Madonna of Jan Vos

The panel was commissioned by Jan Vos, who, in March 1441, took office near Bruges as prior of a Carthusian Monastery, the earliest date that he could have instructed van Eyck.

This fact, and the similarity of the landscape to that in a number of his earlier portraits has led to a general consensus among art historians that aspects of the panel are a pastiche of van Eyckian motifs, and that the painting was finished by a talented workshop member.

[1] Painted inscriptions woven into the canopy read AVE GRA[TIA] PLE[N]A (Hail Mary full of grace).

[2] Petrus Christus's Exeter Madonna was commissioned byafter 1450, by which time van Eyck's workshop had ceased operation.

As depicted in the book, about a century after it was painted the picture and its artistic merits are discussed by painter Hans Holbein and Anne of Cleves who is about to become Queen of England.