22 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE 2J

Peter, he left his occupation, and his wife and child, too." 129 This is not the place to
speculate whether any of the women can be identified as the wife of Peter or whether
one of the children might be his legendary daughter Petronilla, 1·' 0 whether the weeping
woman might be Mary Magdalene, the legendary betrothed of John, etc.--but there is
no mistaking in the child's gesture the very visible external and internal connection
with the main action, and there is no mistaking the way that the main action is mir-
rored in the demeanor of the figures in the foreground, increasing the intensity of its
impact on the viewer.
This is a remarkable human intensification and affective interpretation of the n Jan v
existing biblical story: with the calling of the apostles being shown to mean the sepa-
ration of those called from their families, it takes on the qualities of a "deed that causes
suffering." However, in the drama of the abandoned women and children on the shore,
Diptych 1n
Raphael has portrayed not only the pain of separation but also how individuals may
come to terms with it. While one of the abandoned mothers is closely embraced by
her child, which can be read as an indication of the pain of separation, this is all too
Thy n- orn
evident in the figure of the young woman hunched over at the water's edge. The main
figure of the group turns to her to give her comfort. Not by chance close to the center
Colle 1on
of the painting and directly below the main action in the background, she embodies
the peripeteia of the narrative. With her empathetic act of consolation she prepares
the turn for the better that will come to those in the foreground action. Since her ges- _,""''',_"'he core question in any historical, genre-based interpretation of 'The Annunci-
ture is connected with a verbal explanation-she is clearly speaking in the drawing in ation in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection 1 (fig. r) is--bearing in mind that
the Albertina and again in the drawing in Munich 131 -she also seems to personify the nothing is known of its genesis, its first owner, or its first location 2 and that
moment of "recognition." The evident implication is that she already knows of the we can only guess at its purpose and earliest use--why did Jan van Eyck,
apostles' calling-a "good peripeteia" linked with the moment of recognition. Mean- in this late·' diptych, choose to represent the Annunciation on the inner wings by
while, the group of earnestly disputing men at the left is in all likelihood to be read as means of two fictive statuettes? Why transpose the subject into the hard medium of
a continuation of the main action, with these the next to be called by Christ. unpainted sculpture? Why increase the aesthetic distance, why the representation of a
Broadly speaking, however, examination of Raphael's late history paintings seems representation instead of a representation in its own right?
to lead to the skeptical conclusion that the invention of tragic actions-which would
in itself presuppose a knowledge, however obtained, of Aristotle's Poetics-is just one
factor among many. In no sense can Aristotle's text-in whatever as-yet-unidentified
form or version it might have been known to Raphael 132 -he posited as the clavis inter- I.
pretatoria of his concept of pictorial narrative. There are but a few instances where it
seems that Raphael shaped the action within a painting to conform to the precepts of It is well known that when painting limits itself to the point of feigned renounce-
Greek tragedy. And yet, one could with justification claim that these instances con- ment of color, as is the case here, this might be interpreted as motivated by liturgical
stitute the most important chapter in the history of the reception of the Poetics in reasons. 4 The Feast of the Annunciation--on 25 March, exactly nine months before
the Cinquecento. Which would leave his intention-simply enough, and historically Christmas-is the only feast day that falls within Lent. Hence, so the theory goes, the
likely-being that this theatrical mode of painting, emphatically making greater use avoidance of color when the image of the Annunciation is placed in a liturgical context,
of its possibilities and, with new confidence, demonstrating its universalitcl,m should that is, on the outer panels of a winged altar. Van Eyck himself had given an example
throw down the gauntlet to poetry and drama. Which would leave the assumption of this in his Dresden triptych of 1437/ where the monochrome images are placed
that Raphael saw and relished the paragone with classical tragedy as a chance to dem- on the outer panels. By contrast, the diptych offers the aesthetic surprise of feigned
onstrate the virtLz of his own medium, which is silent but visible, permanent and simulated colorless stone on the inside. It is impossible to say whether this makes it a
hence all the more eloquent than the fleeting art of the spoken word "cum pictura, unique piece, or whether it may simply happen to be the only surviving example of an
tacens opus et habitus semper eiusdem, sic in intimas penetret adfectus, ut ips am vim otherwise lost group of monochrome, northern European diptychs from the first half
dicendi nonnumquam superare videatur. " 134 of the fifteenth century. Only one other, older example would appear to be listed in the

This text was originally published as "Zu Jan van Eycks Diptychon dcr Sammlung Thysscn-
Borncmisza." Zeitscluift fiiT Kunstgeschichte 54 (I99I): 459-89.
24 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE ON )AN VAN EYCK'S Dil'TYCH 25

FIG.1
Jun vcn Eyck
[Netherlandish, ca. 1390·-1~ 41)
The Annunciation, ca.1433--35,
oil on panel, 39 x 24 em
[15 3/s x 9112 in, Virgin], 38.8 x
23.2 em [15 3/s x 91/s in., angel]
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-
tlornemisza, inv. 137.a-b
[1933111-2)

FIG.2
Jan van Eyck
(Netherlandish, ca.1390-1441]
Saint John the Baptist and
John the Evangelist, detail of
the outside of the Ghent
altarpiece, 1432, oil on panel
Ghent, Sint-Baafskathedraal
(Cathedral of Saint 13avo]
FIG.3
Attributed to Robert Campin
(Flemish, ca.1375/1379-1444]
The Holy Trinity, detail of the
outside of the Flernalle altarpiece,
ca. 1430, oil on oak panel
Frankfurt am Main, Stiidelsches
Kunstinstitut, inv. 9398
PARAGONS AND PARAGON£
inventory, compiled in I4I3-I6, of works owned by Jean due de Berry: "faiz de noir et
de blanc" (made in black and white). 6
Of course, Van Eyck's diptych cannot be defined as a grisaille in the strict sense
of the word. 7 Yet there can be no doubt that it has a place in the history of grisaille,
which had barely been researched until recently, or, more precisely, that it has a place
in the still-underresearched, anything-but-linear process of the mimetic interpretation
of monochrome works of art, that is to say, the transformation of the genre of grisaille
into a fiction of sculpture. There were already numerous instances of this process in
fourteenth-century art, as can readily be seen in illuminated manuscripts and in the
few paraments that have come down-to us. 8 And there are various examples of outer
panels of Netherlandish altars where the genre of grisaille had already been transformed
into painted sculpture.
Judging by the examples that have survived, priority seems to be with the outer
panels of the Ghent altarpiece (fig. 2)Y Yet Van Eyck's large imitations of stone--the
niche statues of the two Saint Johns, a miracle of monochrome painting--are utterly
homogenous in their materiality: statues, niches, frames, all in the same color of stone.
The same is true of the Marriage of the Virgin in the Prado, attributed to the group
ON )AN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH
Robert Cam pin-Master of Flbnalle-Master of Merode, which cannot be dated with any FIG.4
certainty. 10 The stone-colored, painted "statues" of Saint James and Saint Clara on the Rogier van der Weyden
(Flemish, ca.1399--1464]
back panel stand in niches made of exactly the same material, in terms of color and
The Annunciation, detail of the
appearance.
outside of the polyptych
It therefore seems fair to say that the complete mimetic transformation of a mono- of the Last Judgment, 1~34,
chromatic image to look exactly like stone is first seen in works such as the outer oil on panel
panel of the Holy Trinity 11 (fig. 3), attributed to Robert Campin. For, in contrast to the Beaune, H6tei .. Dieu
Ghent altarpiece, here the artist has painted the niche in such a way as to create the
impression of different types and colors of stone in the wall, which might be enough
for a realistic interpretation and possible identification of the geographical source of
the stones. 12 Whatever the case, in this painterly fiction the stone used for the plinth
and statue, which extend well forward, is portrayed quite differently than that of the
niche and the wall.
Even more finely differentiated is the back of the Frankfurt fragment of The Thief
Gesjnas. 13 For here the fictive statue of John the Baptist is placed in a stone niche from
which is suspended by a chain a reflective, tent-shaped metal baldachin with bells. The
copy by Jan de Coninck (now in Liverpool) of the exterior of the lost altar is imprecise

PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
and hence of limited relevance; the semidestroyed fragment itself, though, does show
that half of the painted statue extends forward from the niche and must have been
placed on a similarly extended plinth, so that the fiction of a three-dimensional sculp-
ture intruding into the viewer's space must have been very convincing.
By the same token, in the case of the outer panels of the Edelheer triptych in the
Church of Saint Peter in Louvain 14 (which raise the question of whether and to what
extent they are based on the work of Rogier van der Weyden, although there is no doubt
that the originals must have been made before r443), they show the Trinity in one and
Mary and John in another rectangular niche as fictive statues, with plinths in a different
color of "stone," extending outward over the edge of the niche as though seen from above.
Finally, the process of the mimetic interpretation of monochrome works of art,
which can merely be touched on here, could be said to come to a final climax in Rogier
van der Weyden's simulated statues on the outer panels of the polyptych of Beaune 15
(fig. 4). On the one hand, the materiality of the veined reddish ston~'that surrounds the
niches is accentuated by appearing to be chipped in a number of places. On the other
hand, the functional character of the stone sculpture, above all in the two figures of the
Annunciation scene in the top section, 16 could not be more effectively underlined. Not
only are they painted as if viewed slightly from below, with the wide octagonal plinth
extending over the front edge of the niche, but they are also portrayed in a manner
so faithful to their supposed material and genre that both on the angel and the lilies
next to Mary-just as on real sculptures-small stone braces have, so to speak, been
left in place.
While a survey of a relatively wide range of Netherlandish altars shows that
painted images of statues are often found on the outer panels, 17 the subsequent devel-
opment of mimetic transformation was far from linear, and the colored differentiation
of the monochrome image by means of the representation of various types of stone was
certainly not the rule. Thus, in the case of the Portinari altar in Florence, 18 the outer
panels by Hugo van der Goes can be cited as an important example of stone painting
that draws renewed attention to its status as grisaille.
II.
What is the place of the diptych in these developments? As far as I am aware, it was
Erwin Panofsky 19 who first made the suggestion that the contest between the arts of
sculpture and painting, which-as the paragone-is discernible with growing clarity
in literary form in Italy from r400 onward/ 0 was not a matter of written debate in the
north, yet in a visual and nonverbal manner it is manifest in the painted sculptures on
the outer panels of altars.
The question of this "silent paragone" of Netherlandish painting 21 (which can
hardly have been so very silent and superficial, for its existence presumes an art dis-
course, of whatever kind, involving both the makers and the recipients of art, whether
or not it has since disappeared from view) has, as far as I am aware, not yet been
researched to any great extent. However, despite the lack of written sources, an initial
survey appears to validate the hypothesis of a dialectical relationship, in the second
quarter of the century, between painterly praxis and early art theory in the forms and
conceptual premises of a paragone between sculpture and painting. The assumption is
1
ON JAN VAN EYCK S DIPTYCH
that the avoidance of color originally motivated by liturgical reasons and the prerequi-
site and instigation of the painterly resolution of the problem of "imitating sculpture"
bec2.me a mavens [cause] in the epoch-specific process of the growing self-awareness
of painting as a genre and of the social ascent of the painter and his art. Almost as a
matter of course, painting-which used its own means to create a deceptively real
impression of the alien medium of three-dimensional sculpture-entered into competi-
tion and a mutually comparative relationship with the other genre [sculpture]; painting
became conscious of its own, long--ago-formulated advantages, its means and limits,
and proclaimed its greater worth. 22
The premise is that, as a late and complex product of these developments, Van
Eyck's diptych belongs to the process of genesis of a northern mode of painting that
polemically underlines its own value and means, even as it engages in their theoreti-
cal reflection. It is hardly conceivable that painting-able to portray such deceptively
real-looking sculpture that not only casts natural shadows but also incorporates com-
pletely natural reflections-would not consider its relationship to sculpture and would
not have been reflected on theoretically. It is hardly conceivable that the first owner
of the diptych used it only for religious devotion, that he, at the sight of its brilliant
aesthetic and intellectual level of achievement, should have said and thought nothing,
regardless of the language he might have used in r440-Netherlandish, French, Latin,
maybe even Italian.
The conceit of this work is to deny vehemently its own pictorial nature, fictitiously
to replace painting with stone. At least four types of stone are sim.ulated here: the
white stone of the statuettes; 23 the gleaming black stone of the back panel; the slightly
chipped, veined white stone used for the edges of the niches; and the mottled red
marble of the outer frames. Simulated stone frames were not an invention of Van
Eyck's; they had been known since Giotto and in Italian panel paintings since r330. 24
In Old Netherlandish painting, however, Van Eyck was the main exponent of this
technique in what may possibly even be regarded as a form of Italianism. No fewer
than eight of his works have painted frames, with the appearance of either marble
or porphyry. Their likely purpose: the presence of a precious, heavy marble frame
points to the value and materiality of the painting. But it points also to the portable
nature of the object; take, for instance, the simulated metal frame of the portrait of
Jan de Leeuw/ 5 with an inscription running around it, which seems to suggest that
one could pick up the picture and turn it around in one's hands. However, while the
frame in the case of this portrait acts as a true aesthetic boundary-as a window onto
the painting 26 -in the case of the diptych, there is no distinction between the image
and the frame. On an aesthetic level, everything here is stone and-as a fictive, single,
three-dimensional object made from different types of stone--the image shares the
apparently tangible reality of the £rameY
Ill.
Although the two white statuettes embody emphatic three-dimensionality within a
painted image, we cannot know what terminology Van Eyck might have had in mind
when he so pointedly demonstrated the fundamental paradox of painting-a topic of
debate ever since antiquity---that is to say, its problematic ability to portray "quel che
30 PARAGONS AND PA RAGONE
none" (that which is not), to simulate three-dimensional physical reality on a plane. 2H
For the Latin scholar-and Van Eyck was versed in Latin--it would be the concept of
eminentia, used by Cicero and Pliny. 2·9 Alberti used prominentia. 3° From q.oo on, at
the latest, Alberti and other Italian art theorists and practitioners had recourse also
to Cennino Cennini's concept of rilievd 1 when they wanted to describe the "main
part and greatest advantage of painting/' 32 namely, the plastic effect of painted motifs.
Besides lines and foreshortening, the means to this end---in the hands of a judicious
painter-were above all light and shade, white and black. These elements alone can
create "faces which seem to stand out from the pictures as if they were sculptcd." 33 As
Alberti writes:
I would prefer learned painters to believe that the greatest art and industry are con-
cerned with the disposition of white and black, and that all skill and care should
be used in correctly placing these two. Just as the incidence of light and shade
makes it apparent where surfaces become convex or concave, or how much any
part slopes and turns this way or that, so the combination of white and black
achieves what the Athenian painter Nicias was praised for, and what the artist
must above all desire: that the things he paints should appear in maximum relie£.3 4
With a high degree of conceptual lucidity, Van Eyck took one of the most impor-
tant aesthetic postulates of that century-the creation of colorless rilievo solely
through the use of light and shade, white and black-and implemented it in the form
of simulated white stone sculpture that seems by definition to be "plastic" and that is
ideally suited, by virtue of its whiteness, to stand as "pure rilievo."
It can also be assumed that Van Eyck would have been just as aware of literary
accounts of classical prototypes of three-dimensional black-and-white painting as
Alberti was. And he would have known from Pliny that no less an artist than Zeuxis
painted in black and white: "pinxit et monochromata ex albo/' 35 and that he, as
Quintilian reported, "invented the systematic calculation of light and shade." 36 That
plastic effects in painting were dependent on a knowledge of the properties of light and
shade, and that, besides Zeuxis, the greatest exponent of this was the Athenian Nicias,
would have been known to him from a much-discussed passage in the writings of Pliny:
Nicias "kept a strict watch on light and shade and took the greatest pains to make his
paintings stand out from the panels.'m
It has been demonstrated38 that--at odds with the underdrawing and literally at
the last minute-Van Eyck painted the octagonal plinths for both statuettes so that
they would noticeably extend forward from the red marble frame, in effect giving vis-
ible form to the notion of eminentia. With the aesthetic boundary thus breached in the
foreground and a direct relationship arising between the painted statuette and the real
frame of the painting, Van Eyck unmistakably alerts the viewer to the fact that the rela-
tionship between the dimensions of the reality depicted in the painting and concrete
reality has become a problem for him. If the statuette can really extend over the real
frame, then it shares the same realm as the latter and is just as real. At the same time,
it also has a share in establishing the physical dimensions of the real frame. As the eye
can readily verify, by gently touching the frame, the statuette defines its own absolute
dimensions. This is not a smaller painted image of a statue that is actually larger, but a
faithful one-to-one depiction of a 28-cm-high statuette that directly participates in the
reality and size of the frame.
ON JAN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH JI
Cliches in medieval art theory, which can safely be assumed still to have held
true for Van Eyck~including the famous distinction, rooted in the Book of Genesis,
between imago and similitudo, to which Augustine added the concept of aequali-
tas39---will have colored the popular-philosophical or even philosophical background
of this work: If the statuette were painted on anything other than a one-to-one scale,
it would be mere similitudo, no more than a qualitatively similar imago of a separate
sculpture. But by being portrayed in its "real" size, what was merely qualitatively
similar has become quantitatively identical, the painting has become an aequalitas.
In theoretical terms, it is as though Van Eyck had transcended the purely pictorial
character of painting.
That Van Eyck, whose paintings so often juxtaposed large and small, distant and
near, 40 was well aware of the problems of scale and of similitudo and aequalitas, is very
clear from the outer panels of the Ghent altarpiece, where the patrons, the Vijd-Borluds,
portrayed almost life size with all the attributes of aequalitas, are turned toward the
stone figures of the saints, who, as less-than-life-sized statues, are thus defined as mere
similitudines of originals.
At this point, let us not forget that Van Eyck's ceuvre as a whole is rich in small,
painted sculptural figures that frequently stand out for their unrealistic smallness and
plentiful, microscopic detail. 41 This in fact points to a theme in the rivalry between the
arts: sculpture executed by the painter with greater refinement than a sculptor could
ever aspire to, which may also be taken to be the reason for the extraordinarily sharp
detail in the two panels of the diptych.
With or without a theoretical basis of this kind, with or without making direct
reference to real figurines from that epoch, it is clear that a painted statuette, which at
once defines its own dimensions so clearly by emerging thus from the frame, confronts
the viewer with a very different claim to reality than does a small-scale image of the
same statuette, which is only "similar" but not "equal" to it in size.
Quantitative correspondence to reality-aequalitas-in combination with quali-
tative similitudo is also one of the crucial components of the trompe-l'ceil effect. If
trompe ]'ceil can be defined as a form of painting that disguises its own painterly char-
acteristics and presents itself as part of the real world, 42 then Van Eyck's diptych is
an early trompe l'ceil. The negation of the aesthetic boundary is also intrinsic to this
genre. One of the most popular means to achieve this is, instead of increasing the
apparent depths of the picture ground, rather to close it off completely and to extend
the image forward into the viewer's realm. As we see in this case: an unusually flat
Gothic niche, with multiple moldings and fluting, is backed and closed off by a slab of
black stone.
IV
It is one of the main conceits of the diptych that this stone is polished and, on closer
examination, distinctly reflective. In a reflective image that is faithful but shadowy due
to its blackness, it duplicates both statuettes. It remains to be seen whether, with this
meticulous yet artfully muted reflection of white stone sculptures in a highly unusual,
black stone mirror, "with immense calculation ... so that the brilliance of the colours
should not offend the sight/' 4" Van Eyck, in his own willful interpretation, almost in the
32 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
manner of a productive misunderstanding, was referencing the famous black pigment,
Apelles' atramentum, and the effect of his colors seen "veluti per lapidem specularem"
(as if through muscovy-glasst which Pliny describes in Book 35 of his Naturalis historia.
The passage in question, which to this day has not been satisfactorily explained,
reads:
His inventions in the art of painting have been useful to all other painters as well,
but there was one which nobody was able to imitate: when his works were fin-
ished he used to cover them over with a black varnish of such thinness that its
very presence, while its reflexion threw up the brilliance of all the colours and
preserved them from dust and dirt, was only visible to anyone who looked at it
close up, but also employing great calculation of lights, so that the brilliance of
the colours should not offend the sight when people looked at them as if through
muscovy-glass and so that the same device from a distance might invisibly give
sombreness to colours that were too brilliant. 44
Older and more recent interpretations alike suggest that Apelles used his atra-
mentLlm, whose production Pliny describes elsewhere, 45 as a glaze that he applied to
his paintings in order to achieve the particular effect described here. 46 Yet, it is worth
considering whether Van Eyck may not have understood this passage very differently,
whether in his reading of this perplexing statement he may in fact not have taken
Pliny's combined use of the terms atramentum, repercussus, and lapis specularis-that
is, "black," "reflection/' and "muscovy-glass" -as a glowing report of a particularly
astounding mimetic achievement on the part of one of the greatest painters in antiq-
uity, namely Apelles, who-like Van Eyck-had a deep understanding of optics and
who had mastered the extremely difficult task of painting pale figures reflected in
black stone. In that case, 'Van Eyck's reading and interpretation of this passage might
be as follows: the famous painter, whose inventions were useful also to others, had
been unsurpassed in his ability to delineate his perfect works (absoluta 47 opera) on fine
black-atramento inlinebat48 ita tenui-so that, by reflecting the bright, painted colors
(repercussu claritatis), 49 the black generated a different color (ut ... colorem alium exci-
tarett albeit only visible from close up, when the viewer picked up the piece with his
hand (ad manum intuenti demum). By dint of extremely careful calculations Apelles
had managed also to prevent the brightness of the colors from hurting the viewer's
eyes, by making it appear that they were being seen through "muscovy-glass" (veluti
per lapidem specularem).
However, there is no proof that this was how Van Eyck read this passage, that his
black stone was in fact an allusion to Apelles' atramenwm, repercussus, and lapis
specularis.
By contrast, however, there is the self-evident connection-of whatever kind--
with contemporary, or almost-contemporary, monuments of the type that Van Eyck
would have seen himself, including a series of tombs and altar antcpendia with images
of unpainted or largely unpainted statuettes against polished, black stone. 5° Outstand-
ing examples would be the tomb monuments of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless in
Dijon. 51 Works of this kind could have formed the empirical basis of the superb white
reflections in the black stone of the diptych.
Van Eyck's reflections! A glance at his work as a whole amply demonstrates that
besides the legendary colors "che gli dava lustra da per se, senza vernice" (that glowed
ON )AN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH 33
by themselves, without varnish)/ 2 and besides his superb mastery of light and shade,
one of the hallmarks of his painting is specifically the secondary gleam of reality in a
paimed reflection. In addition to flat reflections in water, there are a striking number
of highly sophisticated "light shadows" --not infrequently n1.onstrously distorted---on
the internal and external reflective curves of a smooth vessel, armor, a helmet, and
polished stone that-along with their cast shadows---confirm by their reflections the
reality of painted objects in the picture, for these items are not only depicted in their
own right, the viewer also sees their "species."
With demonstrative clarity the bas-de-page and the main miniature on the page of
John the Baptist (fig. s) in the Turin-Milan Hours 53 exemplify the juxtaposition of flat
and convex reflections. In the Baptism of Christ the castle by the river and the shores
of the river are seen upside down, with the image weakened by the gentle movement
of the water, as a proportionately identical but perspectivally adjusted, apparent dupli-
cation of visible reality. The spatially different positioning of the four towers in the
reflected image is handled with great skill. For this by no means duplicates the view
of the castle on the riverbank as the viewer of the miniature sees it but turns out to
be a carefully constructed, that is, faithful, mirror image of the real spatial object. The
reflection of the towers shows this very clearly: the small corner tower, like the out-
side wall, is directly on the water. Hence it is reflected one-to-one. However, the next-
tallest tower, to the left, is set farther back. Accordingly, only part of its full height
and the upper windows are reflected in the water. Still farther away from the viewer is
another tower next to it; the reflection of this tower is correspondingly short, whereas
the section of the building in front of it is reflected one-to-one. In the middle distance
from the water, and presumably in the center of the castle compound, is a tall tower.
Its reflection is moderately curtailed. Only two of the three rows of windows are seen
in the reflected image.
That it is specifically a series of towers that serve to demonstrate the laws of
reflection on a flat surface may be connected with the function of the tower as an
example in the scientific theory of reflection. It is hardly coincidental and more likely
to be an allusion to traditional catoptrics that two of the four towers shown in the min-
iature-the towers nearest and farthest from the reflective surface----have their tips vis-
ibly reflected in the water, while the tips of the two others "extend ... into the earth, " 54
that is to say, into the near riverbank in the foreground, thus proving the principle that
the mirror image is not impressed into the mirror but appears only on its surface.
In the main miniature, with the famous, prototypical interior of the Birth of John
the Baptist, these are other forms of reflection. Indeed, in the motif of the reflective
vessels, above all in the sharply accentuated brass jug in the center of the composi-
tion in which we can sec reflected a window or an opened door, as it were, outside
I .
this scene and behind the viewer's back, the reflection-like the cast shadows on the
frames in the Annunciation on the Ghent altarpiece-is even used as a means whereby
reality outside the composition can be reflected within it and--in a pictorial concept
that has already tentatively been characterized as specifically northern European 55 and
that is, at the very least, distinctly different from Alberti's notion of the "painting as a
window" 56--to remove the front limits of the picture.
Throughout this miniature there is evidence of the fact that here the painter
has mastered not only fundamental aspects of optics and catoptrics but also the
reflection and refraction of light in gleaming and translucent materials, and that
these are to be demonstrated to the devoutly contemplative user of the Book of
 1
ON )AN VAN EYCK S DIPTYCH 3S

