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| workshop of Robert Campin Madonna of the Firescreen ca. 1440 tempera and oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| workshop of Robert Campin Madonna of the Firescreen (detail) ca. 1440 tempera and oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| workshop of Robert Campin Madonna of the Firescreen (detail) ca. 1440 tempera and oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Rogier van der Weyden St John the Baptist Triptych (Birth of John the Baptist) ca. 1455 oil on panel (left-hand panel) Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Rogier van der Weyden St John the Baptist Triptych (Baptism of Christ) ca. 1455 oil on panel (central panel) Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Rogier van der Weyden St John the Baptist Triptych (Beheading of St John the Baptist) ca. 1455 oil on panel (right-hand panel) Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
"In the symbolism of the middle ages nothing had an unequivocal meaning; everything could be applied or explained in several different ways. Indeed, the world of things contained manifold disguises for God's being and, if we peruse the philosophical, theological, and moralising treatises or the mystic writings of the period, we are confronted with a profusion of metaphor and symbolism, which was the only way of speaking about the unspeakable. It was a question of dealing creatively with the visible world, with objects and natural phenomena that were supposed to express invisible concepts or qualities through comparison. The more one acquired a thorough understanding of this comparative technique, the more one was able to view the world as ever more complex and ambiguous; ideally this would lead to divine revelations of a very personal nature."
"We have to look at the paintings of the fifteenth century in the same way. Like the reality they reproduce, they contain a potential for symbolism that cannot simply be deciphered like a code. They hold many associative possibilities which can be revealed to the attentive spectator by visual means. The greater the artist, the more ingenious this mechanism of expressive concealment. Erwin Panofsky called it 'disguised symbolism' because the phenomenon involves underlying meanings which the representation as such does not immediately evoke. Owing to an all-too-literary search for symbolic meanings, this conception of the problem has frequently resulted in a system of iconographical explanations which actually detracts from the spirit of visual revelation. Likewise, we sometimes look for the symbolic significance of objects or scenes because, to our modern eyes, they seem anomalous, or because the symbolism of earlier periods escapes us."
– Dirk de Vos, The Flemish Primitives (Princeton University Press, 2002)
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds ca. 1480 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds (detail) ca. 1480 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds (detail) ca. 1480 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds (detail) ca. 1480 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds (detail) ca. 1480 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| attributed to Petrus Christus St John the Baptist (detail) ca. 1440 oil on panel Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| attributed to Petrus Christus St John the Baptist ca. 1440 oil on panel Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Jan van Eyck Virgin and Child with St Michael Archangel, Donor, and St Catherine 1437 oil on panels (triptych) Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
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| Jan van Eyck Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Ghent Altarpiece) 1432 oil on panels Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent |