Optical Symbolism as Optical Description: A Case Study of Canon van der Paele’s Spectacles

When Carol Purtle published her influential study of Van Eyck’s Marian paintings, it ran counter to a growing methodological tendency, which has become increasingly evident over the last twenty years or so, to favor iconographically minimalist interpretations of early Netherlandish paintings whereby only obvious symbols are accepted as necessary or valid. This article argues that this reductionist trend is in direct contradiction of the allusive and responsive ways in which Eyckian paintings communicate symbolic meaning visually, using a distinctive optical language which establishes a fluid integration of description and meaning. The following discussion demonstrates how this language operates on a symbolic level using the example of a single object–the pair of spectacles in The Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (completed 1436).

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2009.1.1.2
Jan van Eyck,  Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 1 Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele, completed 1436, oil on oak panel, 141 x 176.5 cm (including frame). Groeninge Museum, Bruges, inv. no. 0.161.1 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of spectacles from Virgin and Child with ,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 2 Jan van Eyck, detail of spectacles from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of flowers and parrot from Virgin and Chi,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 3 Jan van Eyck, detail of flowers and parrot from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
French Illuminator,  detail of Saint Luke from Christ and the Four Ev,  ca. 1400,  Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Fig. 4 French Illuminator, detail of Saint Luke from Christ and the Four Evangelists, ca. 1400, parchment. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, inv. no. ms. 331, fol.187r (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Martin Schongauer,  Death of the Virgin,  ca. 1480,  Trustees of the British Museum, London
Fig. 5 Martin Schongauer, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1480, copperplate engraving on paper, 25.8 x 17 cm. Trustees of the British Museum, London, inv. no. PD 1895-9-15-258 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Bedford Master,  Death and Coronation of the Virgin, miniature fr,  ca. 1410-15,  British Library, London
Fig. 6 Bedford Master, Death and Coronation of the Virgin, miniature from the Bedford Hours, ca. 1410-15, parchment, 26.3 x 18.4 cm. British Library, London, inv. no. Add. 18850, fol. 89v (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Parisian Illuminator,  Hybrid Man Holding a Disk, bas-de-page from a Be,  ca. 1350,  Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Fig. 7 Parisian Illuminator, Hybrid Man Holding a Disk, bas-de-page from a Benedictine breviary, ca. 1350, parchment, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, inv. no. MS. Canon. Liturg. 192, fol. 199r (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of the reflection in Saint George's shield,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 8 Jan van Eyck, detail of the reflection in Saint George's shield from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of Saint Donatian's brocade garment and cr,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 9 Jan van Eyck, detail of Saint Donatian's brocade garment and crozier from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of Saint Donatian's morse from Virgin and,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 10 Jan van Eyck, detail of Saint Donatian's morse from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Annunciation,  ca. 1434-36,  National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Fig. 11 Jan van Eyck, Annunciation, ca. 1434-36, oil on canvas (transferred from oak), 90.2 x 34.1 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection, inv. no. 1937.1.39 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Virgin in a Church,  ca.1426-28,  Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Fig. 12 Jan van Eyck, Virgin in a Church, ca.1426-28, oil on oak, 31 x 14 cm (painted surface). Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 525c (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of crystal carafe and basin from the Lucca,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 13 Jan van Eyck, detail of crystal carafe and basin from the Lucca Madonna (figure 14) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Virgin and Child in an Interior (Lucca Madonna),  ca. 1434-37,  Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
Fig. 14 Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child in an Interior (Lucca Madonna), ca. 1434-37, oil on oak panel, 65.5 x 49.5 cm. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, inv. no. 944 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. Most authors believe Van Eyck received the commission two years earlier, in 1434, when Van der Paele founded his first chaplaincy, commemorated by the inscription on the lower frame of the painting. For a complete bibliography of the painting and its history, see Aquilin Janssens de Bisthoven, Stedelijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Groeningemuseum), Brugge, De Vlaamse Primitieven I: Corpus van de vijftiende-eeuwse schilderkunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1, rev. ed. (Brussels: Nationaal Centrum voor Navorsingen over de Vlaamse Primitieven, 1981), 194-233. For Van der Paele’s foundations, see A. Dewitte, “De Kapelanie-stichtingen van Kanunnik van der Paele, Brugge 1434 en 1443,” Biekorf 72 (1971): 15-20.