Hours-who is simultaneously able to vicw the miniature close-up 57 --in a manner FIG. 5

that recalls the laws of optics and stimulates the mind of the cultured spirit. This Jan van Eyck

is perhaps seen most clearly in the striking accumulation of opaque and translucent [Netherlandish, ca. 1390 -1441)
The Birth of John the Baptist
vessels with their rich variety of convex and concave reflections. Thus, the brass jug,
[above) and The Baptism of Christ
like the pewter jugs in the background, presents the artist with an opportunity to [below), ca.l420, parchment,
depict the extremely distorted convex/concave reflections of the various colors and ca. 24.8 x 20.3 em [9 3/4 x 8 in)
items in the surroundings. The pewter dishes on the table reflect itcn1s in just as From The Book of /-lours of
Turin, Fol. 93v
complex a manner as the concave, reflective surfaces of the brass dish in the back-
Turin, Museo Civico
ground. The three carefully differentiated, translucent glass items on the table and in
the hand of the approaching figure of Mary are each half-filled with variously colored,
hence variously translucent, liquids: transparent yellow compared to less transparent
red, and so on and so forth.
Something of the complexity of the optical and catoptrical calculations that under-
pin this painting becomes evident in light of the fact that the smooth wood used for
the tabletop is also reflective. It functions as a matte, horizontal, flat mirror reflect-
ing the backlight entering through the window in the far wall of the roon'l, thus
negating the shadows that the objects on the table, lit from somewhere in the left
foreground, would normally be casting on the tabletop. These observations could be
pursued still further. Indeed, the question is whether the inspired entrance motif for
this miniature, the cat---with hair standing on end and eyes glittering-malevolently
staring at the viewer, may not be an allusion to a famous, fundamental problem in the
field of optics, namely, the nature of vision. In the debate fueled by the two conflicting
theories of transmission or reception, the glowing eat's eyes that can be seen even in
the dark were popularly cited as evi~encc for the validity of transmission theory, on the
grounds that these pointed to the existence of a light within the eye. 58
This is not the place to pursue the history of reflections in the work of Van Eyck
and his circle. It is a well-known, long-established fact that the Ghent altarpiece has a
great number of reflections: the metal shaft of the well of life functions as a cylindrical
mirror, reflecting the world within and without the composition, just like the reflec--
tive vessels in the Annunciation or the polished stone on the fastening of John the
Baptist's cloak with the shadowy outline of a human figure. 59 The culmination of this
motif is the famous mirror signature in the Arnolfini Wedding: it is none other than
Van Eyck, with a companion, who appears in the convex mirror in the background of
the painting. 60

v.
Van Eyck's reflections! Is there a discernible connection here with the science of catop-
trics? It was a topos in classical literature that vessels made from smooth, reflective
materials with raised surfaces generate multiple images because C<Jch raised surface
acts like a tiny convex mirror. Seneca makes this point: "If you place one man in front
of them, a whole population appears." 61 Pliny takes a similar approach to the question
of the multiplication of images in reflections: "moreover bowls can be made of such a
shape, with a number of looking-glasses so to speak beaten outward inside them, that
if only a single person is looking into them, a crowd of images is formed of the same
number as the facets in question. " 62
 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
ON JAN VAN EYC:K'S DIPTYC:H 37

Maybe it was this topos that Van Eyck, as it were, translated into painting on more
than one occasion. It is already evident, with some clarity, in the "knights" pictured on
the Ghent altarpiece/ 3 whose gleaming armor demonstrates both single reflections and
multiplying convex reflections. The foremost knight's curved breastplate reflects the
landscape and the shaft of his lance with no more than a simple, catoptric distortion.
By contrast, his companion has a ridged breastplate, which provides the artist with an
opportunity to depict multiple images, side by side, of the dark inside of his shield,
even his horse's neck and the green landscape.
On a minute scale, the armor of Saint Michael in the Dresden triptych of 1437 64
likewise acts as a multiple reflector. Images are reflected three and four times in the
domed shoulder pieces and in the shell-shaped helmet.
As far as we can judge from the photograph of the destroyed Betrayal of Christ
from the Turin-Milan Hours/ 5 here, too, the helmets, armor, and weapons glinting in
the darkness allow the artist to depict all kinds of reflections.
Significantly, it was the almost frontally shown domed kettle hat very near the
center of the composition in which the main event-the kiss of Judas-was reflected
two or even three times, and it seems that other helmets and pieces of armor reflected
not just the light of the torches and lanterns but also, in minute distorted detail,
figures in the surroundings. Here, too, single and multiple convex reflections were
seen in close proximity: besides the simple domed helmet with its single reflection,
there was also a fantasy helmet in the shape of a fluted bowl at the right-hand edge of
the miniature.
The reference to the topos of the populus imaginum, as seen in the multiple reflec-
tions in the fluted bowl, is at its clearest in the helmet of Saint George in The Virgin
with the Canon Van der Paele 66 (fig. 6L where the flutes create upward of sixfold reflec-
tions of the Madonna and Child. The right and, less clearly, the left vambrace reflect
them once each, the breastplate has a double reflection, extremely distorted. And it
looks almost like a literal allusion to Pliny's text when the vambrace for the left arm
is both mildly concave and convex in the center, with the result that Mary's red cloak
and the window are reflected in it like shadows, once concave and once convex. For in
his description of a distorting mirror Pliny exemplifies exactly this situation in terms shield" of the kind described by Pliny, which does indeed behave like a distorting mir· FIG.6
of a Thracian shield where the center is "recessed or projecting": ror. Monstrously reflected in it is the group of holy women and Saint John, who take ,Jan van Eyck

Ingenuity even devises vessels that do conjuring tricks, for instance, those depos-
ited as votive offerings in the temple at Smyrna: this is brought about by the shape
of the material, and it makes a very great difference whether the vessels are con-
cave and shaped like a bowl or convex like a Thracian shield, whether their center
is recessed or projecting, whether the oval is horizontal or oblique, laid flat or
placed upright, as the quality of the shape receiving the shadows twists them as
they come: for in fact the image in a mirror is merely the shadow arranged by the
brilliance of the material receiving itY
That one can immediately make the reference to this ancient text with its infor-
mation about the magic mirror in the form of the small Thracian hand shield of the
type gladiators used, and that one can therefore assume intimate knowledge, if not
actual reading, of Pliny, is seen in a detail from The Crucifixion in the New York dip-
tych6R (fig. 7). For here we see, attached to the sword handle of one of the soldiers
observing the scene (pictured from behind), nothing other than a small "Thracian
up the foreground of the composition, witnessing the Crucifixion "from a distance/' (Netherlandish, ca.1390-1441]
The Virgin with the Canon
as the Bible says.
Vander Pae/e, 1436,
In view of the major, decisive role of light, shade, reflection, and refraction-of oil on panel, 122 x 15/ em
opaque, translucent, and reflective surfaces singly and in combination-in Van Eyck's (4 8 '/s x 617fa in ]
pictorial world, and in view of his unmistakable interest in portraying catoptric phe- Bruges, Groeningemuseum
nomena, including the ancients' "multiplication of species" in complex reflections, we
would do well to recall two facts. First, the leading role of scientific optics in late medi-
eval thinking, which is based on its importance in late medieval epistemology. Concen··
trating entirely on the sense of vision--to the exclusion of all the other senses--late
medieval thinkers made "epistenwlogical use" of the science of optics. 69 It has rightly
been suggested in this connection that at least since the great thirteenth-century "per-
spectivists/' since Roger Bacon, John Pecham, and Witelo, who were all beholden to
classical and Arabic tradition/ 0 optics had not been on the periphery but rather had
occupied a central position in the medieval intellect, a key position between natural
philosophy and epistemology. Accordingly, a specifically late medieval field theory has
been identified·-completely different from any modern scientific system-·-that was

FIG.7
Jan van Eyck
(Netherlandish, ca.1390-1441)
and workshop assistant
The Crucif7xion (detail of the lower
half), ca.1420-25, oil on canvas,
transferred from wood,
56.5 x 19.7 em (22'/4 x 7% in.)
New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Fletcher
Fund 1933, 33.92ab
PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
about light, vision, the verifiability and falsifiability of human cognition, a theory that
combined optics and semantics.7 1 Second, we should also remember the continuity
from ancient to Arabic to medieval optics. And we should not forget that the theories
of optics pursued by the thirteenth-century perspectivists, that is to say, ancient and
Arabic optics--above all, as defined by Alhazen-in effect survived into the seventeenth
century, despite Ockham's epistemological objections and his rejection of species in
media (species as mediators). 72
These, in addition to the evidently widespread availability of texts/1 were the most
important reasons for optical studies to be taught at universities. Between the four-
teenth and sixteenth centuries a large number of European universities included the
study of optical treatises in their curricula and, until the seventeenth century, these
were taught on the basis of the work of Pecham, Witelo, and, occasionally, Alhazen/4
with the result that besides Aristotelian and theological theories of vision, Alhazen's
theory, too, had a permanent place in the education system. In 1420, on the basis of
a few simple principles of ancient catoptrics-passed on from Arab scholars to the
thirteenth-century perspectivists, and already paraphrased by Dante in the Divina
commedia-Brunelleschi established his perspectiva artificialis in his famous mirror
experiment outside the Florentine Baptistry.75 It is clear that Van Eyck's reflections
and the diptych in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection would have been unthinkable
without knowledge of the basic principles of medieval catoptrics.
ON JAN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH 39
z
K S
That a reflected image is no more than the appearance of the original image in a FIG.8
different place, that this place can be determined by geometric calculations because Propositions 27 and 28
the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflexion, are merely the most important From John Pecharn, fJerspectiva
communis (Milan: Petrus
catoptric theorems that Van Eyck was evidently alluding to in the two panels, and
de Corneno, 14827)
whose exact application was to be demonstrated to the enlightened viewer. In fact,
in both panels the reflection of the statuette appears in the black stone mirror as the
similitudo of the real thing, "true" in terms of its shape and proportions/" but shadow-
ily weakened, reversed, and, because of the greater distance, smaller than the original,
as is proper for a mere ydolum. "What then is a reflected image (ydolum)? I say that it
is merely the appearance of an object outside its place" 77 is PechaiTt's pithy formulation.
For the reflected image-in the ground of the mirror-appears in a place different from
that of the original, and this different place can be geometrically calculated.
The geometry of reflection and the proposition of an ydolum in a different, geo-
metrically calculable place are dem.onstrated in Van Eyck's panels, an old proposition
that could have been known to him in John Pecham's formulation/ 8 for optics were
often taught on the basis of Pecham's perspectiva communis. For the theorem that the
position of the reflected image can be precisely determined or construed by means of a
relatively simple geometric operation was already established in ancient catoptrics. 19
And we can assume Euclid knew of this theorem, which is based on his own angles
axioms. Ptolemaeus, Alhazen, Grosseteste, Bacon, Witclo, Pecham, and others accepted
this proposition, and it was only in r6o4 that Kepler tried to disprove it. In 1669, the
English optical scholar Isaac Barrow in his Lectiones XVIII (Eighteen lectures) called it
"the ancient Principle." Since it is purely geometrical, it was not at all affected by the
fundamental problem of theories of vision, the conflict between the transmission or
reception of rays. In his proposition 27, Pecharn illustrates it by means of a geometric
diagram (fig. 8) and explains it as follows:
Let A be the visible point, B the center of the eye, and DGH the mirror. Let eathe--
tus AH be drawn and extended to Z, as far behind the mirror as A is in front of
it, and let straight line BZ be drawn through point G of the mirror. I say that G

