Prophet Zacharias; Angel of The Annunciation

This panel of Prophet Zacharias and the Angel of the Annunciation forms part of the monumental Ghent Altarpiece (completed 1432), the masterpiece of Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert. The altarpiece, commissioned for Saint Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent by Jodocus Vijd and his wife, is the most important work of Early Netherlandish painting and a landmark of Western art. The prophets and sibyls of the Ghent Altarpiece's exterior panels demonstrate Jan van Eyck's command of the theological iconography of Christian typology — the idea that the Hebrew prophets and pagan sibyls had foretold the coming of Christ, making the Old Testament and classical antiquity precursors to the New. His rendering of aged prophetic figures, their faces communicating the weight of divine revelation, belongs to the northern tradition of devotional art that treated the human face as the primary vehicle for spiritual expression. The precise rendering of aging flesh, the quality of light on their robes, and the psychological depth of their expressions all reflect van Eyck's founding achievements in Flemish oil painting.

The figures demonstrate van Eyck's revolutionary oil technique, with luminous glazes creating an unprecedented sense of three-dimensional form and atmospheric space within the grisaille simulation of carved stone.