Virgin and Child Before a Firescreen 1440

Robert Campin painted this ‘Virgin and Child Before a Firescreen’ in the 15th century, using oil on panel. The use of oil paint allowed Campin to achieve a new level of realism, capturing the textures and details of everyday life. The folds of the Virgin's dress, for example, are rendered with remarkable precision, and the firescreen behind her is a marvel of basketry. Look closely at the variety of surfaces – wood, metal, fabric – and see how each is carefully differentiated. Campin's attention to detail extends to the depiction of the domestic interior, complete with mundane objects like a woven screen, or a metal vessel, and the use of these elements is not accidental. By placing the Virgin and Child in a contemporary setting, he is bringing the sacred into the everyday, and this reflects the changing social and economic conditions of the time. Campin is inviting us to find the divine in the ordinary. The real innovation of the Early Netherlandish painters was to blur the boundaries between the elevated genre of oil painting and the immersive, material world.