What is the name of the person that towered above the columns of the church?
In the central panel the Virgin and Child are enthroned in a church nave within a columned basilica running on either side. The columns are painted using a variety of dark red, orange and grey pigments, a colour scheme which Peter Heath describes as lending to a "sense of airy silence". The throne is positioned on a dais, before a lavishly detailed oriental carpet lying on a similarly geometrically designed tiled floor. The arms of the canopied throne and the arches to either side contain carved or sculptured figures, including tiny representations of Isaac, and David and Goliath, although art historian Antje Maria Neuner reads this carving as showing Jephthah sacrificing his daughter. Mary wears a richly embroidered and as is typical for van Eyck, voluminous red robe, which effectively serves as a cloth of honour. The robe is placed over a blue square-cut underdress edged with a jewelled border. In van Eyck's Marian paintings, he almost always clothes her in red writes Pächt, which makes her seem to dominate the space. The Christ Child is naked and holds towards the donor a banderole adorned with a phrase from the Gospel of Matthew (11:29), DISCITE A ME, QUIA MITIS SUM ET HUMILIS CORDE ("Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart").
Mary's presence in the church is symbolic; she and the child occupy the area where the altar would normally be situated. Like van Eyck's two other late Madonna portraits (Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele of 1436 and Madonna in the Church of c. 1438–40), Mary is unrealistically large and out of proportion to her surroundings. This reflects the influence of 12th- and 13th-century Italian artists such as Cimabue and Giotto, who in turn drew on the tradition of monumental depictions of Mary from Byzantine icons. According to Lorne Campbell, Mary is presented as if about to "rise from her throne and advance into the same plane as St. Michael and St. Catherine, she would tower above them and also above the columns of the church." This idea is in keeping with van Eyck's tendency in such portraits to present Mary as if she was an apparition materialising before the donor in response to his prayer and devotion. Van Eyck's Mary is here monumental, but less overwhelmingly large than in 13th century works. She is disproportionate to the architecture in her panel, but approximately proportional to the figures in the wings. This restraint evidences the beginning of van Eyck's mature phase, most evidently seen in the composition's "greater spatial depth".Christ's pose closely follows that of the Paele Madonna; his body still leans towards the donor but here his head faces the viewer more directly.
Mary