_Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). _See_ 186.
_See also_ (p. xxi)
One of Van Eyck's obviously truthful portraits, so highly finished that
the single hairs on the shaven chin are given. On the upper part of the
frame is the inscription, "Als ich kan"--as I can, the first words of
an old Flemish proverb, "As I can, but not as I will,"--an inscription
beautifully illustrative of a great man's modesty; accurately true
also as a piece of criticism. No pictures are more finished than Van
Eyck's, yet they are only "as he can," not as he would. "Let all the
ingenuity and all the art of the human race he brought to bear upon the
attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what
is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can
finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the
infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this
respect" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt iv. ch. ix. § 5).