Van Eyck and El Greco

¶ … van Eyck and El Greco incorporated religious iconography into their paintings, most of which were commissioned by the wealthy Catholic elite. Working thousands of kilometers apart from one another, and separated also by a century of time, Jan van Eyck and El Greco share in common few technical or formal elements. In the first half of the fifteenth century in the Netherlands, Jan van Eyck created visual landscapes that were unprecedented at the time. With "remarkable skill and accuracy," the Dutch artist conveyed the life and times of Christ with attention to detail and a striking amount of realism.

A Greek working in Spain exactly a hundred years later would also break new ground in the visual arts. Domenikos Theotokopoulos, who would be forever after known by the moniker El Greco (the Greek), turned painting on its head. As if foreseeing the advent of abstraction and expressionism, El Greco conveyed traditional Catholic iconography with colors as vivid as those used by Jan van Eyck. However, El Greco's style and composition are radically different from those used by the Netherlandish artist.

In "The Crucifixion," Jan van Eyck depicts the grim scene of Christ's execution in vivid detail. Commissioned by the Burgundian court, the Crucifixion scene is partner to another panel showing an equally as intense vision of the Last Judgement. Together, the two panels were designed as altarpieces. During the time van Eyck painted "The Crucifixion," religious art served a practical purpose. Artists were dominated by ubiquitous visions of the Crucifixion in their daily lives and were also "able to imagine a spacious church interior dominated by" such iconography.

The panels are long and narrow, and so the eye must move continually up and down the wood. Such an arrangement proves ideal for an image of the crucifix, which occupies a long, narrow plane in space. Interestingly, most of the composition is consumed by crowd surrounding the crucified Christ: dozens of mourners and cavalries. A sense of chaos permeates the picture, and the viewer is invariably struck by the depth and detail of its illusion."

Every inch of the canvas is filled with color and vibrant detail.

El Greco's "The Vision of St. John" is also vivid and colorful, and yet the composition and style as well as the iconography could not be more divergent from Jan van Eyck's "The Crucifixion." In El Greco's oil painting, St. John the Evangelist appears in the foreground, his arms outstretched to the heavens. The artist does not attempt a realistic depiction of the subject, but rather an impression thereof. Bodies are undulating as if under water.

Both Jan van Eyck and El Greco created masterworks of official Catholic iconography. Also an altar painting like van Eyck's, "The Vision of St. John" was commissioned by Pedro Salazar de Mendoza in 1608. The most notable shift in artistic consciousness that took place in early seventeenth century Spain was that "El Greco set out to renew Catholic imagery...he did not depict the "moment ...but in the process of musing."