The Sparkling Stones in the Ghent Altarpiece and the Fountain of Life of Jan Van Eyck, Reflecting Cusanus and Jan Van Ruusbroec

WOLFGANG CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER

THE SPARKLING STONES IN THE GHENT ALTARPIECE AND THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE OF JAN VAN EYCK, REFLECTING CUSANUS AND JAN VAN RUUSBROEC

For Lothar Graf zu Dohna, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, May 4th, 2014

SUMMARY – The rich use of precious stones in the panels of the Ghent Altarpiece is due to the presence of stones in the Rivers of Para- dise (Gn 2:10-14: onyx and bedolah, i.e. sardonyx or carnelian and jet) and in the goshen of the High Priest in Exodus (28.15 to 21), which inspired the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Apocalypse (21.9 to 21). Whereas within the Fountain of Life in the Prado, which since new investigations is to be ascribed to Jan van Eyck, on the side of the Synagogue all stones are concentrated in the Goshen, on the side of the Ecclesia the precious stones are spread over the spiritual and secular leaders. This later moment is maintained in the Ghent Altarpiece, in which Jan van Eyck in addition to the biblical sources picks up statements of Jan van Ruusbroec. Citing the Apocalypse the Flemish mystic spoke of a sparkling stone, which is given to the one, who transcends all things, and in it he gains light and truth and life. Exactly that was painted by Jan van Eyck.

Mysticism is widely seen as a matter of the word: the figurative seems to be at best an illustration of what is said about the mystical appearances. In fact, however, in the visualization of spiritual perception and artistic forming, there is a communication and exchange between the pictorial and the linguistic. To illustrate their thoughts mystics draw on the figurative world of objects, while texts enter in the visual design and the forming of thinking and meditating painters. Of special importance in this regard is the interrelationship between the pictorial works of the painter Jan van Eyck and the texts of the Bible and the theological writings of Jan van Ruusbroec and Nicholas of Cusa: All of them deal with precious sparkling stones in a spiritual way.

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THE JEWELS AND PEARLS OF JAN VAN EYCK

The brilliance in the representation of the jewels and pearls in the Ghent Altar- piece by Jan van Eyck1 has often been maintained, but the semantic aspects of these precious stones have remained largely undiscussed. Likewise, the inequal- ity in the distribution of the stones on the panels and their location have not been specifically addressed. This is surprising, because none of the painters of the 15th century depicts stones and jewels to such an extent as Jan van Eyck.2 The abundant presentation of precious stones in the robes of highranking senior church officials could first be understood as an indication of the wealth and the jewelry cult of the Burgundian court, which is reflected even in a religious context. But that may not be enough, because it cannot explain the many gems in the fountain basin of the Adoration of the Lamb in the Ghent Altar- piece. With particular intensity Jan van Eyck paints precious jewelry in the upper register of the interior view of the Altarpiece; only in the panels of Adam and Eve are they missing. In addition to that, precious stones and pearls are often to be found in the middle panel of the lower register: especially in the trappings of worshippers of the Lamb. Finally, isolated precious stones can be seen on the two side panels on both sides of the lower register, which form one contiguous scene.3

1 For the discussion of perception and comprehension of the picture order in the Ghent Altar- piece, the vexed question of the authorship ‘Jan or Hubert van Eyck’ and their shares of the existing work is irrelevant; for simplicity, in the following Jan is referred to as the painter. For details see: Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Antwerp 1980; Volker Her- zner, Jan van Eyck und der Genter Altar, Worms 1995. Both offer more literature. See also Till Holger Borchert, Le siècle de Van Eyck: Le monde méditerranéen et les primitifs flamands 1430-1530, Bruges 2002; Harold van de Perre, Van Eyck: L’agneau mystique, s.l. [Paris] 1996; Dana Goodgal, The iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece, Philadelphia (PA) 1981. – The present text is based upon studies done while the author was a research fellow at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts in Brussels. I would like to thank Marc de Mey (Royal Academy), Inigo Bocken (Nijmegen) and Francis Jarman (Hildesheim) for their kind support. 2 See e.g. Marc de Mey, ‘Mastering ambiguity’, in: M. Turner (Ed.), The artful mind: Cognitive science and the riddle of human creativity, New York 2006, 271-304; Idem, ‘The lines and the lusters of light’, in: M. de Mey, M.P.J. Martens & C. Stroo (Eds.), Vision & material: Interac- tion between art and science in Jan van Eyck’s time, Brussels 2012, 29-63; Wolfgang Christian Schneider, ‘Reflections as an object of vision in the Ghent Altarpiece’, in: De Mey et al., Vision & material, 171-181. 3 This unity is evident from the foremost horse Milites Christi, whose hindquarters are visible on the board of iudices. Similarly, the tree in the middle ground joins the panels of the Ere- miti and Peregrini.

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THE APOCALYPSE AND ITS STONES

A first access to the content of the precious stones is given by the theme of the altarpiece, which is indicated in the central panel of the lower register: The Adoration of the Lamb, a scene from the Apocalypse. In fact, the text of the Apocalypse contains a longer passage that refers to gems (Ap 21:9-21): One of the angels, who has previously poured the cup of bitterness upon the earth, appears to the writer of the book, removes him and shows him the bride of the Lamb: the holy city of Jerusalem, ‘Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper, clear as crystal’ (21:11). And its wall was made of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalced- ony, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate was of one pearl, and the market square of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. (21:18-21) This description undoubtedly outlines the outer frame of the meaningful whole envisaged by Jan van Eyck. But the painter does not intend to set a city before our eyes: only in the distant background of the worship of the Lamb are municipal buildings visible, which may be interpreted as Jerusalem. Regarding the fullness of the semantic implications with which Jan van Eyck has enriched the paintings of the upper register4 it seems to be necessary to take into account the depth of the narrative in the Book of Revelation, which as such forms part of a far-reaching network of statements all over the Bible. It should be possible to explain the content of the precious stones and their reflections in the Ghent altarpiece in terms of their references to late medieval mysticism.

