The Madonna in the Church

The Madonna in the Church by Jan van Eyck, painted around 1430, shows the Virgin Mary standing in a Gothic cathedral interior flooded with divine light. The tiny panel (31 x 14 cm) is now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The Virgin is depicted at an impossibly large scale relative to the architecture, a deliberate theological statement equating Mary with the Church itself ("Ecclesia"). The painting's jewel-like precision exemplifies Van Eyck's revolutionary mastery of oil painting.

Van Eyck achieves an extraordinary luminous effect through multiple thin oil glazes, with light streaming through the Gothic windows and reflecting off surfaces to create one of the most convincing interior light studies in 15th-century painting.