Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin
Jan van Eyck · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Jan van Eyck (c. 1395–1441)
- Date
- c. 1435
- Dimensions
- 66 x 62 cm
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Location
- Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
This painting shows Nicolas Rolin, the powerful chancellor of the Duke of Burgundy, kneeling in prayer before the Virgin Mary, who holds the Christ Child on her lap while an angel crowns her. The meeting takes place in a splendid loggia open onto a wide landscape.
A closer look
Rolin, in a fur-trimmed brocade robe, faces the Virgin as an equal in the picture space, a bold statement of his status. Between them, through three arches, the eye travels across a garden with lilies and roses, two tiny figures on a parapet, and a river city with bridges, churches and boats, painted with almost microscopic precision before fading into blue mountains. The capitals of the columns carry small scenes from the Old Testament. The painting brings together the sacred and the worldly in one perfectly ordered space.
History of the painting
Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of the Duke of Burgundy, commissioned the painting for his family chapel in the church of Notre-Dame-du-Châtel in Autun, his birthplace. It stayed there until the French Revolution, when the church was closed and later demolished; the panel was seized and sent to Paris, and it has been in the Louvre since about 1800.
