Merode Altarpiece

2 Pages 506 Words

One of the most famous and most widely studied of Netherland paintings is Robert Campin, the Master Flemalles, Merode Altarpiece completed in 1426. This three piece panel triptych stirred fifteenth century Flemings with its exquisiteness and mystifying symbolism.
The subject of the altarpiece is the Annunciation. The Annunciation is imagined as taking place not in the traditional church but in a modern Nether land house. The proportions of the “room” which occupies the large central panel are drastically foreshortened, but the painter’s choice of lines of sight demonstrates development in unified perspective that is so different from the illuminated French manuscripts done by the Limburg Brothers. 1 Campin uses individual panels to shape the visual field of the altarpiece. The small size of the altarpiece a little over two feet square reminds us of its function in a individual observance. 2
Flemish painting has undergone a transition and objects of daily life and sacred rituals are rendered with symbolic content of the painting, as objects that serve other then allegorical purposes.1
The Virgin Mary is shown in the central panel reading and not acknowledging the presence of the angel Gabriel watching over her. George Ferguson author of Signs and Symbolism in Christian Art interprets Mary’s reading as taking place in the context of a sanctuary.3 Reading in the Flemish culture is an act of private devotion rather then public empowerment. Lilies on the table and a towel in its niche represent the piscine that the priest use for hand washing and symbolic purification.3
The left panel shows the donors looking through a door, open-eyed, and observing, a key theme of Netherlanders paintings, Mary and the Angel Gabriel. The Metropolitan Museum of Art suggest the donors in the painting is that of Jan Englebrecht a merchant and his wife that lived in Cologne. A guarded wall separates the donors firmly from the town behind ...