hill covered with vineyards, also above Rolin's praying hands. Snyder noted that Rolin was a noted entrepreneur of wines and later donated some of his best vineyards to the Hospice at Beaune.99 Snyder also related the vineyards to the grapevine motif that begins in the scene of the Drunkenness of Noah and deco- rates the first arch, and he suggested that they may have a eucharistic meaning, since Noah prefigured the suffering Christ and Melchizedek on the other side prefigured Christ at the Last Supper.100 Van Buren suggested a different connection between the vineyards and Rolin. She notes that in the com- mentary on the Matins office by Honorius Augustodunensis in his Gemma animae, a work that she believes supplies much of the imagery for the Rolin Virgin, Honorius compares the celebrants of the nocturnal vigil (Matins) to workers laboring in the vineyard after Christ's parable in Matthew 20.

These two interpretations, rather than being alternatives, support one another. Since Rolin was personally involved with wines, a comparison of laboring in the vineyards with celebrat- ing the Matins office would have taken on a personal meaning. And, although Van Buren believed that the time of day was morning,101 Van Eyck's representation of Matins at sunset strengthens her argument that Van Eyck drew upon Honorius's text for his interpretation. In Honorius's metaphor, the present life is an ongoing time of ignorance, a nighttime that will last

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JOHN L. WARD

23) Jan van Eyck, <The Virgin with Canon van der Paele), 24) Jan van Eyck, ((The Virgin with Canon van der Paele>, detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel. detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

until Christ's return during which the laborers in the vineyard work during daylight hours.102 Thus it would seem that the light of the setting sun ends this period of toiling in the vineyards "darkened by the shades of ignorance"103 as Christ, the rising Sun of Justice, emerges to sit on his judgment throne and, through the bridge that springs from his blessing hand, extends the promise of Paradise to Rolin and the viewer.

In the Virgin with the Canon van der Paele [Fig. 12], Van Eyck's disguised symbols are again woven into the picture's design in such a way that, while the viewer sees Christ with his mother as in a vision, the role of the holy pair in enabling man to return to Paradise is also mystically revealed. As in the Rolin Virgin, the precise place and event represented in the Van der Paele Virgin is problematic: is the canon meditating and visualizing the holy figures? Or has he died and gone to Heaven? His informed eyes and the breviary he holds suggest that, as with Rolin, the other figures appear to him in a meditative visualization or vision. But the centering of the Virgin's substantial throne in an apse, the absence of a prie- dieu and the inclusion of a sponsoring saint who, lips apart, is actively speaking on the donor's behalf and treading on his surplice, and the attention he attracts from this sacred group indicate his corporeal presence in their world. In contrast to the perfect alignment of the Virgin and Child with one another but not with the donor or the room in the Rolin Virgin, the holy figures in Van der Paele's picture respond to the canon's

presence: the Virgin turns her head, Christ twists his body, and the parrot's head makes a half-revolution to view him.

The fact that Van der Paele was in failing health and antici- pating death when he commissioned the picture makes it prob- able that we see him, with his impending death weighing on his mind, praying and visualizing his presentation before the Throne of Grace after his death.104 He himself appears as the living canon surrounded by his visualization, in which he seems to see the figures looking at him as they would when he appeared after death before the heavenly throne by his patron saint. The primary difference between the situations of the two donors is that Rolin sees the Virgin and Child appear mystically before him in a transfigured world to offer a blessing and promise of future salvation, while Van der Paele sees how it will be when he dies and comes before the Throne of Grace.

The picture's visual design and orchestrated meanings are built up in two intersecting systems, both of which center on the Virgin and Child. The most obvious relationship is created by the opposed positions of St. Donatian, the patron saint of the church, and St. George, the patron saint of the donor. Van Eyck uses their balanced placement to either side of Christ to articulate the two different aspects of his role in history that are mirrored in the roles of the saints: by his presenting the bread and wine of the Last Supper as his body and blood, Christ acted as both priest and sacrifice; as the one who van- quishes Satan and death he was the model for the Christian

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soldier. To articulate these meanings Van Eyck disposed the carvings on the throne and pilaster capitals to reflect the left- right division.105 On the throne arm by St. Donatian, Cain kills Abel, a prefiguration of the Crucifixion (which, in turn, signi- fied both the birth of the Church and the giving of the body and blood that paid for man's sin).106 The pilaster capital behind St. Donatian's cross shows two scenes, Abraham sacri- ficing Isaac, also a prefiguration of the Crucifixion, and Abraham and Melchizedek, which foretold the institution of the Mass [Fig. 23].107 The carving on the throne arm on the

right, Samson opening the lion's mouth, is a prefiguration of the Christ overcoming Satan or the Harrowing of Hell.108 On the pilaster capital by St. George's elbow are two more scenes, one of an unidentified rider striking down armored figures and one of David killing Goliath, a familiar prefiguration of Christ defeating death or the Harrowing of Hell [Fig. 24].109

Given the appropriateness of the other five carvings to the role of the saint nearest them and as foreshadowings of Christ, it may be assumed that the rider of the unidentified carving is also a figure of the Christian soldier and a figure of Christ as avenging God. But the image does not include features that permit it to be positively identified as any of the more commonly depicted typological subjects. It has been proposed that the carving represents Abraham's battle with four kings and his rescue of Lot described in Genesis 14.110 However, discrepancies make that identification unlikely. The identification of the rider as Abraham was based on the resemblance of the bearded head on his shield to that on Abraham's shield in the scene of his meeting with Melchizedek on the left of the picture. But, as Hitchcock noted, the shapes of the shields differ, as do the faces on them, and the rider wears a long-sleeved robe while Abraham wears armor in the scene with Melchizedek,"1 a discrepancy all the greater because Abraham encountered Melchizedek as he returned from rescuing Lot (Genesis 14:14-18). Moreover, the only man who might be Lot seems more alarmed than relieved at the sight of the rider, the woman acts more curious than liberated, none of the figures attacked by the rider is identified as a king112 and the rider's beard is unlike Abraham's in the scene with Melchizedek. Furthermore, the identified scenes form a chronological sequence initiated by Adam and Eve immediately behind the orphery of St. Donatian's cope at the left [Fig. 25], as do the Old Testament scenes in the Rolin Virgin and the Washington Annunciation, whereas Lot's rescue occurred earlier than either of the Abraham scenes.

The character of the heads on the shields in both scenes though different, suggests that they may be images of the Deity.113 But we need not assume that the two shield holders, despite disparate appearances, are the same man. Rather,

25) Jan van Eyck, (<The Virgin with Canon van der Paele), detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

these shields should probably be understood as symbols of God's protection and clearly related to Paul's advice to Chris- tians to clothe themselves in the armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-17). As Hitchcock points out, this concept is developed in the armor of St. George, on whose breastplate is written "Adonai"-the Hebrew word for "Lord"-and on various surfaces of which are reflected the images of the Virgin and Child.114 The scene might then represent Joshua in his con- quest of the nations living in the land of Canaan (Joshua XI). According to St. Augustine, "It was to prefigure this [the ad- vent of Christ in the flesh] that it was not Moses, who received the law for the people on Mount Sinai, that led the people into the land of promise, but Joshua, whose name also was changed at God's command, so that he was called Jesus."115 Joshua's ruthless battles against the nations of Canaan are

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JOHN L. WARD

presented in the Glossa ordinaria116 as a figure for the Christian's struggle, with Christ's help, to destroy the corrupt elements living in his being in order to be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as Joshua helped the Israelites enter the promised land. God directly charged Joshua as his chosen leader and reassured him with these words: "No man shall be able to resist you all the days of thy life: as I have been with Moses, so will I be with thee: I will not leave thee nor forsake thee" (Joshua 1:6). Consequently, Joshua is, so to speak, the heir to God's shield, handed down from Abraham and an apt symbol for St. George, the Christian soldier who battles to defeat sin and prepare the way for the Christian's salvation. One must be struck by Van Eyck's choice of a subject that, whether or not my identification is correct and in sharp contrast to the other scenes here and elsewhere in his work, was infrequently depicted and would not have been readily recognized. If Van Eyck was in fact attempting to find a story that conveyed the appropriate typological meaning while positioning itself in a chronological sequence after Abraham and before David, this may have seemed the best option available, given the compelling analogy between the role of Joshua and Christ as military leaders bringing the chosen people to the promised land.

Although the foregoing symbolism is complex and embedded, once it was noticed, the typological orchestration of background relief carvings with the figures on the throne and the two standing saints-and the interaction of all of them with Christ-could have been figured out by anyone familiar with the stories and their traditional typological significance. And even if the rampaging rider could not be identified, his military character in relation to St. George and the proximate carvings of David and Goliath and Samson and the Lion should have made the basic typology evident.

But Van Eyck goes further in creating the suggestion of interplay between the foreground figures and background carvings. On the left capital the figures behind Abraham do not watch his meeting with Melchizedek but unmistakably turn their heads to the left and downward, as if they were aware of the small, golden, brightly lit churchlike structure beneath the cross held by St. Donatian.117 The armored figure behind Abraham turns his body and leans out to get a good look, and the man immediately next to the buttresses raises his joined hands in prayer. Since the story of Abraham and Melchizedek symbolizes the replacement of the blood sacrifice by salvation through grace, instituted with the piercing of Christ's side at the Crucifixion and the simultaneous institution of the Church, the outward glance of the spectators suggests that they foresee this future event in the one at which they are present.118 Furthermore, the theme is repeated in the capital

on the right: a figure at the right of David and Goliath, with hands raised, looks outward as if at the armored arm of St. George, placed approximately symmetrical to the church-like structure beneath St. Donatian's cross, where, on the elbow and streaking up the forearm, are visible dim, distorted reflections of Christ and the Virgin. If the rider on this capital carries the shield of God, then the figure at the right may be understood to foresee the armor provided by Christian faith and reflecting Christ's image.

