Joos Vijd and John the Baptist: the Ghent Altarpiece’s exterior panels

Joos Vijd and John the Baptist: the Ghent Altarpiece’s exterior panels

Joos Vijd kneels beside a painted statue of John the Baptist in the lower left of the closed Ghent Altarpiece. The cathedral’s guide identifies him and his wife, Elisabeth Borluut, as its commissioners. It attributes the ensemble to the Van Eyck brothers and dates its inauguration to 1432. Their portraits flank two saints: Vijd and the Baptist occupy the left, while the Evangelist and Elisabeth complete the lower register on the right. These are neighbouring paintings within a coordinated arrangement, rather than a donor and saint sharing one continuous panel.^[1]

The distinction becomes especially rewarding at close range. Vijd’s red clothing, joined hands and unidealised face make an individual worshipper present. Beside him, John appears as pale stone, with the Lamb supported against his body. Flesh, cloth, sculpture and architecture are all made through paint. Their differences establish a relationship between a mortal patron and the sacred figure to whom his attention turns, while inviting us to compare the artist’s treatment of different kinds of presence.

Look closely at paint and restoration

Details from Joos Vijd and John the Baptist: the Ghent Altarpiece’s exterior panels

1

Vijd’s eye: later paint before removal

Before removal: later pink paint crosses the eyelash line. KIK-IRPA, 2020, p. 131. © Sint-Baafskathedraal / Lukas–Art in Flanders, photo KIK-IRPA. Unmodified published detail.

2

Baptist’s robe: painted stone after treatment

After treatment: painted veining in the Baptist’s robe. KIK-IRPA, 2020, p. 240. © Sint-Baafskathedraal / Lukas–Art in Flanders, photo KIK-IRPA. Unmodified published detail.

Looking at the donor

The published colour view supplied by Lukas–Art in Flanders shows Vijd bareheaded within a dark, arched recess. His red robe fills much of the narrow opening, while pale fur marks the collar and cuffs. The provider specifically connects restoration with recovery of the coat’s original tonal values. This matters when comparing photographs: a reproduction made before treatment may record an extensively altered garment rather than the colour relationships now visible.^[2]

In the restored view, the body seems broad and grounded, but its action is restrained. The hands meet before the chest without concealing one another completely. The head rises above the spreading collar and turns towards the centre of the closed ensemble. A belt and dark purse interrupt the red fabric near the waist. Below, the robe reaches towards the tiled floor, making the prayerful figure occupy a convincing architectural space rather than float against a decorative background.

The Baptist’s setting is shallower and lighter. His flowing drapery, exposed feet, curling hair and beard appear to belong to a carved figure standing on a polygonal base. His right index finger directs attention towards the Lamb carried on his left arm. The Lukas record identifies both this attribute and his role as patron of the church then dedicated to Saint John. The exterior saint should therefore be distinguished from the separately enthroned John the Baptist on the opened altarpiece.^[3]

Who was Joos Vijd?

The municipal account published by Beveren situates Vijd within the prosperous world linking the Scheldt region and Ghent. Born around 1360, he belonged to a family whose interests included land, administration and the peat economy. After moving to Ghent, he married Elisabeth Borluut and developed an administrative and diplomatic career, becoming first alderman. His appearance here belongs to that history of civic authority and property, rather than to an anonymous type of medieval donor.^[4]

The same account describes an undertaking that is easily missed when the portrait is isolated from its patron’s activities. Flooding had affected the region in 1404; in 1414 John the Fearless authorised Vijd to reclaim polder land. Contracts for the waterworks followed in 1416. Land management and the recovery of productive ground formed part of the economic background to his patronage. They also help explain why the couple’s religious foundations could depend on income from places beyond the city containing the painting.^[4]

The French-language State Archives account brings that connection down to a specific document. An estate inventory of Elisabeth, drawn up in 1446 after her death in 1443, records Vracenbrouc, wetland between Verrebroek, Vrasene and Beveren. The archivists connect it with Vijd’s reclamation from 1414. A marginal note assigns revenue to the couple’s annual memorial observance. This is documentary evidence of land supporting commemoration, rather than an inference drawn from the donor’s expensive clothes.^[5]

Prayer, memory and the chapel

That annual observance should not be conflated with every service endowed by the couple. Weale’s historical study records a foundation of 13 May 1435 for a daily Mass at their chapel’s altar in Saint John’s. The exact distinction matters: a daily liturgical provision and an annual memorial are related forms of patronage, but they are not interchangeable descriptions of one document. Together, they connect the painted act of kneeling with continuing arrangements for worship after the founders’ deaths.^[6]

Weale also describes the donor’s red cloth, brown fur, hanging sleeves and large dark purse. His pre-restoration account helps identify the garment’s substantial features even though it cannot tell us which later paint layers he was seeing. Clothing gives the sitter material and social specificity. The portrait’s humility is expressed through posture and prayer; it does not require an absence of wealth or public standing. The purse remains visible within the devotional image rather than being hidden from the viewer.^[6]

