Jan van Eyck

Lorne Campbell, 1998

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (London: National Gallery Publications and Yale University Press, 1998).

Jan van Eyck appears to have come from Maaseik; the coats of arms on his tombstone indicated that he was of the gentry class. Two of his brothers, Hubert (died 1426) and Lambert (documented between 1431 and 1442), were also painters. The order in which they were born has not been established and it is not known where, when or from whom they received their education. If NG 222, dated 1433, is indeed Jan’s self portrait, he may have been born in about 1380. His use of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets indicates something of the range of his accomplishments. By 1422 he was working for John of Bavaria, ruler of Holland, who had previously been bishop‐elect of Liège and therefore overlord of Maaseik and who died in 1425. Jan immediately entered the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who made him his varlet de chambre, treated him with the greatest consideration and paid him handsomely, so that he could have him paint for him ‘whenever he pleased’. In 1434 Jan’s salary was increased by 720 per cent, to 360 livres de 40 gros, and converted into a life pension. On Philip’s behalf, Jan went on a pilgrimage, in 1426, and on several journeys to distant places. Between 1425 and 1428 he was based in Lille; in 1428–9 he went to Portugal and there painted Philip’s future wife Isabella of Portugal; by 1431 he was established in Bruges and he died there in June 1441.

Before 6 May 1432, Jan had completed the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Lamb (Ghent, Cathedral of St Bavo), which had been left unfinished by his brother Hubert. Nine pictures bear Jan’s signature: the ‘Léal Souvenir’, dated 1432 (NG 290); the possible self portrait of 1433 (NG 222); the portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and his wife, dated 1434 (NG 186); the portrait of Jan de Leeuw, dated 1436 (Vienna); the Virgin and Child with Saints Donatian and George and Canon van der Paele, dated 1436 (Bruges); the small triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor, dated 1437 (Dresden); the Saint Barbara, also dated 1437 (Antwerp), which is a brush drawing and may be an unfinished painting; the Virgin of the Fountain, dated 1439 (Antwerp); and the portrait of his wife Margaret, dated 1439 (Bruges). Certain surviving pictures were probably signed on the original frames, now lost; other signed paintings, and one or two pictures mentioned as Jan’s in early sources, are known only from copies. Several paintings and one portrait drawing (Dresden) are unanimously attributed to Jan but their dates have not been securely established. Nothing certain is known about the work which he produced before 1432.

Jan painted secular subjects as well as religious pictures and portraits. He worked for the court, for the local clergy, for fellow professionals such as the goldsmith Jan de Leeuw, for the foreign communities established in Bruges and for foreigners visiting the Low Countries. He enjoyed a very high reputation – the Italian humanist Fazio, writing in 1456, called him ‘the principal painter of our century’ – and his work was avidly collected.

In 1422 Jan was working with one assistant; in 1424 he had two assistants; in 1432 and 1433 he was employing unspecified numbers of assistants, perhaps as many as five. He evidently ran a busy workshop, though his assistants do not appear to have made very significant contributions to pictures such as the portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and his wife. Art historians have failed to reach agreement over many questions of attribution. Hubert and Lambert van Eyck remain rather obscure figures and the followers of Jan – outstanding among them the artist known as ‘Hand G’ of the Turin–Milan Hours – deserve more searching investigation.

General References

Weale 1908, pp. xxvii–xlix; Dhanens 1980, pp. 12–60; Paviot 1990.