FIG.9
Diagram 1: Panel with the Angel
Dr·awing by author
FIG.10
Diagram 2: Panel with the Virgin
Drawing by author
PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
is the point of reflection. Thus draw ray AG; now angle ZGH and angle DGB are
equal because they are [vertically] opposite each other. Likewise angles ZGH and
HGA are equal because triangles HZG and HGA arc equal, as was shown above.
Consequently angles HGA and DGB are equal, and reflection takes place at point
G and no other. so
Immediately following this, Pecham's proposition 28 81 presents the same proof
with respect to a visible object extending between points Hand z, which would cor-
respond to Van Eyck's painted statuettes. In keeping with the proof already presented
in the previous proposition, the reflected image of the visible object appears on the
surface of the mirror between points R and L. As Pecham's diagram shows, there is also
a geometrical explanation for the problem of the perspectival reduction in the size of
the mirror image compared to the real object in front of the mirror.
Van Eyck constructed his diptych in exactly this manner. It looks like a dem-
onstration of propositions 27 and 28 in that the geometric body of the horizontal,
octagonal plinth, confirmed by the different number of its ornaments, is backed up
against the mirror; moreover, in the dark ground of the mirror we can sec reflections
of the individual features of the disappearing right edge, reflected at the verifiably
correct distance, that is to say, at the distance between a real plinth and the surface
of a mirror.
Because the angle of the rays falling onto the surface of the mirror is equal to that
of the reflected ray, 82 but the first has been painted into position, Van Eyck has by
definition determined the sight line and hence the position of the viewer's eye gazing
at the mirror-from the side, no less! For the mirror image of the angel, if it is going
to be correct, places the viewer at an angle to the painting, 83 in all probability, if not
necessarily, at an intersection point on the central axis between the two panels (fig. 9).
It is only from that point, viewing the work from an angle, that the perspectival dis-
tortion of the octagonal plinth rings true, of which-logically-only the inner-right
narrow side is visible. And it is only if one assumes this angled view that it is possible
to understand why it seems that the statuette is slightly closer to the left side of the
niche: problem~ of projection of the kind that abound in the wings of Old Netherland-
ish polyptychs.
And it looks like a didactically exaggerated demonstration of propositions 3, 4,
and I I 84 --on the weakness of the reflected image and the changes wrought on it by
colored or dark mirrors-when the opaque surface of the black stone weakly and
1
ON JAN VAN EYCK S DJPTYCH 41
shadowily reflects the backs of the white. statuettes in a mixture of black and white.
Since a refracted ray is weaker than a straight ray, the reflected lights and colors are
weaker, and since "the color of the mirror is mingled with the reflected light and
obscures it, ... objects will be visible in it, not as they really arc but vested with the
color of the mirror."
If, as in the diptych, the mirror is made from a particularly hard, doubly impen-
etrable material such as black stone, which bounces the rays back from it, then there
would appear to be a remarkably tangible connection with a central question of the
properties of mirrors that Seneca had already raised in his Quaestiones naturales:
whether the image in the mirror exists as a real object, whether it is impressed into the
latter and affects the eye from there, or whether the eye perceives it in the mirror as a
mere image of the real object in a place other than its real place. 85 For John Pecham's
vehement answer, see his proposition 19. 86 Pecham suggests that the first possibility is
fundamentally wrong for a number of reasons, "for objects are seen in iron and adaman-
tine mirrors in which there is no transparency capable of receiving the impression."
Unlike the semi translucent, softer glass mirror, Van Eyck's impenetrably unyielding
stone mirror is compelling proof of the theory of pure reflection.
VI.
As in so nuny trompe l'reils, the background behind Van Eyck's angel is closed off.
It was an inspired move when he established this material boundary yet gave it the
appearance of optical openness and translucence, so that-in a remarkable rever-
sal-instead of creating a perspectival image leading into the depths, the space in front
of the background is seen as a reflection, skillfully contained by the absorbent black
of the reflective surface. Linear perspective, visible in a flat mirror: in a historically
scarcely comprehensible manner, Van Eyck's diptych has echoes of the beginnings of
the scientific study of central perspective in Italy, which started with Brunelleschi's
mirror experiment. 87 It is very clear that here the phenomenon of perspective is in
action in the mirror: the duplicate image of the angel and its plinth is seen·--exag-
geratedly small but otherwise meticulously exact-to their right, with the vanishing
points on a perspectival line that may be assumed to lie on the central axis between
the two panels.
Not so in the right-hand panel! For this is by no means a symmetrical match for
the panel on the left. Here the line of perspective runs not inward but outward to the
right, where it is just possible to make out the brightly lit, greatly foreshortened nar-
row side of the plinth, while it and the statuette have, as it were, been slightly shifted
to the left, where-significantly--the outer edge of the statuette marginally overlaps
the frame, leaving all the more space on the right side. Here, making a greater impact
and with greater clarity than in the panel with the angel, the entire f-lgure of Mary is
reflected fron1 head to toe in the black stone.
In other words, the mirror image and the linear perspective compel the diligent
viewer, observing the panel close-up (insofar as he or she understands the basis
of reflection theory), to conclude that the panel is to be viewed and read diagonally
from the right (f-lg. ro). If this panel is part of a movable diptych--as is in fact the
case 88 ---then this means that, unlike the left panel, the right panel has, in the painter's
 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
reflective-perspectival fiction, been turned inward. Thus Van Eyck creates the illusion
that the diptych is not hanging, opened flat out, on a wall, but---entirely in keeping with
the weight of its own stone-is standing upright with one wing turned slightly inward!
VII.
Should further proof be needed that a material fact of a quite banal kind-that the
stone object can stand upright only if the panels are at an angle to each other-has
taken on its own aesthetic reality, then one need only consider the lighting, which
appears to be falling on the diptych from the upper right. The angel is fully lit. His
wing casts a precise shadow on the left frame of the niche. By contrast, the right-hand
panel, turned slightly inward, has the light falling across it rather than directly onto it.
Hence the deeper shadows on the statuette of the Virgin Mary and the wider shadow on
the left edge of the frame. Hence, also, the light falling sideways on the trefoil pattern
on the plinth, that is, the stronger shadows and semishadows compared to the fully lit
trefoils on the other panel.
It remains to be seen whether the deeper shadows on the figure of Mary, which
also make the reflection clearer, might be significant in their own right, bearing in
mind the biblical text and the Incarnation metaphor of "overshadowing" that may be
alluded to here: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee" (adumbrabit tibi).R 9
That the shadows appear on the left, that is to say, the imagined light falls in from
the right, is the result of a complicated artistic calculation wherein the angled wing
is an aesthetic necessity. It is only if the left side is in shade and the reflection is on
the right that reflection and shadow do not overlap. Only by this means do the two
flank the statuette like attributes--both umbrae, 90 shadow images of the figure's three-
dimensional reality and physical truth, both predicated on her realness.
For what could the functional point of this remarkable demonstration of shadow
image and mirror image on either side of the painted sculpture be, other than once
again to add emphatic weight to the rilievo! The point here is the pictorial argu-
ment-painted with very considerable intellectual and aesthetic care-that the feigned
statuette is so "real" that it not only is able to cast a shadow but can even be reflected.
And it is not by chance that the mirror image, in all its weakness, is emphatically no
more than a mere shadowy gleam of reality. The ydolum to one side of the statuette
is not only flat and reversed but also all the dimmer because of the device of the black
mirror. The fact that it is so distinctly merely an image acts as a foil for the reality of
the statuette. Its pointedly optical phenomenon is an antithetical argument for the
truth of the latter.
VIII.
Could it be that Van Eyck's reflections in fact constitute an early paragone motif? I
would say so. For when, of all things, a stone sculpture is reflected in highly polished
stone, so that it is visible from two sides, then we have before us a motif that is to
1
ON JAN VAN EYCK S DIPTYCH 4.3
play a leading part in the duello between the painter and the sculptor that was such
a feature of the Italian discourse on art during the Renaissance: the sculptor's claim
that the painter was unable to form three-dimensional bodies because he could only
ever show them from one side is here demonstratively refuted. For the painter's art
does indeed allow him to portray the body from more than one side, and in fact more
perfectly than sculpture---simultaneously, that is, at a glance-whereas the rilievo
of sculpture can be appreciated only progressively, as the viewer strides around the
three-dimensional statue. 91 This will be Giorgione's argument in Venice. In a paragone
painting of Saint George, 92 known to us only from written accounts, some of which
describe the figure as a female nude/" the human form is seen from various sides at
once-reflected in spring water, lateral mirrors, and cuirasses--proving the capacity
of painting to portray different angles simultaneously and hence its superiority to
sculpture. It is reasonable to assume some kind of connection here with a prototype by
Van Eyck that was in Urbina in the fifteenth century, namely his lost Women Bathing,
which, according to Fazio, showed reflections of female nudes. 94
It would be impossible to prove that it was Van Eyck's intention that the contest
between painting and sculpture be implicit in the reflected sculptures in the diptych.
However, there can be no doubt about the increasing consistency in his representation
of sculpture. Whereas the poses, facial expressions, and gestures of the stone flgures on
the outer wings of the small Dresden altarpiece of 143 795 arc still represented in the
manner of a painterly narrative, in the diptych, where the angel and the Virgin Mary
are portrayed in the manner of single, isolated statues, the nature of the medium of
sculpture is distinctly and very deliberately highlighted. The lifelessness and stony
immobility of the painted object is intentional-indicative of this is the fact that in
the underdrawing 96 Van Eyck gave focus to the Virgin's gaze by adding a pupil, which
he omitted in the final version, leaving her sightless. It is worth recalling at this point
the extent to which the trompc-l'ceil effect relied on the motionlessness of the simu-
lated objects, and how often-in historical terms-it was connected with the genre of
stilllife. 97 By transposing the subject matter into stone, a famous weakness of painting
is masterfully eliminated, for the motionlessness of painting becomes, so to speak, a
natural feature of sculpture.
A second disadvantage of painting, which was enshrined as a concept in the
ancient cliche "pictura tacens" (silent picture)/R is also conclusively removed by
turning the figures to stone. While integrated, painted banderoles bearing inscrip-
tions made more rather than less of painting's silence and the voicelessness of visual
expression, speech is here accommodated in the painted stone of the frames with
the angel's words "Ave, gratia plena" (Hail, full of grace) and the Virgin's humble
response, "Ecce ancilla domini" (Behold the Lord's scrvant). 99 Thus the action and the
spoken word become visible in the form of a sculpture with a chiseled inscription.
IX.
Why the flction of stone instead of a painting? Crucial to the logic of the consid-
erable aesthetic and intellectual effort involved is----once again-the notion of the self--
imposed difficulty that the painter overcomes by his skill: the difficulte vain cue. 1011
There seems to he no truly compelling reason for portraying the Annunciation in
44 PARAGONS AND l'ARAGONE
simulated stone other than the painter's desire to display his art and mastery. Accord-
ingly, the painter transposes his subject matter into sculpture-the wrong genre and
fraught with difficulty for him. Thus he almost involuntarily enters into competition
with the sculptor. Almost of their own accord, notions such as duello and the para-
gone between painting and sculpture come to mind. It is as though painting came to
a better understanding of its own merits through the rivalry with the other genre.
Here Van Eyck demonstrates the full extent of painting's capabilities, the virtus of
his own art. For there is no denying the demonstrative painterly and artistic nature
of the diptych.
Moreover, in this work we see a fundamental precept of effect-driven, demonstra-
tive artistry: the feigned artlessness of the trompe l'ceil that uses the means of painting
to deny that it is painting in the familiar dialectic of illusion and disillusion in illusion-
istic art proves all the more effectively to be art.
Not painted, but chiseled; not in color, but in natural-colored stones; not with the
colors of the artist's palette, but with the colors of nature! It is reasonable to assume
that the artist's intention was to re-create the true colors of nature in the stone rather
than be bound by the deceptive colorfulness of painting. For the likely backdrop to the
artistic stance of feigned artlessness by means of a reduced palette is common criti-
cisms of painting, topoi of the ongoing reflection-ever since Plato-on the fraudulent
nature of painting, which, for all the variety of its historical manifestations, could be
summed up in the formula pictura-fictura and will have been known to painters of
every intellectual level: painting that shows what is not, an appealingly superficial,
deeply illusory, even mendacious fiction. 101 And compounding this criticism of the
illusion of rilievo, there was also the no less important and no less diversely expressed
second main consideration: that non tangible, only optically identifiable color was par-
ticularly illusive and deceptive, that it was not substance, no more than a matter of
accident, mere surface decoration, that it was particularly sensual even to the extent
of seduction, as "colorum lenocinium" (enticement of color) 102 -topoi in the critique
of color that would linger on in the art discourse of the Renaissance in the antagonistic
evaluation of sculpture and painting, of disegno and colore, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Erasmus, in admiring appreciation of Durer's art, will declare that it is more admirable
to achieve-without recourse to the seductive appeal of colors-what Apelles achieved
with their help. Durer himself will declare that although he loved bright colors in his
youth, now he paints with the simple colors of Nature. 103 And Titian will restrict his
palette to just three colors, and so on and so forth. 104
X.
However rich the portrayal of the stone surfaces in Van Eyck's diptych, there is no
mistaking that this is simplex color, no mistaking the limited palette. A historically
demanding limitation!
Investigations have identified just seven pigments in the diptych: white from
white lead; reds from iron oxide, red ocher, and cinnabar; black from charcoal and
rust; and yellow from yellow terra di Siena. 105 Seven pigments-four colors: white, red,
black, yellow. Let us turn to Pliny:
ON JAN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCI-l 45
Thus to contemplate all these numbers and great variety of colours prompts us to
marvel at former generations.
Four colors only were used by the illustrious painters Apelles, Aetion, Me-
lanthius and Nicomachus to execute their immortal works-·of whites, Melinum;
of yellow ochres, Attic; o£ reds, Pontic Sinapis; of blacks, atramentum---although
their pictures each sold for the wealth of a whole town. Nowadays when purple
finds its way even on to party-walls and when India contributes the mud of her
rivers and the gore of her snakes and elephants, there is no such thing as high-class
painting. Everything in fact was superior in the days when resources were scantier.
The reason for this is that, as we said before, it is values of material and not of
genius that people are now on the look-out for. 106
Could it be that in this late work Van Eyck was making reference to the famous
locus classicus where Pliny describes the masterfully constrained palettes of the
ancients? Could it be that he restricted his own to the same four colors used by
Apelles? 107 It is worth noting in passing here that in the passage "ex albis, ex rubris"
the Latin text distinguishes between individual pigments and the four abstract
concepts of color-white, red, black, and yellow-just as clearly as, for instance,
the fourteenth-century Neapolitan text De arte iluminandi, which oddly extrapo-
lates a three-color theory-black, white, and red--from the same text by Pliny. 108
Van Eyck himself thought partly in terms of abstract colors and partly in terms of
pigments, as we can tell from the color notes he made in the margins of his silver-
point drawing of Cardinal Albergati: sanguinachtich, geelachtich, blauachtich, and
ocl<ereachtich-which might be translated as "a little sanguineous," "yellowish,"
"blueish," and "ocherish." 109
If this painting does indeed reference the passage by Pliny, this is of great interest
to our understanding of Van Eyck and the place of his ceuvre in art history: it would
mean that as early as 1440, in northern Europe, there was an artist able to imitate and
rival the ancients by taking up their notion of four-color painting, an artist who aspired
to recognition as a second Apelles.
A glance at 111e Virgin with the Canon Van der Paele 110 could provide indirect
confirmation of this hypothesis. For, in the same way that there are multiple reflec-
tions of the Madonna and Child on Saint George's helmet and armor, so there is a
small, convex mirror image on his shield (fig. u). The saint is wearing it--a joust-
ing shield with a rounded notch for the lance that would be in front of the chest for
tournaments-slung on its strap over his left shoulder. On its reflective inner side,
between the two sharply distorted reflections of the red column in the lower section
and of the white flag in the upper section is a semihidden, minute reflected image of
two men, with the nearer of the two wearing a red chaperon and stockings. The posi-
tion of the shield, its convex inner side only partially turned toward the center of the
painting, indicates that the two men are standing more or less in front of the painting's
central axis, in the same viewing position adopted by Van Eyck and his companion in
the Arnolfini Wedding. Thus the likely conclusion is that once again it is Van Eyck
himself contemplating his own picture, his shadowy ydolum attesting to the reality of
the contents of the painting.
That the reflection in the Arnolfini Wedding is to be read as a signature is made
very clear by the accompanying inscription. 111 And, to judge by appearances, it seems
the same intention prevails in The Paele Virgin, although the means are subtler, and

