The painted ecclesiastical spaces appearing in Hugo van der Goes’ Trinity Altarpiece (1478-79), have been understood to loosely represent what is known of this triptych’s setting - the now largely lost Trinity College Kirk, built in Edinburgh from 1460 for Queen Dowager Mary of Guelders. This paper will consider the inconsistencies in composition, structure, and lighting as a vehicle for expressing the sacred rather than earthly character of the painted space, in the context of the experimentations with perspective undertaken by van der Goes and other Netherlandish painters of the time. The interactive, tactile, three-dimensional character of triptychs – to be displayed opened or closed, ritually revealed, and ceremonially translated – will be investigated to establish the relationship of the two painted spaces appearing on the inner and outer doors of the Trinity Altarpiece with each other, and with their physical surroundings.

This paper also discusses whether, inspired by van der Goes’ investigations of representation of sacred spaces on a movable and moving object, a modern digital reconstruction of the lost spaces of the Trinity Kirk, could represent an effective vehicle for making the invisible, the holy, and the symbolic present in the visitor’s bodily experience.

• https://www.rsa.org/page/RSAChicago2024
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