Die drei Marien am Grabe

This little panel has puzzled experts for a very long time, and they still argue over whose hand made it. It comes out of the van Eyck workshop in the early years of the 1400s, when oil paint was being pushed to a new fineness in the Low Countries. Some give it to Jan van Eyck, some to his elder brother Hubert, of whom almost nothing else survives, and some to both together. What is not in doubt is the care in it. Three women come at dawn to anoint Christ's body and find the tomb open, an angel seated on the slab and the guards sprawled asleep in gleaming armour. In the distance you can pick out the towers of Jerusalem, painted as if the artist had walked its streets.