Saint Francis receives the stigmata

This little panel is barely bigger than a sheet of paper, and for a long time scholars thought it was the copy, with the near-identical version now in Philadelphia taken as the original. Then, in the 1980s, X-rays and infrared looked under the paint here and found van Eyck's own underdrawing, complete with changes he made as he went, and opinion swung to this one. It shows Saint Francis on the mountain of La Verna in 1224, the moment the wounds of the crucifixion are said to have appeared on his hands and feet, his companion Brother Leo resting below. Van Eyck skips the usual blaze of holy light. What he pours his attention into instead is the rock: geologists have picked out several real kinds of stone in it, fossils and all.