Sunday, July 30, 2006

Visions of Paradise: Van Eyck

From the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck, completed 1432 A.D.

Not all image-smiths work in words. Van Eyck's artwork has been said to sacramentalize nature, to remove (or refuse to recognize) a distinction between this world and the realm of the holy. He shows nature as a rightful part of God's self-revelation, and remembers that paradise was not meant to be an other-worldly thing.


Previous in the Visions of Paradise series:
Tolkien's Lothlorien
Coleridge's Xanadu

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