Eyckian Icons and Copies

CHAPTER 3 Eyckian Icons and Copies Larry Silver In his magisterial survey of icons, Bild und Kult (translated as Likeness and Presence), Hans Belting distinguishes between religious images, usually known as icons, and a modern “era of art.”1 Part of the shift stems from the recog- nizably unique personal style of an individual, named artist, epitomized in the early fifteenth century Netherlands by Jan van Eyck (1399–1441). Yet van Eyck also demonstrably refashioned traditional icons, portrait-like images of holy figures, into vivid illusionistic presences, represented in the medium of oil paint.2 Thus the dilemma of assessing the status of his religious images resembles the proverbial water glass: half-full, if one sees the gain toward an early modern trajectory with defined individual artistic identity as well as en- hanced, portrait-like naturalism in painting religious images; but half-empty, if one sees a departure from gilded backgrounds and artificial flatness of ethe- real icon figures, fashioned by anonymous medieval craftsmen. To consider the Eyckian reworkings of traditional icons chiefly as copies requires a viewer to suspend optical perception, which shows the figures fully and palpably present. Yet these works do closely re-fashion pre-existing Byzantine icon types in the current new oil paint medium and technique. As we shall see, further copies after van Eyck (and some of his contempo- raries), some of them from his workshop (though dating remains approximate) extended the number and the reach of his own icons;3 however, as Amy Powell has argued, the effects of an original cult image can also easily be simulated, even with no actual model at hand.4 If so, then van Eyck and his contempo- 1 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art. University of Chicago Press, 1994, 409–57. See also: Hans Belting and Christiane Kruse, Die Erfindung des Gemäldes: das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei. Hirmer, 1994, on the fifteenth- century Netherlands; Craig Harbison, Jan van Eyck. The Play of Realism. Reaktion Books, 158–67. 2 On icons: Belting 1994; Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds. Reaktion Books, 1997; on Mary icons in Byzantium, Bissera Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium. Penn State Press, 2006. 3 Some copies after Eyckian models are studied also in the paper by Leslie Blacksberg in this volume. 4 Amy Powell, “A Point ‘Ceaselessly Pushed Back:’ the Origins of Early Netherlandish Painting,” Art Bulletin no. 87, 2006, pp. 707–28. However, for the opposite view, endorsed © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004379596_005 Eyckian Icons and Copies 131 raries can equally be seen as promoting their own Netherlandish equivalent of the purported Byzantine model, yet that replicable religious image, itself often copied, literally or more loosely, serves as an equivalent, continuing spiri- tual stimulus for private religious devotion. Indeed, both Belting and Powell present basically the same instances of Netherlandish fifteenth-century icon copying. First and foremost, a mid-century documented copy after one Byzantine prototype survives in both its actual model and one Netherlandish painted copy.5 An Italo-Byzantine icon of a tender Madonna and Child cheek embrace, with both figures turned toward the viewer, based on the Byzantine model of the Eleousa, was brought back to the cathedral of Cambrai from Rome in 1440 by a local canon.6 Like many such icons, it was ascribed to the patron saint of painters, Saint Luke, allegedly from life.7 Soon it came to be regarded as a sacred cult image, Notre-Dame de Grâce, cared for by a religious confraternity, and carried in procession to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption and vener- ated by pilgrims, including the Burgundian dukes and French king. Copies of the painting were ordered shortly afterwards, including documented commis- sions for three pictures by Petrus Christus in 1454 and an additional twelve from Hayne of Brussels in 1455.8 One surviving (slightly larger) image from the fifteenth century survives (Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Gallery; fig. 3.1); more likely Hayne’s work, it is inscribed with a Latin prayer on its attached frame. here, concerning reworked Byzantine models: Maryan W. Ainsworth, “ ‘À la façon gréce:’ The Encounter of Northern Renaissance Artists with Byzantine Icons,” Byzantium. Faith and Power (1261–1557), exhibition catalogue, edited by Helen C. Evans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 545–93. See also for a discussion close to this essay, Maryan W. Ainsworth, Gerard David. Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, Metropolitan Museum, 1998b, 261–72. See the related discussion of “phantom copies” later in early modern workshops, a concept discussed by Neil de Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet, “Art, Value, and Market Practices in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century,” Art Bulletin, no. 76, 1994, pp. 451–64, esp. 453– 55, further elaborated by Van Miegroet, “Copies fantômes. La culture imitative au début de l’époque moderne en Europe,” L’éstampe, un art multiple à la portée de tous, edited by Sophie Raux and Nicolas Surlapierre, Presses Universitaires Du Septentrion, 2008, pp. 47–64. 5 Powell 2006, 711–13, figs. 4–6; Ainsworth 2004, 582–86, nos. 349–50. 6 This type is most familiar from the twelfth-century icon, sent from Constantinople to Kiev, Our Lady of Vladimir. Pentcheva 2006, 171–72; 177–80, fig. 110; Karl-August Wirth, “Eleousa.” Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, edited by Otto Schmitt et al., vol. IV, J.B. Metzler, 1958, cols. 1297–307. 7 Ainsworth 2004, 569–71, no. 340; Belting 1994, 47–77; Pentcheva 2006, 124–27; Gisela Kraut, Lukas malt die Madonna: Zeugnisse zum künstlerischen Selbstverständnis in der Malerei. Werner’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986; Dorothee Klein, St. Lukas als Maler der Maria: Ikonographie der Lukas-Madonna. Schloß, 1933. 8 Ainsworth 2004, 548 n. 7, noting that Christus received his commission from the count of Estampes, nephew of the duke of Burgundy; Hayne from the local cathedral chapter..

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