The prophet Jeremiah

Barthélemy d'Eyck's The Prophet Jeremiah, painted around 1443 and now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, depicts the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah — one of the great prophetic voices of the Hebrew Bible, known for the book of Lamentations and for his anguished warnings to Jerusalem before its Babylonian conquest. Barthélemy d'Eyck, the Franco-Flemish court painter to René of Anjou, produced this prophetic figure as part of a broader devotional or pictorial program. Prophet figures were standard elements of altarpiece programs — typically appearing in the predella or in subsidiary panels as witnesses to the Christian events depicted in the main panels.

Oil and tempera on panel with the precise Flemish-influenced technique that distinguishes d'Eyck from purely French painters of the period. Jeremiah is shown as an aging, bearded figure — the archetype of the prophet of doom — typically holding a scroll or book inscribed with his prophetic text.