One further symbolic conjunction of foreground and background forms hints at the freeing of mankind from the sin of the first parents through Christ's sacrifice: the cross, which is held before the background columns, appears from our vantage point to fit perfectly between them, as if the space had been made to contain it. At the point where the only background surface to receive direct illumination is overlapped by one of the column capitals, a single pearl, extending from the left arm of the cross appears to absorb the weight of the plinth that it seems to touch, as if to ease the crushing burden on the back of the small figure immediately below. The detail is so minor that it may be difficult to believe it was designed with any deliberate meaning. But its striking similarity in form and implied significance to the numerous examples of symbolic conjunctions in Van Eyck's work discussed in part I of this article confirms the artist's intent, as does one further fact: the left arm of the cross is able to just touch the capital behind it because it is longer than the corresponding arm by precisely the diameter of a pearl.

To the left-right and front-back interplay of symbolic meaning and pictorial structure just described, Van Eyck added a second kind of structure that creates an additional set of meanings, one that intersects and expands upon the first. The semi- circular space in which the scene is set cooperates with a circular narrative movement.119 This begins in the center with the symbolic Garden of Eden, suggested by the splendid carpet and cloth of honor and by the carved figures of Adam and Eve on the throne arms. The first parents appear again on a fragment of a pilaster capital barely visible behind St. Donatian, whose splendid cope contrasts sharply with their nudity and stony color. Since the height of the carving is approximately the same as the width of the orphery bordering the cope, since it aligns with it, and since Adam placed on the left front edge of the capital and Eve on the receding left side appear to be moving to the left, there is a visual suggestion that they emerge from the cope. This effect would not be especially meaningful if the subject is the Fall of Man, as has been suggested.120 Although the figures are hard to see, a number of details con- flict with any known representation of that subject: neither a tree nor a fruit is visible, and the third head is on the bearded

40


Adam's side and behind him (whereas the serpent is always placed with Eve or between the figures). Eve's left knee is lifted as if she is moving to the left, away from Adam, her body is overlapped by his, her head appears to be turned backward to look behind Adam at the third figure, and his downward gaze expresses dejection. On the other hand, all but one of these traits are frequently found in depictions of the Expulsion from the Garden, in which case the third head would belong to the expelling angel. The anomalous trait, the movement to the left, is dictated by the desire to show the figures as emerging from the cope. Since, in the armrest carving, Eve already holds the fruit and, since she and her hus- band cover their pubic areas with their hands, they represent the Original Sin and the Fall. A separate depiction of the Fall would be superfluous. Moreover, the use of the Expulsion as the first narrative scene in the Old Testament sequence paral- lels Jan's choice in the Rolin Virgin, where it is used to convey the idea that in the Expulsion Adam and Eve were cast into a stony existence from which only Christ's death will free them.121 The juxtaposition with St. Donatian's cope, by conveying the sense that the figures have been expelled from a world of splendid color into one of stony monochrome, is an expressive symbol for their loss of Paradise and eternal life. If my arguments concerning the unidentified rider on the right pilaster are accepted, the pilaster capital scenes are all in chronological sequence. This creates a progression that follows the curving space around to the right, and finally back to the New Adam and Eve in Heavenly Paradise, who by extending the flowers to the canon cancel out the Original Sin and en- dow him with eternal life.

If the rider on the capital next to David and Goliath is in fact Joshua, it would seem that Van Eyck, using what might be called masked conjunctional symbolism, has suggested, by the sequence of the historiated capitals, yet another symbolic fulfillment of the Old Testament Law by the Madonna and Child. Kern pointed out in 1912 that the intervals of the visible arches and columns leave room for precisely one column behind the cloth of honor,122 the capital of which would be located exactly behind the Virgin's head, as would the historiated capital of the pilaster immediately behind it. The chronological sequence confirmed by the identification of the rider as Joshua requires that one of the two covered subjects (assuming the same number of scenes on the visible capitals) must be the most significant Old Testament event between the time of Abraham and Joshua, the same one that is presumably eclipsed by the crown in the Rolin Virgin and that, as a wall painting, is placed in the darkest corner of theAnnunciation in Washington,123 namely, Moses Receiving the Law.

But in addition to depicting a church that departs from tradition in the placement of a (concealed) column and pilaster on its center axis124 and the resemblance of the narrative sequence to that of the Rolin Virgin, Van Eyck left one further hint that he wanted the viewer to think about the subject hidden behind the cloth of honor. It has been mentioned above that various figures in Van Eyck's relief sculptures are distracted from the narrative events they stand next to by things they see beyond the confines of their own sculptural space. The response of the woman at the left of the scene with the ruthless rider makes little sense as a reflection either of terror or joy; she appears to look at the observer, not the rider, and points to the left, where the observer can see nothing. She can only be trying to attract attention to the covered pilaster and to interest the viewer in deciding what subjects appear on it.

If the cloth of honor covers Moses receiving the Law of the Old Covenant, it also recalls the veil with which Moses covered his face after receiving the Commandments (Exodus 34:33). This veiling was referred to by Saint Paul, who said that Christian ministers spoke plainly,

And not as Moses put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not steadfastly look on the face of that which was made void.

But their senses were made dull. For until this day, the self same veil, in the reading of the Old Testament, remaineth not taken away (because in Christ it is done away)....

But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. (II Corinthians, 3:13- 14, 18)

And this is the comparison that Van Eyck gives us: the veiling of Moses contrasted with the immediate revelation of Christ, who, by his presence, transforms the surrounding saints into reflected aspects of him. Christ's mother also participates in this spiritual transformation: according to the frame's inscrip- tion, she "is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his good- ness."125

As the donor's patron, St. George was virtually required to be present in the picture. But the sculptural subjects on the background pilaster visible on his side connect his victory over a dragon (and rescue of a maiden) with Christ's victory over Satan and death and his Harrowing of Hell.126 The capital of the red column at the far right of the painting behind St. George is overrun with surly-looking dragons, surely intended

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JOHN L. WARD

26) Jan van Eyck, <The Virgin with Canon van der Paele?, detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

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to refer to the saint's combat with one of their kind, as Hitchcock has remarked [Fig. 26].127 Although their great num- bers at first suggest that their power is in ascendancy, they are imprisoned in a tightly-woven network of interlaced bands, so that finally they give the appearance of having been rounded up and packed, snarling, into this foliated cage. Because St. George's lance rests against the capital, the cross on his crusader's flag appears to flow out of the crossed bands that define the capital's form. Since the cross repeats, in freer form and color, the crossed pattern of the stone bands from which it descends, the implication is that the bands on the capital prefigure Christ's cross within an architecture that both in its Biblical sculptures and its Romanesque form, is used by Van Eyck to refer to the Old Testament.128 The likelihood that this idea was intended is strengthened by the fact that, of the twenty-seven visible capitals with similar decorative interlace in Van Eyck's work, the one by St. George's pennant is that with the most consistently cruciform pattern of nearly straight bands.129

The cross on St. George's standard in turn transmits its reflected image to the top of his shield beside the bouche de la lance, the notch in its upper edge. Beneath the strap holding the shield on St. George's back appears the reflection of a diminutive figure wearing red stockings and a red chaperon turban that mark him as a contemporary witness, very possi- bly the artist himself [Fig. 27].130 Toward the bottom of the shield the red column is reflected, appearing to recede hori- zontally into depth because of the shield's curvature. The name of God and the reflections of the Virgin and Child on St. George's armor identify it with the armor of God described by St. Paul, who associates the shield that is part of this armor with faith (Ephesians 6:16). To St. Paul, personal faith was connected with the Christian Faith, symbolized by Ecclesia. Consequently, the images reflected on the shield enact the ascendancy of Ecclesia, symbolized by the reflected cross at the top, over Synagogia, symbolized by the now-prone column associated with the Old Testament.131 Although the small figure probably represents Van Eyck, it is in any case more than a kind of private conceit. It is the resolution of the division between foreground and background initiated at the left by the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden and, visually, into the sculptural world of monochromatic twilight in the picture's background. St. George's body blocks a view of the pilaster capital that would be symmetrically opposite the Expulsion. The small figure reflected in the shield is approximately the size of the figures in the Expulsion and placed near enough to the surface position of the pilaster scene covered by St. George to substitute for it. The result is that Adam and Eve, seeming to be driven from St. Donatian's cope as if from

27) Jan van Eyck, <(The Virgin with Canon van der Paele), detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

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Paradise, are balanced by a figure that is in the protective space of St. George's shield. If there were once three figures, as has been suggested,132 they would have balanced in number the three figures on the capital at the left. With the cross reflected above them and the prone column of the Old Testa-

28) Jan van Eyck, <(The Virgin with Canon van der Paele), detail. Photo: A.C.L. Brussel.

ment reflected below, the artist presents the reflected figures as having been released from the monochromatic, stony world of the capitals through the intervention of the cross, symbolic of Christ's sacrifice. Essentially the image is an analog of the

Harrowing of Hell and the victory over evil that is the theme of the right side of the picture. And since the shield reflects

figures who stand in front of the picture, Van Eyck includes himself and viewers in the salvation extended to the donor.

