Madonna in the Church (or The Virgin in the Church) is a small panel painting by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–1440, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon (Virgin of Tenderness). Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life.Harbison (1995), 99 In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Like other Byzantine depictions of the Madonna, van Eyck depicts a monumental Mary, unrealistically large compared to her surroundings. The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral's windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary's virginal purity and God's ethereal presence.Smith (2004), 64
Most art historians see the panel as the left wing of a dismantled diptych; presumably its opposite wing was a votive portrait. Near-contemporary copies by the Master of 1499 and Jan Gossaert pair it with two very different right-hand images: one is of a donor kneeling in an interior setting; the other is set outdoors, with the donor being presented by St Anthony. Both painters made significant alterations to van Eyck's composition, which may have brought the image more up to date with contemporary styles, but the copies have been described as "spiritually if not aesthetically disastrous to the original concept".Koch (1967), 48. See also Panofsky (1953), 487
Madonna in the Church was first documented in 1851. Since then its dating and attribution have been widely debated amongst scholars. At first thought an early work by Jan van Eyck, and for a period attributed to his brother Hubert van Eyck, it is now definitively attributed to Jan and believed to be a later work, demonstrating techniques present in work from the mid-1430s and later. The panel was acquired for the Berlin Gemäldegalerie in 1874. It was stolen in 1877 and soon returned, but without its original inscribed frame, which was never recovered.Harbison (1995), 177 Today Madonna in the Church is widely considered one of van Eyck's finest; Millard Meiss wrote that its "splendor and subtlety of [its depiction] of light is unsurpassed in Western art."Meiss (1945), 179
Attribution and dating
The attribution of the panel reflects the progression and trends of 19th and 20th-century scholarship on Early Netherlandish art. It is now thought to have been completed c. 1438–1440, but there are still arguments for dates as early as 1424–1429. As with the pages ascribed to Hand G in the Turin-Milan Hours manuscript, the panel was attributed to Jan's brother Hubert van Eyck in the 1875 Gemäldegalerie catalogue, and by a 1911 claim by art historian Georges Hulin de Loo. This is no longer considered credible and Hubert, today, is credited with very few works.Till-Holger Borchert mentions that although Hubert enjoyed a brief re-flourish in the early 20th century, during the latter half of the 19th century some scholars were claiming he was the invention of the 16th century, by "fiercely patriotic Ghent humanists", and a "fictitious character who had never actually lived, let alone been an important painter." See Borchert (2008), 12 By 1912 the painting had been definitively attributed to Jan in the museum catalogue.
Attempts to date it have undergone similar shifts of opinion. In the 19th century the panel was believed to be an early work by Jan completed as early as c. 1410, although this view changed as scholarship progressed. In the early 20th century, Ludwig von Baldass placed it around 1424–1429, then for a long period it was seen as originating from the early 1430s.Dhanens (1980), 323 Erwin Panofsky provided the first detailed treatise on the work and placed it around 1432–34. However, following research from Meyer Schapiro, he revised his opinion to the late 1430s in the 1953 edition of his Early Netherlandish Painting.Panofsky & Wuttke (2006), 552 A 1970s comparative study of van Eyck's 1437 Saint Barbara concluded that Madonna in the Church was completed after c. 1437. In the 1990s, Otto Pächt judged the work as probably a late van Eyck, given the similar treatment of an interior in the 1434 Arnolfini Portrait.Pächt (1999), 205 In the early 21st century, Jeffrey Chipps Smith and John Oliver Hand placed it between 1426 and 1428, claiming it as perhaps the earliest extant signed work confirmed as by Jan.Smith (2004), 61
The panel
Description At 31 cm × 14 cm, the painting's dimensions are small enough to be almost considered miniature, consistent with most 15th-century devotional diptychs. A reduced size increased portability and affordability, and encouraged the viewer to approach the piece to more closely see its intricate details.Harbison (1995), 169–187 The work shows Mary wearing a dark blue robe – the colour traditionally used to emphasise her humanity – over a red dress of different textured fabrics. Her hem is embroidered in gold with gilded lettering that reads "SOL" and "LU",Smith (2004), 63 or perhaps SIOR SOLE HEC ES,Meiss (1945), 180 in all probability, fragments of the Latin words for "sun" (sole) and "light" (lux). On her head is an elaborately tiered and jeweled crown and in her arms she carries the infant Jesus, his feet resting on her left hand. Swaddled in a white cloth from hips trailing down beyond his feet, his hand clutches the jeweled neckline of his mother's dress.Weale (1908), 167
Further depictions of Mary are found in the church background. They include a statue of the Virgin and Child positioned between two lit candles in the choir screen behind the main figures, and to the right two angels stand in the choir singing her praises (perhaps singing the hymn inscribed on the frame). Above her is an annunciation relief, and in the recessed bay a relief depicting her coronation; the crucifixion is shown on the rood. Thus, the stages of Mary's life as mother of Jesus are depicted in the painting.Meiss (1945), 179–181 A two-column prayer tablet – similar to the one depicted in Rogier van der Weyden's large Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1445–1450) – hangs on a pier to the left. It contains words alluding to and echoing the lines on the original frame. The windows of the clerestory overlook flying buttresses, and cobwebs are visible between the arches of the vault.Borchert (2008), 63 Several different building phases can be seen in the arched gallery, while the choral balcony and transept are depicted in a more contemporary style than the nave.
