The Soldiers of Christ in the Ghent Altarpiece

The Soldiers of Christ in the Ghent Altarpiece

Armoured horsemen advance beneath three tall banners, carrying the eye towards the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Commonly called the Soldiers or Knights of Christ, this narrow painting belongs to the opened lower register of the Ghent Altarpiece. It stands between the Just Judges and the central assembly. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral presents its warriors as defenders of the Church, with crowned rulers accompanying them. The title describes a sacred role within a procession, rather than identifying a battle taking place before us.^[1]

This is an unusually concentrated painting. Horses, armour, embroidered garments, faces, crowns and standards fill its lower half, while rocks, woodland, a distant church and pale mountains create a landscape above. The figures possess individual appearances, yet their names remain disputed. Conservation supplies a different kind of precision: it reveals changes to the paint and explains why older reproductions can give a misleading impression of colour, modelling and distance. Both kinds of evidence reward looking closely, provided that a proposed identity is kept distinct from a demonstrated material finding. The published whole-panel view provides a starting point for that examination.^[12]

Look closely at the crowned figures

Details from The Soldiers of Christ in the Ghent Altarpiece

1

A king after removal of later paint

Face and neck after removal of later paint; identity remains disputed. KIK-IRPA report, p. 136. © Sint-Baafskathedraal Gent, Lukas–Art in Flanders; photo KIK-IRPA. Unmodified published detail.

2

The red cloak after removal of later paint

Cloak after removal of later paint; underlying colour degradation remains. KIK-IRPA report, p. 135. © Sint-Baafskathedraal Gent, Lukas–Art in Flanders; photo KIK-IRPA. Unmodified published detail.

Three riders at the front

The nearest horses establish the panel’s forward movement. A dark animal enters from the lower left, a dappled grey occupies the centre, and a pale horse lifts its head towards the right. Their bodies overlap rather than standing in a neat row. Harnesses, straps and decorative fittings bind the animals visually to the riders above. Between the horses, small openings reveal fragments of the ground. The procession feels compressed, but it retains the irregular rhythm of separate bodies negotiating the same path.

The armour strengthens that sense of physical presence. A polished shoulder catches light beside green sleeves; a rounded breastplate gives way to articulated protection at the elbow and knee. Metal changes from bright silver to warm brown according to its place in the composition. These shifts matter as much as the inventory of weapons. They make a hard surface appear curved, while the softer fabric emerging between plates prevents the horsemen from becoming anonymous suits of armour.

The pale horse supplies a particularly clear contrast. Its light mane and neck stand against a darker animal behind, while its elaborate bridle turns a functional object into a sequence of bright accents. The rider’s arm, shield and reins occupy different planes in front of it. Following those crossings is a better way to understand the composition than reading it as a line of isolated portraits. Each apparent individual belongs to a tightly constructed network of neighbouring forms.

Saints, princes and uncertain names

The Vlaamse Kunstcollectie describes the group through the medieval ideal of placing the sword in Christ’s service. It includes crowned princes and allows that some could represent leaders associated with the crusades. Its Dutch collection record names Louis IX, Godfrey of Bouillon and Charlemagne among proposed identifications, while expressly withholding conclusive certainty. These possibilities belong in the painting’s interpretation, but they should not be presented as an authenticated roll call. A crown establishes royal status more readily than it establishes one historical name.^[2]

Earlier scholarship is more confident about the leading riders. W. H. James Weale’s 1912 account identifies Saint Martin on the dappled horse, wearing green beneath his armour and a laurel wreath. He assigns Saint George a red cross on a white standard and Saint Sebastian a different cross-bearing banner. These descriptions show how details of clothing, heraldry and the horses were assembled into an identification. They remain an historical interpretation, rather than labels written beside the figures themselves.^[3]

Even the first saint’s name has varied. In his French-language study published by Belgium’s Royal Museums of Fine Arts in 1955, Jacques Lavalleye lists Martin or Victor among competing proposals and observes the wider lack of agreement over the company’s members. His discussion is useful because it preserves uncertainty within a seemingly familiar subject. Recognition of military saints does not establish that every contemporary-looking face must be a disguised portrait of a particular prince.^[4]

The crowned men also differ in presentation. One has a long grey beard and a broad fur-bordered garment; another, higher in the group, appears younger and wears a decorated crown above dark hair. Their faces turn by different degrees, so that some remain partly screened by a neighbour. Royal magnificence is made visible through individual features and costly materials. The painting can communicate rank and dignity even where the precise personal identities remain unresolved.

