"Ghent Altarpiece"

The 12-panel altarpiece is a prominent example of the transition from Middle Age to Renaissance art and is considered a masterpiece of European art, identified by some as "the first major oil painting."

The panels are organized in two vertical registers, each with double sets of foldable wings containing inner and outer panel paintings. The upper register of the inner panels represents the heavenly redemption, and includes the central classical arrangement of God (identified either as Christ the King or God the Father), flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. They are flanked in the next panels by angels playing music and, on the far outermost panels, the figures of Adam and Eve.

The central panel of the lower register shows a gathering of saints, sinners, clergy, and soldiers attendant at an adoration of the Lamb of God. There are several groupings of figures, overseen by the dove of the Holy Spirit. The four lower panels of the closed altar are divided into two pairs; sculptural grisaille paintings of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, and on the two outer panels, donor portraits of Joost Vijdt and his wife Lysbette Borluut; in the upper row are the archangel Gabriel and the Annunciation, and at the very top are the prophets and sibyls.

The altarpiece is one of the most renowned and important artworks in European history. Indebted to the International Gothic as well as Byzantine and Romanic traditions, the altarpiece represented a significant advancement in Western art, in which the idealization of the medieval tradition gives way to an exacting observation of nature and human representation. A now lost inscription on the frame stated that Hubert van Eyck maior quo nemo repertus (greater than anyone) started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck—calling himself arte secundus (second best in the art)—completed it in 1432.