The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Description

In the early 1420s the city of Ghent commissioned a great altarpiece for St Bavo Cathedral, a work begun by Hubert van Eyck and finished after his death by his brother Jan, completed in 1432. This Adoration of the Mystic Lamb reproduction brings that lower central panel, the widest and most crowded scene in the whole polyptych, into a hand-painted oil on canvas you can own and hang.

About Adoration of the Mystic Lamb Reproduction

The panel opens onto a wide landscape under a high horizon, lit as if at the start of a clear morning. At the centre an altar stands on a low green mound, and on it is a white lamb, alive, bleeding from its chest into a raised chalice, a direct image of the sacrifice of Christ. The dove of the Holy Spirit hangs above in a ring of gold light. Angels kneel close around the altar holding the instruments of the Passion, while from both sides long processions of saints, apostles, martyrs, prophets, and clergy move forward across grass dense with painted flowers, each figure given its own weight of cloth, hair, and expression.

Jan van Eyck worked in thin, layered oil glazes that let light pass through colour and bounce back off the white ground beneath, which is why the reds of the robes and the greens of the meadow still glow rather than sit flat on the panel. The botanical detail is famous for good reason: more than a hundred identifiable plant species have been counted in the grass alone. This panel is also the only horizontal one in the entire altarpiece, built to match the combined width of the three standing panels set above it, and recent conservation work has uncovered original passages long buried under old varnish and repaint.

Our museum quality reproduction is painted entirely by hand by a trained artist working in oil on artist-grade canvas, matching the palette of Eyck stroke by stroke rather than printing it. The brush follows the same slow build of thin layers, so the surface carries real texture, visible paint, and the kind of depth that a print cannot hold. The result is a hand-painted oil painting reproduction meant to be looked at closely, the way the original has been looked at for nearly six centuries.

The hand-painted reproduction

Six centuries on, people still travel to stand in front of this panel, drawn by the density of faces and the strange calm of a bleeding lamb rendered in plain daylight. A hand-painted version lets that attention live on a wall at home.

• Hand-painted oil on canvas, brushed layer by layer by a trained artist
• Available in a range of sizes to fit different walls
• Gallery-ready presentation, ready to hang
• Certificate of authenticity included with every order
• Painted to order in 2 to 3 weeks, then delivered in 5 to 7 days