The Virgin and Child with St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos
Jan Van Eyck
JAN VAN EYCK, c.1442. OIL ON MASONITE.
A painting once imbued with the indulgence of forgiveness, Jan Vos, the monk Patron who is pictured kneeling before the Virgin Mary, ensured that any who said ‘Ave Maria’ before the image would receive forty days off their time in purgatory. The indulgence, however, was only valid so long as the painting remained in the Carthusian order for which it was commissioned, so when it was purchased in 1954 its powers of penance were lost. Van Eyck filled this commission with not only his signature style and unparalleled artistic ability, but also his trademark iconography. Behind Mary, an imagined city scape appears through the arches and in the cupola of Barbara’s tower, a statue of the deity Mars resides. Van Eyck places Jan Vos in the centre of the work, flanked by two saints, as he pays his respect and reverence to Mary and the infant Jesus. He collapses modernity into antiquity, imagination into reality and religious power into oil paint.