Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
4 DIRK DE VOS Further Notes on ALS ICH CAN While Jan van Eyck's motto has never been the subject of real controversy (Note 1), it has never been entirely satisfactorily explained either, recent interpretations notwith- standing (Note 2). Its strange spellirzg and brevity (Note 3) raise the question of whether it might not have a second, hidden meaning. Scheller has remarked that in its use o_f alternate Greek and Latin letters it is related to the practice of Medieval copyists of con- cealing their names at the ends of texts in a 'scholarly manner, so that it seems logical to infer, in the context of-other inscriptions by Van Eyck which were also deliberately conceived in the line of the l documentari tradition, that the same holds good for this motto too. lnj'act it is not so di fficult to see the motto via its Greek transliteration as an anagrarn of the name Jan van Eyck ( 1'`vate All the letters are present except tlve k' and the but these can easily be explained as an inversion of the Greek labda. The motto proves to contain no other letters than precisely those required to constitute an anagram of Van Eyck's signature as it appears irn Flemish on the Portrait of Jan de Leeuw in Vienna. Moreover, the strange addition-of the H in ICH can at present be accounted for quite easily since the H is seen as the Greek eta, standing for the letter E from Eyck. The whole device is most ingenious) for the motto has a completely Greek guise, while it can nonetheless be read - with a bit cfgoodwill- in Flemish. The compilation of a motto as an anagram of one's own name seems, indeed, not to have been uncommon in rhetorician circles in 15th-century Bruges. As Scheller has already pointed out, the IXH could also refer to the monogram of Christ (Note 5), while Dhanens thinks the design of the motto may have been determined by inscriptions on Greek-Byzantine icons(Note 6). A_further point is that the text on the cross in the main scene of the Ghent Altarpiece is very like the tripartite form oJJan)s motto. This makes it seem very likely that the motto also lzas an, as yet undeciphered, religious content (Note 7).
Oud Holland - Quarterly for Dutch Art History – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1983
You can share this free article with as many people as you like with the url below! We hope you enjoy this feature!
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.