In her important article in 2012 Lehmann made the observation that the oil medium, through its invisibility, itself contributed to giving paintings a "suggestion of immateriality" that seduced viewers and scholars into forgetting the material. Thus, although oil painting is always mentioned as a prerequisite for the mimetic, mirrorlike quality of Early Netherlandish painting, it is rarely considered beyond that as a relevant component for the conception and theoretical analysis of art works. This omission concerns also the much-discussed metapictorial metaphors of mirror and window. Among the special qualities of oil is not only its viscosity, which makes oil paint easy to model and manipulate, but also its transparency, which makes the paint layer(s) translucent. Oil painting’s luminosity results from the fact that the real light falling on the painting is not directly reflected back from the paint surface, but penetrates the layers of varying thickness and transparency until reflected by the opaque light ground. An oil painting, thus, itself becomes a translucent and reflexive object. Furthermore, light is not only an object of painting, but actually penetrates the image and actively contributes to its appearance and effect. That this optically complex technology was not only thoughtfully employed by painters, but also consciously reflected, especially in recourse to the motifs of mirror and window, will be argued using the example of Hans Memling's Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove (1487). The parallelization of painting, mirror, and window experiences a culmination here, for by deliberately keeping the reflection behind Mary dark, it emphasizes the brightly radiating double window appearing in the mirror, in which viewers – comparing the figures’ contours – can recognize the framed diptych panels themselves. In this detail the window motif is used to reflect both on the translucent painting and on light itself as medium of visualization. This reflection finds a continuation in the various other depicted openings: in the parallelization of window view and stained glass, or in the play with window shutters opened to different extents, in which an allusion to the materiality of the folding diptych (also excluding daylight or opening itself up to it) may be seen. The materiality of the diptych, oscillating between opacity and transparency, is visualized and reflected within the image and the metaphor of mirror and window is grounded in the material and technique of the painting itself. Theory and practice, my paper aims to argue, are in a complex interrelationship, in which material aspects contribute to the development of a painted image theory, whereas the technique of oil painting may also have been stimulated by optical theory. The late medieval science of perspectiva was not only a theory of vision, but also of light as medium and first cause and force of action. The question to what extent this theory, studied within a metaphysical framework, may have influenced the development and use of oil painting will also be discussed with regard to Memling's diptych, considering painting’s theological function as a medium that guides from the visible to the invisible.
Ann-Sophie Lehmann: Das Medium als Mediator. Eine Materialtheorie für (Öl-)Bilder, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 57 (2012), 69-88
Sandra Hindriks studied Art History at the University of Bonn, where she received her PhD for her dissertation Der ‘vlaemsche Apelles’. Jan van Eycks früher Ruhm und die niederländische ‘Renaissance’ (published in 2019). In 2012/13 she was granted the Slifka Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. After working as post doc researcher at the University of Konstanz from 2015 to 2020, she is now Assistant Professor on the Tenure Track Professorship for Early Modern Art History with focus on the Netherlands and Central Europe at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on Northern Renaissance painting and is currently primarily concerned with theories of the image and visual perception at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period.
https://kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/professoreninnen/hindriks-sandra/
Although oil painting is always mentioned as prerequisite for the mirrorlike quality of Early Netherlandish painting, it is rarely considered beyond that as relevant for the conception and theoretical analysis of art works. This omission concerns also the metapictorial metaphors of mirror and window. By taking a close look at Hans Memling's Nieuwenhove-Diptych, it will be argued that these metaphors are linked to the material and technique of the painting itself. Theory and practice are in a complex interrelationship, in which material aspects contribute to a painted image theory, whereas painting with oil could have been stimulated by optical theory.