Dear List,

On September 17, 2002 an important presentation in the field of Cultural
Heritage will occur in the St Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium.
It is a presentation of a new DVD entitled "De Visione Dei" on the
famous Van Eyck altarpiece. This DVD was created by Marc de Mey and
other members of the Ghent University, Faculty of Letters who
collaborated with the department of Philosophy and Applied Sciences. The
DVD will be distributed by Mercatorfonds Publishers.

During a conference in Antwerp (HNA Historians of Netherlandish Art,
March 2002) I have seen a preview and I can assure you that the imagery
of a virtual camera floating through church space towards the altarpiece
is just astounding. The DVD starts with a virtual camera floating
through the Gothic artchitecture of the cathedral space, tumbling
head-over at the last moment and zooming on the Van Eyck painting,
focusing on a painted text scroll which can only be properly read upside
down.
Another section of the DVD is about the gradual build-up of the painting
by Jan van Eyck, starting with the one central panel, then a tryptych,
adding more parts until in the end the full polyptich setup was reached
as it exists today.
Another section of the DVD is on theology, discussing whether the
central figure is God the Father or Jesus Christ.
The DVD which was made for the interested lay person is fascinating in
many respects and rich enough in visual quality and contents to be of
value to the historian and art historian.

The presentation ceremony in the Cathedral is not open to the general
public.


As an independent art historian I am especially interested in this DVD
project as my professional field is Virtual Reality applied to art
history.  During the past years I have collaborated with departments of
the Delft Polytechnic, creating a 'Flight over Delft in 1660' and a
section called 'Walking with Vermeer' in which one may actually walk
through a series of historic townscape drawings and prints which have
been pulled into a 3D movie. These movies are available for free on my
Internet site
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalden


Yours,

Kees Kaldenbach
art historian
www.johannesvermeer.org

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