Information from the museum, 18 December 2015
A New Look at a Van Eyck Masterpiece, a focus exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 25, 2016, will present the findings of a recent study of Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgment paintings (ca. 1440–41). In a collaboration at the Met between Maryan Ainsworth, a Curator in the Department of European Paintings, and the Department of Paintings Conservation, these paintings and their frames have undergone technical investigations in an effort to solve long-standing mysteries about them. Whether the paintings were always intended as a diptych, or whether they were originally the wings of a triptych whose centerpiece has long disappeared, has been in question. The answer may be found not only in a closer look at the frames, but also in the relationship of the Metropolitan’s Crucifixion painting to a recently rediscovered drawing of the Crucifixion attributed to Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390-1441) that has been acquired by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, and will also be on view in the Met’s exhibition.
Publication
Information from Delineavit et Sculpsit, 12 January 2016
In a new publication in the series Boijmans Studies leading specialists examine various aspects of this mysterious drawing – its discovery, the scientific and technical research into the materials, and the identity of the artist. Is it a work by Jan van Eyck himself or a workshop assistant, or is it a late fifteenth-century copy of a work by the famous progenitor of Netherlandish painting?
The book is published in conjunction with a focus exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum: A New Look at a Van Eyck Masterpiece, 25 January-24 May 2016. This exhibition, organized by curator Maryan Ainsworth, presents the findings of a recent study of Jan van Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgment paintings (ca. 1440–41) in the Metropolitan Museum.
More information and the table of contents is available at Delineavit et Sculpsit.