PRECIOUS STONES IN GENESIS

The first context in which a precious stone appears in the Bible is in Genesis. The description of Paradise mentions the four rivers that irrigate the garden of Eden and says that the first of them, Pishon, flows around the land of Havilah

4 See for that the studies in the volume Wolfgang Christian Schneider et al. (Eds.), ‘Videre et videri coincidunt’: Theorien des Sehens in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, Münster 2010, especially Schneider, ‘Betrachtung, Aufstieg und Ordnung’, 209-236; as well as Schneider, ‘Die Deesis des Genter Altars’, 205-223.

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where precious gold is to be found, but also bedolah and the schoham (Gn 2: 10-14). The interpretation of these words is difficult and must have become insecure already in early times. In the current English translations for bedolah the Vulgate version of the word is usually chosen: Bedellium; most German Bibles interpret it as ‘Bedellium-Harz’, whereas in the Dutch Bible of 1637 and the later ones ‘bedolah’ remained untranslated. In Hebrew ‘bedolah’ is usually understood as ‘gum resin’. But this interpretation is highly questionable; on the one hand because bedolah in the Hebrew text is combined with a word meaning ‘stone’ and because it is then paralleled to a second word explicitly marked as a stone, which is generally understood as ‘onyx’. On the other hand, it must be seen that the Jewish translators of the Scriptures in Alexandria translate bedolah with anthrax. Anthrax occurs in the LXX only in two other places, and both of them apply the same fact (Ex 28:18 and Ex 36:18 [Vulgate 39.11]), the description of the stones of the Goschen of the High Priest. Here Anthrax cannot mean ‘gum resin’, because there it explicitly refers to jewels – and indeed all other words name precious stones, and all of them bear names cut into them. This interpretation of anthrax as stone is proved by Isaiah (54:11 LXX), where God speaks to Jerusalem: ‘I will prepare for thee anthrax as the stone [of the walls] and lay thy foundations with sapphires’. There ‘gum resin’ cannot be meant, because the verse deals with stones of the wall. At the same time, however, a coherent form of anthrax, the word anthraxin, occurs elsewhere in the Bible, in Psalms 119:4 and Proverbs 33:21, and there it is associated with martially used firebrand. Thus bedolah must have besides the context of precious stones somehow the aspect of firebrand or burning coal. All this points to bedolah as the deep black jet,5 a petrified coal, that does not stain and is hard enough to be used as a gemstone: to be polished and plastically cut, as actually happened in early history. And indeed jet appears in ancient works of art, for example in Roman times,6 as well as in ancient sources: in Pliny’s Natural History and in Dioscurides (6th century), where ‘Lithos Gagatēs’ is mentioned as burning.7 All this matches what is said of bedolah in Exodus 28:21 and

5 Its English name ‘Jet’ (as well as the German ‘Gagat’ and the French ‘Jais’) derives from the river ‘Gagae’ in Lycia (southern Turkey) – i.e. in the cultural complex of the Middle East, from where the Bible originates. The hardness of jet is similar to that of amber. See Bernhard Gruber, ‘Der “schwarze’ Bernstein” – Gagat’, in: Oberösterreichische Geo Nachrichten 14 (1999), 37-41. 6 Wilhelmine Hagen, ‘Kaiserzeitliche Gagatarbeiten aus dem rheinischen Germanien’, in: Bon- ner Jahrbuch 142 (1937), 77-144. 7 Dioscurides (Vienna cod. med. gr. 1) fol. 395r.; see Andreas Fingernagel (Ed.), Juden, Christen und Muslime: Interkultureller Dialog in alten Schriften, Vienna 2010; ill. 46 on 117; see also the text on 122. Cf. Dioscurides V 146; Plinius nat. hist. 36 c. 19 (34) [142]; similar: Coelius Aurelianus 1 c. 4 (where Gagates lithos ranks between bedellium und bitumen); further mentions are in Aetius of Amida and in the orphic Lithika (peri lithoon).

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39:14, and especially the biblical demand, that each of the twelve stones of the Goschen should bear one of the names of the twelve tribes of Israel ‘like the engravings of a signet’ (Ex 28:21). In case of an interpretation of bedolah as ‘gum resin’ that certainly would not be possible. In Isaiah 54:11 (LXX) therefore is meant a wall of (potentially) burning stones. The other stone mentioned in Exodus as lying in the river of Paradise, the schoham, is expressly designated as a stone and usually understood as an onyx, probably a sardonyx or carnelian. The additional characterisation as ‘stone’ obviously marks the greater hardness of the schoham compared with the lesser hardness of the bedolah. Thus the account in Genesis points to two precious stones, which are different in their hardness. The characterisation of bedolah resp. anthraxin in Psalms 119:4 (or Prv 33:21) as connected with firebrand was influential to the tradition, not only because this was probably the impetus for an understanding of bedolah as something like a ‘gum’ in the English and German translations, but also because the Vulgate in Exodus 28:12 in Exodus 36:18 for bedolah chose the translation carbunculus, probably in respect of the deep red colour connected with glowing coal.8 Following this tradition Cusanus speaks in his De non aliud of the carbunculus as burning and develops out of this his interpretation of the carbuncle.9 This caused the translation of bedolah (Hebrew), anthrax (LXX) or carbunculus (Vulgate) as ‘Rubin’ in most German translations or as ‘robijn’ in the Dutch Lutheran Bible (1750/1933/1994). This translation was accompanied by a similar shift in the interpretation of the other stone mentioned in the river of Paradise; the Shoham, which is usually interpreted as onyx (but sometimes also as chrysoprase, beryl, malachite), was translated by the LXX as prasinos, which in the Vulgate became onychinus (onyx), which since antiquity was pop- ular in its black form. Therefore from a historical point of view (but not in the tradition of the biblical wording) both stones in the Pishon have in fact changed their colours. Thus the representation of the water of Paradise, the source of the four Paradise streams, by Jan van Eyck is understandable. For it is striking that the

