"Saint Barbara"

It is not a finished painting, but a drawing in silverpoint, with light color in oil and black pigment on a chalk and animal glue ground. Silverpoint is a traditional medium, used since the medieval period and popular during the Renaissance. It is also quite difficult to master, as no line can be erased and no true black can be achieved. As such, it was not a sketching medium but used for fine drawings and as an under drawing medium for paintings.

The composition is filled with iconography to illustrate the story of Saint Barbara's martyrdom. As an icon of beauty, she has the narrow shoulders typical of the female figure in a van Eyck portrait, and is dressed in a houppelande, a garment similar to an academic robe with wide sleeves, over her gown, which is gathered at the waist. The opening in her bodice rises to a deep v-neck, while the trim rises to form a collar made of fur. The three women behind her and to the viewer's right are seen viewing the construction, each wearing a similar houppelande. Since she is a maiden, she is bare headed. Saint Barbara is posed reading with a palm branch in her left hand to symbolize her triumph over death. While the figure of Saint Barbara dominates the lower half of the 2-foot-tall, vertically oriented composition, the upper regions depict a magnificent Gothic cathedral under construction. This alludes to part of the Saint's legend, where she orders workmen to alter her father's construction project to include three windows to symbolize the Holy Trinity. Van Eyck again uses the Gothic style to allude to the heavenly sphere. In this case, the building might also reflect the artist's contemporary time, in many respects it resembles the Cologne Cathedral, which in 1437, and after more than 200 years, was still under construction.