|
本帖最后由 ngsunyu 于 2019-11-25 01:06 编辑
The two musical panels are commonly known by variants of the titles Singing Angels and Music-making Angels, and are both 161 cm x 69.3 cm. Each features a choir; on the left angels gather behind a wooden carved music stand positioned on a swivel. The presence of the two groups on either side of the Deësis reflects a by then well-established motif in representations of the heavens opening; that of musical accompaniment provided by celestial beings.
The left hand panel's frame is inscribed with the words MELOS DEO LAUS ("Music in Praise of God").
The left-hand group shows eight fair haired angels wearing crowns and gathered in front of a music stand singing, although none of them looks towards the score on the stand. As in a number of the other panels, here van Eyck used the device of the open mouth to give a sense of life and motion to his figures.
at the start of another invasion by Germany in 1940, a decision was made in Belgium to send the altarpiece to the Vatican to keep it safe. The painting was in France, en route to the Vatican, when Italy declared war as an Axis power alongside Germany. The painting was stored in a museum in Pau, and French, Belgian and German military representatives signed an agreement which required the consent of all three before the masterpiece could be moved. In 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the painting to be seized from a museum in Pau and brought to Germany to be stored in the Schloss Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria. The seizure, led by senior museum administrator Ernst Buchner and aided by officials in France, was ostensibly to protect the altarpiece from war. After Allied air raids made the castle too dangerous for the painting, it was stored in the Altaussee salt mines. Belgian and French authorities protested against the seizing of the painting, and the head of the German army's Art Protection Unit was dismissed after he disagreed with the seizure.
The altarpiece was recovered by the Allied group Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program after the war and returned to Belgium in a ceremony presided over by Belgian royalty at the Royal Palace of Brussels, where the 17 panels were displayed for the press. French officials were not invited as the Vichy government had allowed the Germans to remove the painting. (en.wikipedia.org/Ghent altarpiece) |
|