8 In Epiphanius (ca. 315-403): De gemmis (ed. Robert P. Blake & Henry de Vis, London 1934, 110f.) the context of red and burning of the carbunculus is still present: the coal which the angel grips in the great Isaiah Vision is a carbuncle; for the Ethiopians, the carbuncle Christ shines like a light in the dark night and lights like the stone with endogenous luminosity the blackness. See Christel Meier, Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jh., Munich 1977, 104f. 9 De non aliud XI-XIII: see Harald Schwaetzer & Maximilian Glas, ‘Beryll, Diamant, Karfun- kel: Edelsteine im Werk des Nikolaus Cusanus’, in: Litterae Cusanae 4 (2004), 88ff; and Harald Schwaetzer, ‘Karfunkel’, in: Klaus Reinhardt, Jorge M. Machetta & Harald Schwaet- zer (Eds.), De non aliud: Nichts anderes, Münster 2011, 255-261.

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painter in the gutter around the fountain shows mainly red and black tinted stones – and thereby reflects the Latin tradition of the intricate interpretation- history of the stones mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis.

STONES IN THE BOOK OF EXODUS

But with this reference to the Book of Genesis by Jan van Eyck only a first layer of the content of precious stones within the altarpiece has come into view. A further layer is reflected in another part to the Bible referring to precious stones, that even Philo of Alexandria (and after him Severian of Gabalah)10 discussed and connected with the gems of the river Pishon:11 it is a longer passage of the Book of Exodus (28:15-21; largely repeated in 36:16-21 [Vulgate: 39:9-14]), which refers to the production of the briefly mentioned Goshen, the breastplate of the high priest’s ritual cloth. It is worthwhile to quote this section carefully: 15 And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cunning work; after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it; of gold, of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine twined linen, shalt thou make it. 16 Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof. 17 And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. 18 And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. 19 And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst. 20 And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they shall be set in gold in their inclosings. 21 And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet; every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes. As in the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Apocalypse, the names of the stones in this biblical passage can only approximately be linked to modern identifications of precious stones – and this not only in the English, German or

10 Severian, De mundi creatione (Patrologia cursus completes: Series Graeca [ed. J.P. Migne], Paris 1857-1858, Vol. 56, 479 [further abbreviated as PG]), assigns the carbunculus the royal dignity, the prasinus the priestly, the first to Judah, the second to Levi. 11 Philo, Leg. alleg. I 66ff. (see Francis Henry Colson & George Herbert Whitaker [Eds.], Philo of Alexandria: Allegorical interpretation, London-Cambridge [MA], 1949, 190ff). The fourth stone (bedolah; anthrax) Philo recognises as the Stone of Juda, the Prasinos (for him a green sapphire) as the stone of Issachar.

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Dutch translations, but also in the Greek and Latin ones.12 Finally, there is some uncertainty about the interpretation of these precious stones, even in regard to the Hebrew original text, caused by naming changes throughout the centuries and due to shifts through the first post-Masoretic vocalization of the early Old Testament texts. But it does seem that Jan van Eyck can be placed in a certain interpretative tradition with his understanding of the stones. This, however, requires a detour via a work hitherto only loosely connected with Jan: the Fountain of Life in the Prado in Madrid.

THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE IN THE PRADO

For a long time, the Fountain of Life in the Prado (Fig. 1), which is first mentioned in the inventory of the monastery of Parral in Segovia in 1455 as a donation of the Castilian King Henry IV, was dated to the late 40s of the 15th century or even to the years after the mid-century, and ascribed to pupils or followers of Jan van Eyck.13 This assessment was based mainly on the – undoubtedly existing – qualitative weaknesses in some areas of the panel (especially in the faces of Christ and the angels) and some antiquated moments (such as the costume of the figures in the foreground or the scenery reminiscent of the Limbourg Brothers). This late dating, however, has since been overturned, because the dendrochronological analysis of the Fountain of Life undertaken by Peter Klein makes it probable that the work was painted on a wooden panel from a tree felled by ca. 1414.14 If one considers the time required for the drying of the wood, the painting would then have been created in the years before 1430, about 1428 or so, because wood cut in around 1414 would not have been left for thirty years unused (even allowing for a long drying time). Thus older observations become relevant again, such as the observation that the garments represented the fashion

12 Cf. Wolfgang Zwickel (Ed.), Edelsteine in der Bibel, Mainz 2002; Johannes Schiller, ‘Art. Edelstein’, in: WiBiLex: http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/16795/. 13 Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 355. 14 See Volker Herzner, ‘Der Madrider Lebensbrunnen aus der Werkstatt Jan van Eycks und die zielsicheren Irrwege der Forschung’, in: Kunstgeschichte: Texte zur Diskussion, 2011-9 (urn:nb- n:de:0009-23-28428) [http://www.dipp.nrw.de /lizenzen/dppl/dppl/DPPL_v2_de_06-2004. html]. Unfortunately, the assignment of the wood to a specific region remains unclear. Should it be classified in the dendrochronological scale, which is valid for Spain, the question arises whether the wood belongs to the time of Jan’s Spanish journey; see the considerations in Wolfgang Christian Schneider, ‘Jan van Eyck und seine Welt’, in: Der Weg des Sehens und die Reflexion (forthcoming).

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of the years around 1425, a finding that had previously been set aside as a deliberate antiquarianism of Eyck’s successor. At the same time, the investigation of the grounding of the painting by X-rays and infrared-reflectography has revealed a host of changes between the original layout in the preparatory drawing and the final execution in colour.15 In particular the fountain in the centre was round in the first version, but later received its present octagonal shape. Such creativity in searching for a form indicates a painter working independently, not a copyist or simple pupil. We may therefore recognise in this Master of the Fountain of Life, working just before 1430 in an Eyckian style,16 Jan van Eyck himself. The differences in quality to later works of Eyck already referred to suggest that the painting dates from an early phase of this painter’s work, and that perhaps the involvement of less talented assistants. Thus the Fountain of Life in the Prado and the Ghent Altarpiece (Fig. 2) come near to each other in such a way that the Fountain of Life precedes the Ghent Altarpiece, which in turn – possibly with the exception of the worship of the Lamb in the centre, which could have been created earlier (1432?) – has to be dated to the middle of the 30s (i.e. 1435 and later).17 This should not only be thought of as a temporal sequence, but also as a semantic one. Because both works, despite their different emphases, provide a similar theme: On the one hand, the work of the Lamb and the interpretation of the associated events, in particular the idea of the Eucharistic mystery by which is triggered the conflict between church and synagogue in the Fountain of Life; on the other hand,

15 Pilar Silva Maroto, ‘Le dessin sous-jacent de deux peintures eyckiennes du Musée du Prado: Le Triomphe de l’Église sur la Synagogue, école de van Eyck, et Saint François reçevant les stigmates, du Maître d’Hoogstraten’, in: Hélène Verougstraete et al. (Eds.), La peinture ancienne et ses procédés: Copies, répliques, pastiches, Leuven 2006, 42-50; Bart Fransen, ‘Jan van Eyck, “el gran pintor del ilustre duque de Borgoña”: El viaje a la Península y la Fuente de la Vida’, in: Javier Baròn et al., La senda española de los artistas flamencos, Barcelona 2009, 105-125. 16 As a terminus ante quem Silva Maroto points to the Burgundian Order in the left foreground of the kneeling man wearing a fur cap, which was replaced by the ‘Order of the Golden Fleece’ founded in 1430 (Silva Maroto, ‘Le dessin’, 43). 17 Herzner confirms the date 13 May 1435, as the donor Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut dedi- cated the daily celebration of Mass for their chapel, because ‘es abwegig [wäre] anzunehmen, dass der Altar aufgestellt worden wäre, bevor die täglichen Messen stattfanden, die für den Auftraggeber letztlich wichtiger waren als jeder noch so prunkvolle Altar’ (Herzner, ‘Der Madrider Lebensbrunnen’, §16). Nevertheless, this event does not necessarily mean that in fact all the tables were completed at this time. There are cases where only parts of a work of art (not yet fully completed in its entirety) were included in a festive act because the donor for a specific reason, wanted prematurely some ‘special public act’. For dendrochronological examination of the altarpiece see also Jozef Vynckier, ‘Étude dendrochronologique de quelques panneaux de l’Agneau Mystique de Van Eyck’, in: Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique. Bul- letin 28 (1999/2000) [2002], 237-240.

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the apocalyptic worship of the Lamb with the coexistence of people of the church and people of ancient times and of Judaism in the Ghent Altarpiece. At the same time both panels visualise by the water of Paradise flowing towards the viewer a specific ‘statement’.18 It is noteworthy, however, that in the Foun- tain of Life it is not John the Baptist who appears to the left of Christ, but John the Evangelist – thus in the Fountain of Life the process of crucifixion, whose witnesses were Mary and the Evangelist, is reported implicitly, whereas in the Ghent altarpiece Mary and John the Baptist, the figures of the Deesis, point to the Last Judgment and the mercy of Christ at the end of times. Moreover, in the Madrid Painting there is a barrier between the scene around the enthroned Christ with the Lamb and the area of the conflict between Christianity and Judaism, the ‘wall of Paradise’. This barrier is missing in the Ghent Altarpiece. Therefore the concept of the well of life can be understood as a precursor to that of the Mystic Lamb; this, however, is a more abstract and indexical kind of message than that of the Fountain of Life. The Fountain of Life provides the essential link in the tradition of precious stones, missing in the Ghent Altarpiece, in concrete form, because the conflict between church and synagogue is not – as often – represented by the personifi- cations of Ecclesia and Synagogue, but through their heads: by the Pope and the High Priest (including the adherents of both); and in the figure of the High Priest Jan van Eyck shows quite accurately the Goshen, the chest plate, as described in the Book of Exodus. But while on the side of the synagogue all jewelry, all the precious stones, are focused in the one figure of the High Priest, on the side of the Ecclesia the gems are spread over the people – according to their feudal rank: beside the Roman Pope and the church dignitaries, the emperor and a king with secular nobles. In this jewel-adorned presentation the representatives of Christianity (as we probably should say) are aligned with the figure of Christ in the upper divine area behind the wall.

THE GOSHEN OF THE HIGH PRIEST IN THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE

Jan van Eyck reproduces the stones of the Goshen in a very differentiated way. Though one must be aware of doubts regarding the names of the gemstones,

18 Leslie Ann Blacksberg, ‘Between salvation and damnation: The role of the fountain in the Fountain of Life (Museo del Prado: Madrid)’, in: Barbara Baert et al. (Eds.), Het wellende water: De bron in tekst en beeld in de middeleeuwse Nederlanden en het Rijnland, Leuven 2005 (Sym- bolae Facultatis Litterarum Lovaniensis B 34), 157-173. The correlation between the two works suggests that the fountain in the Ghent Altarpiece, which was painted over a continuous lawn, belonged to the original concept, whatever the explanation for this overpainting might be.

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one can see that Jan van Eyck seems to be following the tradition of the Latin Vulgate. I sardius – topazius – zmaragdus II carbunculus – sapphyrus – iaspis III ligyrius – achates – amethistus IV chrysolitus – onychinus – berillus For it is evident that he depicts the first stone of the second row as red, as a carbunculus (the development of the colour from bedolah and anthrax has already been noted). The second stone in an intensive red colour on Eyck’s Goshen is in a place, for which the Vulgate gives an appropriate name: agate, which is normally given as red. The reproduction of the remaining stones seems also to implement the Vulgate text, though in the lowest fourth row onychinus and berillus are reversed. But this is due to the transmission history of the biblical text, and in the LXX the berillus is placed ahead of the onychinus, which in some Vulgate manuscripts is preserved.19 Since the stones of the Goshen bore the names of the 12 tribes of Israel, the breast-plate became the symbol of the social order of Judaism and formed the idea of Jerusalem as the main ritual site of the 12 tribes. Thus with reference to the external threats Isaiah (54:11-13) gives a comforting picture of the coming Jerusalem liberated by God: 11 I will lay thy stones with fair colours (LXX: anthrax), and lay thy foundations with sapphires. 12 And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. 13 And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. This idea then determines the description of the Heavenly Jerusalem presented in the Book of Revelation: as stones of the walls there appear all twelve gems of the Goshen of the High Priest, and indeed deliberately in the number twelve, as evidence the subsequent number twelve of the gates made of pearls. Through these stones the Heavenly Jerusalem gains the character of Paradise, of Eden, as Ezekiel had described it.20 Because all the gems on the Goshen of the High Priest represent persons, the stones of Heavenly Jerusalem too have a personal value and mean people. Thus, when in the Fountain of Life in the Prado the gems on the side of the Church are no longer like those on the side of the synagogue concentrated in Goshen, but spread over the representatives of

19 In the second row jasper and sapphire seem to have exchanged their positions. 20 Ezekiel 28:13-16: The idea of God’s chosen city probably belongs to a broader tradition, as Tyre shows, that was pleasing to God.

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Christianity, ecclesiastical and secular, that means that no longer are the off- spring of Abraham’s house the holders of the heavenly gems, but all Christian believers.

THE SPARKLING STONES IN THE GHENT ALTARPIECE

All this leads us again to the Worship of the Lamb in the Ghent Altarpiece. For there the continuation and development is shown of all that is laid out in the Prado panel, but at the same time almost in a corrected – or perhaps better – in an elevated version. Above all it is worth noting that the architectural element is pushed into the background, while the character of Paradise is expanded. Thus a shift of emphasis happens: Less emphasis is given to the Eucharistic mystery, the divine feeding, so the pictorial work places more emphasis on the eschatological realities of the heavenly Jerusalem and Paradise. Thereby the stones of the many figures have one further semantic implication: Zion, with which the Church is identified as a whole, is considered in the tradition as a female; the writer of the Apocalypse, who has previously (4:3) described the Divine-Enthroned as radiant in gems21 can therefore speak about Zion as a bride: [Ap 21:2] And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (...) 9 And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. 10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, 11 Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; 12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: 13 On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

21 See also the interpretation of Anastasius of Sinai (ca. 610-701), in: Hexaemeron lib. VIII: duobus Lignis et de quatuor fluminibus paradisi (PG 89, 971-984).

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The precious stones and pearls which accentuate the adoring figures and the whole panel of the Adoration of the Lamb can therefore not simply be considered as ‘jewelry’ of the individual figures, but rather realise the ‘decorated’ figure of the mystic body of the Church as the Bride of Christ. In place of the feudal order, for which (on the side of Ecclesia) in the Fountain of Life one repre- sentative of each rank is shown, the Ghent altarpiece shows an order of the different ways to God, in which – albeit partially leading – high-level persons are included (Fig. 3). Thus popes and bishops are in two of the groups, but among the red-clothed figures on the right side of the centre of the image, which is dominated by representatives of the Church (in addition to popes, bishops, deacons and monks), there are princely people too, as indicated by the fur-lined caps. At the same time princely personages appear among the Iudices and among the Milites Christi. Disregarding the hierarchical order everything is concentrated on the individual merit; the inner disposition of the singular person is central. Therewith the weight of the Church as an institution is mitigated – in contrast to the circumstances in the Fountain of Life. This too is reflected in the fact that the very explicit reference to the liturgical in the Fountain of Life, the hosts in the water of life, is abandoned. Instead of the hierarchical and institutional-ecclesiastical, there are pointers to an individual inner path to the divine mystery as being important. To iden- tify these, all the individual groups within the worship of the Lamb are shown in motion towards the Lamb, and even the people in the forefront appear in this sense to have just arrived at the well, the first of them having just fallen to his knees. According to the text of the Bible the upper register takes this emphasis on motion by conceiving the figure of Christ as all seeing and thus challeng- ing the observer to move himself. This process is described in the De visione Dei of Nicholas of Cusa,22 who may be seen as belonging to the wider sphere of Jan van Eyck and to whom van Eyck had indirect personal connections.23 Moreover inscriptions on the podium of the throne implicitly speak of such a movement and determine the quality of the movement of the All-Seeing: Vita sine morte a capite // iuventus sine senectute in fronte // Gaudium sine merore a dextris // securitas sine timore a sinistris [Life without death from the head // Youth without age from ahead Joy without sadness from the right // safety without fear from the left]24