  2. 2. As the original position of the painting is unknown, it is not possible to establish the relationship between pictorial light and real light in the setting for which it was designed. Most likely it was located near the chapel of Saints Peter and Paul, where it probably served as a memorial or epitaph. See especially Antoon Viaene, “Het grafpaneel van kanunnik van der Paele, voltooid in 1436 door Jan van Eyck (Groeningemuseum Bruges),” Biekorf 66 (1965): 257-64; Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, “Patronage” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005), 366-77; and D. Brine, “Piety and Purgatory: Wall-Mounted Memorials from the Southern Netherlands, c. 1380-c. 1520” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2006), 210-52.

  3. 3. For a more detailed analysis of Van der Paele’s spectacles, in the wider context of Van Eyckís engagement with optical concepts and devices, see S. Hanley, “The Optical Concerns of Jan van Eyck’s Painting Practice” (PhD diss., The University of York, 2007).

  4. 4. The term “iconographic minimalism” was coined by Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 131-35. For an overview of this tendency, see Craig Harbison, “Iconography and Iconology,” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005), 378-406.

  5. 5. Born in or near Bruges ca.1370, Van der Paele would have been about sixty-four years of age when Van Eyck began the painting. On his illness, see Jan V. Dequeker, “Polymyalgia Rheumatica with Temporal Arteritis, as Painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 124, no. 12 (June 15, 1981): 1597-98.

  6. 6. He was reappointed to the chapter of Saint Donatian in 1410 and retired to Bruges in July 1418. For Van der Paeleís biography, see Rafael de Keyser, “De Kanunnik Van der Paele,” Spiegel Historiael 6 (1971), 336-43; De Keyser, “Paele, Joris Van der,” in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brussels, 1972), vol. 5, cols. 673-77; and Craig Harbison, The Play of Realism (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), 57-60.

  7. 7. Vincent Ilardi, “Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses in Fifteenth Century Florence and Milan: New Documents,” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 345-46.

  8. 8. Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision: From Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007), 61.

  9. 9. For a thorough discussion of this statement in the context of his writing, see S. Gayk, “Sensible Signes: Mediating Images in Late Medieval Literature” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2005), 47-74.

  10. 10. Robert A. Koch, “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 73.

  11. 11. John L. Ward, “Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck’s Paintings,” Artibus et Historiae 29 (1994), 24. I do not, however, follow Ward’s view that the different colored flowers–red, white, and blue–represent the virtues, not least because the “blue” flowers he identifies are actually white flowers reflecting the blue of the Virgin’s gown.

  12. 12. Lawrence Naftulin, “A Note on the Iconography of the van der Paele Madonna,” Oud Holland 36 (1971): 7n12. Isidore, in his Etymologies, Book 12, section 7.24, notes that the parrot “makes a greeting naturally, saying ‘ave’ or ‘χαίρε.’ Other words it learns by being taught.” Isidore of Seville, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 265. Augustine, in his Second Exposition on Psalm 18, refers to the parrot as a talking bird, “often taught by men to utter they know not what.” See D. M. Hitchcock, “The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976), 170.

  13. 13. Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 101.

  14. 14. ret Rothstein, “Vision and Devotion in Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele,” Word and Image 15, no. 3 (1999): 262.

  15. 15. The earliest known textual reference to the use of spectacles for the correction of nearsightedness forms part of an order sent by Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan in 1462. For this, see Ilardi, Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses, 345.

