Portrait of a Carthusian  1446

Christus places his sitter in the corner of a warmly illuminated room and enhances the quality of his "real" presence by the fly resting momentarily on the fictive frame. The leading painter of Bruges following Jan van Eyck's death in 1441, Christus moves beyond the flat neutral backgrounds of his predecessor's portraits. The illusionistic inscription underscores the veris...