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The Value of Verisimilitude in the Art of Jan Van Eyck

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The Value of Verisimilitude in the Art of Jan Van Eyck http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929092 . Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Yale University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Yale French Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LINDA SEIDEL The Value of Verisimilitude in the Art of Janvan Eyck Verisimilitude, the appearanceof truth, was the quality most praised by Bartolommeo Fazio in his midfifteenth-century discussion of Jan van Eyck's painting. In a description of a triptych by Jan,the Genoese humanist noted an Angel Gabriel "with hair surpassingreality," and a donor lacking "only a voice;" Jerome, probablypainted on one of the wings, looked "like a living being in a library,"and the viewer had the impression when standing a bit away from the panel that the room "recedes inwards and that it has complete books laid open in it. ..." Fazio remarked that a viewer could measure the distance between places on a circular map of the world that Janpainted for the Duke of Burgundy;on another painting, the viewer could see both a nude wom- an's back as well as her face and breast through the judicious placement of a mirror.Indeed, Fazio noted, "almost nothing is more wonderful in this work than the mirror painted in the picture, in which you see whatever is represented as in a real mirror."' Although none of the paintings Fazio described has survived, no one doubts or discounts the substance of his praise. Tiny panels of Saint Jeromeand of a nude woman bathing, known in possibly abbreviated versions from the 1. Michael Baxandall, "BartholomaeusFacius on Painting; A Fifteenth-Century Manuscriptof the De VirisIllustribus, " Journal of the Warburgand CourtauldInstitutes 27 (1964): 90-107; the English translationof the entry on JohannesGallicus, from which the quotations are excerpted, appearson p. 102. In his article, Baxandalluses an early manuscriptsource, Vat.lat. 13650, to establish a new text for Fazio'schapter on Painters previously known only from a Florentinepublication of 1745 by LorenzoMehus. Fazio, secretaryto Alfonso of Naples, wrote the work in 1456. His treatise is distinguished by its inclusion of painters and sculptors among the more familiar groups of orators,law- yers, princes, and physicians. YFSSpecial Edition, Contexts: Style and Valuesin Medieval Art and Literature, ed. Daniel Poirion and Nancy FreemanRegalado, X 1991 by Yale University. 25 This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 Yale French Studies hands of Jan'sfollowers, provide unambiguous support for the points he made; and the celebrated works by Janthat have come down to us and which are scattered among a handful of primarilyEuropean muse- ums indisputably attest to the perspicacity of Fazio's remarks.2 Although Fazio in these cases, as Baxandallnotes, has clearly trans- ferred to Jan'spainting familiar expectations for poetry, recognition of Jan'snaturalism is a consistent response to his art, not a relative judg- ment. Yet, Panofsky observed, the sense that his works "confront us with a reconstruction rather than a mere representation of the visible world is more difficult to rationalize" (Panofsky,Early Netherlandish Painting, 181; emphasis mine). In this paper,I shall scrutinize Jan'suse of descriptive details in his construction of individual physiognomy and environmental topography; I seek to inquire whether, and if so how, a record of such kind might have laid claim to higher truth. For,if the verisimilitude that Jan'sart displays had rhetorical pretense, then his style, not just the subject matter of his paintings, raises the issue of art's capacity to stand as witness to the events it portrays. Concern about the role of art as recordarises initially in the context of Jan'sArnolfini Portrait in London, in which reflections in a mirror appearto document the otherwise unobservedattendance of witnesses at a marriage (fig. 1). Jan'smultifigured devotional panels in Ghent, Bruges and Paris, in which "living" donors coexist with long deceased saints in a space which Janhas created, develop this theme. Through the manipulation of both shadows and reflections, Jan makes the painted setting appearto be an extension of our own. Jan'sconstruction of concrete relationships between the "real"viewer of his paintings and the objects and settings he portrayson his panels implicates view- ers in inextricable ways in the act of looking at his art. Insofar as Jan appropriatesus as authorities into his painting, verisimilitude is not merely an aesthetic option for him or for us: it is a strategy of power.3 2. ForJan's oeuvre in general see Max J.Friedlaender, Early Netherlandish Painting, 1. The van Eycks-Petrus Christus, preface by Erwin Panofsky,trans. Heinz Norden (Brussels: Sigthoff, 1967); publication of the original German edition began in 1924. More recent comprehensivestudies of Jan'swork include those by ErwinPanofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character,2 vols. (Cambridge,Mass., Harvard University Press, 1953), 1:178-246, and Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Janvan Eyck (New York:Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1980).The color plates and details in Dhanens' book are particularlyhelpful tools in studying Jan'swork. 3. Some of these points were raised toward the end of my article "'Janvan Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait':Business as Usual?" Critical Inquiry 16 (Autumn 1989): 54-86, to which the readeris referredfor extensive bibliographicreferences on Jan'sart. This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LINDA SEIDEL 27 O 1- ..~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ,~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.... % 1Ian van Eyck, Portraitof GiovannmAmolfin and Giovanna Cenami. The National Gallery,London; detail of the mirror.Photo: Courtesy of the Trustees, the National Gallery London. More than half of Janvan Eyck's extant works are portraits of his contemporaries seen either as busts in small scale or full length and m a somewhat largerformat, though not life size. Fourworks, all painted mnthe early 1430s, belong to this latter group.The celebratedpanels of Chann elor Nicholas Rolin and the Virgin in the Louvre (fig. 2), Canon van der Paele with the Virgin and Saints George and Donatian m the Stadeljk Museum, Bruges (fig. 3), and Joos Vijd and his wife on the This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 Yale French Studies 2. Ianvan Eyck, Chancelor Nicholas Rolin and the Virgin.Musie du Louvre, MPars.Photo: Archives photographiques. 3. Janvan Eyck, The Vizginwith Canon van der Paele, Saint Donatian and Saint George. Stadelijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Bruges.C A.C.L.-Brussels. This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LINDA SEIDEL 29 4. Janvan Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece, exterior: the do- nors and statues of their pa- tron saints; the Annunciation; Sibyls,and Prophets. Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Client. 0 A.C.L.-Bruxelles. wings of the multipaneled Altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb in the Cathe- dral of Saint Bavo (fig. 4) (originally Saint John's)mn Ghent, show power- ful court and civic dignitaries in consort with the Virgin and or saints. Why these individuals should have hired the Duke's artist to make these works and why Philip mgt have allowed his varlet de chambre to "freelance"for them are questions that have not been addressed. The compelln double portrait in the National Gallery, London, be- lieved to present the marriage of Giovanni Arnolfn adGiovanna Cenami and dated 1434, is conventionally discussed in art historical literature as part of this group:an image of real people participatingin a sacramental event. In fact it presents a well-to-do but as yet obscure young merchant couple, unattended by holy companions, in the aus- tere splendor of their private dwelling; as such, it is an ostensibly anomalous adherent to the group of devotional works. Yet, in each of these four paintings, Januses veristic details of one sort or another to This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30 Yale French Studies trap his viewers into a significant relationship with the panel, one that involves intellectual activity and not merely aesthetic pleasure. This strategy of representation, which is an essential component of Jan's style, demands further consideration. For example, in the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan matches the implied source of light used to model figures on the outer wings with the actual source of light that would have illuminated the chapel for which the painting was made and in which it was intended to be seen. By suggest- ing through paint that the frame of the painting casts shadows on the panels it encloses, the artist has implied that the spaces in which the portrayedevents take place are extensions of those in which the view- ing occurs. The claim is restated when the wings of the altarpiece are opened even though representations of celestial thrones and distant landscape, which are juxtaposed on the interior panels, disrupt the logic of constructed space that pervades the exterior.
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