Medieval historian Jan Dumolyn addresses the temptation to read a moral biography directly from Vijd’s face. His account draws attention to its wrinkles and irregularities while warning against assuming that piety and social prestige were incompatible. A childless couple could seek religious benefit and lasting remembrance through the same foundation. This makes the portrait’s conspicuous individuality intelligible without turning every blemish into evidence of either exceptional honesty or concealed vice.^[7]

The face should consequently be examined as a carefully made likeness with a history of treatment. Its folds and asymmetries contribute to recognition, but they do not supply a reliable diagnosis or a transcript of the sitter’s character. Dumolyn’s broader interpretation allows devotion and reputation to coexist. The painting’s continued preservation of Vijd’s identity is itself part of the memorial achievement, even when his motives cannot be reduced to one modern psychological explanation.^[7]

Why a painted statue stands beside him

Susan Jones’s Metropolitan Museum essay places the exterior’s fictive sculpture within the altarpiece’s larger religious setting. She suggests that the grisaille saints may also challenge the achievements of sculpted retables. This is an interpretation of painting’s relation to another medium, rather than evidence that an actual marble statue once occupied this niche. The figure’s apparent weight and substance are pictorial effects within a wooden, painted ensemble.^[8]

Watch: Jan van Eyck in context

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The comparison sharpens the donor’s role. Vijd appears to pray in a space adjoining an enduring sacred image, while the saint directs attention beyond himself to the Lamb. Jones also connects the commission’s chapel setting with the liturgical meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. That relationship helps explain why the animal is essential here: it joins John’s identifying gesture to the central subject encountered when the wings open, without requiring the donor to be physically present inside the heavenly gathering.^[8]

KIK-IRPA’s scientific study identifies a more particular material fiction than the word “grisaille” alone conveys. The Baptist imitates white marble or alabaster, including painted veining. Brown washes beneath translucent white and stronger highlights help construct its surface. An incised compass circle below the Lamb has prompted suggestions of an abandoned lantern handle or a trial mark, but its purpose remains unresolved. It should not be announced as a securely identified lost attribute.^[9]

The same study finds coordination in the adjacent frames’ painted veining and highlights. Silver leaf beneath coloured glazes contributed to their imitation of stone. Thus the relation between donor and saint extends into the actual framing members. These are decorated physical structures surrounding the pictures, not simply illusionistic borders painted on a single shared scene.^[9]

What had happened to Vijd’s red robe?

The February 2014 conservation report describes extensive overpainting of the coat. Later work had modified folds and reduced contrasts, while earlier treatment had damaged parts of the fur collar. The report distinguishes those areas from better-preserved passages rather than treating the entire costume as equally altered. It also records granular pink scumbles on the donors’ faces and hands, sometimes crossing fine age cracks and the eyelashes.^[10]

Such evidence changes how a detail photograph should be captioned. The enlarged eye shown here documents later paint over the lash line before its removal; it is not a close-up of an untouched medieval surface. The same report also corrects an easily repeated background detail: cobwebs were clearer behind Elisabeth. The corresponding area behind Joos was less legible because its background was more damaged. Describing both niches as equally recovered would conceal an important difference in preservation.^[10]

KIK-IRPA’s June 2014 press dossier explains how elemental imaging helped investigate the coat. Macro X-ray fluorescence mapping detected mercury associated with vermilion in the red paint. Iron distribution helped reveal fills concealed beneath subsequent layers, and paint cross-sections supplied another kind of evidence. These findings did more than produce attractive scientific pictures: they helped distinguish features of the older painting from changes that had become familiar through long exposure.^[11]

An elemental map is nevertheless a record of where particular elements are detected, not a normal colour photograph or an automatic reconstruction of the robe. Its significance depends on comparison with the visible surface and sampled layer structure. The dossier’s account therefore supports a specific explanation of altered red drapery. It does not justify assigning a pigment, a date or a restoration history to every colour seen elsewhere in the altarpiece.^[11]

Observation, imaging and the decision to clean

The bilingual French and Dutch study by Myriam Postec and colleagues describes restorers noticing discrepancies in surface texture and drapery before technological examination resolved their extent. Published in 2016 following the 2015 Brussels conference, it names the universities of Antwerp and Delft in the development of the fluorescence technology used. The investigation thus combined close observation with Belgian and Dutch scientific work, rather than replacing the restorer’s eye with an instrument.^[12]

The article also explains a useful limitation: ordinary X-radiography had not revealed certain iron-rich fills because they lacked the heavy elements that would make them conspicuous in that technique. An absence in one image need not mean an absence in the painting. Different methods answered different questions. Their agreement with observations and samples strengthened the treatment’s basis; a single apparently clear technical image would have supplied a much less complete account.^[12]

