Painting The Supernatural

The great altar-piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, at Ghent, was painted by the brothers van Eyck probably between the years 1415 and 1432. One of the eleven paintings, that on the central panel shown here, depicts the minutely detailed landscape in the background which are as precise as a photograph and there is realism in the individual portraits of the ecclesiastics and citizens who, with saints and angels, reverently worship the Lamb. The van Eyck s painted the supernatural with conviction and feeling.