Вера Икон

A face of Christ, seen straight on, filling almost the whole panel. It belongs to an old belief that a genuine likeness of Christ had once been miraculously imprinted on cloth, the vera icon, or true image. Van Eyck's original is lost, but his workshop made close copies, and this one carries the date 1439. He treated the sacred subject with the same unsparing exactness he brought to living sitters, down to every hair of the beard, the catchlights in the eyes, the deep red of the robe against a dark ground. For centuries this frontal Holy Face had been shown in the flatter language of icons. Here it is rendered as though a real man were sitting a hand's breadth away.