Maximiliaan Martens’s 2015 discussion of conservation ethics follows the difficult decision from test windows in the donors’ coats. Later paint could be distinguished through its relationship to existing cracks, while intervening varnish could help separate layers. But technical separability was only one consideration. The question also involved assessing the quality, survival and legibility of what would emerge, and the risks of removing an established historical surface.^[13]

That discussion prevents “cleaning” from becoming an effortless story in which the masterpiece simply returns to 1432. Recovering subtle modelling in the drapery changes our understanding of the image, but it does not reverse every abrasion, loss or ageing process. Martens presents a reasoned conservation judgment made through examination and discussion. The restored robe is more informative about the earlier painting because of that work; its survival remains materially uneven rather than perfectly complete.^[13]

What a crack map can and cannot tell us

The digital analysis published by Aleksandra Pižurica and colleagues in 2015 includes a crack-density map of the upper left of Vijd’s panel. Differences could help identify areas of filling or overpainting, making a tiny network of surface changes useful to conservation. Yet the authors also note that low crack density can occur in thin original paint. A relatively smooth patch is therefore a clue requiring investigation, rather than a verdict that the passage must be later.^[14]

This distinction matters for looking at enlarged images online. A computer-generated indication, a photograph and the physical surface are different kinds of evidence. The paper’s method was checked against conservation knowledge rather than treated as a substitute for it. It gives Vijd’s portrait a place in the development of digital painting analysis, while retaining a basic obligation to ask how an apparent pattern was produced and whether another material explanation remains possible.^[14]

Two neighbours with different object histories

The Baptist’s later history also makes precise identification essential. The City of Ghent’s account of the 1934 theft explains that the saint and the Just Judges disappeared together, after the formerly double-sided shutter had been separated. The Baptist was recovered through the ransom correspondence; the Judges remains missing. The returned saint is therefore an original surviving painting, not the modern replacement occupying the Judges’ place in the opened ensemble.^[15]

Vijd’s portrait was not the other stolen face. The pairing discussed on this page is the visual relationship between adjacent exterior paintings; it must not be confused with the Baptist’s former reverse. Keeping those relationships distinct allows the saint to be understood through both its devotional position and its particular survival. A donor’s neighbour in the closed arrangement can have an entirely different history from the painting once attached to its back.

The cathedral describes the altarpiece as generally closed except on Sundays and religious feast days.^[1] In that setting, Vijd’s prayer and John’s pointing gesture belonged to a frequently encountered appearance of the work. Their quiet, narrowly framed exchange prepared another kind of looking from the expansive colour and gathering visible inside. The exterior deserves sustained attention in its own right: the donor’s memorial presence, the Baptist’s painted stone and their materially coordinated surrounds all contribute to the commission’s meaning.

Related reading

The Just Judges: the missing Ghent Altarpiece panel

Ghent Altarpiece

The Arnolfini Portrait

References

1. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Summary of the panels, English guide, exterior panels V–VIII and general introduction. View Source
2. Lukas–Art in Flanders, The Ghent Altarpiece: Judocus Vyd, artwork record and restored colour image. View Source
3. Lukas–Art in Flanders, The Ghent Altarpiece: John the Baptist, artwork record and restored colour image. View Source
4. Municipality of Beveren, 0060, Joos Vijd and the Ghent Altarpiece, 2020. View Source
5. Archives de l’État en Belgique, Faites la connaissance de Joos Vijd, le maître d’ouvrage du célèbre Agneau mystique, 3 June 2020. View Source
6. W. H. James Weale, The Van Eycks and Their Art, 1912, pp. 50 and 58. View Source
7. Jan Dumolyn, The pimples of Joos Vijd, City of Ghent, 28 November 2025. View Source
8. Susan Jones, The Ghent Altarpiece, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. View Source
9. Bart Fransen and Cyriel Stroo, editors, The Ghent Altarpiece: Research and Conservation of the Exterior, KIK-IRPA, 2020, especially pp. 131–135, 205–206, 225–226, 235–241 and 256–258. View Source
10. Hélène Dubois and conservation team, Interim Report, February 2014, prepared for the 17 March 2014 commission meeting, especially pp. 8–14 and 16–17. View Source
11. KIK-IRPA, Press conference: Ghent Altarpiece, 20 June 2014, pp. 5–7. View Source
12. Myriam Postec and colleagues, Spectaculaire ontdekkingen … / Découvertes spectaculaires sur l’Agneau mystique des frères Van Eyck: le rôle essentiel du restaurateur, in Innovatie in de conservatie-restauratie, 8, 2016, pp. 153–171, especially pp. 156 and 158–161. View Source
13. Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, “Afblijven of Afnemen?”—Leave it or take it away: ethical considerations on the removal of overpaintings. The case of the Ghent Altarpiece, 2015, author version, pp. 1–7. View Source
14. Aleksandra Pižurica and colleagues, Digital Painting Analysis, at the Cross Section of Engineering, Mathematics, and Culture, 2015, author preprint, especially pp. 3–4. View Source
15. City of Ghent, The disappearance of the Just Judges panel. View Source