Viennese diptych
The Vienna Diptych is a painting by Hugo van der Goes . The left wing of the picture, probably painted with oil on oak in 1477, measures 32.3 × 21.9 cm, the right 34.4 × 21.9 cm. The diptych is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna .
Motif
The fall of man is shown on the left . Eve is just about to pick an apple from the tree of knowledge . She holds another already bitten in her other hand. Adam raised one of his hands to receive the apple. It is interesting that the presentation of the "snake": a lizard-like, iridescent hybrids, one of the medieval scholastic commentaries on Genesis ( Peter Comestor to be derived), ultimately to the Venerable Bede declining and even the exit of the 15th century, as in Vincent of Beauvais to Finding connection between the serpent and the virgin face (virgineum vultum) - the resemblance to the face of Eve is unmistakable, by the way - a demon who clings to the tree of life.
On the back, which has been sawn off by the panel in is Grisaille the St. Genevieve shown.
The right side shows the lamentation of Christ after he was deposed from the cross . In addition to Jesus, Johannes , Maria and Maria Magdalena can be seen in the foreground. The back of the panel - the inventory of the art collections of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria from 1659 mentions a "Schildt, warin ein black eagle" on the back - has been destroyed except for a few remains of the original painting.
With regard to its subject matter (the antithesis of the Fall of Man / Redemption), the work of Hugo van der Goes is unique in the history of diptych painting (Wolfgang Kermer).
literature
- Wolfgang Kermer : Studies on the diptych in sacred painting: from the beginnings to the middle of the sixteenth century; with a catalog. Düsseldorf: Dr. Stehle, 1967 [Phil. Diss., Univ. Tübingen, 1966], pp. 151–154 (iconographic interpretation); Cat.-No. 137, pp. 136–137 (with the older literature), Figs. 175, 176.
- Jochen Sander, Hugo van der Goes, style development and chronology, Mainz, 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1226-1 .
- Grace and devotion: the diptych in the age of Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and Rogier van der Weyden [John Oliver Hand, Catherine A. Metzger a. Ron Spronk], Stuttgart, 2007, ISBN 3-7630-2473-5 .