In this article The Rolin and Van derPaele Virgins have been discussed in terms of the use of the architecture and its sculptural decoration to represent man after the Fall, doomed to a colorless world of twilight and the use of foreground figures to

represent liberation from this era through Christ's appearance and sacrifice, so that the saints of the Van der Paele Virgin, by the vivid color and splendor of their garments, convey the idea of the Church and its members as sharing in God's light, as does the Virgin, who is "the unspotted mirror of God's majesty." By contrast, it was the sin of Adam and Eve that clouded the mirrors of their souls and threw them into darkness.133 The

Holy Scriptures were referred to by various Church Fathers as mirrors, enabling the reader to cleanse the mirror of his soul and see God more clearly.134 It is perhaps his devout meditation on God's word that has enabled Van der Paele to visualize so vividly the moment when he will be presented at the heav-

enly throne for admission to Paradise and he will see God face to face. Clearly Van Eyck, in playing with these ideas, was fully aware of his own painting as a spotless mirror in which the viewer with a pure soul could see reflected not only the holy images but the deeper meanings not visible to the viewer mired in sin. The architecture and figures of the Van der Paele Virgin, in addition to conveying symbolic ideas about darkness and

light, also interact to articulate a second symbolic idea. Just as, in the Rolin Virgin, the Holy Mother as Ecclesia and Christ as the foundation stone symbolically supplant the architecture, so in the Van der Paele Virgin the standing saints are represen- tatives and embodiments of the Church and replace the architecture behind them, an idea conveyed by their symbolic association with the scenes on the background capitals, by the

alignment of their heads with the column capitals behind them, by the interaction of their cross and crusader's pennant with the architecture, by their juxtaposition with the Expulsion on one side and with the reflected artist (who suggests by his position the replacement of the era of darkness and death with an era of light and salvation by faith) on the other. The theoretical basis of this replacement is the imagery of I Peter 2:4-5, which refers to Christ as a "living stone" and instructs members of the early Christian communities to "be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house," and Ephesians 2:19-22, which instructs the Ephesian Christians that they are "built upon the

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foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the corner-stone."

The reflected image in St. George's shield is not the only means Van Eyck uses to unite the viewer with the picture's visionary world and its message of salvation. Panofsky pointed out the picture's intimacy, achieved by including us within the curve of a circular building that "draws us, quite literally, into the circle of the sacra conversazione" and by the carpet that "seems to extend to the very tips of our shoes."135 Yet no one has noted the presence of a remarkable formal invention by which this extension of the pictorial space and the salvation it promises is animated. The edge of the Virgin's robe turns over as it descends from her lap to reveal a green lining, the only green ever worn by one of Van Eyck's Virgins. Because of its alignment with the green border of the carpet, and the placement of the robe's red exterior above the carpet's pre- dominantly red center, it seems to spill like a waterfall into a river that flows out to the viewer and then doubles back toward the donor. Following the hem edge from which the green lining emerges upwards we discover that it originates in the completely green parrot placed above the Virgin's belly at the place where the robe closes together. In part I of this article it was argued that the symbolic significance of the parrot turned on two ideas: the tradition that parrots by nature said "ave" as a greeting and the concept that the "ave" with which the Virgin was greeted undid the sin of Eva, resulting in Van Eyck's image of the new Adam and the new Eve in Paradise.136 Dare we think that the inseminating "ave" of the parrot is the source both of the flowers that spring up for Christ to grasp and of the cascading green river that flows from the Virgin-a river that suggests the "river of water of life ... proceeding from the throne of God" in Paradise (Apocalypse 22:1)? The legitimacy of this reading is confirmed by the tradition that the Virgin is the fountain from which flowed the waters of salvation,137 and

it is conceptually similar to Van Eyck's device to connect the viewer to the water that pours from the Fountain of Life in the Ghent Altarpiece by having it flow into a channel that runs out of the bottom of the picture-except that in the Van der Paele Virgin the symbolism is disguised.

The premise of this article is that some of Van Eyck's paintings contain symbolism that is disguised primarily by the very structural characteristics that constitute an essential part of its meaning and are the best evidence for its having been intended. Because of the close relationship of structure and concept, God's plan of salvation appears to be woven into the very fabric of reality and to become visible in the transcendent state of meditation, at times with the force of sudden revelation.138 I have attempted to validate my readings of Van Eyck's symbolism by arguing that they are consistent with the symbolic methods and concepts in his other work, that they harmonize with the ideas expressed by the work's principal images and overall structural design, that they clarify puzzling details and relationships, and that they make the work seem more expressive. Inevitably, however, the methodical character of the analysis offered here will make some of the interpretations appear contrived, because the very attempts at explanation tend to prevent the experience that is available to the viewer who discovers Van Eyck's symbolic interactions without warning (but who is acquainted with the basic concepts of Christianity available to Van Eyck's patrons and is used to religious art with overt symbolism): then the painting appears not as a mere arrangement of conventional symbols waiting to be identified, but as what Panofsky called a "transfigured reality," in which essential truths are directly revealed. Any methodical analysis of such experiences is somewhat like explaining a joke: the vividness of the work is inevitably com- promised. But when disguises have worked too well for too long, desperate measures are called for.

45

JOHN L. WARD

Some of the photographs for this article were paid for with a grant from the Dean's contingency fund, Graduate School, University of Florida. I am grateful to David Stanley and Patrick Geary for reading earlier versions of this article and suggesting changes.

1 E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Char- acter, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, esp. vol. I, ch. 5 and pp. 201-3.

2 B. G. Lane, "Sacred Versus Profane in Early Netherlandish Paint- ing," Simiolus XVIII (1988), p. 109. As Lane points out, Panofsky's thesis met with some criticism from the time his book first appeared. To her citations should be added: 0. Kurz, "Eyck, Hubert and Jan van," Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. V, col. 329; and J. LeJeune, "Vers une Resurrection des Realit6s: la p6riode Li6geoise des Van Eyck," Wallraf- Richartz Jahrbuch XVII (1955), pp. 62-78.

It is also true that many of the scholars who subsequently searched for religious symbols in Netherlandish painting were content to interpret their meaning without considering the implications of the claim that they were disguised. But following the appearance of L. Benjamin's article, "Disguised Symbolism Exposed and the His- tory of Early Netherlandish Painting," Studies in Iconography II (1976), pp. 11-24, there has been a rise in attempts to interpret the imagery of such works as governed more by the personal motivations and requirements, both spiritual and secular, of the donor, and in the last decade there has been a sharp decline in the number of articles iden- tifying further religious symbols in Netherlandish paintings. Two of the most radical challenges to the idea of complex symbolism are: J. De Coo, "A Medieval Look at the Merode Annunciation," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte XLIV (1981), pp. 114-32 and J. B. Bedaux, "The Reality of Symbols: the Question of Disguised Symbolism in Jan van Eyck's Arnofini Portrait," Simiolus XVI (1986), pp. 5-28. These challenges to Panofsky's approach came at a time of widespread revisions in the way that scholars approached early Netherlandish art, summarized by L. Silver, "The State of Research in Northern Euro- pean Art of the Renaissance Era," The Art Bulletin LXVIII (1986), pp. 518-35. A recent and articulate defense of disguised symbolism appears in C. Wood's review of three books on Netherlandish art in The Art Bulletin LXXV (1993), pp. 174-80.

3 The concept that some of Van Eyck's symbolic relationships enacted the meaning they symbolized was first proposed in my article "Hidden Symbolism in Jan van Eyck's Annunciations," The Art Bulletin LVII (1975), pp. 196-220, in which the relationship between symbolism and visual effect was emphasized. It was developed in two papers, "Concealment and Revelation in Van Eyck's Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin," given at the Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, Pittsburgh, October 12, 1985, and "Disguise and Revela- tion in Eyckian Symbolism," given at the College Art Association Con- vention, National Gallery, Washington, D.C., February 22, 1991.

4 E. Panofsky, "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait," The Burlington Magazine LXIV (1934), pp. 117-27. D. R. Goodgal, The Iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981), pp. 17-21, believes that G. E Waagen, Ueber Hubert und Johann van Eyck, Breslau, 1822, originated the idea that Van Eyck's work contains disguised symbolism, and she find echoes of his language in Panofsky's formulation, which she thinks is based more on the topos initiated by Waagen than on any perceptual evidence.

5 Panofsky, "Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait," p. 126. 6 Ibidem. 7 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, 141-42. 8 Ibidem, p. 143. 9 Ibidem, p. 138.

10 Ibidem, pp. 138-39.

1 See D. M. Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck," (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976), p. 6; C. J. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, Princeton, 1982, p. 171; J. H. Marrow, "Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance," Simiolus XVI (1986), pp. 150-72; Lane, "Sacred Versus Profane in Early Netherland- ish Painting," p. 109.

12 C. Harbison, review of B. G. Lane, The Altar and the Altar- piece, Simiolus XV (1985), pp. 224-25; De Coo, "A Medieval Look at the Merode Annunciation," p. 130.

13 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, pp. 140-41. 14 Panofsky observed that the increasing skill with which artists

combined symbolic meanings with naturalistic description made it more difficult to identify which objects were symbolic, but he never claimed that concealment was the purpose of the disguise and, indeed, notes only that it "confronts the modern beholder-including the art historian-with a serious problem," ibidem, p. 142 (my emphasis).

15 C. Harbison uses this term to describe Panofsky's symbolism in "Realism and Symbolism in Early Flemish Painting," The Art Bulle- tin LXVI (1984), p. 590.