The inscribed shield

A more easily overlooked detail is the large shield carrying a red cross and lettering. Weale associates the buckler with Sebastian and transcribes names of God around its border. He also records the Latin frame title, Cristi milites, identifying the company collectively as Christ’s soldiers. The lettering gives the military equipment a religious character. It is not simply decoration added to make a fine object more elaborate.^[3]

A later study reaches the shield through a different attribution. In his 2015 essay preserved by the RKD in the Netherlands, Grantley McDonald calls its bearer Saint George. He discusses divine names including Adonai, Sabaoth and Emmanuel, together with the protective abbreviation AGLA. His reading links the inscription to sacred speech and to the altar’s liturgical setting. The same analysis connects George below with Michael represented on the lectern of the Singing Angels above.^[5]

Watch: Jan van Eyck in context

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Jan van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece (2 of 2)

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▶03 · InteriorThe Ghent Altarpiece, openSmarthistory▶01 · PortraitThe Arnolfini PortraitSmarthistory▶02 · ExteriorThe Ghent Altarpiece, closedSmarthistory

The disagreement over the bearer should remain apparent. It does not erase the inscription’s religious vocabulary, but it changes how securely a particular saint can be attached to it. McDonald’s discussion also draws Sabaoth into relation with the central enthroned figure and the Sanctus. This places a small accessory within the altarpiece’s larger network of sacred words. The shield can participate in that network without functioning as an independently decisive portrait label.^[5]

Looking at the object itself, its broad red cross interrupts the crowded passage of armour and fabric. The curved outline distinguishes it from the standards rising vertically behind. Its lettering asks for a slower kind of attention than the horses’ motion. A viewer can move from the advancing group to an individual written detail, then return to the shared destination. Such changes of scale are central to the panel’s effect.

Banners and Ghent’s chivalric world

Ghent’s municipal Van Eyck walking guide gives the shield’s red cross on white a local and political context. It associates the design with Saint George and crusading imagery, discusses the city’s Saint George crossbow guild, and recalls Philip the Good’s ambitions for a crusade. Those associations help explain why the sign would have been meaningful within the Burgundian Netherlands. They do not prove that the panel depicts one recorded expedition or that every figure belonged to a particular order.^[6]

The standards rise above the heads like extensions of the riders’ bodies. Their cloth bends and opens at different angles, while narrow shafts maintain a common upward rhythm. White, yellow and red remain distinct amid the darker mass of faces and vegetation. Heraldic signs make the group recognisably martial from a distance, before a viewer can read an inscription or distinguish a crown. Close examination then complicates that first impression with the elaborate surfaces of dress, harness and armour.

The absence of an opposing force is equally significant to the visible scene. There is no encounter between two armies and no fallen adversary establishing a victory. The horses proceed through a landscape towards the neighbouring sacred assembly. Martial status is admitted into an act of approach. Reading the painting in its proper position preserves that movement and avoids replacing it with an imagined battle narrative that the image does not supply.

A church among rocks and trees

The landscape opens through successive layers. A steep rocky mass rises behind the riders at the left; trees extend across the middle distance; a tall building breaks the skyline; pale mountains occupy the far right. The figures do not float against a generic green background. Their crowded foreground gives way to a world that appears to continue beyond the narrow shutter’s edges.

Lavalleye identifies a potentially recognisable architectural detail behind them. He compares the church’s transept façade with Saint-Salvator in Bruges, attending to the large window, tracery, roses and open balustrade. Importantly, he also notes a difference: the painted window lacks a central Y-shaped division found in the building. He proposes a remembered architectural impression rather than a precise documentary copy. The comparison therefore adds local specificity without turning the entire landscape into an exact view of Bruges.^[4]

This distinction matters when looking at the church beside the rocky terrain. A familiar architectural feature can be placed within an invented or transformed setting. It need not certify the identity of every hill, settlement or distant summit around it. The small building gives the eye an intermediate destination between the riders and the mountains. Its vertical accent also answers the standards below, joining human procession and inhabited landscape through repeated upright forms.

