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Hall of Renaissance Masters
Jan van Eyck
Early Netherlandish painter; Ghent Altarpiece
- c. 1390 – 1441
- Renaissance Masters · 7 of 10
Hall of Renaissance Masters
Early Netherlandish painter; Ghent Altarpiece
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Jan van Eyck ( van EYEK; Dutch: [ˈjɑɱ vɑn ˈɛik]; c. before 1390 – 9 July 1441) was an early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as early Netherlandish painting, and one of the supreme figures of the Early Northern Renaissance. Such was his legacy, that he has been called "the inventor of oil-painting" by Vasari, Ernst Gombrich, and others, although this claim is now considered an oversimplification.
Surviving records date his birth at around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name) by the Limburg in present-day Belgium. He took employment in The Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and was employed as painter and valet de chambre to John III the Pitiless, ruler of the counties of Holland and Hainaut. Some time after John's death in 1425, he was appointed as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and worked in Lille before moving to Bruges in 1429, where he lived until his death. He was highly regarded by Philip, and was dispatched on several diplomatic visits abroad, including one to Lisbon in 1428 to discuss the possibility of a marriage contract between the duke and Isabella of Portugal.
About 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him, as well as the Ghent Altarpiece and the illuminated miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours, all dated between 1432 and 1439. Ten are dated and signed with a variation of his motto ALS ICH KAN (As I (Eyck) can), a pun on his name, which he typically painted in Greek characters.
Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subjects. His works include altarpieces, painted panels—diptychs (dismantled), triptychs, and polyptychs—and commissioned portraits. He was well paid by Philip, who wanted the painter to have the financial security and artistic freedom to paint "whenever he pleased." Van Eyck's early work shows influence from the International Gothic style, which he soon eclipsed, in part through a greater emphasis on naturalism and realism. He achieved a new level of virtuosity through his developments in the use of oil paint. His style and techniques profoundly altered the development of the Early Netherlandish school.
Little is known of Jan van Eyck's early life and neither the date nor place of his birth is documented. The first extant record of his life comes from the court of John of Bavaria at The Hague where, between 1422 and 1424, payments were made to Meyster Jan den malre (Master Jan the painter) who was then a court painter with the rank of valet de chambre, with at first one and then two assistants. This suggests a date of birth of 1395 at the latest. However, some scholars have argued it was closer to 1380. He was identified in the late 16th century as having been born in Maaseik, a borough of the prince-bishopric of Liège. His daughter Lievine was in a nunnery in Maaseik after her father's death. The notes on his preparatory drawing for Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati are written in the Maasland dialect.
Van Eyck is known to have had two brothers, Hubert, who died in 1426 and with whom Jan probably served his apprenticeship and Lambert (active between 1431 and 1442), both also painters. The order of their births has not been established, though Alfred Acres states that Hubert was probably older than Jan. Van Eyck may also have had a sister, Margaret, also a painter, though her existence is uncertain and "could reflect a historical confusion with Jan's wife" Margaret. Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France, Barthélemy van Eyck, is presumed to be a relation. It is not known where Jan was educated, but he had knowledge of Latin and used the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in his inscriptions, indicating that he was schooled in the classics. This level of education was rare among painters, and would have made him more attractive to the cultivated Philip.
Van Eyck served as official to John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, Hainault and Zeeland. By this time he had assembled a small workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. After John's death in 1425 he moved to Bruges and came to the attention of Philip the Good c. 1425. His emergence as a collectable painter generally follows his appointment to Philip's court, and from this point his activity in the court is comparatively well documented. He served as court artist and diplomat, and was a senior member of the Tournai painters' guild. On 18 October 1427, the Feast of St. Luke, he travelled to Tournai to attend a banquet in his honour, also attended by Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden.
A court salary freed him from commissioned work, and allowed a large degree of artistic freedom. Over the following decade Van Eyck's reputation and technical ability grew, mostly from his innovative approaches towards the handling and manipulating of oil paint. Unlike most of his peers, his reputation never diminished and he remained well regarded over the following centuries. His revolutionary approach to oil was such that a myth, perpetuated by Giorgio Vasari, arose that he had invented oil painting.
His brother Hubert van Eyck collaborated on Jan's most famous work, the Ghent Altarpiece. Art historians believe it was begun c. 1420 by Hubert and completed in 1432 by Jan. Another brother, Lambert, is mentioned in Burgundian court documents and, probably in partnership with Jan's widow, may have overseen his brother's workshop after Jan's death.
Considered revolutionary within his lifetime, Van Eyck's designs and methods were heavily copied and reproduced. His motto, one of the first and still most distinctive signatures in art history, ALS ICH KAN ("AS I CAN"), a pun on his name, first appeared in 1433 on Portrait of a Man in a Turban, which can be seen as indicating his emerging self-confidence. The years between 1434 and 1436, when he produced the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Lucca Madonna and Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, are generally considered his high point.
Around 1432, he married Margaret who was 15 years younger. At about the same time he bought a house in Bruges; Margaret is unmentioned before he relocated, when the first of their two children was born in 1434. Very little is known of Margaret; even her maiden name is lost – contemporary records refer to her mainly as Damoiselle Marguerite. She may have been of aristocratic birth, though from the lower nobility, as evidenced from her clothes in the portrait, which are fashionable but not of the sumptuousness worn by the bride in the Arnolfini Portrait. Later, as the widow of a renowned painter Margaret was afforded a modest pension by the city of Bruges. At least some of this income was invested in lottery.
