The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting by Barbara G. Lane

Abstract

In T he Fifteenth century, northern European religious thought underwent a decisive transformation. The Church had dominated all other institutions throughout the middle ages but corruption and extravagance fostered its decline beginning in the fourteenth century. Consequently, the public began to mistrust many religious leaders. It is not surprising, then, to find that a new movement arose in the fifteenth century to counter the Church’s mismanagement. Advo­ cated by Thomas a Kempis in his widely read Imitatio Christi, the devotio moderno called for an individual contemplation of the faith and a mystical union with God. The religious paintings of the period are a barometer of these changing attitudes. A study of the meaning of certain Netherlandish images can be of value to our understanding of the disposition of fifteenth-century Northern worshipers toward their faith. It is precisely the meaning of fifteenth-century religious pictures that Barbara Lane discusses in her book. She studies some of these early Netherlandish paintings and proposes that they “explained the rituals celebrated at the altars they adorned” (p. 1), specifically the sacrifice of the mass. For Lane, paintings of a variety of subjects were closely connected with the liturgical rituals of the Catholic Church and, moreover, reiterated the importance of the sacrament of the Eucharist. At times, Lane can be convincing as she tries to prove that fifteenth-century Northern religious pictures allude to the sacrament of communion. She sees the enthroned Virgin and Child in the central image of Jan Van Eyck’s 1437 Dresden Triptych as a symbol for