_Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440).
The Van Eycks--Hubert, the elder brother, and Jan--were natives
of Maesyck (Eyck-sur-Meuse), and are famous as being the
artists to whose ingenuity the first invention of the art of
painting in oils was for a long time ascribed. The probability
is that although the practice of mixing oil with colours was
employed for decorative purposes in Germany and elsewhere long
before their time, they were the first to so improve it as to
make it fully serviceable for figure-painting.[105] The art of
oil painting reached higher perfection in many ways after their
time; but there is no picture in the Gallery which shows better
than this, one great capacity of oil painting--its combination,
namely, of "imperishable firmness with exquisite delicacy"
(_On the Old Road_, i. 141). The place of the Van Eycks in
the development of early Flemish art has been described in
the introduction to that School, but the suddenness and
completeness of their mastery remains among the wonders of
painting. "The first Italian Renaissance," says Fromentin,
"has nothing comparable to this. And in the particular order
of sentiments they expressed and of the subjects they chose,
one must admit that neither any Lombard School, nor Tuscan, nor
Venetian, produced anything that resembles the first outburst
of the School of Bruges." The two brothers were granted the
freedom of the profession by the Corporation of Painters
of Ghent in 1421. In that year Jan left Hubert and took an
appointment as painter to Count John of Bavaria at the Hague.
In 1424 he returned to Bruges as painter to Philip, Duke of
Burgundy, in whose service he remained to the end of his life.
Like Rubens, the painter Jan van Eyck "amused himself with
being ambassador." "He was frequently employed on missions of
trust; and following the fortunes of a chief who was always in
the saddle, he appears for a time to have been in ceaseless
motion, receiving extra pay for secret services at Leyden,
drawing his salary at Bruges, yet settled in a fixed abode at
Lille. In 1428 he joined the embassy sent by Philip the Good to
Lisbon to beg the hand of Isabella of Portugal. His portrait of
the bride fixed the Duke's choice. After his return he settled
finally at Bruges, where he married, and his wife bore him
a daughter, known in after years as a nun in the convent of
Maesyck. At the christening of this child the Duke was sponsor;
and this was but one of the many distinctions by which Philip
the Good rewarded his painter's merits" (Crowe). But never was
there an artist less puffed up. "Jan van Eyck was here." "As
I can, not as I would." Such signatures are the sign-marks of
modesty. In 1426 his brother Hubert died, leaving the great
altar-piece--the Adoration of the Lamb--for Jan to finish.
This masterpiece of the Van Eycks was in 1432 set up in the
Chapel of St. Bavon at Ghent, where the central portions still
remain--the other original panels being now at Brussels and
Berlin. The portraits by Jan in our Gallery belong to the next
three years. There are no finer specimens of his marvellous
precision and delicacy in this branch of the art.
This wonderful picture of a Flemish interior--dated 1434--is as spruce
and clean now (for the small twig broom did its work so well that the
goodman and his wife were not afraid to walk on the polished floor
without their shoes), as it was when first painted five hundred years
ago. This is the more interesting from the eventful history the picture
has had. At one time we hear of a barber-surgeon at Bruges presenting
it to the Queen-regent of the Netherlands, who valued it so highly
that she pensioned him in return for the gift. At another it must have
passed again into humbler hands, for General Hay found it in the room
to which he was taken in 1815 at Brussels to recover from wounds at
the battle of Waterloo. He purchased the picture after his recovery,
and sold it to the British Government in 1842. "It is," says Sir
Edward Poynter, "one of the most precious possessions in the national
collection, and, in respect of its marvellous finish, combined with
the most astounding truth of imitation and effect, perhaps the most
remarkable picture in the world."
For the delicacy of workmanship note especially the mirror, in which
are reflected not only the objects in the room, but others beyond what
appears in the picture, for a door and two additional figures may be
distinguished. In the frame of the mirror, too, are ten diminutive
pictures of the ten "moments" in the Passion of Christ "as material
for the lady's meditation while doing her hair." Notice also the
brass-work of the chandelier. "There are many little objects about,
such as an orange on the window-sill, placed there to catch the light.
Through the window you can see a cherry-tree, with sunshine on the
ripe fruit. In the treatment of these and similar details Jan van
Eyck shows a liking for dots and spots of light" (Conway). Above the
chandelier, elaborately wrought, is the painter's signature. This
signature (in Latin), "Jan van Eyck was here," exactly expresses the
modesty and veracity which were the keynote of his art. The artist only
professed to come, to see, and to record what he saw. Arnolfini was the
representative at Bruges of a Lucca firm of merchants, and Van Eyck
gives us a picture of the quiet, dry, business folk exactly as he found
them.