Music-making Angels

These Music-making Angels from the Ghent Altarpiece play an organ and other instruments as part of the heavenly chorus surrounding the Adoration of the Lamb. The panel demonstrates van Eyck's ability to render musical instruments with documentary precision Jan van Eyck perfected the Flemish oil technique, achieving a microscopic precision and luminosity that made Northern European painting a revelation to Italian contemporaries Oil on canvas, increasingly preferred over panel in the sixteenth c

The organ pipes and mechanical details are rendered with the precision of a technical drawing. The angels' brocade robes display van Eyck's legendary command of textile rendering, each pattern woven with visible threads.