16 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, I, p. 144. 17 St. Augustine, The City of God, XI, 32, trans. M. Dods, New

York, 1950, p. 377. 18 My approach has been influenced by the ideas of R. Arnheim

presented in Art and Visual Perception, A Psychology of the Creative Eye; the New Version, Berkeley, 1974, ch. 10 and in "Objective Per- cepts, Objective Values," New Essays of the Psychology of Art, Berke- ley, 1986, pp. 288-326, and those of M. Baxandall in Patterns of Inten- tion, New Haven, 1985, pp. 116-37. I have found particularly useful Arnheim's view that the overall pictorial structure is inherently symbolic (op. cit., pp. 457-61) and Baxandall's tests for artistic intention, especially his insistence that any explanation of a picture's meaning should be in keeping with its formal order and that "only superior paintings will sustain explanation of the kind we are attempting: inferior paintings are impenetrable" (op. cit., p. 120).

Some scholars have attempted to recognize the interaction of symbolism and visual form in Van Eyck's work, with varying degrees of success. The most methodical effort in this direction has been that of C. Hasenmueller, "A Machine for the Suppression of Space: Illu- sionism as Ritual in a Fifteenth-Century Painting," Semiotica XXIX (1980), pp. 53-94.

19 Wood defines a disguised symbol as one "that has been motivated within the fictional world proposed by a picture," so that the symbolic object "has been invested with meaning on the level of the representation ... and not already inside the fictional world." This difference permits the viewer to be aware of "something of which the actor inside the fiction is unaware, or still incompletely aware" (op. cit., p. 178). This distinction applies well to the objects and relationships that I identify as disguised symbolism in the present article. However, it also seems to apply to the symbolism that I have classed as embedded and even some that I have described as overt. For example, the symbolism of the bundle of wheat in the Portinari Altar- piece is suggested by its placement at the front of the picture space. But since the picture plane is a representational artifact that does not correspond to any entrance or limit within the fictional world that is depicted and since it is motivated by its location in a stable, it quali- fies as disguised symbolism by Wood's definition. This definition accounts for much more of the symbolic imagery that Panofsky considered to be disguised symbolism in Early Netherlandish Painting

46


than does mine, including much of the symbolism in works by other early Netherlandish painters, who, for the most part, did not try to create symbolism that the viewer would initially overlook. Wood also points out the expressive implications of disguised symbolism aris- ing from the disparity between the relationships that are available to the beholder and to the depicted figures, a topic related to concerns of the present study. Not all of Panofsky's disguised symbols perfectly fit Wood's definition, perhaps because Panofsky was not entirely consistent in applying the concept. Thus, he argued that the flowers in a glass and albarello in the foreground of the Portinari Al- tarpiece are at first not recognized as symbolic because the arrangement "looks like a mere still life" (Early Netherlandish Painting, I, p. 333). In other words, the disguise is created by mistaking the arrangement for another class of paintings, rather than because a glass and vase would be found in a stable.

20 E. Kieser, "Zur Deutung und Datierung der Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck," Stadel-Jahrbuch, n.s., 1 (1967), p. 81; J. Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Madonna of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin," Oud-Hol- land LXXXII (1967), p. 169; Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 82; Hasenmueller, "A Machine for the Suppression of Space," p. 64; D. Jansen, Similitudo. Untersuchungen zu den Bildnisses Jan van Eycks, Cologne-Vienna, 1988, p. 85.

21 Purtle,The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 82. 22 See my letter to the editor, Art Journal XXVIII (1968-69), pp.

288-89, responding to M. Felheim, F. W. Brownlow, "Jan van Eyck's 'Chancellor Rolin and the Blessed Virgin," Art Journal XXVIII (1968- 69), pp. 22-26, 58. My strong objections to numerous points in their argument gave my response a needlessly contentious tone, and I now find myself in agreement with the authors' observations concerning the floating quality of the infant Christ and the visionary nature of the Virgin and Child (ibidem, p. 24) and more sympathetic with at least the spirit of their approach.

23 Ward, "Hidden Symbolism in Jan van Eyck'sAnnunciations," p. 197.

24 See ibidem, p. 215-16. 25 For two examples of pictures demonstrating the effect of spa-

tial ambiguity produced by the conjunction of foreground and background forms, see John Baldessari's picture Wrong, 1967, reproduced in C. van Bruggen, John Baldessari, New York, 1990, p. 30, and the drawing reproduced in J. B. Deregowski, "On Seeing a Picture for the First Time," Leonardo IX (1976), p. 22, fig. 5. Baldessari's picture sati- rizes the advice given in photo manuals to avoid ambiguous align- ments because of the unintended absurdities they can create. Deregowski's example, a drawing of people in a room, shows a woman's head placed so that it just touches the bottom of a window behind her. Deregowski cites it to illustrate how cultural expectations influence perceptions. He reports that East Africans who saw the picture interpreted the window as a four-gallon can on the woman's head (ibidem, pp. 22-23). However, because of the inherent ambiguity created by the alignment of forms, once a Westerner thinks of the window as a can it is easy to see the wall dematerialize and the per- ceived can attach itself to the woman's head. Faced with strong spatial ambiguity in a picture, viewers undoubtedly rely on cultural expectations to determine the artist's intent. But the ambiguity produced by the alignment of spatially discrete forms transcends culture, and it seems to be a universally recognized principle of picture-making that, where such ambiguity is undesirable, an alignment of spatially discrete forms should be avoided.

26 The other copy is the Diptych of Christian de Hondt, by the Bruges Master of 1499. See Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van

Eyck, fig. 65. Another version without the dark colored glass is reproduced in M. J. Friedlander, Early Netherlandish Painting, Leyden, 1967- 76, trans. H. Norden, vol. I, pi. 107a, but it derives from the de Hondt Diptych.

27 Examples of church interiors lacking any of these features are reproduced in Friedlander, ibidem, vol. I, pls. 34, 70; vol. II, pls. 34, 38, 75, 106; vol. III, pl. 52; vol. IV, pls. 50,96; vol. V, pi. 12; vol. Via, pls. 125, 130; vol. IXb, pi. 178; vol. X, pi. 104; XI, pis, 6, 27. See also J. Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, Englewood Cliffs (N.J.), 1985, colorplate 35.

28 Examples of crucifixes putting forth new growth to signify the Tree of Life are reproduced in C. Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, London, 1991, fig. 108, and in G. Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, Gutersloh, 1966-80, vol. II, figs. 488, 489. See also the cross depicted in Van Eyck's Virgin with Canon van der Paele [Fig. 12].

29 C. Harbison, "Sexuality and Social Standing in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Double Portrait," Renaissance Quarterly XLIII (1990), p. 256, and idem, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 40. The figure was previously mentioned by M. W. Brockwell, The Pseudo-Arnolfini Por- trait, a Case of Mistaken Identity, London, 1952, p. 30, as one of a pair of monsters carved "at either end" of the bench; by W. Hager, "Ein Spiegelmotif bei Jan van Eyck und das gothische Raumsymbol," Studien zur Kunstform (Munsterische Forschungen, IX) Munster-Co- logne, 1955, p. 42, who described it as an animal with a man's head; by Bedaux, "The Reality of Symbols," p. 20; and by Jansen, Similitudo, p. 152. Both Bedaux and Jansen identify it as the devil. Harbison, like Jansen, noticed the figure's ominous position directly above the couple's joined hands but described it as gargoyle-like and mistakenly identifies the lion behind it as its twin, despite the cap with a chinstrap and drapery on the front figure and the flowing mane on the back one (see M. Davies, The National Gallery, vol. II [Les primitifs flamands I, Corpus de la peinture des anciens pays- bas meridionaux au quinzieme siecle, no. 3], Antwerp, 1954, pi. CCXCVII).

30 Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 91; E. Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, New York, 1980, p. 223.

31 Ibidem, p. 223. 32 For cruciferae see G. Hegi, Illustrierte Flora von Mittel Europa

(3rd ed.), Berlin, 1986, vol. IV, pt. 1; and S. Ross-Craig, Drawings of British Plants, London, 1949, III.

33 These are the colors of the roses, lilies and lilies of the valley, and columbines in the crown of the Virgin in the Ghent Altarpiece. Goodgal, The Iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece, has convincingly argued that the program for that altarpiece was devised by Olivier de Langhe, the prior of St. Bavo's Abbey, Ghent. Albertus Magnus, whom Goodgal regards as de Langhe's most important source, described the flowers of virtue as of three colors, all of which he relates to Christ's blood: red roses of charity, white lilies of chastity, and dark violets of humility (ibidem, p. 268).

34 See L. Naftulin, "A Note on the Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna," Oud-Holland XXXVI (1971), pp. 7-8, n. 12.

35 See A. Janssens de Bisthoven, Musee Communal des Beaus- Arts (Muse6 Groeninge), Bruges (Les primitifs flamands I, Corpus de la peinture 1), 3rd ed. revised by M. Baes-Dondeyne, D. de Vos, Brus- sels, 1983, pp. 210-12, for paintings with parrots deriving from the Van der Paele Virgin.

36 Quoted, cited, and discussed in Naftulin, "A Note on the Ico- nography of the Van der Paele Madonna," n. 12. Dhanens calls de Retza's symbolism "far-fetched" (Hubert and Jan van Eyck, p. 223).

47

JOHN L. WARD

37 See Naftulin, 'A Note on the Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna," n. 12; Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck," pp. 165 and 187, n. 37; Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 92; and G. Marlier, Ambrosius Benson et la peinture i Bruges au temps du Charles Quint, Damme, 1957, p. 111.

