The Ghent Altarpiece, or Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Hubert and Jan Van Eyck heralded the artistic end of the Middle Ages and the Ghent Altarpiece is their crowning achievement. A work of staggering, exacting beauty — it is reverent in its portrayal of divinity while still grounding itself in earthly presence. This marked a departure from the overarching symbolism and flat, matter-of-fact compositions of the work that came before. Instead, the Van Eycks championed observation of nature and human representation as a means to approach holiness, focusing the attention of the religious pilgrim to himself and his place on earth, as opposed to the idealisation of Christian spirituality. God sits above, centred, in royal garb, flanked on either side by the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. Angels play heavenly music and Adam and Eve complete the edges of the upper row. Below, scenes of pastoral prayer play out, watched over by the dove of the Holy Spirit. The human, mortal world literally holds up divinity. It was a radical suggestion — that the everyman is not just worthy of representation but is necessary in the story of God, though the hierarchy is clear. It is generally accepted that, after Hubert’s death in 1426, the younger Jan van Eyck took up his stead and completed the painting, when it was then displayed in St. Bavo’s Cathedral where some 600 years later it still stands today. It is amongst the important pieces of Western art ever created, laying the foundations for the Renaissance and changing the very world it sought to represent.