The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment

Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, considered Van Eyck—his court painter—unequaled in his "art and science." The artist’s expansive yet microcosmic paintings seem observed through both a microscope and a telescope. In The Crucifixion he evokes a remarkable range of emotions among the crowds, set against an imagined Jerusalem. Van Eyck’s 1426 trip across the Alps during a diplomatic mission to Italy and the Holy Lands informed his naturalistic landscape depiction. He gives an equally palpable form to the horrors of the Last Judgment. Technical research has revealed that the two paintings were not always configured as a diptych, but originally served as the wings of a triptych or the doors to a tabernacle or reliquary shrine. The recently conserved frames are original, with biblical texts in Latin and rediscovered, now fragmentary, translations in Middle Dutch.