38 When two symbolic objects are touched or reached for by the Infant Christ in paintings of this period, it is usually to divide his attention and lead the viewer to the sides of the picture (Friedlander, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. Via, pls. 38, 42). Van Eyck's parrot and flowers are held together by the Infant at the center of the picture, with the curve of the parrot's body and reversed head flowing into Christ's extended gesture. Both the proximity and the smooth visual flow from the parrot to the flowers suggest that a close symbolic connection between these objects is intended.

39 Purtle recognizes Van Eyck's equation of Christ and the Virgin to Adam and Eve (The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 93), but believes that the patterns in the carpet and cloth of honor refer to a symbolic rose garden, not to the Garden of Eden (ibidem, p. 91). How- ever, the emphatic cross pattern in the carpet, with its reference to the Tree of Life both in the Garden of Eden and in the Heavenly Para- dise, should be noted.

40 The Penguin Book of Latin Verse, ed. F Brittain, Baltimore, 1962, p. 129.

41 The parrot is paired with the serpent in Durer's engraving, The Fall of Man, with the serpent on the Tree of Knowledge and the parrot (along with Durer's name) on the Tree of Life.

42 See A. Viane, "Het Grafpaneel van Kanunnik van der Paele," Biekorf: Westvlaams Archief voor Geschiedenis, Oudheidkunde en Folklore LXVI (1965), pp. 261-3; Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 87, n. 76, and Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Real- ism, p. 60. Viane points out that St. Donatian holds a cross in place of the traditional bishop's crosier (p. 264).

43 The Van der Paele Virgin appears to have inspired the presentation of the flower in the Virgin and Child with St. Francis and Saint Jerome by Petrus Christus. Borrowings from Van Eyck are everywhere in this picture: its carpet closely follows the one in the Virgin and Child in an Interior in Frankfurt (the Lucca Madonna), the cloth of honor repeats the colors and images of the one in the Virgin and Child by a Fountain, the landscape view is reminiscent of that in the Rolin Virgin and the proportions of the cross held by St. Francis, the quatrefoil motif on the top step and the presence of Adam and Eve decorating the throne arms all have counterparts in the Van der Paele Virgin. As in Van Eyck's picture, the Virgin holds out flowers (a blooming rose and two buds) on a single stem between her thumb and forefinger for a naked Christ to grasp. Although the symbolism is greatly simpli- fied, the suggestion is once again that the new Eve gives the flower to the new Adam to undo the old Eve's sinful gift to Adam.

44 See Viane, "Het Grafpaneel van Kanunnik van der Paele," pp. 257-64; R. Terner, "Bemerkungen zur 'Madonna des Kanonikus van der Paele,'" Zeitschrift for Kunstgeschichte XLIV (1979), pp. 83-91.

45 See W. H. J. Weale, M. W. Brockwell, The Van Eycks and Their Art, London, 1912, p. xxxvii and BartholomaeiFacii De Viris Illustribus, ed. L. Mehus, Florence, 1745, pp. 46 and 48. The text of Fazio's brief biography on Van Eyck is reprinted in Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, p. 361, n. 27. Although the conclusions that Panofsky draws from this evidence (pp. 179-80) should be balanced by Harbison's somewhat different portrayal of Van Eyck's activities at court (Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, ch. 3), there seems little doubt that Jan was thought by his contemporaries to be highly skilled and knowledgeable as an artist.

46 Ward, "Hidden Symbolism in Jan van Eyck'sAnnunciations,"pp. 196-220. Although certain observations I made in this article now seem inaccurate or to be overinterpretations, I am satisfied that the basic ideas are correct. See J. O. Hand, M. Wolff, Early Netherlandish Paint- ing, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art, Systematic Cata- logue, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 76-84, for a discussion of various interpretations of the Washington picture. Although I have not system- atically rethought the arguments presented in that article, two revisions should be made: the object held by the mermaid is not a stone but her familiar attribute, a mirror (cf., e.g., M. Baxandall, Painting and Experi- ence in Fifteenth Century Italy, London, 1972, fig. 15, which also shows an armed merman), and my suggestion that the Fountain of Life on the interior of the Ghent Altarpiece carried suggestions of baptism (Ward, "Hidden Symbolism in Jan van Eyck's Annunciations," pp. 217-18) seems clearly wrong in view of Goodgal's case for the iconography of the interior as being largely determined by Olivier de Langhe, prior of the monastery of St. Bavo's in Ghent, who was quite explicit on the fountain's eucharistic significance (Goodgal, The Iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece, pp. 260-67). See also Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. IV, pt. 1, pp. 65-67.

47 M. Meiss, "Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth Cen- tury Paintings," TheArt Bulletin XXVII (1945), p. 181. Purtle, TheMarian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 151-52, suggests that this effect of a sculpture come to life represents the visionary transformation witnessed by the donor, thought by her and others to have been depicted in a missing panel at the right (ibidem, pp. 151-52). On the other hand, E. Herzog, "Zur Kirchenmadonna van Eycks," Berliner Museen VI (1956), pp. 2-16, although he raised the idea of a missing donor panel, specifically denies that this is "ein Statuenwunder (etwa das Lebendigwerden eines Bildwerkes), eine einmalige visionare Erscheinung, [oder] eine lokale Marienlegende" (ibidem, p. 10).

48 Some of the visual analogies were observed by Panofsky (Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, pp. 144-45), implicitly to support his symbolic equation of the Virgin with the Church. Purtle (The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 147) regards the visual resemblance between the Virgin's hem and the base of the compound pier beside her and the alignment of the crossing piers with her shoulders as evidence for equating the Virgin with a column of the Church.

49 The light that falls on the wall of the chamber next to the Vir- gin in the Ghent Altarpiece Annunciation (indicating, in the absence of any light rays descending on the Virgin and by the fact that their source is opposite to that of any other light in the interior, that they represent the entry of the Lux Mundi) also falls in two patches (Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, p. 417, n. 1482), as does the light reflected on the basin of Van Eyck's Virgin and Child by a Fountain in Antwerp, despite the exterior setting.

50 This detail is illustrated in Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, fig. 199. The difference in status between the otherwise similar figures is too pronounced to be discounted as a purely formal decision and contributes to the effect of slipping between realities.

51 See Herzog, "Zur Kirchenmadonna van Eycks," pp. 14-15, and Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 150-51.

52 See J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, M. Faries, "La Vierge au ChancelierRolin de Van Eyck: examen au moyen de la reflectographe a l'infrarouge,"La Revue du Louvre et des musees de France XL (1991), pp. 37-49.

53 C. Hasenmueller McCorkel, "The Role of the Suspended Crown in Jan van Eyck's Madonna and Chancellor Rolin," The Art Bulletin XLVIII (1976), pp. 516-20, relates this cross form to the structural division and bridging that symbolizes the picture's central concept. This

48


idea is repeated in a later article, Hasenmueller, "A Machine for the Suppression of Space," pp. 53-94, in which the (renamed) writer presents a semiotic approach to the Rolin Virgin that coincides at a number of important points with my own reading, although I had overlooked her article until my analysis was essentially completed.

54 J. Held, review of Panofsky's Early Netherlandish Painting, The Art Bulletin XXXVIII (1955), p. 213; Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Ma- donna of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin," pp. 165-66; Felheim, Brownlow, "Jan van Eyck's 'Chancellor Rolin and the Blessed Virgin,'" p. 24; A. Hagopian Van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting, Part II: More About the Rolin Madonna," The Art Bulletin LX (1978), pp. 1-24.

55 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Trea- sures, ed. and trans. E. Panofsky, Princeton, 1946, pp. 63, 65. There is no evidence to suggest that Van Eyck ever read Suger's words. But his combined use of precious materials and symbolic imagery to achieve an experience of mystical transcendence is remarkably similar.

56 For the gradual blurring of the differences between mystical visions and the kind of visualization of holy images and events ordi- nary worshippers were encouraged to practice by devotional hand- books, see S. Ringbom, "Devotional Images and Imaginative Devo- tions, Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Piety," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, LXXIII (1969), pp. 159-70, and C. Harbison, "Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Piety," Simiolus XV (1985), pp. 87-119. For the idea of the Rolin Virgin as a "visualized prayer," see Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 67-74.

57 Ibidem, p. 67. The first scholar to observe the relationship to the Sedes Sapientia statues was E. Michel, Muse6 Nationale du Lou- vre-Catalogue raisonne des peintures du moyen-age, de la renaissance et des temps modernes. Peintures flamandes du XVe et du XVle siecle, Paris, 1953, p. 116. See also van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," pp. 622-23.

58 H. Roosen-Runge, Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, Wiesbaden, 1972, pp. 26-34. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 67-68, accepts his conclusions. Roosen-Runge gives the visible text on p. 29 and p. 30, fig. 2. A slightly supplemented text is given by Van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," p. 618.

59 For the influence of art works on the form of visions, see M. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, Princeton, 1951, chap. 5.

60 C. de Tolnay, Le Maitre de Flemalle et les Freres van Eyck, Brussels, 1939, p. 29, already noted that the sun was setting on the side of the Virgin and Child, as did Roosen-Runge (Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, pp. 20, 22, 29, 34), and E. Konig, "The History of Art and the History of the Book at the Time of the Transition from Manu- script to Print," Bibliography and the Study of 15th Century Civilisation, colloq. at the British Library, 26-28 Sept. 1984, London, 1987, pp. 161- 62. Kieser recognized that the landscape was lit from the right, but thought it was from the same direction as the foreground light and thus concluded that the whole picture was lit from the North to symbolize a never-setting, eternal light ("Zur Deutung und Datierung der Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck," p. 85) Van Buren claims that the hour is morning and that the sun can be seen in the picture, although the view available to the spectator is southward ("The Canonical Of- fice in Renaissance Painting," p. 622).

