Talk:Virgin and Child with Four Angels

Comments

• ...The painting has been established as a close copy of Jan van Eyck's Virgin with Child at a Fountain, though with many significant modifications,.....

Not a good description. It's either a close copy, or it isn't. The modifications are both many and significant.

So you need to define, from the start, what the copied elements are, i.e. the central group of Madonna and Child.

Yeah, agree. I made a start on this, defining the similarities and differences. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• The icons that are shown below with crowns attached to them were almost certainly not conceived as crowned images. Many icons that are regarded as religiously significant have been given great collections of bling over the years. In fact in Orthodox churches the icons often have a layer of tooled silver over them, and only reveal the faces and hands. Underneath, the icon might be in near perfect condition, or else almost eaten away by borers. Much of the bling dates from centuries later than the icon itself.

So using any of the Byzantine icons with attached crowns as a pre-David representation of the crowned Virgin is questionable.

• There are plenty of images around of the Coronation of the Virgin. In Italy it was a popular subject for altarpieces of the late 14th, early 15th centuries. However, the person who does the crowning is either Jesus, watched from above by God the Father and the Holy Spirit; or else two persons of the Trinity, God the Father and God the Son, identically depicted, sit on either side of the Virgin and crown her, while the Holy Spirit hovers over her head.

The point here is that Mary is not crowned by angels.

So this image doesn't represent Mary being crowned. It represents "Mary, Queen of Heaven".

What the angels are doing is carrying the crown that symbolises her role as "Queen of Heaven". In the same way, you often see in images of the Crucifixion, little angels hovering around, carrying the spear, and the rod with sponge etc. This doen't imply that the angels speared Jesus or gave him drink, merely that they are important symbolic elements in the Passion of Christ.

I was looking at it literarly I suppose. I think this is fixed now. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• Although it is indirectly received, the Byzantine influence can be seen in the David painting, especially in sections of the canvas decorated with golden paint: the rim of Mary's dress, the wings of the crowning angels, and the musical instruments.

This is incorrect, insomuch as the the main indicator of Byzantine influence is not the gold tarrididdles, the wings and all that stuff.

...and when you state that van Eyck was influenced by the Byzantine, in the Madonna of the fountain, then it is not the superficial stuff that is the indicator in that picture, either.

There is something much more significant that needs to be conveyed, if you are going to refer to Byzantine painting at all.

In fact, you could omit most reference to it, and simply set this into the scene of Northern Renaissance painting.

Removed, though if I can broaden my range of sources, a more informed discussion might have a place. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• But since we are going with Byzantine influence, we need to discover what the influence really is.

What this is about is the specific iconography of how the Madonna and Child are positioned , in relation to each other, most precisely. Every position of the body, face and hands in relationship to each other symbolises a different aspect of the Blessed Virgin.

The key to understanding what this painting means is to determine precisely what it is that defines the positions and interactions as different.

• So what we have is a representation in which the Christ Child's back is turned to the viewer, but his face is rotated forward. One arm sticks out awkwardly bent, and the other reaches out to his mother.

The challenge is to find the image in Orthodox icons that have these characteristics.

Along the way you will find that several Renaissance painters did variations, some of them with the child's body facing forward.

None of the sources mention the position of the child in a useful way, just in passing. His position as you say, is very unusual (to me) and I've wondered but have nothing as of yet. This one id proving difficult to source for me, mainly because most of the books I have on the Northern Renaissance concentrate on the earlier generation. I hadn't intended this to go to DYK and didn't nom it, will be a long project and I build up the interpretations. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Nitpicking

• Mary's hair is blonde, not brown. This repro is rather dark, but the golden highlights indicate blonde, and a hairdresser would technically designate that hair as "blonde".

• I have a very strict idea in my head about which hair colour is blond (and which is black). Most to me are brown! Statement was not based on a source (thougfh the following 'thin brush strokes' was), so fine. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• Angel on left is probably wearing very dark green, rather than black. It might be black, but this would be extremely unusual.

• The res on this version is about the best I've seen online, but taking your word, and it does make more sence. Need a better source. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• The word "likely" is not an adverb. You can't say "It is likely a triptych" or "the painting likely formed part of a triptych" . The correct form is "It is likely that the painting was ......" In other words the "event" is likely.

The words that you are intending to imply are either "probably" or "possibly". The fact that "likely" has an "ly" on the end doesn't make it an adverb. It is an adjective like "possible" and "probable".

The choice of "possibly" and "probably" give you a finer distinction of expression that the misused "likely".

• Thinking about this. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Happy hunting!

Amandajm (talk) 07:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Another comment

• All the figures are highly idealised, typical of the art of the period; naturalism is abandoned in favour of elongated figures, who in this work are out of proportion to each other. Mary is far larger than the angels,[7] which adds to her unnatural, ethereal, heavenly presence.

This isn't a very good description of what is happening. The words "naturalism is abandoned", "out of proportion" and "unnatural" aren't getting to the crux of the matter. It makes it read as if this aspect is somehow unusual, or a distortion of the way that things were commonly done, when in fact, the exact opposite was true. The main point here is "hierarchy". "Unnatural" is not the word. "Supernatural" is closer to it. The enlargement of the central figure needs to be stated in positives, rather than negatives, and described in the light of common practice, rather than using the word "abandoned" which suggests that this was not common practice.

Amandajm (talk) 07:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for these and the edits. Will have a look in a few days. Ceoil (talk) 22:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Looking. Ceoil 22:10, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Gerard David - Virgin and Child with Four Angels - WGA6036.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Gerard David - Virgin and Child with Four Angels - WGA6036.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on June 14, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-06-14. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Picture of the day

Virgin and Child with Four Angels is a small oil-on-panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Gerard David. Likely completed between 1510 and 1515, it shows the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus, while she is anointed Queen of Heaven by two angels above her, accompanied by music provided by another two angels placed at either side of her. The painting is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.Painting: Gerard David