THE LAST JUDGEMENT
THE CRUCIFIXION
THE LAST JUDGEMENT |
These pictures juxtaposing Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of mankind with the Last Judgement are early works by Jan Van Eyck, the most celebrated painter of fifteenth century Europe. The "Crucifixion" is presented as an eyewitness account set against a distant landscape, astonishing for its depth and subtlety of description. In contrast, the "Last Judgement" is organised hieratically in three tiers, with the scale of the figures manipulated to indicate their relative importance. The texts on the original frames are given form in the pictures with remarkable literalness, establishing a play between word and image that would have been admitted by contemporaries. The upper half of the "Last Judgement" was painted in part by an assistant. | THE CRUCIFIXION |