22 See Wolfgang Christian Schneider, ‘Betrachtung, Aufstieg und Ordnung im Genter Altar’, in: Schneider et al., ‘Videre et videri coincidunt’, 209-236; Susann Kabisch, ‘Aufführung der Gottesschau: Performativität als Vermittlungsstrategie in Cusanus’ De visione Dei’, in: Coincidentia 2-2 (2011), 355-366. 23 See Schneider, ‘Jan van Eyck und seine Welt’. 24 The loosely rhyming text is as a whole not be found in religious writings up to this date. For the content and origin of this statement, see Schneider, ‘Betrachtung, Aufstieg und Ordnung’,

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In the lower register the Lamb on the altar represents the divine counter-movement, which is somehow floating between two registers: It too is all seeing. Bleed- ing into the calyx it indicates spiritual concretion of the water of the fountain of Paradise. Inscriptions form the bridge between the calyx and the flowing waters of the fountain: ECCE AGNUS DEI QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI and IHES [U.S.] VIA V [ER] ITA [S] VITA (cf. Jn 14:6), which is continued on the fountain of Paradise with a slightly truncated quotation from the Book of Revelation: HIC EST FONS {or} FLUVIUS AQUAE VITAE PROCEDENS DE SEDE DEI + [et] AGNI (22:1).25 (Fig. 4). Although the blood flowing into the calyx could suggest a more concrete sac- ramental emphasis, as shown by the hosts in the Fountain of Life in the Prado, in the Worship of the Lamb everything aims towards the more general and the spiritual moment of an Old Testamental beginning: to the immediately life-giving water that is characterised by the image system as the off springing water of Para- dise. This is underscored by the fact that the column of the Paradise fountain gives life water from twelve effluents,26 which probably (like the twice twelve count of the stones and large pearls on the brooch of Christ) refers to the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles and their mediation of divine salvation.27 In the ditch around the Paradise fountain precious stones are sparkling, as if to prove the description of the undivided water of Paradise as being as clear as crystal (according to Gn 2:10-14). Undoubtedly the stones meant are the already mentioned bedolah and schoham. Of these the bedolah (probably the black jet) acquired through the textural tradition – as explained – a red colouring, whereas the sholam (perhaps a onyx or an agate) received a black colouring. Thus in Jan’s picture clear stones in red and black overweigh in the water of Paradise, though stones occur in other colours, such as green and blue (which may remind us of the cardinal-virtues of hope and belief, whereas the afore- mentioned red also stands for love). Like the Fountain of Life in the Prado, which, according to the inscription on the angel’s rotulus over the wall (Ct 4 [15] «FONS HORTORUM PUTEUS AQUARUM VIVENTIUM»), is administering within the water hosts the bread of life, the water of Paradise in the Ghent altarpiece is seen as donating: as a donor of the precious stones that embody the water of life, while the stones of other colours may illustrate the different content of such donations.

216; see also Jan de Baets, ‘De gewijde teksten van het Lam Gods kritisch onderzocht’, in: Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letterkunde 1961, 590ff; Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 377. 25 Formulated due to Ap 22:1; Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 97, 377; De Baets, ‘De gewijde teksten van het Lam Gods kritisch onderzocht’, 599ff. and esp. 602ff. 26 Two outflows from the urns of the angel, four from the dragon heads under him and six of the winged dragon on the big ball in the middle of the fountain column. 27 According to Origenes the pearls are Logoi. See Commentaire sur l’Évangile selon Matthieu, Paris 1970 (Sources Chrétiennes 162), 162,7f. and 12f.

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JAN VAN RUUSBROEC

While based on the description in Genesis, this interpretation, however, undoubtedly leads further. It leads into an area of marked activity in Jan van Eyck’s 15th century Brabant: it leads to mysticism, as taught by Jan van Ruusbroec († 1381) in the area south of Brussels. In his book De Calculo or Vanden blinkenden Steen (‘The Sparkling Stone’) the mystic explains how man receives gifts of grace from God,28 and he refers to the Apocalypse, where the Divine is revealed: ‘To him who overcomes’, he says, meaning to him, who overcomes and transcen- dends himself and all things, ‘I will give secret bread of heaven’, he says, meaning the taste that is hidden within and the joys of heaven. ‘And I will give him’ he says, ‘a small sparkling stone [calculum candidum; LXX: psäphos],29 and in this stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it’. (Ap 2:17)30 The Fountain of Life in the Prado and the Ghent Altarpiece are in semantic parallel, in that the fountain of life somehow represents the first part of the above quotation, the gift of the ‘hidden manna’, whereas the Ghent Altarpiece represents the second part of the parallelistic statement: the gift of the stone. The lettering of the stone with the name of the recipient shows also that this announcement is connected with the text of the Book of Exodus and the inscribed stones of the High Priest’s Goshen, so that each individual recipient of the stone moves into a tight, almost priestly relationship to God, like the founding fathers of Israel or the Apostles. Ruusbroec unterstands this stone, which he describes too as small and round, fiery-red, shiny and bright – etymo- logically appropriate – as ‘stepping’, and combines that with a comprehensive interpretation. At the same time for Ruusbroec the stone is reddish like a fire-flame, even though the Apocalypse speaks of it as white. Obviously in this he follows the explained Vulgate translation of the Genesis narrative of the stones of the Pishon (2:10), where carbunculus is to be understood as ruby.31 In fact, in Jan van Eyck’s representation of the stones of the water of Paradise the fiery reddish

28 See Chapter 4: Quid sibi velint calculus candidus et nomen novum: Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden blinkenden steen (Opera omnia 10, ed. Guido De Baere), Tielt: Lannoo/Turnhout: Brepols, 1991, 114ff. 29 The Greek and Latin word means pebble, calculus and voting stone. In his interpretation Ruusbroec uses the word in its full breadth. 30 Ruusbroec, Vanden blinkenden steen, 114. 31 On the interpretation tradition of carbunculus: Meier, Gemma spiritalis, 104 (on Epiphanius, De gemmis); see also Schwaetzer & Glas, ‘Beryll, Diamant, Karfunkel’.

