Description
Book SynopsisA study of Netherlandish triptychs from the early fifteenth century through the early seventeenth century, covering works by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hieronymus Bosch, and Peter Paul Rubens. Explores how the triptych format structures and generates meaning.
Trade Review“This remarkable, lucid book takes on a big and complex subject, still somewhat invisible to scholarship. It fully reconsiders a major late medieval art form: the triptych format of hinged altarpieces. The triptych—along with its components, oil paint technique and refined oak carving—rose to Golden Age prominence in fifteenth-century Flemish art. Offering an impressive survey of this great artistic achievement, Opening Doors truly lives up to its name and contributes fresh new interpretations. Scholars and their students will use this book as a standard work for many years to come.”
—Larry Silver,University of Pennsylvania
“Admirably broad in its sweep—from Jan van Eyck to Rubens—this book tackles a fundamentally important question: how the form of the triptych affected its meaning. Noting that archival evidence reveals that this art form was envisioned as a panel covered by doors, Lynn Jacobs develops the idea of the ‘miraculous threshold.’ She explores the rich and complex relationships between the triptych’s exterior and interior, and between the central panel, the most important from a theological point of view, and the wings. This book will undoubtedly have a major impact on the field.”
—Diane Wolfthal,Rice University
“With her characteristic meticulous scholarship and intellectual verve, Lynn Jacobs opens doors in our understanding of the triptych, one of the defining formats of early Netherlandish painting. Using a wealth of contemporary sources and her sensitive readings of individual works, she convincingly demonstrates how ‘paintings with doors,’ as triptychs were termed, structured and generated meaning for artists and audiences alike. Painters from Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch and, later, Peter Paul Rubens exploited the triptych’s thresholds, those physical distinctions between center and wings or inside and outside panels, to create often elegant narrative and symbolic programs. Jacobs has written a richly rewarding, indeed essential, book for anyone seeking to comprehend early Netherlandish art.”
—Jeffrey Chipps Smith,University of Texas at Austin
“Jacobs’s fascinating book should reopen scholarly interest in these marvelous paintings with doors.”
—Henry Luttikhuizen Historians of Netherlandish Art
“Through careful and insightful interpretation of the extant visual material and contemporary terminology, Jacobs’s argument offers a fresh perspective on this particularly Netherlandish altarpiece format.”
—Nenagh Hathaway Burlington Magazine
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Triptych as a “Painting with Doors”
Part I: Origins and the First Half of the Fifteenth Century
1 The Emergence of the Early Netherlandish Triptych I: Robert Campin (and His Associates)
2 The Emergence of the Early Netherlandish Triptych II: Jan van Eyck
Part II: The Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
3 The Triptych Reformulated: Rogier van der Weyden
4 The Triptych Popularized: Painters of the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
5 The Triptych Unified: Memling, David, and Later Fifteenth-Century Painters in Bruges
Part III: The Sixteenth Century and Beyond
6 The World Triptych: Hieronymus Bosch
7 The Triptych in the Age of the Renaissance and the Reformation
8 Coda: The Triptych in the Age of Rubens
Notes
Bibliography
Index
