Concentration doesn’t come easier at St. Bavo’s Cathedral, in Ghent’s historical center, where the interior panels of the altarpiece are on display. They’re shown in a cramped little room, and although the church forbids both speaking and photography inside, that doesn’t help when you hear the roar of dozens of hand-held audio guides. (The cathedral is opening a new interpretation center this autumn, and I have one request: please, audio guides with in-ear headphones.)

Under these conditions, and with Van Eyck’s panels more than five feet away behind thick glass, I struggled to form a definitive opinion on their restoration — especially regarding the face of the Lamb of God, which last month launched a thousand memes more worthy of ruminants than children of Adam. The altarpiece does appear brighter and crisper than it did on my last visit to Ghent. Mary glistens, the angels trill. But it’s hard to appreciate the altarpiece, here, as anything but a bucket-list jewel. It made me think, for better and worse, of my iPhone’s screen, which emits light through each pixel.

If Van Eyck’s innovations are hard to see in the cathedral, all the more reason to grab the chance to see the outer panels at the MSK. Consider this, however: We see more images in a month than the worshipers of 15th-century Flanders saw in a lifetime. And even we, in our muddle of memes, feel something like the awe they must have experienced standing before these 600-year-old paintings, where human invention stretches toward the sacred.

Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution

Through April 30 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium; vaneyck2020.be.