Closely detailed beams of light spill through the high windows and illuminate the interior, filling the portal and flowing across the tiled floors before it hits the clerestory windows. The brilliance of the daylight is juxtaposed with the gentle glow of the candles in the choir screen altar, while the lower portion of the pictorial space is relatively poorly lit. Shadows cast by the cathedral can be seen across the choir steps and near aisle. Their angle is rendered in an unusually realistic manner for early 15th century, and the detail is such that their description is likely based on observation of the actual behaviour of light, a further innovation in 15th-century art. Yet while the light is portrayed as it might appear in nature, its source is not. Panofsky notes that the sunlight enters from the north windows, but contemporary churches normally had east-facing choirs, so the light should enter from the south. He suggests the light is not intended to be natural, but rather to represent the divine, and hence subject to "the laws of symbolism and not those of nature."Panofsky (1953), 147–148
Frame and inscriptions According to Elisabeth Dhanens, the shape and rounded top of the original frame is reminiscent of those found on the top register of panels of the Ghent Altarpiece, which are accepted as designed by Jan's brother Hubert. She believes the current frame is too narrow and small, and contains "clumsy marbling".Dhanens (1980), 325 From a detailed 1851 inventory, we know the text of the hymn inscribed on original frame. The text is written in a poetic form and begun on the lower border and then extended upwards on the vertical borders, ending on the top border.Dhanens (1980), 316 The lower border of the frame read FLOS FLORIOLORUM APPELLARIS; the sides and top MATER HEC EST FILIA PATER EST NATUS QUIS AUDIVIT TALIA DEUS HOMO NATUS ETCET ("The mother is the daughter. This father is born. Who has heard of such a thing? God born a man"). The fifth stanza of the hymn (not included in van Eyck's transcription) reads, "As the sunbeam through the glass. Passeth but not staineth. Thus, the Virgin, as she was. Virgin still remaineth." The lettering on the hem of her robe echoes the inscription on the frame, words similar to those found on Mary's dress in van Eyck's 1436 Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, a passage from the Book of Wisdom (7:29) reading EST ENIM HAEC SPECIOSIOR SOLE ET SUPER OMNEM STELLARUM DISPOSITIONEM. LUCI CONPARATA INVENITUR PRIOR ("For she is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior").
Some historians have suggested that the inscriptions were intended to breathe life into the other statues and depictions of Mary. Others, including Craig Harbison, believe they were purely functional; given that contemporary diptychs were commissioned for private devotion and reflection, the inscriptions were meant to be read as an incantation or were personalised indulgence prayers. Harbison notes that van Eyck's privately commissioned works are unusually heavily inscribed with prayer, and that the words may have served a similar function to prayer tablets, or more exactly "Prayer Wings", of the type seen in the reconstructed London Virgin and Child triptych.Harbison (1995), 95–96. Both wings are later additions.
Architecture
Van Eyck's earlier work often shows churches and cathedrals in older Romanesque style, sometimes to represent the Temple in Jerusalem as an appropriate historical setting, with decoration drawn exclusively from the Old Testament.Snyder (1985), 99 That is clearly not the case here – the Christ Child occupies the same space as a large rood cross depicting him being crucified. The church in this panel is contemporary Gothic – a choice perhaps intended to associate Mary with the Ecclesia Triumphans – while her pose and oversized scale are indebted to the forms and conventions of Byzantine art and the International Gothic.Walther, Ingo F. Masterpieces of Western Art (From Gothic to Neoclassicism: Part 1). Taschen GmbH, 2002. 124. Van Eyck details the architecture with a precision not seen before in northern European painting.