The Annunciation is a particularly good showpiece for van Eyck's obsession with the texture of fabrics: both the Virgin Mary and Gabriel are swathed in lavish robes that fold and hang with surreal, wholly gratuitous complexity. Van Eyck painted clothes, a critic once observed, the way other artists paint mountain ranges.
The problem is, once you get past the first wash of amazement the painting becomes reticent and impersonal. The Annunciation is one of the most frequently painted subjects in Christian art--it derives from Luke 1:26-38, where Gabriel tells Mary she will bear the Christ child, and Mary meekly replies, "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord"--and you look in vain for an individualizing edge in van Eyck's version. All you find after an extended study are a lot of inscrutable details. If Mary is supposed to be a humble resident of some backwater Judean village, for instance, why is she wearing a circlet studded with pearls? She seems to have been doing very well for......
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