What person was meant to represent the host and Eucharist?
The panel is one of the earliest known northern European sacra conversazione (the Virgin and Child shown with a group of saints in a relatively informal grouping) paintings. The Virgin sits on an elevated throne, situated beneath a minutely detailed and extravagantly decorated brocade baldachin containing white rose patterns, symbolising her purity. Given the church setting, Mary occupies the area where the altarpiece would usually be. The steps leading to the throne are covered with an oriental carpet. Her idealised facial type (and that of St. George) is very similar to the Virgin in van Eyck's Washington  Annunciation.Although the Madonna's throne is in the mid-ground, her head is level with the standing figures in the foreground, who are closer in perspective. The apse in which she sits adds to the illusion of depth and is an expanded area for her throne. A similar approach can be seen in the later Dresden Triptych, but that work contains a better handling of spatial depth; Mary's throne is moved back, and the donors and saints are relegated to wing panels. The figures in Canon van der Paele are within a more confined space, are somewhat cramped, but far more monumental.The Child has curly blond hair and sits on a white cloth, animated and upright, at the side of the Virgin's lap. Like Mary, his body is shown frontally, his head in three quarters view. He reaches for what seems to be a parrot perched on her lap. At some point the Child's nudity was covered up; this overpaint was removed during a late 20th-century restoration. He is intended to represent both the host and Eucharist, common allusions in Early Netherlandish art and reflecting that the panel was intended for the celebration of mass.
the Child