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colour is particularly noteworthy. The painter thus follows the Vulgate Genesis text, just like Ruusbroec with his interpretation of the white calculus of the Apocalypse; but in the representation of the Hermits (Ruusbroec lived as a hermit south of Brussels and was a known person) he also refers to Ruusbroec’s announcement. In Jan’s painting the devoted hermits stride barefoot or shod on a path that is laid out not only with rubble, but with whitish-clear stones (Fig. 5). This can only be seen in the sense of Ruusbroec, who says explicitly that the individual man goes painlessly over the stone. But the painter does not show only round stones such as Ruusbroec refers to, but also a larger crystalline stone. And precisely this characterises the connection of the painter to the Flemish mystic because further on he explains: By this sparkling stone we mean our Lord Jesus Christ for according to his divin- ity he is a shining forth of light eternal and a splendor of the glory of God and a mirror untarnished, in which all things are alive. Whoever conquers all things and transcends them shall be given that sparkling stone. And in it he shall be given light and truth and life.32 The crystalline structure of the single larger stone is suitable to illustrate precisely this statement of the ‘mirroring’. For in its crystalline structure this crystal on the path taken by the Hermits corresponds to the diamond crystal on the breast of Christ (Fig. 6), in the middle of the brooch, which reflects thoughts of Nicholas of Cusa, namely his mystical teaching of the mutual penetration of light and dark,33 and therefore it turns out it to be a situation of mirroring. In the darkest panel of the whole altarpiece, as it were in the extremes of darkness, the crystal at the feet of the Hermits reflects the light that is, as says the Gospel, Christ, whose essence Jan van Eyck shows in the clear diamond crystal on the breast of Christ, pointing out also that he too is the seed point of the dark.34 In this reference to the crystal and the mirrored divine light within it the painter seems to integrate the crystal interpretation of Augustine. The bishop of Hippo teaches in his interpretation of the 147th Psalm (vv. 12-20) that the Word coming from the sky and the breath of the Spirit can bring the crystal to

32 Ruusbroec, Vanden blinkenden steen, 114. 33 In detail now: Schneider, ‘Betrachtung, Aufstieg und Ordnung im Genter Altar’, esp. 220ff.; and Idem, ‘Die Deesis des Genter Altars von Jan van Eyck und die Farbenspekulation des Heymericus de Campo’, in: Klaus Reinhardt (Ed.), Heymericus de Campo: Philosophie und Theologie im 15. Jahrhundert, Regensburg 2009, 215ff. 34 So is the interpretation of this finding, when viewed from the perspective of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, in particular the ‘Figura Paradigmatica’; see Schneider, ‘Betrachtung Aufstieg und Ordnung’, 228ff.

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flow (which applies to him as hardly dissolvable ice).35 Thus the transition is made to the source of Paradise, the Worship of the Lamb. At the same time, however, the painter represents in the lighting in the altarpiece of the diamond and the Christ figure (especially in the eyes of Christ, which reflect the light, see Fig. 7), in keeping with the visual interpretative thought of the 15th century, the comprehensive external light in which the church stands as a whole: the light that is removed from visual circumstances, but which illuminates the whole Altarpiece. By that Jan van Eyck follows immediately the words of the Flemish mystic: Whoever conquers all things and transcends them shall be given that sparkling stone. And in it he shall be given light and truth and life. In a crossover of texts and pictures, and beyond all technical virtuosity, the reflecting sparkling stones within the altarpiece of Jan van Eyck thus show the work in its entirety as a ‘mirror of the soul’ – the very direction, in which Jan van Ruusbroec is thinking: In the ‘stones’ that Man has to gain are reflected the glory of the one Light, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blacksberg, L.A., ‘Between salvation and damnation: The role of the fountain in the Fountain of Life (Museo del Prado: Madrid)’, in: B. Baert et al. (Eds.), Het wellende water: De bron in tekst en beeld in de middeleeuwse Nederlanden en het Rijnland, Leuven 2005 (Symbolae Facultatis Litterarum Lovaniensis B 34), 157-173. Blake, R.P. & H. de Vis (Eds.), Epiphanius von Salamis : De (XII) gemmis, London 1934 (Studies and Dokuments 2). Borchert, T.H., Le siècle de Van Eyck: Le monde méditerranéen et les primitifs flamands 1430-1530, Bruges 2002. Colson, F.H. & G.H. Whitaker (Eds.), Philo of Alexandria: Allegorical interpretation, London-Cambridge (MA), 1949. De Baets, J., ‘De gewijde teksten van het Lam Gods kritisch onderzocht’, in: Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Taal en Letterkunde 1961, 531-614. De Mey, M., ‘Mastering ambiguity’, in: M. Turner (Ed.), The artful mind: Cognitive science and the riddle of human creativity, New York 2006, 271-304.

35 Augustine, ‘Exegesis of the 147th Psalm v. 12-20 (Lauda Jerusalem Dominum)’, in: Ennaratio- nes in Psalmos CI-CL, Turnholt 1956 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 40), 2162 p 39ff. (Partly on the basis of Pliny. Nat. Hist. 37.23 ss.). Image and thought is taken from Joachim of Fiore, Apoc.fol.106r. (c. Apoc 4.6), for whom the ‘Crystal of the Law’ is softened by the ‘spirit of the New Testament’: Meier, Gemma spiritalis, 97f.

