Madonna in the Church

Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon (Virgin of Tenderness).

Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose.

Both painters made significant alterations to van Eyck's composition, which may have brought the image more up to date with contemporary styles, but the copies have been described as "spiritually if not aesthetically disastrous to the original concept".

[5] Today Madonna in the Church is widely considered one of van Eyck's finest; Millard Meiss wrote that its "splendor and subtlety of [its depiction] of light is unsurpassed in Western art.

As with the pages ascribed to Hand G in the Turin-Milan Hours manuscript, the panel was attributed to Jan's brother Hubert van Eyck in the 1875 Gemäldegalerie catalogue, and by a 1911 claim by art historian Georges Hulin de Loo.

[16] A two-column prayer tablet – similar to the one depicted in Rogier van der Weyden's large Seven Sacraments Altarpiece (1445–1450) – hangs on a pier to the left.

The brilliance of the daylight is juxtaposed with the gentle glow of the candles in the choir screen altar, while the lower portion of the pictorial space is relatively poorly lit.

[13] Their angle is rendered in an unusually realistic manner for early 15th century, and the detail is such that their description is likely based on observation of the actual behaviour of light, a further innovation in 15th-century art.

[16] Others, including Craig Harbison, believe they were purely functional; given that contemporary diptychs were commissioned for private devotion and reflection, the inscriptions were meant to be read as an incantation or were personalised indulgence prayers.

[21] Van Eyck's earlier work often shows churches and cathedrals in older Romanesque style, sometimes to represent the Temple in Jerusalem as an appropriate historical setting, with decoration drawn exclusively from the Old Testament.

[29] Pächt described the work in terms of an "interior illusion", noting the manner in which the viewer's eye falls across the nave, the crossing, but "only then, [is he] looking through and over the rood screen, the choir."

[31] In the early 15th century, Mary held a central position in Christian iconography and was often portrayed as the one in whom the "Word was made flesh", a direct result of the work of the divine light.

"[35] Before the early Netherlandish period, divine light was not well described: if a painter wanted to depict heavenly radiance, he typically painted an object in reflective gold.

[39][40] It is possible that the Byzantine flavour to these images was also connected with contemporary attempts through diplomacy to achieve reconciliation with the Greek Orthodox Church, in which van Eyck's patron Philip the Good took a keen interest.

[41] Van Eyck gives Mary three roles: Mother of Christ, the personification of the "Ecclesia Triumphans" and Queen of Heaven, the latter apparent from her jewel-studded crown.

Art historians in the 19th century, who thought the work was executed early in van Eyck's career, attributed her scale as the mistake of a relatively immature painter.

These works show interiors seemingly too small to contain the figures, a device van Eyck used to create and emphasise an intimate space shared by donor and saint.

Perhaps reflecting the view of a "relatively immature painter", a copy of the Annunciation by Joos van Cleve shows Mary at a more realistic proportion scale to her surroundings.

This would have been attractive to Philip the Good who, though he made many pilgrimages in person, is recorded as paying van Eyck to perform one on his behalf in 1426, apparently an acceptable practice in Late Medieval celestial accounting.

Harbison further suggests that the two pools of light on the floor echo the two candles on either side of one of the statues, and notes that the copies described below retain the prayer tablet, one bringing it nearer to the foreground.

[50] Dhanens observes how Mary's eyeline extends beyond the horizon of her panel, a common feature of Netherlandish diptychs and triptychs, where the saint's gaze is directed towards an accompanying image of a donor.

[19] Other indicators include the unusually oblique architectural aspect of the church, which suggests that its depiction was intended to extend across to a sister wing – in a manner similar to the Master of Flemalle's Annunciation,[19] and especially in van der Weyden's c. 1452 Braque Triptych, where continuity between the panels is especially emphasised.

[51] Two near-contemporary copies, usually attributed to the Ghent Master of 1499 and Jan Gossaert,[53] were completed while the original was in the collection of Margaret of Austria, great-granddaughter of Philip the Good.

The 1499 version shows the Cistercian abbot Christiaan de Hondt praying in his luxurious quarters,[49] while Gossaert presents the donor Antonio Siciliano, accompanied by Saint Anthony, in a panoramic landscape setting.

[3] The panel attributed to Gossaert shows even more significant, though perhaps more successful, alterations, including shifting the centre of balance by adding a section to the right-hand side, dressing the Virgin entirely in dark blue and changing her facial features.

[56] Both copies omit the two pools of bright light on the floor across from her, thus removing the mystical element of van Eyck's original,[57] perhaps because its significance was not grasped by the later artists.

[58] That Gossaert followed other aspects of the original so closely, however, is evidence of the high regard he held for van Eyck's technical and aesthetic ability, and his version has been seen by some as a homage.

[49] Around 1520–1530, the Ghent illuminator and miniaturist Simon Bening produced a half-length Virgin and Child that closely resembles van Eyck's panel, to the extent that it can be considered a loose copy.

Bening's Madonna is distinct to the two earlier copies of van Eyck; it was intended as a stand-alone panel, not part of a diptych, and though compositionally similar, radically departs from the original, especially in its colourisation.

Historian Léon de Laborde documented an altarpiece in a village near Nantes in 1851 – a Madonna in a church nave holding the Christ Child in her right arm – which he described as "painted on wood, very well preserved, still in its original frame".