Robert Campin (also called the Master of Flémalle), Christ and the Virgin, c. 1430-35, oil and gold on panel, 11-1/4 x 17-15/16 inches (28.6 x 45.6 cm) (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:00] I don’t know if I’ve actually come this close to Christ. It seems as if we’re standing directly face to face.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:11] Well, look at what Campin did. He’s got Christ’s hand appearing to sit on the ledge of the frame of this painting, so that it really feels as though Christ is in our space.
Dr. Zucker: [0:22] And that we might be as close as the Virgin Mary is.
Dr. Harris: [0:25] I think that that idea of being this close to Christ expresses a real spiritual longing to come close to God.
Dr. Zucker: [0:32] Well, we don’t know what God looked like. We don’t know what Christ looked like. We have no idea what any biblical figures looked like. There are no descriptions like that in the Bible.
[0:41] And so this longing, this ability for the artist to create the sense of veracity, is really important and is probably linked back to the legend of Veronica, this woman who offered Christ a cloth in order to wipe his face just before the Crucifixion. That cloth, by legend, then miraculously appeared with his likeness.
[0:58] And so that notion of the true image of Christ, which is often by the way painted this directly, in this frontal way, seems to speak to the Renaissance interest in recovering that image, in reestablishing that kind of intimacy.
Dr. Harris: [1:14] And although this painting has a flat gold background that suggests a heavenly space, that’s contradicted by that northern Renaissance realism that we see here, where we’ve got fingernails, and cuticles, and wrinkles, and knuckles, and almost every little hair painted separately in Christ’s beard. The attention to detail and the sense of clarity is almost frightening.
Dr. Zucker: [1:40] It’s not just the physical beings that are represented with this kind of minute detail, but even the representations of the spiritual are. Look at their halos, for instance. It is this shallow ground that seems very solid actually, and embedded in those halos are fabulous jewels.
[1:56] For the Virgin Mary you have this circle of pearls. Look, each one casts a kind of perfect shadow. Each is luminous. And Christ, of course, with rubies and sapphires.
Dr. Harris: [2:06] If we look at the jewel that Christ wears on his chest, we can actually see in it a reflection of a window, and in that window, a shape of a cross.
Dr. Zucker: [2:18] What’s wild about that brooch is the way that it feels so solid, and yet is absolutely transparent.
Dr. Harris: [2:23] Christ raises his right hand in blessing, although he doesn’t seem to be looking directly at us, he looks past us. Although we feel that we’ve come very close to Christ, at the same time we’re not allowed to make any direct connection with him.
Dr. Zucker: [2:40] Right. That eye contact is missing.
Dr. Harris: [2:42] Perhaps Mary is here as an intercessor for humankind with her son, with Christ.
Dr. Zucker: [2:48] It’s one of the most intimate and most extraordinary renderings of Christ and Mary that I’ve ever seen.
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