FIG.11
Jan van Eyck
(Netherlandish, ca.1390-1441)
Saint George (detail of f1g. 6)
PARAGONS AND PAllAGONE
it is not by chance that the painter's reflection should appear specifically on a shield
in this painting.'In Van Eyck-'s linguistic environment-a combination of lower Ger-
man dialects, albeit not entirely to the exclusion of the Netherlandish of the educated
classes-the knight's shield, the painted sign at an inn, and the panel painted by an
artist were all part of the same linguistic concept and designated by the same word:
schild. The painter's activity is schilderen (to paint), and he is a schilder (painter). By
portraying himself on the shield of the saint and thus painting himself into the schild
of the Virgin, Van Eyck is--in an ingenious duplication and multiplication--a multiple
schilder: the schilder on the small schild but also the schilder of the whole schild, that
is to say, the whole painted surface of the panel, with the small painted schild as the
epitome of his profession, or however else one might like to verbalize the process of
additional meanings and shifting meanings by dint of the inspired intertwining of the
work's literal and metaphorical levels.
Reflection of the self in miniatures falls into the genre of the self-portrait en
abfme: Van Eyck semiconcealed on the shield. But is this in fact a significant reference
to antiquity, comparable to the connection with Apelles?
In his vita of Pericles, Plutarch reports that Phidias portrayed Pericles and himself
on the shield of his own figure of Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis in Athens,l12 and
Dio Chrysostom adds that this was in a partially covert manner. 118 The famous artist
ON JAN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH 47
of antiquity, often referred to as a painter because, according to Pliny, that was what he
was; Pliny also refers to "a shield at Athens that had been painted by him" 114 before he
became a sculptor: the nwst important religious artist in the ancient world as a small
figure semiconcealed on the virgin's shield! Writers who have addressed the legend of
Phidias occasionally touch on his possible arrogance. Yet Cicero saw the real basis of
the legend as an artist's wounded pride and desire for immortality: "The very mechan-
ics are desirous of fame after death. Why did Phidias include a likeness of himself in the
shield of Minerva, when he was not allowed to inscribe his name on it?" 115
Artistic guile, even artistic revenge for being refused his chance of immortal-·
ity-as it is known from other anecdotes, too---seems to be at play here, while very
different and no doubt much older layers of the concept of the picture and of the art-
ist--the artist's guile and the artist's curse, the artist as mysterious magician--come
to the fore in that variant of the legend in which Phidias makes his own semiconcealed
image the key to the painting. It is said that he created his own image on a loose stone
in the portrait of the virgin, so that, should a clumsy or envious hand touch it or even
try to remove it, the whole piece would implode_II 6
Could it not be a direct reference to the ancient legend of artistic pride, artistic
guile, and artistic power when Van Eyck immortalizes himself and his companion in
the species of a reflected image on the Virgin's schild, when, in the strange fiction of
the painter-beholder regarding his own painting, he declares this to be what he sees,
something that-as in the legend--exists only because he sees it? Does the ingenious
allusion to Phidias not constitute a motif similar to that seen in his implied reference
to the four colors of Apelles?
Whatever the motivation for Van Eyck's demonstrative limitation of his palette, on
a practical level it can be read as an expression of the aesthetic ideal of feigned simplic-
ity by means of the self-imposed limitation of one's artistic resources, which in turn
will reveal the artist's true mastery.
The reason is presented by Pliny. For-laudator temporis peracti (praiser of
bygone times)--he closes his account of the four colors on a pessimistic note: "Nowa-
days ... there is no such thing as high-class painting. Everything in fact was superior in
the days when resources were scantier. The reason for this is that, as we said before,
it is values of material and not of genius that people are now on the look-out for." 117
XI.
The values of the spirit, not of the material! It cannot be denied that Van Eyck's demon-
stratively reduced palette and the singular aesthetic structure of his work are perfectly
suited to the intrinsic theme of the Annunciation, to the Virgin Mary's humilitas, nor
that the process that led to this late, complex, and complicated aesthetic outcome in
the sparing color scheme of the Marian diptych began with a striving for religiously
motivated colorlessness: the Annunciation, when the Virgin's humility is so apparent,
a feast day that falls during Lent---her colorless representation thus doubly appropri-
ate; the natural whites backed by black and dully reflected, the brighter red only in
the frame! Of course, white---which in the traditional symbolism of colors is associ-
ated with purity and related notions---and black with its originally negative connota-
tions118 can be read as Marian colors. However, for Jacobus de Voragine the "beauty of

PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
the Virgin" comprises three colors: black, white, and red, with black standing for her
humility, white for her virginity, and red for her love, 119 and there is no doubt that all
those contemporary viewers with a knowledge of religion and color symbolism could
interpret the Marian significance of the three stone colors in the diptych. Is it reason-
able, however, to conclude that Van Eyck had in mind a Marian three-color system?
Can one conclude that his choice of colors was, from the outset, entirely made along
Marian lines? Or is it not more likely that his intention was to create an artistic and
effective contrast between the Marian colores austeri of the inner parts of the panels
and the color floridus, the rich red of the frame, and that appropriateness was the deci-
sive criterion in his choice of colors?
We know nothing of the first owner of this work and can do no more than draw
broad analogies when it comes to its purpose and original use. 120 It was clearly intended
for extra-liturgical, private devotion, a focus for devout belief in the Incarnation
of Christ through the Virgin Mary. But how exactly was it used? Was it originally
intended for use by a layman in connection with the daily hours! The practice of recit-
ing the Angelus had been established since the fourteenth century, 121 a simple devotion
repeated by heart three times a day at the sound of the bell, comparable to the monastic
prayers of the hours. It would be recited either kneeling, standing, or sitting, with or
without a devotional image. In terms of function, the diptych with its representation
of the angel's greeting and its devotional texts would be ideally suited to this form of
worship. It seems likely that this would have been one of the reasons for its existence.
A Marian, devotional aid, then, for someone, unknown to us, with both religious and
aesthetic interests, if the truly spectacular artistic quality of the work is anything to
judge by.
XII.
It seems that Van Eyck particularly wanted to alert viewers to the work's quality, and
that the painted black stone is only a thinly veiled declaration regarding the status and
value of his painting.
"The money changers have a stone by which they see and recognize whether the
silver brought to them is good or bad." 122 This fifteenth-century German source is refer-
ring here to the black touchstone known in German also as Probierstein (testing stone),
Goldstein (goldstone), or Streichstein (streaking stone),1 2" used by goldsmiths, traders,
and money changers to determine the purity of gold or silver and their alloys. They
used to rub or draw the metal in question across a hard stone, which, in petrographic
terms, is a type of hard lydite with coal deposits that give it its black hue.
This practice was known already in the ancient world. 124 The wonderful capacity
to distinguish good metal from bad that is a property of "Lydian" or "Heraclean" stone
was attributed by some to the fact that it also contained gold. Pindar already talks of
the Lydian stone used for testing. Theophrastus, who goes into some detail, describes
the process of running the metal across the "touchstone." Pliny, who uses the word
coticula for the same stone, agrees with him. By observing the mark on the stone, the
expert could determine "to a difference of a scruple" how much gold, silver, or copper
was contained in the metal, "their marvellous calculation not leading them astray." 125
This also accounts for its occasional designation as iudex.
II
ON )AN VAN EYCK'S DIPTYCH 49
II
Goldstein was the name Albrecht Durer used for the black stone of the columns
he saw on his travels in the Netherlands: "The columns of Saint Michael in the mon-
astery at the parish church in Antwerp are all made from a piece of black, beautiful
goldstone."I26 And a contemporary, fifteenth-century account of a precious fountain
basin in Augsburg made from the same material talks of "a proper goldstone across
which you can draw and test guilders and gold." 127
Drawing and testing! The nature of the assay that metal was subjected to lingers
on in the German Strichprobe (streak test). The verb-streichen, or strichen-refers to
the act of drawing a fine line on the black lydite, hence the Old German term Streich-
stein. Grimm's dictionary cites a reference from the thirteenth or fourteenth century
to "zwcne [i.e., two] streichsteinc." Hence still in 1536 the reference to "streichsteyn"
with which to evaluate gold, 128 and a metaphorical use, as a test of goodness, is found
already in Ottokar's Reimchronik 129
The likely n1etaphorical meaning of the black stone in Van Eyck's diptych has
to be connected with the fact that the goldsmith's "lines" on the touchstone are lin-
guistically no different and in factual terms barely distinguishable from the painter's
brushstrokes and lines in the painting. A significant usage by Tauler has survived from
the fourteenth century: "The painter ... marked lines on the picture." 13°For the instru-
ments used by the goldsmith and the painter are almost identical, so similar as to be
easily confused. When the goldsmith makes the first line with gold or silver of known
purity on the hard black stone-the line that will prime it as a touchstone--·he uses a
touch needle or test needle. Grimm's dictionary records a reference to this tool from
1435 : 5 touch needles half silver." The needle itself was a stylus with a gold or silver
11 131
tip that had not only a similar use but a very similar appearance to the painter's gold-,
silver-, or metalpoint!
The goldsmith n1akes two lines on the black stone. Having primed it with the
first line in a metal of known purity, he makes a second line next to it using the metal
that is to be tested, whose purity and value have not yet been established. The black
touchstone is thus a stone used for comparative assay. Depending on where it comes
from, pietra di paragone, paragone di Fiandra, or just paragone is the Italian term
for this stone. 132
In France, the pierre de touche has been known since the fourteenth century by
the shorter name of toucheau, which can be used also for the goldsmith's test needle.
A source from r46r records the words toucheau and toucheaul, meaning a collection
of small stone plates to be used for comparative assay. 133 The root, recorded in the thir .
teenth century, is the postverbal noun touche, derived from Vulgar Latin toccare, as in
11 to strike a bell," 134 which, in turn, may be related to the German Streich.
Van Eyck, whose mother tongue will have been a South Limburg or Maastricht
dialect, but who must have been familiar also with the Netherlandish spoken in the
towns in Flanders where he lived, and who appears also to have had some knowledge
of French, is most likely to have known the black touchstone by the name toets-
steen.1·'s This is almost an exact equivalent of the German Streichstein, since toetsen
or toutsen, related to mid-Netherlandish and to the French touche, was the word used
for making the line on the touchstone to establish the gold or silver content of metal.
Be it a toetssteen, a pierre de touche, or a toucheau-- Van Eyck must have been
familiar with the touchstone of the goldsmith or the: rnoney changer, who would carry
it with him in the forn1 of a relatively snwll slab of black stone. In Quentin Metsys's
painting The Moneylender and His WifcL16 (fig. 12) a small black touchstone lies on the
so PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
1
ON JAN VAN EYCK S DIPTYCH

table. Since the painting's old-fashioned style and old-fashioned iconography suggest FIG.12