Van Eyck undertook a number of journeys on Philip the Duke of Burgundy's behalf between 1426 and 1429, described in records as "secret" commissions, for which he was paid multiples of his annual salary. Their precise nature is still unknown, but they seem to involve his acting as envoy of the court. In 1426 he departed for "certain distant lands", possibly to the Holy Land, a theory given weight by the topographical accuracy of Jerusalem in The Three Marys at the Tomb, a painting completed by members of his workshop c. 1440.
A better documented commission was the journey to Lisbon along with a group intended to prepare the ground for the Duke's wedding to Isabella of Portugal. Van Eyck was tasked with painting the bride, so that the Duke could visualise her before their marriage. Because Portugal was ridden with plague, their court was itinerant and the Dutch party met them at the out-of-the-way castle of Avis. Van Eyck spent nine months there, returning to the Netherlands with Isabella as a bride to be; the couple married on Christmas Day of 1429. It would have been a challenging task in that Van Eyck would have to be honest as to Isabella’s appearance, whilst also pleasing the model herself. Typically he showed his sitters as dignified, yet did not hide their imperfections. After his return, he was preoccupied with completing the Ghent Altarpiece, which was consecrated on 6 May 1432 at Saint Bavo Cathedral during an official ceremony for Philip. Records from 1437 say that he was held in high esteem by the upper ranks of Burgundian nobility and was employed in foreign commissions.
Jan van Eyck died on 9 July 1441, in Bruges. He was buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Donatian. As a mark of respect, Philip made a one-off payment to Jan's widow Margaret, to a value equal to the artist's annual salary. He left behind many unfinished works to be completed by his workshop journeymen. After his death, Lambert van Eyck ran the workshop, as Jan's reputation and stature steadily grew. Early in 1442 Lambert had the body exhumed and placed inside St. Donatian's Cathedral.
In 1449 he was mentioned by the Italian humanist and antiquarian Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli as a painter of note and ability, and was recorded by Bartolomeo Facio in 1456.
Jan van Eyck produced paintings for private clients in addition to his work at the court. Foremost among these is the Ghent Altarpiece painted for the merchant, financier and politician Jodocus Vijdts and his wife Elisabeth Borluut. Started sometime before 1426 and completed by 1432, the polyptych is seen as representing "the final conquest of reality in the North", differing from the great works of the Early Renaissance in Italy by virtue of its willingness to forgo classical idealisation in favor of the faithful observation of nature.
Even though it may be assumed – given the demand and fashion – that he produced a number of triptychs, only the Dresden altarpiece survives, although a number of extant portraits may be wings of dismantled polyptychs. Telltale signs are hinges on original frames, the sitter's orientation, and praying hands or the inclusion of iconographical elements in an otherwise seemingly secular portrait.
About 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him, all dated between 1432 and 1439. Ten, including the Ghent Altarpiece, are dated and signed with a variation of his motto, ALS ICH KAN. In 1998 Holland Cotter estimated that "only two dozen or so paintings...attributed...with varying degrees of confidence, along with some drawings and a few pages from...the Turin-Milan Hours." He described the "complex relationship and tension between art historians and holding museums in assigning authorship. Of the 40 or so works considered originals in the mid 80s, around ten are now vigorously contested by leading researchers as workshop."
Since 1901 Jan van Eyck has often been credited as the anonymous artist known as Hand G of the Turin-Milan Hours. If this is correct, the Turin illustrations are the only known works from his early period; according to Thomas Kren the earlier dates for Hand G precede any known panel painting in an Eyckian style, which "raise[s] provocative questions about the role that manuscript illumination may have played in the vaunted verisimilitude of Eyckian oil painting."
The evidence for attributing Van Eyck rests on part on the fact that although the figures are mostly of the International Gothic type, they reappear in some of his later work. In addition, there are coats of arms connected with the Wittelsbach family with whom he had connections in the Hague, while some of the figures in the miniatures echo the horsemen in the Ghent Altarpiece.
Most of the Turin-Milan Hours were destroyed by fire in 1904 and survive only in photographs and copies; only three pages at most attributed to Hand G now survive, those with large miniatures of the Birth of John the Baptist, the Finding of the True Cross and the Office of the Dead (or Requiem Mass), with the bas-de-page miniatures and initials of the first and last of these The Office of the Dead is often seen as recalling Jan's 1438–1440 Madonna in the Church. Four more were lost in 1904: all the elements of the pages with the miniatures called The Prayer on the Shore (or Duke William of Bavaria at the Seashore, the Sovereign's prayer etc.), and the night-scene of the Betrayal of Christ (which was already described by Durrieu as "worn" before the fire), the Coronation of the Virgin and its bas-de-page, and the large picture only of the seascape Voyage of St Julian & St Martha.
Except the 'Ghent Altarpiece,' Van Eyck's religious works feature the Virgin Mary as the central figure. She is typically seated, wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the hem of her dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon (Virgin of Tenderness). She is sometimes shown reading a Book of Hours. She usually wears red. In the 1432 Ghent Altarpiece Mary wears a crown adorned with flowers and stars. She is dressed as a bride, and reads from a girdle book draped with green cloth, perhaps an element borrowed from Robert Campin's Virgin Annunciate. The panel contains a number of motifs that later reappear in later works; she is already Queen of Heaven, wearing a crown adorned with flowers and stars. Van Eyck usually presents Mary as an apparition before a donor kneeling in prayer to the side. The idea of a saint appearing before a layperson was common in Northern donor portraits of the period. In Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele (1434–1436), the Canon seems to have just paused momentarily to reflect on a passage from his hand-held bible as the Virgin and Child with two saints appear before him, as if embodiments of his prayer.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Jan van Eyck”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.