There Will Never Be Another Show of Northern Renaissance Master Jan van Eyck Like the One About to Open in Belgium

Around half of the known works by
Flemish master Jan van Eyck will be exhibited in a
once-in-a-lifetime exhibition in Belgium next week alongside the
newly restored Ghent Altarpiece, one of the most famous—and most
stolen—works of art in the world.

Van Eyck’s precise, virtuoso paintings have captivated
historians and artists alike for centuries. In a 2007 interview,
painter Luc Tuymans said: “After the Flemish primitives, and
foremost among them Jan van Eyck, any artist can only be a
dilettante.”

And as it turns out, there are new
revelations still to be discovered in Van Eyck’s oeuvre, more than
500 years after his death. The exhibition, which opens February 1
at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, brings together more of the
artist’s works than have ever been seen in one place. It’s a
highlight of the Belgian city’s Year of Van Eyck, timed to coincide
with the completion of the ambitious six-year, $2.5 million
restoration of Hubert and Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, the Ghent
Altarpiece. 

High-tech, extensive conservation
has revealed striking new
details, like the surprisingly humanoid face on the
sacrificial lamb representing Christ and buildings that reflect the
architecture of medieval Ghent. (The lamb’s newly intensely gaze
has already caused a stir online.) All
eight of the restored outer panels will go on view for the
first—and likely the last—time at the museum; the altarpiece is
almost never shown outside of its home at Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in
Ghent. The public seems to have recognized the importance of the
occasion: 40,000 tickets have already been
sold.  

In addition to 12 works by Van Eyck and nine
from his studio, more than 100 works by his
contemporaries, including the early Italian Renaissance artists Fra
Angelico, Pisanello, and Stefano de Giovanni, will also be included
in the show, alongside a remarkable collection of miniatures
painted in medieval illuminated manuscripts.

The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as The
Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, has an eventful history. It
has been dismantled and stolen six times over the centuries,
including by Napoleon. Hitler wanted it for his mega-museum in
Linz, Austria. The panels were finally reunited after World War
II—although one piece depicting righteous judges, which was stolen
in 1934, remains missing to this day.  

The interior panels of the
altarpiece are staying put in the Belgian city’s cathedral and will
be reunited with the external ones in the cathedral’s
new visitor center once the museum exhibition closes at the end of
April. New displays in the center include an augmented-reality
experience explaining the work’s religious and art historical
significance.

The landmark exhibition has been put together with major loans
from collections around the world, including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles,
the Prado in Madrid, and the Vatican Museums. London’s National Gallery agreed to loan of the mysterious
Portrait of a Man (Léal souvenir), one of its three
works by Van Eyck, which was completed the same year the altarpiece
was finished.

The festivities are all a part of
Ghent’s year of Van Eyck, which will include other exhibitions and
themed events. Belgium’s Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage has
announced the completion of the astonishing task of fully
digitizing Van Eyck’s complete painted works and miniatures to
coincide with the celebrations. The works are available online in
high resolution at the Closer to Van Eyck
website. The digitized collection is due to be exhibited at
Brussels’s BOZAR – Centre
for Fine Arts in September.

See more works from the remarkable exhibition below.

“Van Eyck. An Optical Revolution”
runs February 1 through April 30 at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent,
Belgium.

The post There Will Never Be Another Show of Northern
Renaissance Master Jan van Eyck Like the One About to Open in
Belgium appeared first on artnet News.