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De Mey, M., ‘The lines and the lusters of light’, in: M. de Mey, M.P.J. Martens & C. Stroo (Eds.), Vision & material: Interaction between art and science in Jan van Eyck’s time, Brussels 2012, 29-63. Dhanens, E., Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Antwerp 1980. Fingernagel, A. (Ed.), Juden, Christen und Muslime: Interkultureller Dialog in alten Schriften, Vienna 2010. Fransen, B., ‘Jan van Eyck, “el gran pintor del ilustre duque de Borgoña”: El viaje a la Península y la Fuente de la Vida’, in: J. Baròn et al., La senda española de los artistas flamencos, Barcelona 2009, 105-125. Goodgal, D., The iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece, Philadelphia (PA) 1981. Gruber, B. ‘Der “schwarze’ Bernstein” – Gagat’, in: Oberösterreichische Geo Nachrichten 14 (1999), 37-41. Hagen, W., ‘Kaiserzeitliche Gagatarbeiten aus dem rheinischen Germanien’, in: Bonner Jahrbuch 142 (1937), 77-144. Herzner, V., Jan van Eyck und der Genter Altar, Worms 1995. Herzner, V., ‘Der Madrider Lebensbrunnen aus der Werkstatt Jan van Eycks und die zielsicheren Irrwege der Forschung’, in: Kunstgeschichte. Texte zur Diskussion, 2011-9 (urn:nbn:de:0009-23-28428). Available at: http://www.dipp.nrw.de /lizenzen/dppl/ dppl/DPPL_v2_de_06-2004.html. Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden blinkenden steen (Opera omnia 10, ed. Guido De Baere), Tielt: Lannoo/Turnhout: Brepols, 1991, 100-216 (Corpus Christianorum. Con- tinuatio Mediaevalis 110). Translation into English by André Lefevere. Kabisch, S., ‘Aufführung der Gottesschau: Performativität als Vermittlungsstrategie in Cusanus’ De visione Dei’, in: Coincidentia 2-2 (2011), 355-366. Meier, C., Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jh., Munich 1977. Schiller, J., ‘Art. Edelstein’, in: WiBiLex: http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/ 16795/. Schneider, W.Ch., ‘Reflections as an object of vision in the Ghent Altarpiece’, in: M. de Mey, M.P.J. Martens & C. Stroo (Eds.), Vision & material: Interaction between art and science in Jan van Eyck’s time, Brussels 2012, 171-181. Schneider, W.Ch., ‘Die Deesis des Genter Altars von Jan van Eyck und die Farben- spekulation des Heymericus de Campo’, in: K. Reinhardt (Ed.), Heymericus de Campo: Philosophie und Theologie im 15. Jahrhundert, Regensburg 2009 (Philosop- hie Interdisziplinär 28), 205-223 (with illustrations 226-229). Schneider, W.Ch., ‘Betrachtung, Aufstieg und Ordnung im Genter Altar’, in: W.C. Schneider et al. (Eds.), ‘Videre et videri coincidunt’: Theorien des Sehens in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, Münster 2010 (Texte und Studien zur Europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Reihe B, Band 1), 209-236. Schneider, W.Ch. et al. (Eds.), ‘Videre et videri coincidunt’: Theorien des Sehens in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts, Münster 2010 (Texte und Studien zur Europäi- schen Geistesgeschichte, Reihe B, Band 1). Schneider, W.Ch., ‘Jan van Eyck und seine Welt’, in: Der Weg des Sehens und die Reflexion (forthcoming).

97549.indb 171 19/12/14 08:50 Schwaetzer, H. & M. Glas, ‘Beryll, Diamant, Karfunkel: Edelsteine im Werk des Nikolaus Cusanus’, in: Litterae Cusanae 4 (2004), 79-94. Schwaetzer, H., ‘Karfunkel’, in: K. Reinhardt, J.M. Machetta & H. Schwaetzer (Eds.), De non aliud: Nichts anderes, Münster 2011, 255-261. Silva Maroto, P., ‘Le dessin sous-jacent de deux peintures eyckiennes du Musée du Prado: Le Triomphe de l’Église sur la Synagogue, école de van Eyck, et Saint François reçevant les stigmates, du Maître d’Hoogstraten’, in: H. Verougstraete et al. (Eds.), La peinture ancienne et ses procédés. Copies, répliques, pastiches, Leuven 2006 (Le Colloque XV pour l’Étude du Dessin Sous-Jacent et de la Technologie dans la Peinture), 42-50. Van de Perre, H., Van Eyck: L’agneau mystique, s.l. [Paris] 1996. Vynckier, J., ‘Étude dendrochronologique de quelques panneaux de l’Agneau Mystique de Van Eyck’, in: Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique. Bulletin 28 (1999/2000) [2002], 237-240. Zwickel, W. (Ed.), Edelsteine in der Bibel, Mainz 2002.

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Fig. 1: Jan van Eyck, The Fountain of Life (The Fountain of Grace and the Triumph of the Church over the Synagogue), ±1430, oil on panel, 181×119 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

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Fig. 2: Jan van Eyck, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (the Ghent Altarpiece), front sight with open wings, ±1432-1435/36, oil on panel, 340×440 cm, St. Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent

Fig. 3: The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (central panel)

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Fig. 4: The Fountain of Life (detail of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb panel)

Fig. 5: Crystal (detail of the Hermits panel)

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Fig. 6: Brooch (detail of the Enthroned Christ panel)

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Fig. 7: Enthroned Christ (detail)

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