What does the Virgin Mary look like?

Rogier van der Weyden, Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1435-40, oil and tempera on panel, 137.5 x 110.8 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
A conversation with Dr. Christopher Atkins, Van Otterloo-Weatherbie Director of the Center for Netherlandish Art and Dr. Beth Harris.

[@JessmanChicken86]

I love the extreme detail of the northern European painters.

[@marianaprates9379]

I love Rogier van der Weyden. He is absolutely fantastic.

[@carlberg7503]

Great painting, great lecture, great use of close-ups to appreciate the details.

[@matthew-jy5jp]

Beautiful painting. God bless everyone watching. And happy Thanksgiving

[@supremereader7614]

The Artist''s artwork. Wonderful! Thank you! 🙏

[@majeabad9483]

What interested me in this 1440 painting is the dress of the Virgin Mary. It has flower patterns. And it reminded me of the Lady's image of herself in the 1531 Our Lady of Guadalupe. So the Virgin Mary does like wearing flower patterned dresses.😊

[@supremereader7614]

Beautiful video, but I wish you'd leave us with the raw image for a bit longer. Just as I egin to absorb and begin to contemplate it, you change scenes. It would be great if you left a scene for ten seconds or even more.

[@smarthistory-art-history]

You can find our high resolution images on our Flickr site here: www.flickr.com/photos/profzucker/
If you want to look at the Rogier van der Weyden photos specifically, here is a link: www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=weyden&user_id=82032880%40N00&view_all=1

[@bruce9635]

Exquisite

[@diegowithane]

cool arts man

[@rustyw5842]

I just finished reading the Chapter about Antonello da Messina in Vasari's "The Lives of the Artists". Vasari gives him the credit for importing oil-based paints into Italia. Who did Antonello learn it from? Again according to Vasari, it was Giovanni da Bruggia, "... a man took delight in alchemy ... And after he had experimented with many materials, both pure substances as mixtures, he finally discovered that linseed and walnut oil dried faster than all the other oils he had tested.
...
But when he became old, he finally bestowed the favour [sharing the secret of oil-based paints] upon Ruggieri da Bruggia, his pupil ..." [translation by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella
Giovanni da Bruggia, a footnote explains, was the Italian adaptation of Jan van Eyck; Ruggieri da Bruggia = Rogier van der Weyden.

[@rustyw5842]

With this in mind, I would have liked for Drs Atkins and Harris to have mentioned the 'revolutionary' media employed by van der Weyden which allowed such fine detail and deep, rich, complex colors of this wood panel.

[@smarthistory-art-history]

The Giovanni da Bruggia that Vasari mentions is actually the man we call Jan van Eyck (Jan of Bruges) but while Vasari is a valuable resource and very entertaining, in many instances and regarding oil paint, he is inaccurate. Oil painting existed before the 14th century though one could credibly say the Flemish in the 15th century perfected its use.

[@rustyw5842]

@@smarthistory-art-history , this version of Vasari's "Lives" does have extensive footnotes, correcting many of Vasari's errors. Interestingly, this section, about the "family tree" of oil painting from Van Eyck to van der Leyden to Antonello, DOES NOT warrant any mention.

[@schoolstudio7915]

Really interesting ! Give us an idea of ​​how the artist make a painting for Virgin Mary in those days.. thank you

[@Sasha0927]

I can't imagine such a pious woman being willing to expose herself before a man who is not her husband - especially not in that culture or at that time. Seems unrealistic and unappealing in the way that click-bait titles are.

[@juniorberns]

Looks vary.. but she was a Roman Citizen.

[@mjsmcd]

Luke wrote gospel 50 to 100 yrs after jesus and mary time

[@smarthistory-art-history]

The attribution of the text is itself insecure. The focus of the video however is not on scriptural sources, as art historians, our focus is on the object and the world in which it was made including what van der Weyden believed to be true.

[@TheDanEdwards]

1:26 - "The viewer in the fifteenth century certainly would have understood that saint Luke, the virgin, and Christ did not exist in their own time but..." - of course the 15th century audience would have thought that. The question is, though, whether the artist (Rogier van der Weyden) was trying to portray the alleged author of the third canonical gospel as being contemporary with the author's subjects. Given the masses could not read, and even literate people likely knew little to nothing of the history of the Levant the artist is pushing church dogma that somehow the third gospel is a sort of historical chronicle. The artist is in service to his church, something at which many who wish to be artists today would not find desirable.

[@MeanApollo]

There are always people like you, who do nothing else but to seek to destructively undermine and warp everything from history in the worst possible way.
Whats the reason for that ?! Dont tell me, i already know...
More than anything else, it shows what is in YOUR heaf and heart, which you then project.

[@veronicaperez-rx5ef]

But she wasn’t so pale so light skinned. 🙄 beautiful but c’mon.

[@smarthistory-art-history]

Despite the conceit of the painting, while art can be a bridge to the time and place it was made, it isn't usually that helpful regarding what is being depicted in terms of its historical accuracy. So while this painting can tell us a great deal about van der Weyden and his world, it can't tell us much at all about someone who lived 1,500 years before the painter did.

[@wess5060]

Amen. Hear we go again...Whites claiming people from other cultures. It's laughable. 😄😄😄It's evident that painting was done years after Mary and Luke's death.

[@Monadshavenowindows]

History as a critical and systematic discipline didn’t exist like it does today back in ancient, medieval, and early modern times. This is why depictions of Mary, Christ, and other important figures in the faith are depicted with physical features and dressed in ways that resemble the culture and ethnicity of the region of the artist. They couldn’t just get on a plane and go to Israel, or ask a neighbor who happens to be an expert archaeologist that just flew back from Jerusalem.