Focus restoration of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb. Fourth installment: last phase, exhibitions and documentation

Having completed the first two phases of the restoration of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb by Jan and Hubert van Eyck (which we discussed in the third installment of this focus: in the second we instead dealt with the survey campaign and in the first with the history of previous restorations and materials, and also in our magazine you will find a long and detailed article on the work and its significance), it is time to get the third one underway, which will concern the upper register of the open polyptych, namely the Deësis (the three figures in the center: Christ the King Enthroned, the Madonna and St. John the Baptist, which several art historians claim are to be ascribed to the hand of Hubert van Eyck, an if there is no certainty) and the compartments with musician angels and Adam and Eve. The program includes the usual operations that were conducted in phase two: cleaning, removal of surface varnish and repainting, and repair of gaps. The last phase of the restoration will start soon and will be completed in the fall: it will be possible to see again the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb in its entirety, restored and with the original colors of the van Eyck brothers, starting October 8 in the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent, the site where the work has been preserved for centuries.

In the meantime, it is possible to see what has been done so far: until September 30, the cathedral is hosting the exhibition The Return of the Lamb, as part of which the lower register of the open polyptych, restored in its second phase, can be seen. On the other hand, the compartments of the closed polyptych, restored in the first phase, are the protagonists, until April 30, of the exhibition Van Eyck. An optical revolution, the largest exhibition ever devoted to Jan van Eyck, held at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, where, moreover, the workshop in which the restoration work was carried out was set up (as seen in the second installment of this special, the public could see the restorers at work in real time). Once this last exhibition is over, the panels that have already been restored will come together and will be displayed together in The Return of the Lamb, after which, as mentioned, from October all the compartments will be shown together, and all restored, in the large worship building in Ghent.

The restoration, as is to be expected, has produced a great deal of material, both for scholars (the numerous scientific studies that were conducted before, during and after the survey campaign, as well as throughout the restoration, and that will continue to be produced even after the intervention is finished, have made it possible to arrive at a degree of knowledge of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb that has never been achieved before) and for the public. Technicians from the KIK-IRPA (Royal Institute of Fine Arts) in Brussels, who handled the restoration, have made much of this material available to the public through a website, Closer to van Eyck(http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be), with which it has been possible to share very high-resolution photographs of the polyptych before, during and after restoration, images of the professionals at work, detailed reports and scientific studies that can be downloaded in PDF format, images of the x-rays and reflectographs, and even some archival material, such as the study by art historian Paul Coremans compiled in 1953, following the 1950-1951 restoration, and published in full in Closer to van Eyck.

Putting together Closer to van Eyck required the joint work of several institutions, under the coordination of Professor Ron Spronk of Queen’s University Kingston (Canada) and Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands): the Ghent Cathedral Opera (Kathedrale Kerkfabriek Sint Baafs), the Lukas Art in Flanders database (a large portal of images of Flemish works of art preserved in Flanders), KIK-IRPA, the company Universum Digitalis, which was responsible for the material realization of the portal, the company Visscher & Van Rijckevorsel filmproducties, and the Free University of Brussels. All with support from the University of Antwerp, Ghent University, Queen’s University, and Radboud University. The Getty Foundation in Los Angeles also collaborated on the documentation and putting it online.

The Closer to van Eyck project (published in 2012 and then updated in 2018 with new graphics and updated content, but it should still be noted that it is an evolving site) consists of several elements. The “heart” of the website is, of course, the photographic documentation of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb: macrophotographs, available for all the compartments of the polyptych (both before and after restoration), allow a resolution of up to 100 billion pixels (in practice, it is almost like observing the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb under a microscope, with the advantage that there is no need to use sophisticated instrumentation, but it is sufficient to use any browser), and they come with a thumbnail image that indicates the position of the fragment in relation to the polyptych and also serves to give an idea of the level of magnification and the size of the portion being viewed. Another tool made available by the technicians who created Closer to van Eyck is the useful comparative visualization, which allows two images from different moments of the restoration (or the painting and a reflectographic image, or an X-ray) to be viewed side by side, so that momentary comparisons can be made, in real time, with extraordinary simplicity, given the user-friendly interface suitable even for those unfamiliar with web tools, or dated or limited visualization systems. Always part of the photographic documentation, of course, are infrared macrophotographs, reflectographs and X-rays, also published for each individual portion of the painting and all at very high resolution. There is also no shortage of photographs of the compartment with the intact Judges, to which a special section is devoted: this is the modern copy of the compartment of the polyptych stolen in 1934 (KIK-IRPA technicians had determined that the copy also needed restoration).

The “chapter” on intact Judges is part of the Extras section, which includes a guide to using the site, scholarly resources (such as PDF reports and studies), a presentation of the VERONA project (Van Eyck Research in OpeN Access), i.e., a website that contains a database of high-resolution images of all known works by Jan van Eyck (also created by KIK-IRPA), an index of individual images (with the possibility to select type and even resolution measured in pixels per centimeter), and a very rich video section, a kind of true documentary on the restoration of the polyptych with interviews and insights into the various stages of the intervention (at the moment available only in English and only for operations up to 2012, but the KIK-IRPA technicians plan to expand the section with more videos soon). Finally, the Learn more section contains interesting summaries about the project, the documentation methods, the research around the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb, and the restoration itself, also outlined here in its various stages.

Many were the objectives of this project: on the one hand, the desire of the restorers was to bring the public into... direct contact with a restoration operation, since not everyone knows how such an operation is carried out, what the phases and instrumentation are, what it means to conduct study campaigns on a work in view of a restoration. On the other hand, it is also a very useful tool for the scientific community, which has at its fingertips, and in a short time (just a few clicks), a vast amount of materials, which can also be reached with great ease of use (simplification of navigation has been one of the goals of the website from the beginning). In addition, for the first time in the history of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb, technical images (reflectographs and x-rays, as well as infrared macrophotographs) have been made available to all. This is an important aid in view of the completion of the work, in order to continue to show the public and scholars, even if only “virtually,” what can finally be seen assembled in St. Bavon Cathedral in Ghent from October.

Pictured below: the upper register of the open Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb , the protagonist of the third and final phase of restoration, which will be completed in the fall of 2020.

Focus restoration of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb. Fourth installment: last phase, exhibitions and documentation

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