that it is a paraphrase, if not a copy, of a painting from the mid-fifteenth century and Quentin Metsys
(South Netherlandish,
nray even be a replica of Van Eyck's lost painting of a moneylender, which is said to
ca.1466 ··Ei30)
have established the type, 137 one might even speculate as to whether the lost painting The Moneylender and His Wife,
may not also have included a small touchstone. 1514, oil on wood, 10.5 x 67 ern
It may also be crucial to the interpretation of the diptych that-as in the Ger- (273/; x 263/s in)
\ man Goldstein and the Italian pietra di par agone-the toetssteen of Van Eyck's own Par'is, Mus6e du L.ouvr'e,
inv. 1444
linguistic environment referred not only to the goldsmith's touchstone but also to a
whole group of types of black stone, where the color was the main criterion and that
included--besides lydite--black marble, basalt, and the like. Their use in decorative
work could be described as "inlay work in marble and touchstone." 138 Toetsstenen,
that is, "made from black touchstone," was the description of the gravestones of the
Burgundian dukes in Dijon. In other words: the black stone of the diptych was a toe/s-
steen--a Goldstein for German speakers, and a pietra di par agone for Italians.
It is hardly conceivable that Van Eyck would not have considered the word, the
concept, and its meaning when he decided to include a type of black stone in the mas··
terfully reduced pictorial plan of his stone painting with just three colors of natural
stone, hardly conceivable that he could have painted the stone that was the picture
support for a picture within a picture without heeding its significance and meaning.
On the contrary, it seems reasonable to assume that in the empty black plane, where
the mirror image on the black stone is delicate and shadowy, he wanted to alert the
observant beholder to the originalliteralmeaning and power of the toetssteen, to the
fact that the Streichstein was a touchstone for the purity and value of the Strich-
the line-that is drawn across it. It seems that Van Eyck, like the goldsmith with his
metal, wanted to assess the purity of his own line 139 against the discriminating power
of the stone. Does this then mean that the black stone, in which the reflections of the
two painted statuettes demonstrate their physical reality to the viewer, is also to be
read as a touchstone for the spectacular artistic achievement it embodies? Touchstone-
cunr-mirror140 of Van Eyck's painting?
 n6 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
Van Eyck
This essay is an extended version of a lecture delivered
on 24 January 1989 during a conference titled Neues zum
Verkiindigungs-Diptychon des fan van Eyclz in der Sammlung
Thyssen-Bornemisza, organized together with Emil Bosshard of
the Thysscn-Borncmisza Collection and held at the Schweizcr-
isches Institut flir Kunstwisscnschaft in Zurich. In 1988 Emil
Boss hard had supervised an expert cleaning and thorough exami-
nation of the diptych, and he presented the results during the first
part of the conference. I should like to thank him most sincerely
for our collaboration, generously shared information, the chance
to see his manuscript, and other help. This manuscript was com-
pleted in February 1990. A shorter version in lecture format was
published as "Ein 'Prlifstein der Malerci' bei Jan van Eyck?" in Der
Kiinstler iiber sich in seinem Werk. InternaLionales Symposium
der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, 1989, ed. Matthias Winner
(Wcinheim: VCH, 1992), Ss--roo.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ABBREVIATIONS
Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck
Elisabeth Dhanens. Hubert und fan van Eycl<. New York:
Tabard, 1980.
Eisler, The Tllyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Colin Eisler. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Coiiection:
Early Netherlandish PainLing. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989.
Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine
Marion Grams--Thieme. Lebendige Steine: Studien zur
niederliindischen Grisaillemalerei des I 5. und friihen I 6.
fahrhunderts. Cologne: Bohlau, 1988.
Lindberg, Tlleories of Vision
David C. Lindberg. Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to
Kepler. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976.
Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Paiuting
Erwin Panofsky. Early Netherlandish PainLing, Its Origins
and Character. Vol. r. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953.
Peckham, Jolln Pecham
John Peckham. fohn Pecham and the Science of Optics:
Perspectiva communis. Ed. David C. Lindberg. Madison:
Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art
). ). Pollitt. The Ancient View of Creel< Art: Criticism, History
and Terminology. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1974.
NOTES
r. Max ). Friedlander, Ein bi~her tmbekanntes Werk von fan
van Eyck (n.p.: n.p., 1934); Max ). Friedlander, "A New Painting
by Van Eyck," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 65
I1934): 3-S; Max ). Friedlander, Die altniederliindische Malerei
(Berlin: Cassircr, 1937), 14, 78, pls. r, 2; Charles de Tolnay, Le
maitre de Flemalle et les freres Van Eycl< (Brussels: Editions de
la Connaissance, 1939), nos. 10, 68; Hermann Beenken, Hubert
und Jan van Eyck (Munich: Bruckmann, 1943), 54£., nos. 96, 97;
H. Thcodor Mnspcr, Untersuchungen zu Rogier van der Wey-
den tmd Jan van Eyclz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammcr, 1948), 103f.,
J07, nos. r62---63; Suzanne Sulzberger, "L' Annonciation de Jean
van Eyck dans la collection Thyssen a Lugano," Revue beige
d'archeologie et d'histoire de l'mt 19 (1950): 67-70; Ludwig Bal-
dass, fan van Eyck (London: Phaidon, 19_12), nos. II, 52, 59, 2,78;
Germain Bazin, "Petrus Christus et lcs rapports entre l'Italie et
la Flandreau milieu du XV' siecle," La mvue des arts 2 (1952):
204; Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 192; Valentin Denis,
Tutta la pitLura di fan van Eyck (Milan: Rizzoli, 1954), 28, 48;
)osua Bruyn, Van Eyck problemen: De Levensbron, het werk
van een leerling van fan van Eyck (Utrecht: Hacntjens Dekker &
Gumbert, 1957), 94, 96; Molly Teasdale Smith, "The Use of Gri-
saille as a Lenten Observance," Marsyas 8 (1957--j9): so; Edwin
Redslob, Meisterweri<e der Malerei aus der Sammlung Thyssen-
Bornemisza, "Sammlung SchlofJ Rohoncz" in Lugano-Castagnola
(Berlin: Rembrandt, I959L r, no. r; Suzanne Sulzbergcr, "Notes
sur la grisaille," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 59 (1962): 119-20; Paul
Philippot, "Les grisailles et lcs 'degres de n~alite' de l 'image dans
la pcinture flamandc des XV' et XVIc siccles," Bulletin des Musees
Royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique rs (1966): 230; Max). Friedlan-
der, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. r, The van Eycl<s-Petnzs
Christus (Lei den: Sijthoff, 1967), 103, pl. 99; Wolfgang Kermer, Stu-
dien zum Diptyclwn in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfiingen
bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten [ahrhunderts (Dusseldorf: Stehle,
1967), nos. 133, 176; ). Leeuwenberg, "Zeven Zuidnederlandse
Rcisaltaartjes," Revue beige d'archeologie et d'histoire de ]'art
27 (1968): ro2, fig. 5; Denis Coekelbcrghs, "Les grisailles de Van
Eyck," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 7I (r968): So, 83-85; Charles D.
Cuttler, Northern Painting: From Pucelle to Bruegel/Fourteenth,
Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1968), 89--90; Giorgio T. Faggin and Raffacllo Brignetti,
L'opera completa dei Von Eyclz (Milan: Rizzoli, 1968), nos. 24-a, b,
pls. 54--SS; John L. Ward, "A New Look at the Frieclsam Annuncia-
tion," The Art Bulletin so (r968): r8s; Denis Coekelbcrghs, "Les
grisailles et le trompe-l'ceil dans l'ceuvre de Van Eyck et de Roger
van der Weyden," in Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire de ]'art
offerts au Pwfesseur Jacques Lavalleye (Louvain: Bureaux du
Recueil, Bibliotheque de l'Universite, 1970), 21--34, pls. s-6; James
Snyder, "The Chronology of Jan van Eyck's Paintings," in Josua
Bruyn ct al., eds., Album mnicorum J. G. van Gelder (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1973), 294, 297; )olanta Maurin-Bialostocka, fan van Eyck
(Warsaw: Bimo Wydawniczo-Propagandowe, 1973), nos. 27, 45;
Charles Sterling, "Jan van Eyck avant 1432," Revue de ]'art 33
(r976): 8, 12, 40, so, 78, note 5; Anton Legner, "Polychrome und
monochrome Skulptur in der Realitiit und im Abbild," in Vm Ste-
fan Lochner: Die I<olner Maler von I.300-I4JO: Ergebnisse der
Ausstellung und des Colloquiums, I<oln 1974 (Cologne: Wallraf-
Richartz-Muscum, 1977), 140--63; Robert Didier and John Steyaert,
"Stehende Muttergottes, sogenannte Notre-Dame ter Rieve, Gent
um r 400-qro, Gent 0. L. Frouw St. Pieterskcrk," in Anton Leg-
ner, eel., Die Parle.r und der schone SUI IJSO---I400: Europdische
Kunst unter den Luxemburgern, exh. cat. (Cologne: MuseCI1 der
Stadt Kiiln, 1978), r:87; Albert Chatclet, Van Eyck (Bologna: Capi-
tol, 1979), 47, pl. 22; Allen Rosenbaum, Old Master Paintings from
the Collection of Baron Thyssen-Bomemisza, exh. (:at. (Washing-
ton, D.C.: International Exhibitions foundation, I979L I09--IO;
Dhanens, Hu/Jert und fan van Eyck, 339-43; Elisabeth Dhanens,
s.v. "Jan van Eyck," in Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brus-
sels: Palcis der Acaclemicn, 198r), 9:259; Janos Vegh, Van Eycl<
(Budapest: Corvina, 1983), no. 24-; Miriam Milman, Tl·ompe-l'Oeil
Painting: The Illusions of Reolity (Geneva: Sidra, 1982,), 54-SS;
Grams-Thiemc, Lebcnclige Steine, 141-44; Otto Piicht and Maria
Schmidt-Dengler, Von Eyck: Die Begriinder der altniederliin-
dischen Malemi (Munich: Prestel, 1989), IIS; and Colin Eisler
and Carina Frykluncl, "Jan van Eyck," in Eisler, The T1Iyssen-
Homemisza Collection, so-6r, cat. 3 with extensive bib.
2. On the history of the work, which came to light only in
1932, see Eisler, The Thyssen-Bomemisza Collection, 56; on the
work's state of preservation, the cleaning undertaken in 1988, and
the radiographic investigation, see Emil Bosshard, "Condition," in
Eisler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 52-55·
3· On the dating of this work, see, most recently, Eisler, The
'Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 57-59.
4· Smith, "The Use of Grisaillc" (see note r): 43-50; Grams-
Thieme, Lebendige Steine, 167-72.
5· Dhanens, Hubert und fan van Eyck, 242--51; Grams-Thieme,
Lebendige Steine, r38-4r.
6. Jules Guiffrey, Inventaires de Jean due de Berry (Paris:
Leroux, 1894-96), r: no. 15, as cited in Grams-Thieme, Lebendige
Steine, 421, note 519; cf. Eisler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Col-
lection, 6o.
7· On grisaille, see Smith, "The Use of Grisaille" (note r), 43££.;
Sulzberger, "Notes sur la grisaille" (see note r), rr9-20; Philippot,
"Les grisailles et les 'degres de realitC'" (see note r), 225-4-2; Coekel-
bcrghs, "Les grisailles de van Eyck" (see note r), 79-92; Cockcl-
berghs, "Les grisaillcs ct lc trompe .. l'ceil" (see note r), 2I--J4; Gray
Is the Color: An Exhibition of Grisaille Painting XIIIth--XXth
Centuries, cxh. cat. (Houston: Institute for the Arts, Rice Univer-
sity, 1974); Musec d'art et d'essai, La grisaille, exh. cat. (Paris: Edi-
tions de la Reunion des Musccs Nationaux, [r98o]); for a clctailccl
account, see Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine, passim, and, on the
problem of terminology and more, 3-12.
8. Sec, e.g., Jean Pucellc, Das Stundenbuch der Jeanne d'Evreux
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, 2ooo);
on this, see Edith Balas, "Jean Pucelle and the Gothic Cathedral
Sculptures: A Hypothesis," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 99 (r982):
39--54; Stanley H. Ferber, "Jean Pucelle and Giovanni Pisano,"
The Art Bulletin 66(r984): 65-72; see also Andre Beauneveu, Psal-
ter des Hm-zogs von Herry (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale), ms. fr.
13091; on this, see Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of
Jean de Herry, vol. r, The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patron-
age of the Duke (London: Phaidon, 1969), 64, figs. 51-74.
9· Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 207--9; Dhancns,
Hubert und fan van Eyck, 96; Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine,
?"81--84.
ro. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 161, with early
dating; E Rudolph Uebe, Skulpt.urennachahmung auf den nieder-
liindischen Altargemiilden des rs. Jahrhunderts (Ciithen: Both,
1913), 20; L. Fischer, "Die Vermahlung Maria des Prado zu
Madrid," Bulletin des Musees Royaux des beaux-arts 7 (1958):
3-12; Mojmir S. Frinta, The Genius of RobeTt Cmnpin (The
NOTES: VAN EYCK
Hague: Mouton, 1966), 63; Martin Davies, Rogier von der Wey-
dcn: An Essay, with a Critical Catalogue of Paintings Assigned
to Him and to Robert Cmnpin (London: Phaidon, 1972), 256--5'7;
Lornc Campbell, "Robert Campin, the Master of Flemalle and
the Master of Mcrode," The Burlington Magozine rr6 I1974):
64-2; Grams-T'hieme, Lebendige Stcine, 215--TS; on the problem
of artists and attribution, see Dominique Hollanders·-Favart and
Roger Van Schoute, eds., Le dessin scms--jacent dans la petnwre.
Colloque III, 6-7--8 septembre I979: Le probleme maitre de
Flemalle-van der Weyden (Louvain-la-Neuve: College Erasmc,
1981); Elisabctb Dhancns, "Tusscn de Van Eycks en Hugo van der
Goes," Mededelingen van de Koninldjjl<e Academic voor Weten-
schappen, LeLteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgic, Klasse der
Schone Ktmsten 45 (r984): no. I, 5-98.
n. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 169; Max). Fried-
lander, Early Netherlandish PainLing, vol. 2, Rogier van der Wey-
den and the Maste.r of Flemalle (Leiclen: Sijthoff, 1967), n-'72,
no. 6o; Davies, Rogier van der Weyden (see note w), 32, 251;
Campbell, "Robert Campin" (sec note ro), 638; Dhanens, "'I'ussen
de Van Eycks" (see note ro), 21--·-23, with attribution to a master
active in Ghent around 1440; Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine,
194--98.
12. On the "pierre bleu de Tournai," see Grete Ring, "Beitragc
zur Plastik von Tournai im 1_1. JahrhLmclert," in Paul Clemen, eel.,
Belgische Kunstdenkmiiler, 1:269££. (Munich: Bruckmann, 1923);
Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine, 341, note 104.
13. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 167-69; Fricclliin-
cler, Rogier van der Weyden (see note n), 71, no. 59a; on the hack
of the fragment, sec Davies, RogieT van der Weyden (note ro), 249;
Campbell, "Robert Campin" (see note ro), 641, note 67; Dhanens,
"Tussen de Van Eycks" (see note 10), rS--20.
I4· Davies, Rogier von der Weyden (sec note ro), 2,2,5; Helene
Vcrougstraete-Marcq, "Le triptyque Eclelheer: Examen au labora ..
toire et rapports avec la Descentc de la Croix de Van dcr Wcyden
