In Van Eyck there is more structure, more muscle, more blood in the
veins; hence the impressive virility of his faces and the strong style
of his pictures. Altogether he is a portrait-painter of Holbein's
kin--exact, shrewd, and with a gift of penetration that is almost cruel.
He sees things with more perfect rightness than Memling, and also in a
bigger and some summary way. The sensations which the aspect of things
evokes in him are more powerful; his feeling for their colour is more
intense; his palette has a fullness, a richness, a distinctness, which
Memling's has not. His colour schemes are of more even power, better
held together, composed of values more cunningly found. His whites are
fatter, his purple richer, and the indigo blue--that fine blue as of old
Japanese enamel, which is peculiar to him--has more depth of dye, more
solidity of texture. The splendour and the costliness of the precious
things, of which the superb fashions of his time were so lavish,
appealed to him more strongly.
_Fromentin._