Expert: Rebecca Curran - 10/5/2004

Question
I am interested in any info on Van Der Weyden's portraits, especially focus on composition, style in comparison to Van Eyck.  

Answer
Hi Carla, If you want to compare portraits I would compare Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding, and the Man in a Red Turban to Van Der Weyden's Portrait of a Man, or even any of his Saints portraits.
Van Eyck was one the protray the natural world. He did not perfect a linear perspective in his works, he did however perfect aerial perspective and a unity of lighting. He painted a convincing protrayal of the natural world, rather than a styalized, or expressive one.
Van Eycks style proved to be too difficult and disspassionate to follow and the Netherlandish art moved to the more liner and overtly emotional style with the work of Van Der Weyden
Van Der Weyden style later in his career came to sacrifice both realism and decorative values to the demands of expressivity.He came to more or less ignore the logic of scale a spatical recession, and he confined himself to a selective naturalism of detail.
Van der Weyden in contrast to Van Eyck treats teh painting as a flat surface upon which he depicts abstract forms.

That last statment is something you must prove yourself
Rebecca Curran

WWW.rebeccacurran.ca