61 It should be noted that Matins was referred to as the nocturnal Office by Honorius Augustodunensis, whose writings Van Buren believes are reflected in Van Eyck's imagery (Van Buren, "The Ca- nonical Office in Renaissance Painting," p. 620), and it was celebrated

at night by monastics. For lay celebrants the hours at which Matins could be said were more flexible. Giovanni the Carthusian, in a Vene- tian book of instruction for girls, Decor puellarum, 1471, advised be- ginners to say twenty-five Paters and Aves on waking in lieu of the Matins Office; on the other hand, experienced girls were advised to say Complines and Matins after dinner (summarized in G. Hasenohr, "La vie quotidienne de la femme vue par 1'eglise: I'enseignement des 'journees chr6tiennes' de la fin du moyen-age," in Frau und Spit- mittelalterlicherAlltag, International Congress, Krems an der Donau, 2-5 October 1984, Vienna, 1986, p. 95). Nevertheless, after the early centuries of Christianity the Matins office represented the nocturnal vigil, as Van Buren's source, Honorius Augustodunensis, makes clear (Van Buren, p. 620), and Van Eyck's insistence, by the scrupulous orientation of all of his churches, that the hour is sunset, invites explanation.

Konig points out that the text on the Virgin's gown would normally be found near the front of a Book of Hours, whereas Rolin's book is opened at the center ("The History of Art," p. 163). He therefore proposes that Rolin is reading the Penitential Psalms, which mark the beginning of the second part of the volume, and that the purpose of these psalms in a Book of Hours-to ask forgiveness from Christ, man's final judge-represents the primary concern of the donor. The words on the Virgin's gown, in Konig's view, may then be understood as in keeping with the courtly custom of first addressing the family and entourage of a prince before petitioning him, rather than provid- ing a key to the picture's primary purpose and meaning (ibidem, p. 164). However, although Konig properly insists that the picture is about more than praise for the Virgin, the idea that Rolin is speaking and visualizing the words and concepts of the office on the Virgin's hem is too elegant to be discarded for a complex explanation involv- ing two texts, the more important of which cannot be identified with any certainty. Moreover, every open book in a Van Eyck painting- nineteen, counting some disputed pictures-is open near the center. Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, pp. 113-116, independently concludes that the primary theme of the Rolin Virgin is Rolin's confession of sin and Christ's forgiveness.

62 See Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, p. 413, n. 1373, and Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 60, n. 5.

63 Hasenmueller points out that the Fall is not shown to make the visible sequence begin with the entry into the world ("A Machine for the Suppression of Space," 1980, p. 71).

64 Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 76 and n. 49, points out that for the Church fathers the drunken Noah was not regarded as sinful but as a prefiguration of the suffering Christ. Hasenmuller, 1993, p. 64, and Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Madonna of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin," p. 171, had noted the eucharistic significance of Noah but, contrary to the traditional Church view, Snyder also regards Noah as a symbol of sin (p. 170), as does Harbison (Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 114).

65 The various subjects that have been proposed are summarized in Roosen-Runge, Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, pp. 39- 40, n. 71. Hasenmueller McCorkel, "The Role of the Suspended Crown," p. 520, n. 14, subsequently suggested the subject of David receiving the news of the death of Saul (ibidem, p. 520, n. 13), and A. Chatelet, Van Eyck, 1980, Woodbury (N.Y.), p. 44, identified it as David and Abishag.

66 This identification was first proposed by J. Philippe, Van Eyck et la genese mosane de la peinture des anciens Pay-Bas, Li6ge, 1960, p. 136, and has been accepted by Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Ma- donna of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin," pp. 170-71; Van Buren, "The Ca-

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JOHN L. WARD

nonical Office in Renaissance Painting," pp. 620-21; and Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 77.

67 St. Augustine, The City of God, XVI, 22 (trans. M. Dods, New York, 1950, p. 45).

68 Ibidem, XVI, 2 (pp. 522-23). 69 Marrow, "Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art,"

p. 151. 70 Hasenmueller McCorkel ("The Role of the Suspended Crown,"

p. 520, and, as Hasenmueller, "A Machine for the Suppression of Space," p. 65) recognized that the visual obscurity of the scene as it was overshadowed by the crown was itself meaningful and that one might expect the obscured scene to be one that was symbolically superseded by the crowning of the Virgin. But since the subject of Abraham and Melchizedek did not relate to her interpretation of the Virgin's coronation as a crown awarded for personal merit, she discarded this possibility.

71 Van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," p. 621, believes that an informed viewer would have understood that the part of the frieze covered by the crown included scenes from the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. However, Honorius Augustodunensis, her proposed source for the imagery, divides the period before the giving of the Law to Moses into three parts: "the first was from Adam to Noah.... The second hour ... was from Noah to Abraham.... The third hour was from Abraham to Moses" (Van Buren, p. 620, and Gemma animae, [Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, vol. CLXXII], cols. 616D-17D). See also Pat. Lat., vol. CLXXII, cols. 622A-623B, in which Honorius compares the celebrants of the nocturnal office with workers in the vineyard, the history of which he divides into a period initiated by Adam, with Abel as the first worker at dawn, Noah at Terce, Abraham at Sext, and Moses at None. Since Moses is the major figure following Abraham and the last of the series in Honorius's analysis, he is the figure we would expect to conclude Van Eyck's series.

This is indeed true wherever Van Eyck got his ideas. The Giv- ing of the Ten Commandments to Moses marks the separation of the period ante lege from thatsub lege, just as the Fall initiates the former period and the Annunciation initiates the period sub gracia. But just as Van Eyck excluded the precipitating event of the Fall from his series representing the period it began and placed the Annunciation on the outside of his Ghent and Dresden altarpieces, so the Giving of the Law is the means by which the next period is entered and properly concludes the series ante lege.

72 See Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. IV, pt. 1, fig. 219 for an image of Ecclesia being born from the crucified Christ's side and replacing the blood sacrifice. E. Hall, H. Uhr, "Aureola and Fructus: Distinctions of Beatitude in Scholastic Thought and the Mean- ing of Some Crowns in Early Flemish Painting," The Art Bulletin LX (1978), pp. 262-64, agree with Hasenmueller McCorkel that the Virgin's crown is awarded for personal merit and identify it specifically as an aureola. They cite St. Antoninus's interpretation of the phrases on the Virgin's hem as conforming specifically the three ways in which the Virgin merited theaureola. The words of Van Eyck's text undoubtedly celebrate the Virgin's merit, which causes her to be chosen to be the mother and (as the Church) the bride of Christ. But the visual interaction of the crown covering the Old Testament scenes, the juxtaposition of the cathedral with the Virgin, whose form it echoes, and the emergence of the man/God from the Virgin's robes, symbolically enact Christ's fulfillment of his historical mission, the creation of the Church and his wedding to it, which enables Christians to participate in his sacrifice. See Schiller, vol. IV, pt. 1, figs 217, 22-24, for explicit depictions of the infant Christ as the spouse of the Church. Van Eyck

depicted the Virgin of the Ghent Altarpiece Deisis with the triple crown, awarded for her merit as virgin, martyr, and doctor (Hall, Uhr, "Au- reola and Fructus," pp. 264 and 263, fig. 12). By contrast, Rolin's Vir- gin is given a crown much like the one in The Virgin in a Church, evidence that her three-fold merit was not his concern.

73 C. Harbison, "Religious Imagination and Art-Historical Method: a Reply to Barbara Lane's 'Sacred versus Profane,"' Simiolus XIX (1989), p. 204, has written that the Christ Child in the Rolin Virgin "emerges fully man through a slit in his mother's blood-red robe." In a paper given in a conference in Pittsburgh in 1985 that Harbison at- tended, I first proposed that "it is possible to visualize the infant as having issued forth from the opening [in the Virgin's robe] as if from the womb." I suggested to Professor Harbison that he might have been influenced by my idea, but he denies this (correspondence, 23 Sept. 1991). In any case, I am gratified that he has confirmed my perception despite the very different conclusions he draws from it. Ironically, I arrived at my insight while reading B. G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Paint- ing, New York, 1984 (reviewed negatively by Harbison, Simiolus XV [1985], pp. 221-25), in particular her discussion of the symbolic equation of the Incarnation and the Transubstantiation (pp. 50-60), and while viewing the image she includes of Jan Prevost's Altarpiece of the Vir- gin Enthroned (fig. 24), which explicitly depicts angels simultaneously opening the bridal tent and the Virgin's robes to reveal the naked Christ, all of which takes place on an altar. But Lane, "Sacred Versus Profane in Early Netherlandish Painting," p. 109, rejects the idea of disguised symbolism, and although she discusses the Rolin Virgin in the same chapter, she does not note that it enacts the same concept of Christ emerging from the marriage tent in disguised form.

74 For examples of the Sedes Sapientiae, see J. de Borchgrave- d'Altena, "Madones en Majeste, A propos de Notre-Dame d'Eprave," Revue beige d'arch6ologie et d'histoire de l'art XXX (1961), pp. 3- 114, and I. H. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom, Princeton, 1972; for the sudden popularity of the naked Christ in the Renaissance, see L. Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, New York, 1983.