  16. 16. On the distinctions between different early words for spectacles in reference to the date and place of their invention, see Edward Rosen, “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 11 (1956): 13-46, 182-218.

  17. 17. “vitreos ab oculis ad legendum”: Rosen, The Invention of Eyeglasses, 213.

  18. 18. See Franz Daxecker “Representations of Eyeglasses on Gothic Winged Altars in Austria,” Documenta Ophthalmologica 93 (1997): 169-88, for further early examples of the tradition, although there is no attempt to interpret their significance.

  19. 19. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, ed. and trans. W. G. Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2:91.

  20. 20. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 89-90.

  21. 21. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 79-80.

  22. 22. Judith Neaman, “Magnification as Metaphor,” in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. William Mark Ormrod (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1991), 105-21.

  23. 23. Luke 1:46-55 (Douay-Reims)

  24. 24. Neaman, “Magnification as Metaphor,” 108.

  25. 25. It is surprising that this motif is not found in Visitation images. The subject is, however, comparatively rare in early Netherlandish art, and the opportunity to integrate the motif is very limited. However, a similar idea may be expressed in the two Visitation statuettes of Mary and Elizabeth attributed to Heinrich of Constance, ca. 1310, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.724), which both have crystal cabochons that originally contained or covered images of the infants they are carrying inside.

  26. 26. The Magnificat attracted by far the greatest number of polyphonic settings in Bruges churches with the single exception of the Mass itself. A list of one hundred and fifty new polyphonic compositions from the fifteenth century includes ninety-one Masses and thirty-six Magnificats, in contrast to only twelve Te Deums. In 1468-69 more Magnificat settings were composed than Masses (eighteen versus sixteen). Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 30.

  27. 27. Reinhard Strohm, “Music, Ritual and Painting in Fifteenth-Century Bruges” in Hans Memling: Essays, ed. Dirk de Vos (Bruges: Ludion Editions, 1994), 35. The setting “in discantu de O Christi pietas” comprised the singing of two halves of the antiphon, “O Christi Pietas,” alternately after each verse of the Magnificat. Strohm, Music, Ritual and Painting, 35.

  28. 28. Based on analysis of the text’s distortion, three ophthalmologists have independently concluded that the lenses are convex (magnifying) with a power of around +2.50. Ilardi, Renaissance Vision, 80.

  29. 29. Van Eyck used the same phrase on the frame of the Dresden Triptych and behind the Virgin on the interior of the Ghent Altarpiece.

  30. 30. HEC E[ST] SPECIOSOR SOLE SUP[ER] O[MN]EM STELLARU[M] DISPOSIC[I]O[N]EM LUCI C[OM]PA[RA]TA I[N]VE[N]ITUR P[RI]OR CA[N]DOR E[ST] ENI[M] LUCIS ETERNE SPEC[U]L[U]M S[I]N[E] MAC[U]LA D[E]I MAIES[TATIS]. Transcription and translation is given in Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck (New York: Tabard Press, 1980), 218, 383.

  31. 31. William Henry James Weale, Hubert and John van Eyck: Their Life and Work (London: John Lane, 1908), 123, was the first to recognize that the passage is also found at Lauds for the Feast of the Assumption.

  32. 32. Rudolf Preimesberger, “Zu Jan van Eycks Diptychon der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza,” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991): 483-85.

  33. 33. Carol Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982).

  34. 34. For the textual development of the metaphor, with further examples, see Jean Dagens “La métaphore de la verrière, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 25 (1949): 524-32; and Yrjö Hirn, “La verrière symbol de la maternité virginale,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 29 (1928): 33-39.

  35. 35. Millard Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth-Century Paintings,” Art Bulletin 27 (1945): 175-81.

  36. 36. “Ut vitrum non laeditur, sole penetrante, sic illaesa creditur, virgo post et ante.”: Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol,” 179.

Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Brine, D. “Piety and Purgatory: Wall-Mounted Memorials from the Southern Netherlands, c. 1380-c. 1520.” PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2006.

