In Ghent, Flanders, the largest ever exhibition on Jan van Eyck, featuring half of his known works

Running from February 1 to April 30, 2020 is the exhibition Van Eyck. An optical revolution, the largest ever dedicated to Jan van Eyck (Maaseik, c. 1390 - Bruges, 1441). The venue for the exhibition is the Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Museum of Fine Arts) in Ghent, Flanders, which promises to give its visitors “an experience of the kind you only get once in a lifetime.” The exhibition will feature ten works by van Eyck, several from his workshop, and about 100 other works from the period. The curators, Till-Holger Borchert, Jan Dumolyn, and Maximiliaan Martens, under the coordination of Johan De Smet, wanted to “keep the bar high,” as the exhibition’s presentation puts it: out of twenty known works by van Eyck, ten are on display in Ghent (and of those that are not, some are too fragile to travel). Also among the stars of the exhibition are the eight freshly restored exterior panels of the Polyptych of the Mystic Lamb(here is a lengthy discussion of the work), lent exceptionally by St. Bavon Cathedral in Ghent. This is the first time since 1902 that they have been loaned for an exhibition.

In addition, the panels of the polyptych have never before dialogued with other Gent works in an exhibition. What’s more, from 2020 they will no longer move from the Cathedral: as a result, the MSK exhibition is the first and also the last opportunity to see the outer compartments of the Mystic Lamb Polyptych displayed together with van Eyck’s other masterpieces. Van Eyck’s other paintings on display, however, are the Madonna of the Fountain (from the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp), the Portrait of Baudouin de Lannoy (from the Staatliche Museen in Berlin), theAnnunciation from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and theAnnunciation from the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Portrait of a Man from the Muzeu Brukenthal in Sibiu, St. Barbara of Nicomedia (from the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp), the Madonna of the Fountain made with the workshop, from a private collection, the Book of Hours from Palazzo Madama, and the Stigmata of St. Francis from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “Never before,” say the curators, “have so many works by van Eyck been seen together in one place.”

The exhibition will thus allow unprecedented glances at the artist trained in Burgundy at the court of Philip the Good and who became the greatest painter of Flanders in his time, capable of innovating on the level of technique, strong in solid scientific knowledge and extraordinary powers of observation, which allowed him to lead oil painting to results never before achieved. “Before him,” reads a note, “no painter had painted reality in such a tangible way, with portraits that lack only breath and with landscapes that show the world in all its facets.”

Tickets can already be booked on the website dedicated to the exhibition, and during the exhibition the MSK in Ghent will remain open seven days a week: numerous evening openings have also already been promised to allow as many people as possible to admire the works of the great Flemish artist. Details on times and ticket costs will be announced at a later date. The exhibition is made possible through a collaboration between the Department of Culture, Youth and Media of the Community of Flanders, the City of Ghent, the Flanders Tourist Board, the St. Bavon Cathedral Factory, the Department of Art History of the University of Ghent, the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies at UGhent, the Flemish Research Center for the Arts in Burgundian Holland, and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage of Belgium (KIK-IRPA).

Pictured: Jan van Eyck, Annunciation, detail (1434-1436; oil on panel transported on canvas, 92.7 x 36.7 cm; Washington, National Gallery)

In Ghent, Flanders, the largest ever exhibition on Jan van Eyck, featuring half of his known works

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