d11 Prado a Madrid," in Hollanders-Favart and Van Schoute, Le des-
sin sous-jacent (see note LO), rr9---29; Grams-Thieme, Lebendige
Steine, 198-2,04.
15. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 26B; Friedlander,
Rogier van der Weyden (sec note rr), no. I4; Davies, Rogier van
der Weyden (see note ro), 197-99; Nicole Veronee-Verhaegen,
L'H6tel-Dieu de Beaune (Bmssels: Centre National de Recherches
Primitifs Flamands, 1973), r8- 19, 89--90.
r6. Por a controversial view on the participation of the work-·
shop, see Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2,68; and
Veronee-Verhaegcn, L'II6tel-Dieu de Hemme (sec note rs), 90.
17. Grams-Thieme, Lebendige Steine, passim.
r8. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 332-33; Grams-
Thieme, Lebendige Steine, 1.60-66.
19. Erwin Panofsky, Galilee as a Critic of the Arts (The Hague:
Nijhoff, r954), '\; Panofsky, Early Netherlandish l'aint.ing, r62;
Anton Legner, "Hilder und Materialien in der spatgotischcn Kunst-
produktion," Stadel fahrbuch, n.s., 6 (r97o): 168.
2,0. Leatrice Mendelsohn, Parogcmi: Benedetto VaTchi's "Due
lezzioni" and Cinquecento Art Theory (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI
Research Press, 1982), passim; Leonardo da Vinci, Paragone: A Com-
parison of the Arts, trans. Irma A. Richter (London: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1949); John White, "Paragone: Aspects of the Relationship
 II8 PARAGONS AND l'ARAGONE
between Sculpture and Painting," in Charles S. Singleton, ed., Art,
Science, and History in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press, 1967), 43-roS; M. Pepe, "II paragone tra pittura e scul-
tura nella letteratura artistica rinascimentale," Cultura e scuola
30 (1969): 120-31; Peter Hecht, "The Paragone Debate: Ten Illus-
trations and a Comment," Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for
the History of Art 14 (1984): 125-36.
21. Legner, "Bilder und Materialien" (sec note 19), csp. 168,
with a ref. to Gerhard Schmidt; see also Legner, "Polychrome und
monochrome Skulptur" (note 1), esp. 160-63.
22. It is documented that Robert Campin, like Jan van Eyck in
Bruges (Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 149--51), worked in
Tournai as a painter in colors of stone statues (if not also designing
them), and his work is still visible in the Annunciation group by
Jehan Delemer in the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine; see Paul
Rolland, Les primitifs tournaisiens: Peintres eJ sculpteurs (Brus-
sels: Librairie Nationale d'Art et d'Histoirc, 1932), passim; The-
odor Muller, Sculpture in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and
Spain I440-ISOO, trans. Elaine and William Robson Scott (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 207-8, note 55; Campbell, "Robert
Campin" (see note ro), 646-47; Legner, "Bildcr und Materialien"
(see note 19), 160-61; Hollanders-Favart and Van Schoute, Le des-
sin sous-jacent (see note ro), passim; Dieter Jansen, "Der Kolner
Provinzial des Minoritenordens Heinrich von Werl, der Werl-Altar
und Robert Campin," Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 45 (r984): r6-17.
23. For an interpretation of the portrayed material as alabaster,
see Didier and Steyaert, "Stehende Muttergottes" (note 1), 87; as
Liege marble, see Eisler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 6o;
see the same place for the hypothesis of programmatic material
differentiation--the statues of the Ghent altarpiece in marble,
the Thyssen diptych in alabaster, the Dresden triptych in ivory.
24. Monika Ciimmerer-Georgc, "Eine italienische Wurzel in
der Rahmen-Idee Jan van Eycks," in Kunstgeschichtliche Studien
fiir Kmt Bauch zum 70. Geburtstag von seinen Schiilern (Munich:
Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1967), 67-76; cf. Grams-Thieme, Leben-
dige Steine, 140.
25. Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 238-41; Dieter Jansen,
Similitudo: Untersuchungen zu den Bildnissen Jan van Eycks
(Cologne: Bohlau, 1988), 124-30.
26. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson
(Bari: Laterza, 1973), 3:36-37: "aperta finestra ... ex qua historia
contueatur" and "una finestra apcrta per donde io miri quello che
ivi sara dipinto."
27. On the ambiguous nature of the painted stone frame, see
Panofsky, Early Nether.landish Painting, 18r.
28. Cf. the overview in David Summers, Michelangelo and the
Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981), 41-59.
29. Ernst H. Gombrich, The Heritage of Apelles (Oxford:
Phaidon, 1976), 5, 16.
30. Hans-Karl Lucke, cd., A.lberti Index: Leon BaUista Alberti,
De re aedificatoria, Florenz I 4 85, Index verborum (Munich: Pre-
s tel, 1979), 3:rrm: "quod ille [the painter] prominentias ex tabula
monstrare umbris et lincis et angulis comrninutis clabora."
31. Cennino Ccnnini, II libw dell'arLe (Vicenza: Pozza, 197r),
esp. ro-u: "cap. IX. Come tude' dare [sccondo]la ragione della
luce, chiaro e scuro aile tue figure, dotandole di ragione di rilicvo,"
with a distinct emphasis on the connection between rilievo and
chiaroscuro. Cennini's own mode of expression and vocabu-
lary-"da' el tuo rilievo c l'oscuro" (p. 11)-shows that Tilievo
stands out as the illuminated part; cf. also rilievuzzo as a high-
light added to a painting; for a general account of the concept, see
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century
Italy: A Primer in the Social Hist01y of Pictorial Style (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1972), rr8, 12r-22; Luigi Grassi and Mario Pcpc,
Dizionario della critica d'arte (Turin: Utet, 1978), 2:s.v. "rilievo"
(entry by Luigi Grassi), 48o-8r; Summers, Michelangelo and the
Language of Art (sec note 28), 41-42 and passim.
32. Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (see
note 28), ~69, note 4; rilievo is already the norm in Ccnnini's
comment: "perche, cio mancando, non sarcbbe tuo lavorio con
nessuno rilievo, c verrebbe co sa scm price, e con poco maestero,"
Cennini, Illibro dell'arte (see note 31), rr.
33· Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture: The
Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua, ed. Cecil Grayson (Lon .
don: Phaidon, 1972), 88/89, "Pictos ego vultus, et doctis et indoctis
consentientibus, laudabo eos qui veluti exsculpti cxtare a tabulis
videantur," Alberti, Opere volgari (sec note 26), 82-83.
34· Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture (see note 33), 88/89:
Sed sic velim pictorcs eruditi existimcnt summam industriam
atque in albo tantum in nigro clisponendo versari, inque his
duobus probe locandis omne ingenium et diligentiam consum-
mandam. Nam vcluti luminum et umbrae casus id cfficit ut
quo loco superficies turgeant, quove in cavum rccedant, quan-
tumve quaeque pars dcclinet ac deflcctat [appareat], sic albi et
nigri concinnitas efficit illud quod Niciac pictori Atheniensi
laudi dabatur quodve artifici in primis optandnm est: ut suae
res pictae maxime eminere videantur. ...
Ma voglio cosi estimino i dotti, che tutta Ia somma indus-
tria e arte stain sapere usare il bianco e 'l nero, e in ben sapcrc
usare questi due conviensi porre tutto lo studio e diligenza.
Pero che il lume e l'ombra fanno parere le cosc rilevate, cosi
il bianco e '1 nero fa le cose dipinte parere rilevate, e da quella
lode quale si dava a Nitia pittore ateniense.
Alberti, Opere volgari (see note 26), So.
35· Pliny Naturalis historia 35.64. Pliny the Elder, Natural His-
tory, trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann, 1952), 9:309.
36. "Luminum umbrarumquc invcnisse rationcm ... traditur,"
Quintilian Institutio aratoria 12. ro.4, as cited in Pollitt, The
Ancient View of Greek Art, 400.
37· "Lumen et umbras custodiit atque, ut emincrent e tabulis
picturae, maximc curavit," Pliny Naturalis historia 35.131 (see
note 35), 357·
38. Information kindly supplied by Emil Bosshard of the Thyssen-
Bornemisza Collection.
39· Sec, most recently, Victor I. Stoichita, "Imago Regis: Kunst-
theorie und konigliches Portriit in den Mcninas von Velasquez,"
Zeitschrift fiir I<'..unstgeschichte 49 (1986): 165--89; cf. Walter Di.irig,
Imago: Bin Beitrag zm Terminologie und Theologie der romischen
Litmgie (Munich: Zink, 1952), 3-40.
40. For an impressive example, sec the Rolin Madonna, Dha·-
nens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 266-.. 79.
41. For examples, see Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, uo,
22 r, 243; on this problem, see Legner, "Bilcler unci Matcrialicn"
(note 19), 158-76.
41, On the trompc-l'ceil character of this work, see Grams-
Thieme, Lebendige Steine, 142-43; for a general account, see
Charles Sterling, La nat me morte de 1' anti quite a nos jours (Paris:
Tisne, 1952); Martin Battersby, Trompe l'ceil: T1re Eye Deceived
(London: Academy Editions, 1974); Celestine Dars, Images of
Deception: T1re Al't of Trompe-l'cr.il (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979).
43· See below, note 44·
44· Pliny Naturalis historia 35·97 (see note 35), 333:
Inventa eius et ceteris profuere in arte; unum irnitari nemo
potuit, quod absoluta opera atramento inlinebat ita tenui, ut
id ipsum, cum rcpcrcussum claritates colorum omnium cxci-
taret custodiretque a pulvere et sorclibus, ad manum intuenti
demum apparerct, sed et luminum ratione magna, ne claritas
colorum acicm offenderet vcluti per lapidcm spccularem intu-
entibus et e longinquo eadem res nimis floridis coloribus aus-
tcritatem occultc daret.
On the problema tics of this passage, see Pollitt, The Ancient View
of Greek Art, 325-26.
45· Pliny Naturalis historia 35.41 (see note 35), 291, ?"93·
46. Ernst H. Gombrich, "Controversial Methods and Meth-
ods of Controversy," The Burlington Magazine 105 (r963): 90-.. 93;
Kathleen Weil-Garris Posner, Leonardo and Central Italian Art,
IS rs-rsso (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1974), 18--20 and
passim; Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art, 325-2.6.
47· Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art, 301 . -3.
48. Pollitt, T1Ie Ancient View of Greek Art, 392-97.
49· Pollitt, The Ancient View of Creel< Art, 325-26.
so. On the wider context of the "duochrome taste" as seen in
various monuments, above all in the fourteenth century, such as
the high altar of Cologne cathedral, see Legner, "Bilder und Mate-
rialien" (note 19), esp. 157.
p. On the genesis and reconstruction of the former in 1827,
sec Muller, Sculpture in the Netherlands (note 22), rr-12, and on
the latter, 54-55; on the destroyed monument to Louis de Male in
Lille, see Dhanens, Hubert und Tan van Eyck, 46.
52· Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piLl eccellenti pittor.i, scultori
ed architettori scritte, ed. Gaetano Milancsi (Florence: Sansoni,
1878), 2:s66, as cited in Otto Piicht, Van Eyck and the Foundas of
Early Netherlandish l'ainting, trans. David Britt (London: Miller,
1994), 13.
53· Albert Chatelct, Les primiLifs hollandais: La peintme dans
les Pays-Bas du Nord au xve siecle (Fribourg: Office du Livre,
1980), 195-96, no. 18; Hans Belting and Dagmar Eichberger, Jan
van Eyck als Erzi:ihler: Friihe Tafelbilder im Umlueis der New
Ymker Doppeltafel (Worms: Werner'sche Vcrlagsgesellschaft, 1983),
40-45, 151-52.
54· Peckham, John Pecham, 47f., 168-71, csp. no-71: "quod
falsum est [that the image is impressed into the mirror] quoniam
in aqua turris apparct esse in terra tan tum quantum est in acre."
For the parallel passages in Alhazen and Bacon, sec 256, note 2'7.
55· Svctlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in tire
Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, r983), ros
and passim.
NOTES: VAN EYCK II9
56. See above, note 26.
57· On the specific reception of hook miniatures, see Belting
and Eichbcrger, Jan van Eyck als ETzahler (note 53), 143 -64.
sS. Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 145.
59· Dhancns, Hubert und Jan van Eyclz, 73, 75.
6o. Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 193 . 204; Jansen,
Similitudo (see note 25), 14..5.
61. "Si unum ostcnderis hominem, populus apparet," Lucius
Annaeus Seneca Quaestiones naturales r.s.s, trans. Thomas H.
Corcoran (London: Heinemann, T971), 47; Lindberg, Themies of
Vision, 87.
62. "Quin c:tiam pocula ita figurantur expulsis intus crehris
ceu speculis, ut vel uno intuente totidem. populus imaginum Hat,"
Pliny Naturalis historia 33.129 (sec note 35), 97.
63. Dhanens, Hubert rmd Jan van Eyck, 6r.
64. Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 244.
65. Chatelct, Les primitifs hollandais (sec note 53), 195, no. rs,
with bib. and information on the problem of attribution.
66. Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 212· . 31, esp. 227.
67. "Excogitantur et monstrifica, ut in tcmplo Zmyrnae dicata.
id cvcnit figura materiae. plurimum refert concava sint et poculi
modo an parmac Thracidicae, media dcpressa an elata, trans-
versa an obliqua, supina an infesta, qualitatc excipicntis figurac
torquentc venientes umbras; neque enim est aliud ilia imago quam
digesta claritate materiae accipientis umbra," Pliny Naturalis
historia 33.129-30. (sec note 35), 97, 99·
68. Chatelet, Les primitifs hollandais (see note 53), 196-97;
Belting and Eichberger, Jan van Eyck als Erzi:ihler (sec note 53),
passim, csp. 88; Dagmar Eichberger, Bildkonzeption und Welt-
deutung im New Yorker Diptychon des Jan van Eyck (Wiesbaden:
Reichert, 1987), passim.
69. Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and CeTtitude in the Age of
Ockham: Optics, Epistemology, and the Foundations of Seman .
tics, I250-I345 (Lciden: Brill, 1988), xvi, 3-.. ro and passim.
yo. Lindberg, Theories of Vision, xx.
?I. Sec Tachau, Vision and Certitude (note 69).
72· Tachau, Vision and Certitude (see note 69), xiv and passim.
73· David C. Lindberg, A Catalogue of Medieval and Renais-
sance Optical Manuscripts (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medi-
aeval Studies, 1975), passim; see also Lindberg, Theories of Vision,
218.
74· Lindberg, Theories of Vision, xx.
75· Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Lin-
ear Perspective (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 143 . . -so and pas-
sim; Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 148--58; Klaus Bergdolt, Der
clritte I<'..ommentar Lorenzo Ghibertis: Naturwissenschaften und
Medizin in der Krmstthemie del' Friihrenaissance (Weinheim:
VCI-I, 1988), lxxxv-lxxxvi.
76. On John Pecham's propositio 28 (based on Alhazcn) "In
speculis planis figure et quantitatis vcritatem apparcre," see Peck--
harn, John Pecham, 180 ..-81; cf. Bcrgdolt, Der drit.t.e I<'..ommentar
Lorenzo Ghibertis (see note 75), 376-~~n: "ln plane mirrors the
errors are at their slightest, because things appear in the correct
form and size. It is only the position that changes," witb rd. to a
parallel passage in Bacon.
77· Peckham, john Pecham, IJO--?I, "Quid est igitur yclolum?
Dico sola apparitio rei extra locum suum."

