Jan van Eyck within His Art

Alfred Acres is the Wright Family Term Professor of Art History at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and is the author of Renaissance Invention and the Haunted Infancy (2013).

A perfect introduction to this transformative painter . . . this book has no rivals. - Larry Silver, Sixteenth Century JournalAcres’s thoroughly enjoyable and readable account of Jan van Eyck and his art is the perfect introduction to this artist for students and aficionados alike. As is the case with all good books, it raises many questions and urges the reader to seek out answers in the still forthcoming scholarly literature on Van Eyck’s production. - Maryan Ainsworth, Historians of Netherlandish Art ReviewsBy showing his works as a series of encounters, Acres demonstrates how Van Eyck crafted his paintings to actively engage with the audience, a novel concept in European art, where physical and psychological boundaries were beginning to dissolve via a pervasive realism that could only be fully accomplished by the most skilled artists. - ChoiceBy way of clever observations and pictorial analysis, this eloquently written monograph is highly commendable. It offers a concise introduction to the work of one of the most influential Renaissance artists of his time and addresses in eight chapters the career and clusters of Van Eyck's paintings. Alfred Acres presents impressively erudite perspectives and refreshingly balanced views on even some of the most persistent problems in art history like the authorship of the Ghent Altarpiece. It will be welcomed by the general reader and will inspire specialists to think anew. - Till-Holger Borchert, Director of Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, AachenA wonderful new contribution to the literature on this most extraordinary and engaging of artists. Throughout the pages of this beautifully written book we are offered an excellent synthesis of the long historiography on Van Eyck and a detailed and up-to-date engagement with the most recent research and publications on his work. Alfred Acres invites us to see what this supremely inventive artist was seeking to do with his arresting depictions, and aims to give meaning to the many astounding and delightful details of Van Eyck’s work. This is a study not only of Van Eyck as an individual, but of Van Eyck’s interests, talents, inventiveness and commitment to communication and signification, by looking not just at, but within the art of Van Eyck. - Beth Williamson, Professor of Medieval Culture and Chair in the History of Art, University of Bristol

• Introduction: As I Can1 A Career2 The Painter at Work3 Hubert, Jan and the Ghent Altarpiece 4 Annunciations and Other Encounters5 In the Company of the Virgin and Child6 Situating Saints7 Portraiture and PresenceEpilogue: Another MirrorCHRONOLOGYREFERENCESBIBLIOGRAPHYACKNOWLEDGEMENTSPHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSINDEX