Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece as a Lens on Flemish-Tuscan Artistic Parallels

Renato Barilli uses Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (c. 1432) to revisit the historiographical question of parallels between early 15th-century Flemish and Tuscan painters. He argues that direct contacts, while existent, are less significant than structural homologies in material conditions, commerce, and social development. Both regions experienced a commercial boom that spurred innovations in perspective and accounting tools. Barilli cites Lucien Goldmann's concept of homology to explain the simultaneous emergence of mathematically rigorous representation, exemplified by Leon Battista Alberti's 'camera' and Flemish spatial devices. The Ghent Altarpiece, though still Gothic in its panel structure, shows mastery in landscape perspective and precise portraiture. Barilli notes a contradiction common to artists of this 'second manner' (per Vasari): they could depict depth but hesitated to occupy it, clustering figures in the foreground. This dialectic between holding back and venturing into unknown space parallels contemporary navigators who hugged coastlines. Only with Leonardo and Columbus did systematic exploration of the distant begin. The article was published on Artribune on October 2020.