Visit Gent uses the Soldiers’ distant mountains to explain atmospheric perspective: faraway peaks appear softer and less sharply defined than the riders. Their reduced contrast allows an extensive landscape to fit within a shallow painted surface. This is a visual account of depth, not evidence that the mountains portray an identified Alpine location. The change in clarity is more secure than any unsupported name assigned to the range.^[7]

What restoration changed

KIK-IRPA treated the original lower-register paintings between late 2016 and the end of 2019. Its synthesis distinguishes the Soldiers, Hermits and Pilgrims from the central Lamb scene and the modern Judges replacement. For the side panels collectively, it reports roughly ten to fifteen percent overpaint and about five percent loss of original paint. Those are campaign-level figures, not a separately measured percentage for this panel alone. Darkened varnishes had also obscured detail and depth, while treatment addressed the painted surfaces, wooden supports and frames.^[8]

The original Dutch treatment report makes the landscape’s recovery concrete. An azurite-containing addition covered much of the ultramarine mountain paint; distant snowy peaks were less affected. Some thin additions in the sky were retained where safe separation was difficult. On the horses, later strokes had broadened the white animal’s head. A thin layer on a dark-haired king’s face had flattened flesh tones. The report also describes the red cloak’s altered appearance and probable pigment degradation beneath later paint. Removing additions could improve legibility without reversing every historical colour change.^[9]

These findings change how an older photograph should be read. A broad horse’s head or a flattened face may reflect later intervention, while a muted garment need not simply be dirt waiting to disappear. The restored surface combines surviving original paint with areas where conservation required restraint.

KIK-IRPA’s December 2019 press photographs provide useful dated witnesses. One shows the whole Soldiers panel during final retouching with its restored frame; another juxtaposes a detail during final retouching and before treatment. Their captions identify particular stages, rather than an abstract division between an entirely authentic image and an entirely false one. They allow the changed appearance of the procession to be examined in relation to documented work.^[10]

A later copy as a separate witness

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium catalogue a Knights panel by Michiel Coxcie after the Van Eycks, dated 1557–1559. The record connects it with Philip II’s commission and identifies Saint Matthew on its reverse. It is a distinct painted object, with its own support, dimensions and history. Coxcie’s exterior saints were not simply identical reproductions of the original shutters’ subjects. A copy can preserve an interpretation of the procession while also changing the structure of the ensemble to which it belongs.^[11]

That distinction is especially useful within this crowded corner of the Ghent Altarpiece. The neighbouring Judges now supply another kind of substitute, whose history requires its own account. The Soldiers discussed here remain an original surviving panel. A later copy, an old photograph and a conservation image can each answer questions, but only when their relationship to that surviving object is made clear. Returning to the riders themselves, their achievement lies in the sustained connection between minute particulars and collective movement: a crown, a written name or a bridle leads the eye back to the company approaching the Lamb.

Related reading

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb — Jan and Hubert van Eyck

The Just Judges: the missing Ghent Altarpiece panel

The Singing Angels of the Ghent Altarpiece

References

1. Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Dutch panel guide, Knights of Christ and crowned rulers. View Source
2. Vlaamse Kunstcollectie, Dutch collection record, “De Ridders van Christus,” chivalric ideal and uncertain princely identifications. View Source
3. W. H. James Weale, The Van Eycks and Their Art, 1912, pp. 46–47, military saints, buckler and frame inscription. View Source
4. Jacques Lavalleye, “Notules sur deux détails dans l’‘Adoration de l’Agneau mystique’,” 1955, pp. 145–150, identity disagreements and Saint-Salvator comparison. View Source
5. Grantley McDonald, “A Further Source for the Ghent Altarpiece? The Revelations of Bridget of Sweden,” 2015, RKD digitised original, pp. 2–3, shield inscription, divine names and liturgical relationships. View Source
6. City of Ghent, OMG! Van Eyck walking guide, 2022, stop 20, Saint George, the crossbow guild and crusading associations. View Source
7. Visit Gent, “Jan van Eyck’s painting techniques,” atmospheric perspective in the Soldiers panel. View Source
8. KIK-IRPA, restoration synthesis, 27 January 2020, p. 3, lower-register treatment and side-panel figures. View Source
9. KIK-IRPA, Conservatie- en restauratiebehandeling van het Lam Godsveelluik: verslag van Fase 2, original Dutch report, pp. 129–139, mountains, sky, cloak, king and horses. View Source
10. KIK-IRPA, lower-register restoration press dossier, 17 December 2019, p. 12, photographs 13–14 and treatment-stage captions. View Source
11. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Michiel Coxcie, Knights of Christ with Saint Matthew on the reverse, 1557–1559, inventory 6697. View Source
12. Lukas–Art in Flanders, whole-panel photograph and rights, published through Google Arts & Culture. View Source