DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42068#0097
70
MÉLANGES HULIN DE LOO
liave been added by someone else, to finish off the surface,
at some time before the picture developed its characteristic
crackle.
However vague this supposition is, there can be no doubt
about the other alternations which can be seen in the sha-
dowgraph. The head-dress with its many folds has been
altered at several points, both the under and the upper
layers of pigment being visible in the shadowgraph. It
is difficult to isolate only the under version and to recreate
the appearance of the head-dress in its earliest stage. But
it is plain that the design was more balanced, to the right
and left of the face ; there were as many folds and points
on one side as on the other. The correction comsisted in
taking away a large fold from the side of the head at the
spectator’s left and adding to the mass at the right. This
one recognizes as a change of high order, made for the
sake of breaking an evenly balanced design into a livelier,
more contrasting design. It is obviously a correction
worthy of a sensitive artist—which the intrusion of the
h and is not.
In other words, we may conclude from study of the
shadowgraph and from comparison between the x-ray film
and the painted surface, that Jan Van Eyck’s Portrait
of His Wife was eonceived on a large, simple scale, but
was achieved subtly by a method apparently unique at
this period, and was perhaps left unfinished by the painter.
It will be interesting to see how this conclusion will be
afïected when every one of the pictures of the period can
be studied in the same way.
Alan BURROUGHS
du Pogg Muséum of Art, Cambridge (Mass.).
MÉLANGES HULIN DE LOO
liave been added by someone else, to finish off the surface,
at some time before the picture developed its characteristic
crackle.
However vague this supposition is, there can be no doubt
about the other alternations which can be seen in the sha-
dowgraph. The head-dress with its many folds has been
altered at several points, both the under and the upper
layers of pigment being visible in the shadowgraph. It
is difficult to isolate only the under version and to recreate
the appearance of the head-dress in its earliest stage. But
it is plain that the design was more balanced, to the right
and left of the face ; there were as many folds and points
on one side as on the other. The correction comsisted in
taking away a large fold from the side of the head at the
spectator’s left and adding to the mass at the right. This
one recognizes as a change of high order, made for the
sake of breaking an evenly balanced design into a livelier,
more contrasting design. It is obviously a correction
worthy of a sensitive artist—which the intrusion of the
h and is not.
In other words, we may conclude from study of the
shadowgraph and from comparison between the x-ray film
and the painted surface, that Jan Van Eyck’s Portrait
of His Wife was eonceived on a large, simple scale, but
was achieved subtly by a method apparently unique at
this period, and was perhaps left unfinished by the painter.
It will be interesting to see how this conclusion will be
afïected when every one of the pictures of the period can
be studied in the same way.
Alan BURROUGHS
du Pogg Muséum of Art, Cambridge (Mass.).