The Lucca Madonna
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Four brass lions hold up her throne. Solomon's had twelve, and the quotation is the claim: she is the seat on which Wisdom sits.
Then van Eyck puts that throne in a room — carpet, bullseye glass, a niche with a carafe and basin like the one a priest washes in. Light crosses the window without breaking it, which is how the age drew a virgin birth. She is nursing, because the point is that the body is real.
Nobody knows who paid for it. "Lucca" is not a place. It is a duke who owned it.
Sources: Städel Museum, Frankfurt, inv. 944 · Städel Stories, on the provenance and the naming · Carol J. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton University Press, 1982), 110–121 · Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 30,000 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.