75 This is the Douai tanslation. St. Augustine, On the Psalms, trans. S. Hebgin, F Corrigan (Ancient Christian Writers, no. 29), New York, 1960, vol. I, p. 178, interprets the first phrase as signifying that Christ has established his Church "in broad daylight, not in obscurity, not in mystery and under a veil." (See also Walafrid Strabo, Glossa ordinaria [Pat. Lat., vol. CXIII], col. 871 A-B). Purtle's translation equates Christ with the sun, which is inaccurate (Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 181), although in keeping with the concluding section of the Office, which says, "For from you has dawned the sun of justice, Christ our God" (ibidem, p. 185).

76 St. Augustine, 1960, p. 178. 77 See Roosen-Runge, Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, p.

30, fig. 2, for the position of all of the text fragments visible on the Virgin's gown.

78 See Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, pp. 84-85. 79 See Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 185. 80 I first noted the symbolism of the rabbits in a letter written in

1969 to Art Journal (XXVIII, p. 288). S. N. Blum, Early Netherlandish Triptychs, a Study in Patronage, Berkeley, 1969, p. 13, independently arrived at the same interpretation. For the symbolism of the monkey, see Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, p. 133. Although certain characteristic details of Petrus Christus's style still confirm my attribution of the Metropolitan Museum'sAnnunciation to him ("A new Look at the 'Friedsam Annunciation,"' The Art Bulletin L [1968], pp.

50


184-87), the pronounced Eyckian character of its style and symbolism becomes problematic in light of current evidence that Christus did not begin painting in Bruges until after Van Eyck's death (see J. Upton, Petrus Christus, His Place in Fifteenty-Century Flemish Paint- ing, University Park, Pa., 1990, chap. 1). Could he have created the picture for a patron who recognized and admired Van Eyck's symbolic methods and wanted one of that kind?

Panofsky's belief that Van Eyck and some predecessors used the stylistic distinction between Romanesque and Gothic architecture to differentiate symbolically between the Old and New Testaments has recently been questioned (Harbison,Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 175). Nevertheless, the only New Testament subjects carved or depicted as part of a building in Van Eyck's paintings occur in the Virgin in a Church, which is the only fully developed Gothic church interior he painted. Consequently, although it is not constructed in a pure Ro- manesque style (perhaps, here and elsewhere, so as to contribute to an effect of moving between realities), the architecture is intended to suggest an earlier, that is, Old Testament, era in keeping with the period of its sculptural subjects. T. W. Lyman, "Architectural Portraiture and Jan van Eyck's Washington Annunciation," Gesta XX (1981), pp. 263-71, suggests that actual transitional Romanesque churches in his region may have inspired Van Eyck to recognize the symbolic potential of an apparently inverted style development.

81 See Roosen-Runge, Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, fig. 2.

82 J. Lejeune,Les van Eyck-Peintres de Liege et de sa cath6drale, Liege, 1956, p. 203, proposed that the figures could be Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The identification of Jan has been accepted by Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Madonna of Chancellor Nicholas Rolin," p. 168- 69, Kieser, "Zur Deutung und Datierung der Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck," p. 84, Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, p. 278, and Jansen, Simitudo, p. 91. Roosen-Runge interpreted them as heralds (Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, p. 43) and Van Buren as watch- men ("The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," pp. 621-220). Kieser, op. cit., pp. 84-85, and Goodgal, The Iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece, pp. 152-53 felt that the two men's vantage point offered to the viewer a place into which one might project oneself. Hasenmueller, "A Machine for the Suppression of Space," pp. 74-79, saw them as turning from a physical to a spiritual view of the world, and Harbison, "Religious Imagination and Art-Historical Method," p. 200, claims that "the view of the landscape below is imagined with the eyes of the two figures standing on the wall," which cannot be literally true, since we see the scene behind these figures but do not see the view beneath the wall that is visible to the one looking down.

83 If the parapet is lower than the floor, the figures on it would be correspondingly larger. But the edges of three steps descending from the palace are visible (Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, fig. 170), which suggests that the parapet is at least as high as the floor. In order for figures at the wall to represent men the size of the chancellor, they would have to be seen as standing on a surface approximately 11' lower than the floor and 70' back from the arches (or about thirteen times the distance if calculated on the assumption that the floor and parapet are at the same height).

84 Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, pp. 172-76, has challenged Panofsky's idea that Van Eyck lit the interior of his churches consistently from the left to identify the source as a northern, and therefore supernatural, light (Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, pp. 147-48). It is thus interesting to note that, in a painting in which the artist varied the direction of his illumination, his supernatural light still comes from the North.

85 See n. 82 for similar ideas. However, none of these scholars suggested, as claimed here, that Christ extends salvation to the small figures by the wall.

86 Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 124. 87 Ibidem, p. 127. 88 Ibidem. 89 Ibidem. In a kind of manifesto explaining his position ("Reli-

gious Imagination and Art-Historical Method," p. 203), Harbison argued that Van Eyck's work was "an art about people, in which patrons and contemporary life-style are crucial ... [and] would benefit from being treated more as narrative and less as dogma." See also Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, pp. 113-18, 128.

90 Ibidem, p. 127. While Van Eyck may have taken some ideas from textual sources, I believe, like Harbison, that he did not usually follow a fixed program, but added or revised symbolic elements according to his judgment. Nevertheless, Van Eyck's precise orchestration of symbolic elements is compelling testimony to his interest in the expressive coherence of his pictures' spiritual meaning.

91 Hall, Uhr, "Aureola and Fructus," p. 264, argue that the word fragment "LEVATA" refers to the elevation of the Virgin through her coronation (p. 628). However, unlike the parts of the office visible on the lower hem of the Virgin's robe, but akin to the fragment paired with LEVATA around the gap through which the Virgin passes her son, it derived from a Psalm understood to refer to Christ, not the Virgin-a significance emphasized by the positions of these two fragments behind the infant (see Roosen-Runge, Die Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck, p. 30, fig. 2 for word locations; see Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 178-85, for the full text; see Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria, col. 871 A-B, and col. 1208 for interpretations).

92 Harbison,Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, ch. 20. Goodgal's arguments concerning the designing of the program for the Ghent Altarpiece (see n. 46) are generally persuasive, although I do not believe that Van Eyck's uncharacteristic conformity with such a program prevented him from including disguised symbolism on the exterior, where it was most appropriate (see Ward, "Hidden Symbolism in Jan van Eyck's Annunciations," p. 219, n. 128).

93 Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 116. These conclusions were originally presented by van Asperen de Boer, Faries, "La Vierge au Chancelier Rolin de Van Eyck," pp. 47-48, 49, n. 32, on the basis of their examination of the work through reflectography. See also Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, pp. 276-77.

94 See van Asperen de Boer, Faries, "La Vierge au ChancelierRolin de Van Eyck," p. 40, fig. 3, and p. 44, figs. 9 and 10, for the Rolin Virgin; Janssens de Bisthoven, Muse6 Communal des Beaux-Arts, pls. CCXXXVIII, CCXXXIX, and CCXLI for the Van der Paele Virgin; Davies, The National Gallery, pl. CCXCVIII, for theArnolfini Portrait; and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, 'A Scientific Re-examination of the Ghent Altar- piece," Oud-Holland XCIII (1979), pp. 151, 153-54, 159, figs. 16, 17.

95 See Vienna, Nationalbibliothek ms 2549, illustrated in Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, fig. 23, and Bib. Royale ms 9241, illustrated in Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. II, pi. 192 (fig. 330).

96 C. Gilbert, Italian Art, 1400-1500, Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980, xviii-xxvii argues, on the basis of his extensive study of Quattrocento documents, that in Italy patrons tended to leave the artist the task of working out all but the most general elements of imagery, iconography, and form. L. Campbell, "The Art Market in the Southern Netherlands in the Fifteenth Cen- tury," The Burlington Magazine CXVIII (1976), pp. 188-198, gives examples of various practices but concludes that the records are too fragmentary to reach any general conclusions.

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97 For scholars who have regarded this church as signifying some specific historical connection to Rolin, see Kieser, "Zur Deutung und Datierung der Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck," p. 74; Zdzislaw KQpirski, "Madonna Kanclerza Rolin," Rocznik historii sztuki XXXI (1969), pp. 107-61; R. Foster, P Tudor-Craig, The Secret Life of Paint- ings, Ipswich (Eng.)-Totowa (N.J.), c. 1977, pp. 17-19, Jansen, Similitudo, p. 87, and Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 112. For a discussion of Rolin's religious donations, see H. Adh6mar, "Sur la Vierge du Chancelier Rolin de Van Eyck," Bulletin de 'lnstitut du Patrimoine Artistique (Brussels) XV (1975), pp. 9-17.

98 Although the church to which Rolin gave most of his money, St.-S6bastien de Notre-Dame d'Autun, had numerous additions made to it and was destroyed in, 1793, it is doubtful that the church in Van Eyck's painting could ever have produced the floorplan drawn in 1773 (see Van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," p. 632, fig. 15). Kieser ("Zur Deutung und Datierung der Rolin-Madonna des Jan van Eyck," pp. 74-75) proposed that the church is the Carthusian monastery that was to be built at Montreux and paid for by the King of France in partial expiation for his complicity in the as- sassination of Jean sans Peur in 1419, in compliance with one of the articles of the Treaty of Arras, written by Rolin. He regards the central bridge in Jan's picture as the one on which the murder took place. Essentially the same interpretation was presented by Kepiriski. Jansen (Similitudo, p. 87) proposed that the building represented Rolin's pledge to build the Hotel-Dieu in Beaune.