Dagens, Jean. “La métaphore de la verrière.” Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 25 (1949): 524-32.

Daxecker, Franz. “Representations of Eyeglasses on Gothic Winged Altars in Austria.” Documenta Ophthalmologica 93 (1997): 169-88. doi:10.1007/BF02569057

Dequeker, Jan V. “Polymyalgia Rheumatica with Temporal Arteritis, as Painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 124, no. 12 (June 15, 1981): 1597-98.

Dewitte, A. “De Kapelanie-stichtingen van Kanunnik van der Paele, Brugge 1434 en 1443.” Biekorf 72 (1971): 15-20.

Dhanens, Elisabeth. Hubert and Jan van Eyck. New York: Tabard Press, 1980).

Friedländer, Max. The Van Eycks, Petrus Christus. Early Netherlandish Painting 1. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1967.

Gayk, S. “Sensible Signes: Mediating Images in Late Medieval Literature.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2005.

Hanley, S. “The Optical Concerns of Jan van Eyck’s Painting Practice.” PhD diss., The University of York, 2007.

Harbison, Craig. The Play of Realism. London: Reaktion Books, 1991.

——. “Iconography and Iconology.” In Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research. Edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen, 378-406. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005.

——. “Visions and Meditations in early Flemish Painting.” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87-118. doi:10.2307/3780659

Hirn, Yrjö. “La verrière symbol de la maternité virginale.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 29 (1928): 33-39.

Hitchcock, D. M. “The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976.

Ilardi, Vincent. “Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses in Fifteenth Century Florence and Milan: New Documents.” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 341-60. doi:10.2307/2860275

——Renaissance Vision: From Spectacles to Telescopes. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007.

Isidore of Seville. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. Edited and translated by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Vol. 2. Edited and translated by William Granger Ryan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Janssens de Bisthoven, Aquilin. Stedelijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Groeningemuseum), Brugge. De Vlaamse Primitieven I: Corpus van de vijftiende-eeuwse schilderkunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1. Rev. ed. Brussels: Nationaal Centrum voor Navorsingen over de Vlaamse Primitieven, 1981.

Neaman, Judith. “Magnification as Metaphor.” In England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, 105-21. Edited by William Mark Ormrod, Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1991.

Keyser, Rafael de. “De Kanunnik Van der Paele.” Spiegel Historiael 6 (1971): 336-43.

——. “Paele, Joris Van der.” In Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, vol. 5, cols. 673-77. Brussels, 1972.

Koch, Robert A. “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altarpiece.” Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 70-77. doi:10.2307/3048141

Martens, Maximiliaan P. J. “Patronage.” In Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, 366-77. Edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen,. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005.

Meiss, Millard. “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth-Century Paintings.” Art Bulletin 27 (1945): 175-81. doi:10.2307/3047010

Naftulin, Lawrence. “A Note on the Iconography of the van der Paele Madonna.” Oud Holland 36 (1971): 3-11.

Preimesberger, Rudolf. “Zu Jan van Eycks Diptychon der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991): 459-89. doi:10.2307/1482569

Purtle, Carol. The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Rosen, Edward. “The Invention of Eyeglasses.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 11 (1956): 13-46, 182-218. doi:10.1093/jhmas/XI.1.13

Rothstein, Bret. “Vision and Devotion in Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele.” Word and Image 15, no.3 (1999): 262-76.

Strohm, Reinhard. Music in Late Medieval Bruges. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

——. “Music, Ritual and Painting in Fifteenth-Century Bruges.” In Hans Memling: Essays, 30-44. Edited by Dirk de Vos. Bruges: Ludion Editions, 1994.

Viaene, Antoon. “Het grafpaneel van kanunnik van der Paele, voltooid in 1436 door Jan van Eyck (Groeningemuseum Bruges).” Biekorf 66 (1965): 257-64.

