Van Eyck's Washington 'Annunciation': technical evidence for iconographic development

The recent conservation treatment of Jan van Eyck's Annunciation in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], has uncovered an exceptionally beautiful work. The removal of heavily discolored varnish and overpaint revealed a mastery of space and a play of light that could only be guessed at before.(1) A technical study of the painting undertaken in conjunction with the conservation treatment has afforded new insights into van Eyck's methods for achieving his breathtaking visual effects. A complete report of the technical investigation, which included microscopic examination of the surface, infrared reflectography, and paint analysis, will be published shortly.(2) This technical study also revealed a number of changes made by the artist during the creation of the painting. The present article focuses on those compositional changes that have a bearing on the painting's complex meaning, seeking to lay out the sequence in which van Eyck developed the rich iconography. The implications of these changes for our understanding of van Eyck's iconographic motivations are discussed in Carol Purtle, "Van Eyck's Washington Annunciation: Narrative Time and Metaphoric Tradition," which follows this article.

The technical study has left no doubt about the authorship of The Annunciation. Individual procedures are remarkably similar to the methods used in other works by van Eyck. The Virgin's blue drapery, for example, was built up in a method strikingly similar to that in the altarpiece of the Holy Lamb in Ghent: a first layer in grayish blues establishing light and shade, a second solid blue layer to soften the contrast of the first, and a final, rich blue glaze of ultramarine in a water-based protein medium such as glue.(3) The working methods and the composition of the paint are entirely consistent with what we know of van Eyck's practices in the relatively few works that have been analyzed scientifically.(4) With the exception of the blue glaze, the painting medium seems to be linseed oil; our analysis of The Annunciation to date has not identified water-based protein admixtures to the oil.(5) The pigments are consistent with those of other paintings by van Eyck that have been analyzed.(6)

Close study of the surface disclosed the painter's refined technique. For example, van Eyck prepared the intense red of the flowers of Gabriel's cope (red velvet pile worked against a cloth-of-gold background, [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]) with a preliminary layer of vermilion. The rich texture of the velvet was created with a red lake glaze deepened with a little black.(7) Layers of glaze floated over the vermilion suggest the varied depth of the pile, with superimposed glazes creating the highest pile at the center of the petals.

Artists of an earlier generation, or contemporaries in Italy, would have rendered gold brocade with lines of gilding.(8) In a passage such as the green and gold brocade of Gabriel's dalmatic, however, van Eyck used just two colors of paint, worked wet-into-wet, to create a web of lights, darks, and midtones. He suggested the illusion of a lattice of gold threads by dragging fine strokes of black through still-wet yellow paint; with a few loose hairs of the brush he suggested specks of light glittering on the surface nearby [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED].

In his rendering of light van Eyck drew a distinction between the earthly realm and the heavenly. The painting's natural light sources cast shadows, but the seven rays of divine light on which the dove descends to the Virgin do not. Behind the large stool the shadow cast by a primary light source to the viewer's right is softened by light from the upper left clerestory windows. In this diffuse shadow van Eyck worked a subtle brown glaze by tapping with his fingertips.

Van Eyck drew the same distinction between the earthly and the heavenly in his techniques for rendering gold. In the same way that he painted Gabriel's brocade illusionistically, he created the pearl pin in the Virgin's book, Gabriel's jeweled crown and crystal scepter, and even the phrases uttered by the two figures using only paint to suggest the appearance of gold. By contrast he rendered the heavenly rays in gold leaf, using oil mordant gilding in this passage alone. Study of the surface with a stereomicroscope and of a paint cross section taken from one ray shows the traditional technique of oil mordant gilding, which has been observed in other works by van Eyck.(9) Van Eyck's use of actual gold in the rays created a contrast not only technically but also iconographically. While Gabriel was on Earth his angelic vestments, and even the words he uttered, were of this world. Only the rays, rendered in gold, represent the direct intervention of the Deity.

With the technique of infrared reflectography van Eyck's characteristic underdrawing is visible, the drapery defined by clusters of long, parallel strokes, occasionally hatched.(10) The greater part of the underdrawing is fairly fine in character, but some passages seem to have been revised with a broader touch, using a liquid medium. There are many variations in the formal composition from drawing to paint, including shifts in the positions of hands and facial features reminiscent of shifts observed in the recent study of the Arnolfini double portrait in London.(11)