Madonna di Lucca

This is a small panel, made around 1437 for someone to pray in front of at home, not for a church wall. Van Eyck sets the Virgin nursing her child in a cramped, sunlit room, and packs that room with quiet meaning. Her throne is guarded by four little lions, borrowing the throne of Solomon from the Old Testament to say this is the seat of wisdom. Off to the right a shallow niche holds a basin and jug, the kind a priest used to wash before Mass, turning the domestic corner into something like a chapel. On the windowsill sit two pieces of fruit, apples or oranges, a nod to paradise. It takes its odd name from a 19th-century owner, the Duke of Parma and Lucca, and its carpentry suggests it was once the middle of a folding triptych.