Read Stealing the Mystic Lamb for Free Online

provided knit brows and baggy eyes, faces full of character. One of the best tests for the vividness of a painted face is to ask oneself, Would I recognize this painted individual if I saw the person walking down the street? Unlike most Italian painted faces of the period, van Eyck’s faces could be picked out of a crowd.
    While most of the figures in the meadow have not been identified as particular historical individuals, a good number of them have. This recognition does not come from a portrait likeness, as no record exists of what these people really looked like. Iconographic attributes, such as the hagiographic icons of saints, act as badges or name tags that help us recognize key figures. Among the female saints, all of whom carry palm fronds, the symbol of having been martyred, we can locate: Saint Agnes, who carries a lamb as her hagiographic icon; Saint Barbara, who holds a tower (in which she was locked for refusing to marry a pagan); Saint Dorothy carrying a basket of flowers; and Saint Ursula with her arrow (the instrument of her execution at the hand of the Huns). Two members of the ensemble are abbesses, recognizable because they carry crosiers. White lilies bloom near this cluster of saintly women, symbolizing their virginity.
    Among the apostles and clergy are three popes wearing the papal tiara: Martin V, Alexander V, and Gregory XII. Saints Peter, Paul, and John are present, as are Saint Stephen and Saint Livinius. Among the prophets and patriarchs to the left, one may find the prophet Isaiah, dressed in blue and carrying a flowering twig, referring to his prophecy: “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of the tree of Jesse,” Jesse being the forefather of the Old Testament King David, who in turn was considered, in apocryphal sources, to have been an ancestor of Christ. Perhaps surprisingly Virgil is also present, the only recognizable pagan in the field of paradise.
He wears a crown of laurel leaves, the symbol of poetic excellence (from which the term laureate is derived).
    Despite the elevated vantage through which we are shown the scene, and despite the vast number of figures, van Eyck’s level of detail is staggering. Intricacies are hidden in the mass of bodies that may only be seen upon close examination—even with a magnifying glass in hand they are difficult to pick out.
    Take, for example, the three Hebrew letters painted in gold into the band around the red hat of the gentleman standing to the rear of the prophets. This was first noted by Canon Gabriel van den Gheyn, a brave clergyman of Saint Bavo Cathedral whose heroism would preserve The Lamb from theft and possible destruction during the First World War. Van den Gheyn published an article in 1924 noting the Hebrew letters yod feh aleph , which he thought were an abbreviation for the word sabaoth , which means “hosts” or “armies,” as in the “Lord of Hosts.” Van den Gheyn’s rationale that these letters represented this word was not accepted by later historians, but the Hebrew letters were duly noted.
    Yod feh aleph does not spell out a word in Hebrew, though, as we will see, it may be a transliteration rather than a literal word. The nearest word that would make sense is yod feh aleph ramish , meaning “He will beautify,” a line from Psalms 4:149, which contains one more letter. A line from Psalms appears in the panel of the angelic musicians in the upper register, so this reference corresponds theologically to the rest of the altarpiece. If that one extra letter were present, the phrase “He will beautify” would make sense—and yet the Hebrew letters are so small as to make it nearly impossible to tell.
    Van Eyck was at once coy and proud. He sometimes hid his signature, yet did so in plain sight, as in his work The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait , which he signed right in the center of the painting as a witness to the marriage ceremony, thought to involve Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami. He incorporated a