PORTRAIT OF MARGARET VAN EYCK
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Jan van EyckJan van Eyck ( van EYEK; Dutch: [ˈjɑɱ vɑn ˈɛik]; c. before 1390 – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. According to Vasari and other art historians including Ernst Gombrich, he invented oil painting, though most now regard that claim as an oversimplification. The surviving records indicate that he was born around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name), Limburg, which is located 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. After John's death in 1425, he was later 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 undertook a number of diplomatic visits abroad, including to Lisbon in 1428 to explore 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 subject matter, including altarpieces, single-panel religious figures and commissioned portraits. His work includes single panels, diptychs, triptychs, and polyptych panels. He was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and had artistic freedom so that he could paint "whenever he pleased." Van Eyck's work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, 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. He was highly influential, and his techniques and style were adopted and refined by the Early Netherlandish painters.
Arnolfini PortraitThe Arnolfini Portrait (or The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, or other titles) is an oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 1434 and now in the National Gallery, London. It is a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art, because of its beauty, complex iconography, geometric orthogonal perspective, and expansion of the picture space with the use of a mirror. According to Ernst Gombrich "in its own way it was as new and revolutionary as Donatello's or Masaccio's work in Italy. A simple corner of the real world had suddenly been fixed on to a panel as if by magic... For the first time in history the artist became the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term". The portrait has been considered by Erwin Panofsky and some other art historians as a unique form of marriage contract, recorded as a painting. Signed and dated by van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842. Van Eyck used the technique of applying several layers of thin translucent glazes to create a painting with an intensity of both tone and colour. The glowing colours also help to highlight the realism, and to show the material wealth and opulence of Arnolfini's world. Van Eyck took advantage of the longer drying time of oil paint, compared to tempera, to blend colours by painting wet-in-wet to achieve subtle variations in light and shade to heighten the illusion of three-dimensional forms. The wet-in-wet (wet-on-wet), technique, also known as alla prima, was highly utilized by Renaissance painters including Jan van Eyck. The medium of oil paint also permitted van Eyck to capture surface appearance and distinguish textures precisely. He also rendered the effects of both direct and diffuse light by showing the light from the window on the left reflected by various surfaces. It has been suggested that he used a magnifying glass in order to paint the minute details such as the individual highlights on each of the amber beads hanging beside the mirror. The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for "its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it". Whatever meaning is given to the scene and its details, and there has been much debate on this, according to Craig Harbison the painting "is the only fifteenth-century Northern panel to survive in which the artist's contemporaries are shown engaged in some sort of action in a contemporary interior. It is indeed tempting to call this the first genre painting – a painting of everyday life – of modern times".
Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) (previously Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban) is the title given to a small oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, completed in 1433 in Bruges. The inscription at the top of the frame, which is original, reads the first known instnce of his motto Als Ich Can (intended as the pun "as I/Eyck can", perhaps implying "as only I, van Eyck, can") was a common autograph for van Eyck but here is the first known usage and unusually is large and prominent. This and the sitter's unusually direct and confrontational gaze have been taken as an indication that the work is a self-portrait. Van Eyck's portrait of his wife in Bruges was probably a pendant to this painting, although her portrait is dated 1439 and larger. It has been proposed that van Eyck created the portrait to store in his workshop so that he could use it to display his abilities (and social status, given the fine clothes evident in the portrait) to potential clients. However, his reputation was such in 1433 that he was already highly sought after for commissioned work. The panel has been in the National Gallery, London, since 1851, and is hung alongside van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait. The panel has been in England since its acquisition by Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel, probably during his exile in Antwerp from 1642 to 1644.
Portrait of a Lady (van der Weyden)Portrait of a Lady (or Portrait of a Woman) is a small oil-on-oak panel painting executed around 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The composition is built from the geometric shapes that form the lines of the woman's veil, neckline, face, and arms, and by the fall of the light that illuminates her face and headdress. The vivid contrasts of darkness and light enhance the almost unnatural beauty and Gothic elegance of the model. Van der Weyden was preoccupied by commissioned portraiture towards the end of his life and was highly regarded by later generations of painters for his penetrating evocations of character. In this work, the woman's humility and reserved demeanour are conveyed through her fragile physique, lowered eyes and tightly grasped fingers. She is slender and depicted according to the Gothic ideal of elongated features, indicated by her narrow shoulders, tightly pinned hair, high forehead and the elaborate frame set by the headdress. It is the only known portrait of a woman accepted as an autograph work by van der Weyden, yet the sitter's name is not recorded and he did not title the work. Although van der Weyden did not adhere to the conventions of idealisation, he generally sought to flatter his sitters. He depicted his models in highly fashionable clothing, often with rounded—almost sculpted—facial features, some of which deviated from natural representation. He adapted his own aesthetic, and his portraits of women often bear a striking resemblance to each other. The painting has been in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. since its donation in 1937, and is no. 34 in the de Vos catalogue raisonné of the artist. It has been described as "famous among all portraits of women of all schools".
Portrait of Margaret van EyckPortrait of Margaret van Eyck (or Margaret, the Artist's Wife) is a 1439 oil on wood painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It is one of the latest of his surviving paintings, and one of the earliest European artworks to depict a painter's spouse. The painting was made when she was around 34, and was hung until the early 18th century in the Bruges Chapel of the Guild of Painters. It is today in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium. Art historians believe it was once a pendant (diptych) panel for Jan's likely self-portrait in the National Gallery, London. The panel was in poor condition with cracks on the painted surface coupled with accumulated dirt causing discolour, until is was cleaned and restored in 1998 during it's loan to the National Gallery, when it also received extensive technical examination.
Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao ArnolfiniPortrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini (or Portrait of a Man in a Red Chaperon) is a small c. 1438 portrait by Jan van Eyck believed to be the same person as in the famous 1434 Arnolfini Portrait due to the similarities of facial features. Thus, the work is van Eyck's second portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, a wealthy merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany in central Italy, who spent most of his life in Flanders. The painting was long thought a self-portrait; in colourisation, costume and tone, it is very similar to the signed and dated Portrait of a Man in a Red Chaperon in London, which is generally accepted as a self-portrait. It was only later that the current work was associated with Arnolfini and the double marriage painting. Today, the painting is held by the Berlin Gemäldegalerie (State Museum).
List of works by Jan van EyckThis is a complete list of works by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck. He was not a prolific artist; only twenty paintings are attributed to him, although a great many others are believed to be destroyed or lost. Van Eyck was the first major European artist to utilize oil painting. Though the use of oil paint preceded Van Eyck by many centuries, his virtuosic handling and manipulation of oil paint, use of multiple half-transparent layers of paint, glazes, wet-on-wet and other techniques was such that Giorgio Vasari started the myth that Van Eyck had invented oil painting About twenty surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him, as well as the Ghent Altarpiece (co-attributed to his brother Hubert) and some of the illuminated miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours. All panels are dated between 1432 and 1439. Ten works are dated and signed with a variation of his motto ALS ICH KAN ("As I can").
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