QUARANTINE BLOG # 446

June 19, 2021

THE CENTERPIECE OF THE ADORATION OF THE MYSTIC LAMB 

The centerpiece of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is found in the lower central panel of the open altar and is the most important element to understanding the work as a whole. This panel alone measures almost 4.5 feet by 8 feet. Its subject is taken from The Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament.

The attention of everyone in the meadow is directed to the Lamb. On the central panel, two swaths of red velvet draping down the side of the altar, is written in Latin, “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” a quote from the Gospel of John. Scroll down the center of the panel, and we come to the Fountain of the Water of Life, out of which flows endless grace.

The field is filled with figures. As is written in Revelation 7:9-10, “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindred, and people, and tongues” surround the Lamb of God. In the case of this painting, the great multitude can be numbered: 170 total individuals, plus 16 angels.

The panels on the far left and right of the upper register depict Adam and Eve. They are depicted with nostril hairs and awkwardly bulging stomachs. 

While idealized nudes of Greek and Roman statues were acceptable, because they showed the human form as magnificent and perfect, van Eyck’s Adam and Eve were deemed too realistic by Enlightenment viewers. These panels were censored in 1781 and replaced by exact copies, on which bearskins were painted, to cover up the naughty bits. 

In the two panels on the bottom register to the right of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a group of figures approach the meadow to pay homage to the Lamb of God. These figures are identified by inscriptions on the frames that surround them: “the Holy Hermits” and “the Holy Pilgrims”. 

The Holy Hermits are led by Saint Anthony, identified by his T-shaped walking stick. Two female hermits may be seen, one of whom is Mary Magdalen, carrying a jar of ointment. The Holy Pilgrims, in the panel to the farthest right, are led by the giant Saint Christopher, patron saint of travelers.

On the opposite side of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, are two panels. “The Knights of Christ” are on the inner left. None of them have been identified with historical individuals.

The panel on the far left depicts the “Righteous Judges,” a work that would be stolen in the most bizarre of the many crimes involving the painting and the one still unsolved. Hidden in this throng is a man in the dark turban wearing a gold necklace, the only person besides God himself in the entire composition who stares directly out of the painting and at the viewer. It is a self-portrait of Jan van Eyck.

Finally, the upper register of the inside of the altarpiece features three monumental figures. In the center, God the Father is seated, with a hand upraised in blessing. The Holy Spirit as a dove is in the panel directly below the Father. The Lamb of God, the Christ, is on the altar. These images demonstrate the Trinity.  Mary and John the Baptist complete the persons on the upper panel. 

CENSOR THE LAMB!

The Ghent Altarpiece’s first 140 years were quiet. Then, in 1566, The Lamb became the victim of an unprecedented and unparalleled string of crimes.

The city of Ghent’s official religion alternated between Catholicism and Calvinism. 

Calvinists argued that Catholics were praying to icons, violating one of the Ten Commandments. They were also outraged by the selling of “indulgences” – paying clergy for a ticket into Heaven. The Calvinists objected to the gilt artworks and over-decorated churches. To Calvinists, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was the perfect example of what was wrong with Catholicism. It had to be destroyed.

Fearing the Calvinists, the Catholics set up an armed guard inside the cathedral. On  April 19, 1566, Calvinist rioters wreaked destruction near and around the cathedral. They tried to open the locked cathedral doors, but could not get inside.

Two days later they returned. Using a battering ram, they broke open the cathedral doors. They carried torches and were prepared to drag the altarpiece into the square outside and burn it. But when they reached the chapel, the altarpiece was gone. After the rioters’ first attempt at breaking in, the guards took apart the 12 panels of the altarpiece and hid them at the top of one of the cathedral towers.

In 1584 the city was occupied by the Spanish Hapsburgs, and was once again Catholic. The Lamb was returned to the cathedral, and displayed as it was meant to be. It would remain there undisturbed. Until 1781.

In 1781, the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II traveled to Ghent to see The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. He admired its beauty, its skilled execution, its emotional power and scope, but he was scandalized by two of the panels: the nude Adam and Eve.

Van Eyck’s figures both cover their genitals with well-placed hands, yet they were highly offensive to the emperor. One could count the individual hairs painted against Eve’s skin, and, perhaps most suggestively, one can see the tops of pubic hair on both figures, barely emerging from behind their hands.

For the Emperor, this was too real. It was not the morally elevating nudity of classical Greece. Van Eyck’s nudes demeaned; they made Man look awkward. They had to go.

The mayor of Ghent, fearing the emperor, acted immediately. He placed the Adam and Eve panels in storage in the cathedral archives. Eighty years later, the city commissioned an artist to paint exact copies of those panels, with the unacceptable nudity covered over by the addition of bearskin clothing.

The altarpiece would remain in Ghent for only 13 more years before being swept away. The stealing was about to begin.

Next week, Part 3.

👉  For the next three Saturdays, as we approach Independence Day, the closing piece will be the stories behind three important patriotic hymns.  

First, “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee).”

This patriotic hymn was written by Samuel Francis Smith, a native Bostonian. While in seminary, hymn publisher Lowell Mason sought his help. Mason had a stack of German songs and materials needing translation. Learning that Samuel was proficient in German, he recruited the young student to translate them.

On a cold February afternoon, about a half hour before sunset, Samuel sat in his room, pouring over the materials. He was struck by the words of “Goff segne Sachsenland,’ “God Bless Our Saxon Land” (set to the tune used in Great Britain for “God Save the Queen”).

“I instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own adapted to this tune,” Samuel later said. “Picking up a scrap of paper which lay near me, I wrote at once, probably within half an hour, completed the hymn, “America.” A friend took a copy to the pastor of Boston’s Park Street Congregational Church. There “America” was first sung by the Juvenile Choir at a Sunday School Rally, on July 4, 1831.

In the years that followed, Smith grew into a powerful Baptist preacher, pastor, college professor, hymnist, linguist, writer, and missionary advocate. He traveled the world in support of evangelism. He died suddenly in his late eighties at the Boston train station en route to a preaching appointment. But he has always been most revered for “America,” the patriotic hymn he wrote as a 23 year old student.

-30-