All of Van Eyck’s works visible online

The 20 paintings attributed to the artist are thus visible in high resolution on the Closer to VanEyck site. Jan Van Eyck’s complete work, comprising 20 paintings, is therefore now available in high resolution on the site closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be, part of which is also devoted to the restoration of the altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb.

The Portrait of a Man (Léal Souvenir) preserved at the National Gallery in London, the Saint Jerome of the Institute of Arts in Detroit, the Saint Francis of the Museum of Art in Philadelphia and the Virgin in Child at the Fountain (New York, private collection).

These four paintings were exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent during the 2020 major exhibition dedicated to Van Eyck. Shortly after the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the IRPA was able to study and document these paintings before they were packaged and returned to their owners.

Hobbyists can now zoom in on both the finest details and the underlying layers that are revealed through radiography and infrared reflectography. “There are sometimes several versions of the same composition. We can now, for the first time, compare them down to the smallest detail on the basis of standardized images, because the paintings were all photographed according to an identical protocol and with the same material “, explains Bart Fransen, project manager at IRPA.

The other novelty of the site consists in the addition of photos of the back of the tables, rarely visible to visitors. This sometimes has old labels that tell about the previous owners or offer a glimpse of the structure of the wood panel. But above all, it is often painted in imitation of marble or porphyry and has paint splashes, specifies the IRPA.

The digitized works are also part of the interactive exhibition “Face to Van Eyck. The miracle of detail” which is being held in Bozar in Brussels until March 14th.