Ward, John L. “Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck’s Paintings.” Artibus et Historiae 29 (1994): 9-53. doi:10.2307/1483484

Weale, William Henry James. Hubert and John van Eyck: Their Life and Work. London: John Lane, 1908.

List of Illustrations

Jan van Eyck,  Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 1 Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele, completed 1436, oil on oak panel, 141 x 176.5 cm (including frame). Groeninge Museum, Bruges, inv. no. 0.161.1 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of spectacles from Virgin and Child with ,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 2 Jan van Eyck, detail of spectacles from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of flowers and parrot from Virgin and Chi,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 3 Jan van Eyck, detail of flowers and parrot from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
French Illuminator,  detail of Saint Luke from Christ and the Four Ev,  ca. 1400,  Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Fig. 4 French Illuminator, detail of Saint Luke from Christ and the Four Evangelists, ca. 1400, parchment. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, inv. no. ms. 331, fol.187r (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Martin Schongauer,  Death of the Virgin,  ca. 1480,  Trustees of the British Museum, London
Fig. 5 Martin Schongauer, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1480, copperplate engraving on paper, 25.8 x 17 cm. Trustees of the British Museum, London, inv. no. PD 1895-9-15-258 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Bedford Master,  Death and Coronation of the Virgin, miniature fr,  ca. 1410-15,  British Library, London
Fig. 6 Bedford Master, Death and Coronation of the Virgin, miniature from the Bedford Hours, ca. 1410-15, parchment, 26.3 x 18.4 cm. British Library, London, inv. no. Add. 18850, fol. 89v (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Parisian Illuminator,  Hybrid Man Holding a Disk, bas-de-page from a Be,  ca. 1350,  Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Fig. 7 Parisian Illuminator, Hybrid Man Holding a Disk, bas-de-page from a Benedictine breviary, ca. 1350, parchment, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, inv. no. MS. Canon. Liturg. 192, fol. 199r (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of the reflection in Saint George's shield,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 8 Jan van Eyck, detail of the reflection in Saint George's shield from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of Saint Donatian's brocade garment and cr,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 9 Jan van Eyck, detail of Saint Donatian's brocade garment and crozier from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of Saint Donatian's morse from Virgin and,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 10 Jan van Eyck, detail of Saint Donatian's morse from Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele (figure 1) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Annunciation,  ca. 1434-36,  National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Fig. 11 Jan van Eyck, Annunciation, ca. 1434-36, oil on canvas (transferred from oak), 90.2 x 34.1 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection, inv. no. 1937.1.39 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Virgin in a Church,  ca.1426-28,  Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Fig. 12 Jan van Eyck, Virgin in a Church, ca.1426-28, oil on oak, 31 x 14 cm (painted surface). Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 525c (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  detail of crystal carafe and basin from the Lucca,  completed 1436,  Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Fig. 13 Jan van Eyck, detail of crystal carafe and basin from the Lucca Madonna (figure 14) [side-by-side viewer]
Jan van Eyck,  Virgin and Child in an Interior (Lucca Madonna),  ca. 1434-37,  Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
Fig. 14 Jan van Eyck, Virgin and Child in an Interior (Lucca Madonna), ca. 1434-37, oil on oak panel, 65.5 x 49.5 cm. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, inv. no. 944 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. Most authors believe Van Eyck received the commission two years earlier, in 1434, when Van der Paele founded his first chaplaincy, commemorated by the inscription on the lower frame of the painting. For a complete bibliography of the painting and its history, see Aquilin Janssens de Bisthoven, Stedelijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Groeningemuseum), Brugge, De Vlaamse Primitieven I: Corpus van de vijftiende-eeuwse schilderkunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1, rev. ed. (Brussels: Nationaal Centrum voor Navorsingen over de Vlaamse Primitieven, 1981), 194-233. For Van der Paele’s foundations, see A. Dewitte, “De Kapelanie-stichtingen van Kanunnik van der Paele, Brugge 1434 en 1443,” Biekorf 72 (1971): 15-20.

