Here are some photographs of the details of the Margaret painting - Hover the mouse over the image to see the text details or click here to go to the paintings stats page.
This is Margaret, painted in the style of Jan van Eyck's painting of his wife Margaret.
A Netherlandish alien painted in traditional Dutch headdress and brocade top with fir-lined collar and sleeves. Frame with trompe l'oeil engraved lettering in alien script and pastiglia fingers invading into the real world from inside the frame.
11.6x9.3x0.9" 23.6x29.4x2.2cm including the frame.
Details of Margaret the Netherlandish Alien's face showing her translucent skin in a rainbow of colours painted entirely in pigments that you would have found in an artist's palette six hundred years ago in the Renaissance.
Close-up of Margaret the Netherlandish Alien's headdress showing the six layers of cloth where you can see in between the layers when you look at those layers that are end-on.
Close-up of Margaret the Netherlandish Alien's pastiglia hands, gripping the edge of the frame, breaking the rule that keeps that that is in the painting out of the real world of the viewer.
The fingers are build up from gesso and then carved, sized and painted.
Also worthy of note in this image is white fur and ermine trim of the jacket in which each hair is painted individually; and,
the red brocade top where each gold thread s also painted individually
A closer look at Margaret the Netherlandish Alien's sleeve, showing the gold brocade. You can see how the gold is built up using dark and light gold colours on a medium gold background, creating, using merely paint, the effect of gold's very directionally-reflective surface.
An even closer look at Margaret the Netherlandish Alien's sleeve, showing the width of the paint brush strokes in the gold brocade. The scale is 1cm with 10mm above, showing that the individual stokes of raw umber or lead tin yellow are in the order of 200-300 microns across.
Close up of the alien script at the top and bottom of the frame. This is trompe l'oeil of the script carved into the surface of the jasper and then gold-lined.
I will leave it as an exercised for the viewer to work out what it says but it is a proper script and it is a proper language.
Close-up of the moulding corners of the frame of Margaret the Netherlandish Alien.
This is a silled frame because originally, frames were like a window frame where, instead of looking through the frame and seeing the outside world from inside your house, you looked through the picture's frame and saw an alternative universe. Like a window frame, the picture frames leading up to around half way through the fifteenth century had sills.
All images and original artwork Copyright ©2020 Paul Alan Grosse.