99 Snyder, "Jan van Eyck and the Madonna of Chancellor Nicho- las Rolin," p. 170.

100 Ibidem, pp. 170-71. However, contrary to Snyder, the vines that decorate the other two arches are not grape vines, but dragons in the central arch that, placed above the river, may be associated with the leviathon that swallowed Jonah and function as an image of death and rebirth, as Purtle notes (The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 82-83) and roses in the third one, as Harbison (Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 124) observes, clearly associated with the Vir- gin below.

101 Van Buren, "The Canonical Office in Renaissance Painting," p. 622.

102 Honorius, Gemma animae, Pat. Log., vol. CLXXII, cols. 622A-623B.

103 Ibidem, col. 621C. 104 A document from 1434, the year in which the painting was

probably commissioned (see Janssens de Bisthoven, Muse6 Com- munal des Beaux-Arts, p. 214), states that Canon van der Paele, being old and infirm, is to continue to receive his benefices even if he is unable to attend church (ibidem, p. 222).

105 Naftulin, 'A Note on the Iconography of the Van der Paele Ma- donna," pp. 3-8, recognizes Van Eyck's correlation of the symbolic imagery of the background and foreground with the figures and argues that its organization is "a visual metaphor alluding to the three states of the Church," with the left side representing Christ's Church on earth, with its use of the Mass and sacraments and perpetuation of Christ's teaching, and the right side representing the Church Suffer- ing and the Church Triumphant. The interpretation presented here is that the standing saints reflect aspects of Christ as priest and as cham- pion, that the carved throne finials and capitals with paired scenes in the background are orchestrated to further define the roles of Christ and of the standing saints, and that all of these relationships are orga- nized so as to associate Christ with the sacrificial Mass and its admin- istration on the left side and with his defeat of Satan and freeing of souls from Purgatory on the right.

106 Sources given in Janssens de Bisthoven, Muse6 Communal des Beaux-Arts, p. 196. See also M. Meiss, The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, New York, 1974, vol. II, fig. 286.

107 For Abraham and Isaac see L. Reau, Iconographie de l'art chr6tien, Paris, 1956, vol. II, pt. 1, p. 128; Biblia pauperum, a Fac- simile and Edition, ed. A. Henry, Ithica, New York, 1987, p. 14, fig. 9, p. 95, and p. 96. For Abraham and Melchizedek see n. 70; Biblia pauperum, pp. 81, 83; The Mirour of Mans Saluacions, a Middle En- glish Translation of "Speculum humanae salvationis", ed. A. Henry, Philadelphia, 1987, pp. 104, 105.

108 Ibidem, pp. 156, 157; Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. III, p. 318, fig. 21; Biblia pauperum, pp. 101, 103.

109 van Asperen de Boer, "A Scientific Re-examination of the Ghent Altarpiece," p. 200; Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. III, p. 318, fig. 21; Biblia pauperum, pp. 101, 103.

110 Originally suggested by A. Janssens de Bisthoven, R. A. Parmentier, Le Mus6e Communal de Bruges, Corpus de peinture des anciens pays-bas m6ridionaux au quinzieme siecle, first ed., Antwerp, 1951, p. 38, Bruges, this subject was defended by Naftulin, "A Note on the Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna," pp. 3-8. Jansen, Similitudo, p. 74, identifies the figure as Saul and Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck," pp. 207-15, interprets the scene as the death of Uriah, with David and Bathsheba looking on.

111 Ibidem, p. 205. Hitchcock believes the costume is the "full- skirted coat of mail favored by Asiatic cavalry."

112 See Meiss, The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, fig. 291, for an example of this subject.

113 Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck," p. 205, argues that it is in fact Melchizedek's reflected face that is seen in the shield. That is certainly how it appears, but the scale is so small it is difficult to be sure. Since Melchizedek prefigures Christ, the symbolism would not change substantially.

114 Ibidem, p. 20.

115 St. Augustine, City of God, XVI, 43. 116 Strabo, Glossa ordinaria, cols. 513-14. 117 Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna

by Jan van Eyck," pp. 204, 221-23. 118 Van Eyck used the same device in the Rolin Virgin, where, in a

relief carving above Christ's head, soldiers accompanying Abraham as he is greeted by Melchizedek look down on the infant as if they forsaw the significance of the event in which they participated.

119 G. J. Kern, "Perspektive und Bildarchitektur bei Van van Eyck," Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft XXXV (1912), pp. 27-64, argued that the building was round, was patterned after Neuvy-Saint-Sepulcre and was meant to refer symbolically to the Holy Sepulchre. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp. 89-90, follows Kern in regarding the building as round and referring to the Holy Sepulchre, and L. Brand Philip, The GhentAltarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck, p. 163, reached the same idea independently. It has been disputed by L. Baldass, Jan van Eyck, London, 1952, p. 57, n. 2, and Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, pp. 220, 222-23. The turned angle of the column base at the right supports this possibility, and the suggestion of a round funerary structure is appropriate to the iconography. More important, however, than the building's shape, which may have been deliberately ambiguous, is the circular progression of the Old Testa- ment sequence, beginning in the center with Adam and Eve and moving clockwise around the ambulatory to return to Paradise, where the repentant sinner is readmitted through the intervention of the new Adam and Eve.

52


120 Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, p. 93; Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, p. 220. Curiously, three of the most thorough discussions of the symbolism of the other relef carvings-those of Janssens de Bisthoven, Naftulin, and Hitchcock-do not mention this scene.

121 The Expulsion but not the Temptation is also shown on a pilaster capital in the Triptych of the Enthroned Virgin in Dresden (Harbison, Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, fig. 83).

122 Kern, "Perspektive und Bildarchitektur bei Van van Eyck," p. 41, figs. 10, 11.

123 See Hand, Wolff, Early Netherlandish Painting, p. 77, fig. 1 and p. 79, fig. 3. The arrangement of zodiac signs in the Annunciation in Washington seems to reflect a similar use of masked symbols, identi- fiable because they are part of a known sequence (see Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, pp. 137-39, 414, n. 1391).

124 Kern, "Perspektive und Bildarchitektur bei Van van Eyck," pp. 36-37.

125 See Janssens de Bisthoven, Muse6 Communal des Beaux- Arts, p. 201 for the text on the frame.

126 See Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. III, pp. 37-66.

127 Hitchcock, "The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck," p. 18.

128 See n. 70. 129 The other column with straight bands in this painting is the

one adjacent to St. George's face. Here the design seems intended to echo the slant of his nose, as the curve of the capital base is continued by the swirled decoration of his armor, and his mouth, nose tip, and forehead align with the capital's base and top, an apparent reference to the members of the Church being part of its structure (Ephesians 2:20-22). St. Donatian's lips, nose, and the jeweled band of his miter are similarly aligned with the capital behind his head.

130 D. G. Carter, "Reflections in Armor in the Canon van der Paele Madonna," The Art Bulletin XXXVI (1954), pp. 60-62.

131 For images of Ecclesia's triumph overSynagogia, see Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, vol. IV, pt. 1, figs. 125, 126-27, 138, 139. Synagogia is represented on the calendar pages of several manuscripts, beginning with Pucelle's Belleville Breviary, as a building progressively falling to ruin as stones, representing proph- esies, are removed from it to be used in the construction of Ecclesia (Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, p. 33, and vol. II, figs. 11 and 16).

132 D. Farmer, "Further Reflections on a van Eyck Self-Portrait," Oud-Holland LXXXIII (1968), pp. 159-60.

133 See Hugh of St. Victor, De arca Noe morali, Pat. Lat., vol. CLXXVI, col. 651 D-2A, and E. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, trans. I. Trethowan, F J. Sheed, Paterson, N.J., 1965, pp. 364 and 392.

134 See R. Bradley, "Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Medi- eval Literature," Speculum XIX (1954), pp. 100-15.

135 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. I, pp. 7-8. For arguments concerning the shape of the building, see n. 119.

136 See the text of the present article between notes 77 and 87. 137 See Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck, pp.

164-66. 138 Wood (op. cit., pp. 174-180), disputes Harbison's assertion

that Van Eyck's symbolism is completely embedded within the depicted world and argues instead that visual symbolism directs "the recipient's attention away from the sensible presence of the image and toward an absent concept" (Jan van Eyck, the Play of Realism, p. 179). The concept is absent, Wood suggests, because it is not available to the inhabitants of the pictorial world, but is specific to the viewer's position outside of this world (ibidem, pp. 178-79). Undoubtedly many of the symbolic revelations make possible by Van Eyck's methods are enhanced by the beholder's heightened awareness of the projective relationships of the visual field perma- nently mapped on the picture surface and the elimination of the effects of binocular parallax. Nevertheless, many of the disguised symbolic relationships discoverable by an observer of a Van Eyck picture, like the barely concealed one noted by Wood in Campin's Salting Virgin, might have been noticed by someone in a world corresponding to the depicted one, situated where the artist locates the viewer. However likely this would have been to occur, by grounding symbolism in the relationships of the visual field, Van Eyck gives the viewer of his work the experience that God's divine plan permeates the phenomenal world and is directly revealed in the process of con- templation by the acting out of spiritual meanings through the interactions of objects, figures, and details. And, although the difference in position between the viewer and the depicted donors in the three paintings discussed in this article (one of whom is missing but believed to have existed) guarantees that they cannot literally see what the observer does, the effect of the disguised symbolism in transcending the depicted material reality has the effect of letting the observer experience a transcendent state like theirs.

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