120 PARAGONS AND PARAGONE
~ergdolt, Der dritte Kommentar Lorenzo Ghibertis (see
, li, lxxxv.
::olin M. Turbayne, "Grosseteste and an Ancient Optical
.e," Isis so (I959): 467-72.
0 ropositio 27:
peculis planis invcnirc punctum rcflexionis. Sit enim A
;tus visus, B centrum visus, speculum DGH, ct ducatur
etus AH et producatur ultra speculum quantum est A super
ulurn, usque in Z, et ducatur recta BZ per punctum speculi
lico quod G est punctus reflexionis. Ducatur enim radius
angulus enim ZGH equalis est angulo DGB quia ei contra
tus. Item etiam equalis est angulo HGA quia equalcs sunt
Lguli HZG HGA, ut supra patct. Ergo equales sunt anguli
\ et DGB; ergo a puncta G est reflcxio et non ab alio.
n, John Pecham, I78-8o.
'eckham, fohn Pecham, I8o-8r.
'eckham, John Pecham, I6o-6r; for parallel passages in
seudo-Euclid, Alindi, Ptolomaeus, Alhazen, Grossetestc,
md Witelo, see 255, note ro.
)bservations on viewing the painting from an angle are
in Rosenbaum, Old Master Paintings (see note I), I09-IO;
r, The Thyssen- Bornemisza Collection, 59-60.
'Propositio 3: Luces reflexas similiter et colores debilio-
directe radiantibus"; "Propositio 4: Rcflcxiones factas a
iebus fortiter colora tis nichil aut tenuiter visum movere";
itio rr: Res in speculis apparcre universalitcr debilius
lrecte," Peckham, John Pecham, I58-59, I64-65, on this
.eneca Quaestiones natumles r.s (see note 6I), as cited in
g, Theories of Vision, 8 7.
Propositio I9: Formas in speculis apparcntes per impres-
in speculis factam minime videri," Peckham, John
, I68-70.
ee above, note 75.
iosshard, "Condition" (see note 2), 52.
.uke I:35.
)n the mirror image as umbm, sec, e.g., Pliny Naturalis
33.I29(see note 35), 97, 99·
1endelsohn, Paragoni (see note 20), II7-32.
'aolo Pirro, "Dialogo di Pittura," in Paola Barocchi, ed.,
d'arte del Cinquecento (Bari: Laterza, I96o), I: I} I; Vasari
mesi, Le vite de' pili eccellenti pittori (see note 52), IV, 9I;
:s, Michelangelo and the Language of Al't (see note 28),
-83; Alpers, The Art of Describing (sec note ss), I27·-Jo.
;iovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto
iardi (Florence: Marchi & Bertolli, 1973), I:293.
anofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2, 361-62, note 7;
Baxandall, "Bartholomacus Facius on Painting: A Fifteenth-
Manuscript of the De Vir is Ilhzstribus," Journal of the
rand Courtauld lnstitutes 27(I964): 102.
)n the stylistic differences, sec, most recently, Rosen-
Jld Master Paintings (note I), 109-10; cf. Eisler, The
-Bornemisza Collection, 59·
1formation kindly supplied by Emil Bosshard of the Thyssen-
sza Collection.
97· Seep. 31.
98. Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut pictura poesis: The HumanisLic
Theory of Painting (New York: Norton, I967), 3.
99· Inscription above the angel: AVE.GRA.PLENA.DNS.TECU.
BNDCTA.TV.J.MVLIEIB. (Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou among women). Above Mary: ECCE.ANCILLA.
DOMJNI.FIAT.MICHI.SCDM.VBV.TUUM (Behold the Lord's servant;
be it unto me according to thy word).
wo. Grassi and Pcpe, Dizionario deiia critica d'arte (sec
note 31), I: s.v. "difficolta" (entry by Luigi Grassi), I49; Summers,
Michelangelo and the Language of Art (sec note 28), I7?--85.
IOI. Cf. the overview in Summers, Michelangelo and Lauguage,
4I-S5·
102. Erwin Panofsky, "Erasmus and the Visual Arts," Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32(I969): 225.
103. Erwin Panofsky, '"Nebulae in pariete': Notes on Erasmus'
Eulogy on Di\rer," Journal of the Warlnzrg and Courtauld In~ti­
tutes r 4( 195 r): 34-41; Donald B. Kuspit, "Melanchthon and Di\rer:
The Search for the Simple Style," The Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies 3 II973): I7?--202, esp. 188-89.
I04. Erwin Panofsky, Pwb.lems in Titian, Most.ly Iconographic
(London: Phaidon, 1969), I7-I8, note 23.
105. Information kindly supplied by Emil Bosshard of the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
106. Pliny Naturalis historia 35-49-50 (sec note 35), 299:
Qua contemplationc tot colorum tanta varietate subi~ antiqui-
tatem mirari. Quattuor coloribus sohs immortalia illa opera
fecere-ex albis Melina, c silaciis Attica, ex rubris Sinopide
Pontica, ex nigris atramento-Apelles, Action, Melanthius,
Nicomachus, clarissimi pictorcs, cum tabulae eorum singu-
lae oppidorum venirent opibus. nunc ct purpuris in parietes
migrantibus et India confercnte fluminum suorum limum,
draconum elephantorumque saniem nulla riobilis pictura est.
omnia ergo mcliora tunc fuere, cum minor copia. ita est, quo-
niam, ut supra diximus, rerum, non animi prctiis excubatur.
107. John Gage, "A Locus Classicus of Colour Theory: The
Fortunes of Apelles," Journal of the War burg and Courtauld Insti-
tutes 44II98I): I-26; Vincent J. Bruno, Form and Colour in Greelz
Painting (London: Thames & Hudson, I977L 68-72 and passim.
108. Gage, "A Locus Classicus" (see note ro7), I8.
109. Dhancns, Hubert und Jan van Eycl<, 388; Panofsky, Early
Netherlandish Painting, 200.
no. Dhanens, Hubert und Jan van Eyck, 2I2-·3I.
III. Sec above, note 6o.
n2. Plutarch Vita Pericles r69c, as cited in Gerhart Ladner,
"Die Anfiingc des Kryptoportriits," in Florens Deuchler, Mech-
thild Flury-Lemberg, and Karel Otavsky, eds., Von Angesicht zu
Angesicht: PortriiLstudien, Michael Stettler zum yo. Gebmtstag
(Bern: Stiimpfli, I983), 78-97; on this and what follows, see F. Preis-
shofen, "Phidias-Dacdalus auf dem Schild der Athena Parthenos?,"
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archiiologischen InstiWLs 89( 1974): so·-69.
IIJ. Dio Chrysostom OraLiones 7, r 2, and 36, eel. D. A. Russell
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, I992); Russell points out that,
with ref. to I2.5.6, Phidias "had to represent Pericles and himself
surreptitiously," Is 9.
NOTES: VAN EYCK I2I
II4. Pliny Natura lis historia 35·54(see note 35), 301. 134. Ernst Gamillscheg, Etymologisches Wi5rterbuch der fran-
IIS. "Opifices post mortem nobilitari volunt. Quid enim Phidias zosischen Sprache (Heidelberg: Winter, I969L Ss6.
sui similem speciem inclusit in clupeo Minervae, cum inscribere 135. Jan de Vries, Nederlands F.tymologisch Woordenboek
(nomen) non liccre," Cicero 7lisculanae disputationes I.I5.34, (Leiclen: Brill, I9/IL 738.
Marcus Trzllius Cicero, 'llzsculan Disputations, trans. Charles Duke 136. Andree de Bosque, Quentin Metsys (Brussels: Arcade,
Yonge (New York: Harper & Brothers, r877), 23; cf. also Valerius I975L I90.
Maximus Factorum et dicLormn memorabilium 8.I4.6. 137· Ursula Panhans·Bi.\hler, !Jklektizismus und Originalitiit
n6. Preisshofen, "Phidias-Daedalus" (see note 112). im Werk des Petms Christus (Vienna: Holzhauscn, 1978), 91-93.
I I 7· "Nunc ... nulla nobilis pictura est. omnia ergo meliora q8. "Inlegwerk van marmer en toetssteen," see de Vries, Ned-
tunc fuere, cum minor copia. ita est, quoniam, ut supra diximus, eTlands (note I3SL 738.
rerum, non animi pretiis excubatur." See above, note Io6. 139. If this proposed interpretation is valid, then Van Eyck's
n8. On the problem of the traditional iconography of colors "looking closely at the finish of this [line]" on the empty plane of
in the work of Van Eyck, see, most recently, Jansen, Similitudo the touchstone would be close to Apelles' linea summae LenuiLa-
(note 25), 44-52, csp. 4R, so, with ref. to black used for clothing. Us in the famous anecdote of his rivalry with Protogenes. Pliny
n9. "Pulchritudo bcatae Mariae Virginis consistit in vcnusto Naturalis historia 35.8r-83 (see note 35), 321-24; Hans van de
et decenti colore. Puit enim colorata triticeo colore scilicet colore Waal, "The Linea Summac Tcnuitatis of Apelles: Pliny's Phrase
nigra, albo ct rubeo," as cited in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunst- and Its Interpreters," Zeitschrift fiir Asthetik und allgemeine
geschichte (Munich: Beck, I98I), J:s.v. "Farbenlehrc" (entry by Kunstwissenschaft I2 II967): s-32; Pollitt, The Ancient View of
Thomas Lersch), col. ryr. Greek Art, 392--97, 44I-44; Gombrich, The Heritage of Apelles (see
120. Lecuwenberg, "Zcven Zuiclnederlandse Reisaltaartjcs" note 29), 14-20.
(see note I), I02; on the importance of the diptych for the private 140. For one of the countless examples of the "value.. laden"
patron in the late Middle Ages, sec Eichbcrger, Bildkonzeption use of the notion of a mirror, see Michelangelo on 2 May ISI?
und Weltdeutung (note 68), rr6-2o. to Domenico Buoninsegni: "a me basta 1' animo far questa opera
121. Ludwig Eisenhofer, Handbuch der katholischen Liturgik della facciata di San Lorenzo, che sia, d'architectura e di sculptura,
(Freiburg: Herder, I94IL r:n8--8o. lo spechio di tucta Italia" (I have enough courage to make this
122. "Die wcchselare habent ein stein, dar an sic sehent und work of the facade of San Lorenzo in architecture and sculpture
the "mirror" of all of Italy), Michelangelo Buonarroti, II car Leggio
erkennent, weder daz silber gut odcr boese si, daz man in brenget,"
Trubners Deutsches Worterbuch (Berlin: Gruyter, I954L 5:219. di Michelangelo, eel. Giovanni Poggi, Paola Barocchi, and Renzo
I23. Hans Li\schen, Die Namen der Steine: Das Mineralreich Ristori (Florence: Sansoni, 196s), r:277.
im Spiegel der Sprache (Munich: Thun, 1968), 297.
124. On this and what follows, sec Hugo Bh.\mner, Technolo-
gic und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste bei Griechen und
Riimern (Leipzig: Teubner, I887; reprint, Hildeshcirn: Olms, I969),
4:136-40.
125. Pliny Naturalis historia 33.I26(see note 35), 95·
126. "Jtcm die sei\len zu Sanct Michael jm closter an der
pahrkirchen in Antorff sind all von einem stuck des schwarzcn
schonen goldstains genracht," Albrecht Durer, Schriftlicher Nach-
lafl, ed. Hans Rupprich (Berlin: Deutscher Vcrcin fiir Kunstwissen-
schaft, I956), I:IS4·
127. "Ain rcchter goldstain, daran man guldin und galt streicht
und versuecht," Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches WorLer-
buch (Leipzig: Hirzel, I8S4-I954; reprint, Munich: Deutscher
Taschcnbuch-Vcrlag, I99IL 8:col. 850.
128. "Streichsteyn damit man gold bcwert," Grimm, Deutsches
Worterbuch (sec note I27), 19:cols. I2.40-4r.
129. "An diesen goldstein, Christum, strych aller mens chen
ansehen, ratschlag und urteil," Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch
(sec note 127), I9:col. I2.II.
130. "Der moler ... strich gcstriche an dem bilde," Grimm,
Deutsches Wi5rterbuch (see note 127), I9:cols. I222.
IJI. "Item 5 streichnadiln halb sylbergn," Grimm, Deutsches
Wi5rterbuch (see note I27), I9:col. I240.
I32. Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario del.la lingua itali-
ana (Turin: UTET, I964), 12:548.
I3J. Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de
la langue franr;aise (Paris: Le Robert, I985), 8:393, 9:370.