Saint Barbara (van Eyck)

Saint Barbara is a small work on oak panel made in 1437 by the Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, combining silverpoint, ink, brush drawing and touches of oil and black pigment on a chalk ground, so that art historians still debate whether it is an unfinished painting or a complete drawing in its own right. It shows Saint Barbara seated reading before a vast Gothic tower still under construction, surrounded by workmen and scaffolding, an allusion to the tower in which her legend says her pagan father imprisoned her. Measuring about 34 by 18.5 centimetres, the panel is signed and dated on its frame, IOHANNES DE EYCK ME FECIT 1437, and is held at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/