Mérode Altarpiece

Detail, center panel, with table, book of hours, fading candle and vase

The panel is one of the earliest representations of the Annunciation to Mary in a contemporary Northern European interior,[10] which appears to be a dining room. This is Campin's main innovation, showing a reading Madonna, with unbound hair in a familiar setting, an image that lead to many adoptions, most famously Rogier van der Weyden's Reading Magdalen.[11] The colors in the upper part of the central panel are dominated by the cool grays of the plaster and the brown of the timber wall,[12] while the lower half is mostly of warmer and deeper brownish greens and reds.[2] Art historians suggest that the success of the panel is due to the contrast between the warm reds of the Virgin's robe and the pale blue hues of the archangel Gabriel's vestment.[13]

Detail with the Virgin reading a book of hours

The panels' perspective is unusually steep and unevenly distributed. The angle of the table in particular is illogical. Art historian Lorne Campbell describes these distortions as "disturbing".[8]

It shows the moment before the traditional Annunciation scene, when Mary is still unaware of the presence of Gabriel.[13] She is in a red gown rather than the more usual blue, and in a relaxed pose, reading from a book of hours, with her hair unbound. Unusually for a medieval depiction of the Annunciation, the dove of the Holy Spirit is not visible. Instead he is represented by the extinguished light of the candle, and the beam of light falling from the window to the left, which carries the Christ Child holding a cross.[14] The Christ Child flies down towards Mary from the left oculus, signifying her impregnation by God the Father. He gazes directly at her and holds a cross. The folding-table contains a recently extinguished candle,[15] and shows coiling smoke and a still glowing wick. This maybe a reference to the Holy Spirit, who, according to some late medieval writers, descended to the apostles "like a puff of wind".[16]

The white lily in a Tuscan earthenware jug[10] on the table represents Mary's virginity and purity, as does the white, ocher towel. The jug contains a series of enigmatic letters in Latin and Hebraic, deciphered by some art historians as De Campyn, which they presume as the artist's signature.[16] An open manuscript is placed on the green velvet book pouch. Unusually, the book is positioned next to the Virgin rather than the shelf. The pages seem worn and handled, indicating that it has been well read.[16] It has been suggested that the book reflects the Carthusian Ludolf of Saxony's idea of the secluded life of the Virgin - that she earlier lived with "the Holy Scriptures as her sole companion".[17]

The right hand half of the back wall holds three windows, one of which contains a lattice screen.[2] The beams of the ceiling are supported by a series of corbels.[18] The sky visible through the windows is a later addition, which was painted over an earlier gold ground. The armorial shields are also later additions.[10]

Left panel, with street scene and attendant

The donor and his wife are shown kneeling in prayer are in the left panel, looking through a half-open door into the Virgin's Hortus conclusus.[2] The door presents a continuity oddity; although it can be seen opening into the Virgins room from the left panel, no such door entrance is visible in the center panel. Addressing this, the art historians Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen suppose that the donor is "imagining that she has entered into his house. From without, he has opened the door; with his own eyes he beholds the Mother of God and petitions her for a family".[19]

The attendant dressed in a festive outfit[20] is by a later artist, perhaps it was added after the donor's marriage.[21] The left hand space contains an unlocked entrance leading to a minutely detailed street scene.[15] The panel is the more striking as the door leading into the Virgin's chamber is wide open, hugely presumptuous for even a mid-fifteenth century commission, and suggesting access to the gates of heaven.[22]

The donors are identifiable as bourgeoisie from nearby Mechelen, and are documented in Tournai in 1427, identifiable from the coat of arms in the stained glass window of the central panel.[6]

It is assumed that this panel was a later commission to Campin's workshop, not part of the original single panel design. There has been speculation that it was completed by the young Rogier van der Weyden.[23]

The altarpiece was commissioned either by the businessman Jan Engelbrecht, or the Cologne-born merchant Peter Engelbrecht and his wife Margarete Scrynmaker.[24][25] Engelbrecht translates from German as "angel brings", while Scrynmaker means "cabinet maker", the latter perhaps influencing the choice of Joseph in the right hand panel.[24]

Right panel, detail with street scene and view of Liège

Saint Joseph, a carpenter by trade, occupies the right-hand panel. He is shown at work, boring spike holes into one of the instruments of the Passion. An unusual feature is that, although Mary and Joseph did not marry until after the Annunciation, they are apparently living together and sharing the same space. Joseph is shown with the tools of his craft, visible implements include an ax, saw, rod, and a small footstool sitting before a fire of burning logs. Joseph's presence is may be intended to invoke 10 :15 from the Book of Isaiah: "Shall the ax boast itself against him that heweth there- with? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself as if was it were no wood."[26] Isaiah's words were intended as incentatory and revolutionary, were followed by a treatise for the salvation of Israel, and protested against an Assyrian king he considered boorish and vainglorious.[26] Given this, Joseph is seen by art historians as a reassuring presence, warding the devil from the center panel.[27]

Joseph is presented as a relatively old man[27] wearing an eggplant coloured coat and blue turban, in a panel dressed by dark and warm colours, framed by shadows thrown from the window shutters.[2] He works on a mouse trap, probably a symbol of the cross at the Crucifixion,[28] in that it represents an imagined but literal capture of the Devil, said to have held a man in ransom because of the sin of Adam.[29] In some scripts, Christ's naked flesh was served as bait for the devil; "He rejoiced in Christ's death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil's mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord's death."[30]

The background contains a cityscape, probably fictitious, showing the spires of two churches, one of which is now lost, the churches of St. Pierre (left) and Sainte Croix (right) in Liege.[upper-alpha 4][3]