In honor of All Saints/All Souls Day, and the thirty first anniversary of the death of my father. Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, Paradise Panel from the Ghent Altarpiece. Saints and sinners adoring the lamb. This is the innermost central, bottom panel of the 1432 hinged polyptych altarpiece in St. Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. The whole altar is 11'6" x 15"1". Though parts of it are missing, It's still a massive, complex complex.

The "Adoration of the lamb" is a slightly odd, literal invention, with four groups of souls, heavenly and earthly, saints and sinners, all worshiping the bleeding lamb at the center on the altar. It's drawn from the book of John's Revelation, a vast elaboration of the phrase "Worthy is the lamb." The rest of the panels of the altar are really an elaboration of this theme and they'd be opened and closed, creating an elaborate configuration of iconic narratives coordinated with the church year.

The Altarpiece is the largest extant work of the Van Eyck brothers by far. It was intended for its present location, unlike all off their other work on a much smaller scale which were domestic and private. Painted in oil--an innovation at the time, and tempera (paint with an egg yolk vehicle--the fluid that carries the pigment or color)--on panels.

The altar of the lamb hovers over the well of the water of life on the central axis in a garden setting tight the skyline of Ghent in the distance, the whole panel intensely symmetrical, almost diagrammatic.

Dad died as there result of a bypass surgery that went wrong. I was in Maryland in my second fall teaching at the University, and hadn't gone up to Massachusetts because they assured me that bypass was routine. I cried on the plane on All Souls Day.