  2. 2. As the original position of the painting is unknown, it is not possible to establish the relationship between pictorial light and real light in the setting for which it was designed. Most likely it was located near the chapel of Saints Peter and Paul, where it probably served as a memorial or epitaph. See especially Antoon Viaene, “Het grafpaneel van kanunnik van der Paele, voltooid in 1436 door Jan van Eyck (Groeningemuseum Bruges),” Biekorf 66 (1965): 257-64; Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, “Patronage” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005), 366-77; and D. Brine, “Piety and Purgatory: Wall-Mounted Memorials from the Southern Netherlands, c. 1380-c. 1520” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2006), 210-52.

  3. 3. For a more detailed analysis of Van der Paele’s spectacles, in the wider context of Van Eyckís engagement with optical concepts and devices, see S. Hanley, “The Optical Concerns of Jan van Eyck’s Painting Practice” (PhD diss., The University of York, 2007).

  4. 4. The term “iconographic minimalism” was coined by Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 131-35. For an overview of this tendency, see Craig Harbison, “Iconography and Iconology,” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Publications, 2005), 378-406.

  5. 5. Born in or near Bruges ca.1370, Van der Paele would have been about sixty-four years of age when Van Eyck began the painting. On his illness, see Jan V. Dequeker, “Polymyalgia Rheumatica with Temporal Arteritis, as Painted by Jan van Eyck in 1436,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 124, no. 12 (June 15, 1981): 1597-98.

  6. 6. He was reappointed to the chapter of Saint Donatian in 1410 and retired to Bruges in July 1418. For Van der Paeleís biography, see Rafael de Keyser, “De Kanunnik Van der Paele,” Spiegel Historiael 6 (1971), 336-43; De Keyser, “Paele, Joris Van der,” in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brussels, 1972), vol. 5, cols. 673-77; and Craig Harbison, The Play of Realism (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), 57-60.

  7. 7. Vincent Ilardi, “Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses in Fifteenth Century Florence and Milan: New Documents,” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 345-46.

  8. 8. Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision: From Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007), 61.

  9. 9. For a thorough discussion of this statement in the context of his writing, see S. Gayk, “Sensible Signes: Mediating Images in Late Medieval Literature” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2005), 47-74.

  10. 10. Robert A. Koch, “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 73.

  11. 11. John L. Ward, “Disguised Symbolism as Enactive Symbolism in Van Eyck’s Paintings,” Artibus et Historiae 29 (1994), 24. I do not, however, follow Ward’s view that the different colored flowers–red, white, and blue–represent the virtues, not least because the “blue” flowers he identifies are actually white flowers reflecting the blue of the Virgin’s gown.

  12. 12. Lawrence Naftulin, “A Note on the Iconography of the van der Paele Madonna,” Oud Holland 36 (1971): 7n12. Isidore, in his Etymologies, Book 12, section 7.24, notes that the parrot “makes a greeting naturally, saying ‘ave’ or ‘χαίρε.’ Other words it learns by being taught.” Isidore of Seville, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 265. Augustine, in his Second Exposition on Psalm 18, refers to the parrot as a talking bird, “often taught by men to utter they know not what.” See D. M. Hitchcock, “The Iconography of the Van der Paele Madonna by Jan van Eyck” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976), 170.

  13. 13. Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 101.

  14. 14. ret Rothstein, “Vision and Devotion in Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele,” Word and Image 15, no. 3 (1999): 262.

  15. 15. The earliest known textual reference to the use of spectacles for the correction of nearsightedness forms part of an order sent by Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan in 1462. For this, see Ilardi, Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses, 345.

  16. 16. On the distinctions between different early words for spectacles in reference to the date and place of their invention, see Edward Rosen, “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 11 (1956): 13-46, 182-218.

  17. 17. “vitreos ab oculis ad legendum”: Rosen, The Invention of Eyeglasses, 213.

  18. 18. See Franz Daxecker “Representations of Eyeglasses on Gothic Winged Altars in Austria,” Documenta Ophthalmologica 93 (1997): 169-88, for further early examples of the tradition, although there is no attempt to interpret their significance.

  19. 19. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, ed. and trans. W. G. Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2:91.

  20. 20. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 89-90.

  21. 21. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 79-80.

  22. 22. Judith Neaman, “Magnification as Metaphor,” in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. William Mark Ormrod (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1991), 105-21.

  23. 23. Luke 1:46-55 (Douay-Reims)

  24. 24. Neaman, “Magnification as Metaphor,” 108.

  25. 25. It is surprising that this motif is not found in Visitation images. The subject is, however, comparatively rare in early Netherlandish art, and the opportunity to integrate the motif is very limited. However, a similar idea may be expressed in the two Visitation statuettes of Mary and Elizabeth attributed to Heinrich of Constance, ca. 1310, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.724), which both have crystal cabochons that originally contained or covered images of the infants they are carrying inside.

  26. 26. The Magnificat attracted by far the greatest number of polyphonic settings in Bruges churches with the single exception of the Mass itself. A list of one hundred and fifty new polyphonic compositions from the fifteenth century includes ninety-one Masses and thirty-six Magnificats, in contrast to only twelve Te Deums. In 1468-69 more Magnificat settings were composed than Masses (eighteen versus sixteen). Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 30.

  27. 27. Reinhard Strohm, “Music, Ritual and Painting in Fifteenth-Century Bruges” in Hans Memling: Essays, ed. Dirk de Vos (Bruges: Ludion Editions, 1994), 35. The setting “in discantu de O Christi pietas” comprised the singing of two halves of the antiphon, “O Christi Pietas,” alternately after each verse of the Magnificat. Strohm, Music, Ritual and Painting, 35.

  28. 28. Based on analysis of the text’s distortion, three ophthalmologists have independently concluded that the lenses are convex (magnifying) with a power of around +2.50. Ilardi, Renaissance Vision, 80.

  29. 29. Van Eyck used the same phrase on the frame of the Dresden Triptych and behind the Virgin on the interior of the Ghent Altarpiece.

  30. 30. HEC E[ST] SPECIOSOR SOLE SUP[ER] O[MN]EM STELLARU[M] DISPOSIC[I]O[N]EM LUCI C[OM]PA[RA]TA I[N]VE[N]ITUR P[RI]OR CA[N]DOR E[ST] ENI[M] LUCIS ETERNE SPEC[U]L[U]M S[I]N[E] MAC[U]LA D[E]I MAIES[TATIS]. Transcription and translation is given in Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck (New York: Tabard Press, 1980), 218, 383.

  31. 31. William Henry James Weale, Hubert and John van Eyck: Their Life and Work (London: John Lane, 1908), 123, was the first to recognize that the passage is also found at Lauds for the Feast of the Assumption.

  32. 32. Rudolf Preimesberger, “Zu Jan van Eycks Diptychon der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza,” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991): 483-85.

  33. 33. Carol Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982).

  34. 34. For the textual development of the metaphor, with further examples, see Jean Dagens “La métaphore de la verrière, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 25 (1949): 524-32; and Yrjö Hirn, “La verrière symbol de la maternité virginale,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 29 (1928): 33-39.

  35. 35. Millard Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth-Century Paintings,” Art Bulletin 27 (1945): 175-81.

  36. 36. “Ut vitrum non laeditur, sole penetrante, sic illaesa creditur, virgo post et ante.”: Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol,” 179.

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DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2009.1.1.2
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Stephen Hanley, "Optical Symbolism as Optical Description: A Case Study of Canon van der Paele’s Spectacles," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 1:1 (Winter 2009) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2009.1.1.2