Part 1

[Frontispiece: JAN ARNOLFINI AND JEANNE DE CHENANY. BY JAN VAN EYCK.]

Bell's Miniature Series of Painters

THE BROTHERS VAN EYCK

BY

P. G. KONODY

LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1907

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE TIMES OF THE BROTHERS VAN EYCK

HUBERT VAN EYCK

JAN VAN EYCK

THE INVENTION OF OIL-PAINTING

THE ART OF THE VAN EYCKS

COLLABORATION OF THE BROTHERS

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF WORKS, CATALOGUED ACCORDING TO LOCALITY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JAN ARNOLFINI AND JEANNE DE CHENANY (_National Gallery_) - - - _Frontispiece_ By Jan van Eyck.

THE ADORATION OF THE LAMB (_Cathedral of St. Bavo, Ghent_) By Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

THE ENTHRONEMENT OF THOMAS À BECKET (_Chatsworth_) By Jan van Eyck.

THE MAN WITH THE PINKS (_Berlin Museum_) By Jan van Eyck.

ST. BARBARA (_Antwerp Museum_) By Jan van Eyck.

THE JUST JUDGES, AND CHRIST'S WARRIORS (_Berlin Museum_) By Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

PORTRAIT OF TIMOTHY (_National Gallery_) By Jan van Eyck.

THE VAN DER PAELE ALTAR-PIECE (_Bruges Museum_) By Jan van Eyck.

{1}

THE TIMES OF THE BROTHERS VAN EYCK

The unusual activity which during the latter half of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries throbbed throughout the whole of the Netherlands forms one of the most interesting and surprising studies of national progress that history has furnished.

Geographically and politically, in her arts and in her industries, the country was affected by changes both radical and lasting. Some years before the period which embraces the life of the subjects of this biographical sketch, the German Ocean had invaded the northern territory of the Netherlands, and had disorganised a Parliament and divided a people. At the beginning of the thirteenth century over the whole of that low-lying and marshy tract between Kampen on the east and Amsterdam to westward, and southward to within sight of Nieukerk, the North Sea swept in upon the {2} inland lake of Flevo, swallowing thousands of hamlets, villages, and towns suddenly and completely. Until this time there had been but one Friesland, including Holland, divided only by the Vlie, a small stream hardly to be counted a river. Now East Friesland and West Friesland were divided by this vast stretch of water, the stormy and dangerous Zuyderzee, and it became impossible for Holland to send her representatives to the general assemblies at Aurich. West Friesland was absorbed by Holland, and East Friesland became a self-governing State, and remained such until the power of Charles V. was established. Thus politically as well as geographically was the country disrupted by the forces of Nature.

To trace the rise of the Netherlands as a European Power from a more remote period than the beginning of the fourteenth century would be beyond the range of this sketch; but for the purpose of showing the general advance of the country's interests a brief summary of the events culminating in the wellnigh despotic power of the House of Burgundy may refresh the reader's mind, as they affect the constitution of the nation, and may serve to point cause {3} and effect in the increasing prosperity of the country and in the resulting advance of art; for just as the political influence of the Burgundian Princes spread from their hereditary provinces first over Flanders and Brabant--over that part of the Netherlands which is now known as Belgium--and finally over the Dutch provinces, so the current of art swept from Burgundy to Flanders and thence to Holland.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century Holland was ruled by the House of Avennes, Counts of Hainault. Holland having previous to the accession of the Avennes annexed Zeeland, the three provinces may almost be regarded as the nucleus of the Dutch power. William IV., last of the Hainault line, died childless in 1355. His death was the signal for the outbreak of a long and spasmodic series of civil disturbances between the nobles and the cities and municipalities. These parties, known by the titles of the Hooks and the Kabblejaus (codfish), continued their intermittent strife throughout the succeeding 150 years. In the meantime William IV. was succeeded by William of Bavaria. Then followed his brother Albert, who was in turn succeeded by his son William VI. At the death of the latter {4} the reins of government were left in the uncertain hands of his young daughter, Jacqueline, a girl of seventeen. Jacqueline, it appears, led anything but a happy life. Her cousin, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, for thirteen years plundered and robbed her, and at her death in 1437 he had already dispossessed her of her lands and reduced her from the position of Sovereign to that of Lady Forester in her own provinces, whilst for himself he had laid the foundation of that Greater Netherlands which by conquest and annexation he proceeded to extend.

Having acquired the principal Netherlands and inherited the two Burgundies and the counties of Flanders and Artois, he had purchased the county of Namur, usurped the duchy of Brabant, and annexed the barony of Mechlin. A few years later he acquired also the duchy of Luxembourg.

Philip was now the ruler of what may be termed a kingdom of several peoples, who, though in a measure distinct, were of similar temperament and character, and who may be counted now as one. Never has conqueror been in a happier position when faced with the problem of welding together his conquests. {5} For Philip ruled those whose interests were similar, and whose characteristics were almost identical--a people born of the sea, strong and fearless, who had lived by strife with their fellows and by strife with Nature; a people born to toil and to hardship, whose battle for life had been with Nature herself--a race which for centuries had fought with swamp and water year in, year out, conquering a mile of morass or patch of barren furze, striving for the soil to live upon, working not for gold, but for life. This nation had now become a power of natural strength and of dominating physique, virile and live and expansive, whose sons, with brooms at their mastheads, should later sweep the seas from whose destructive embrace she had succeeded in wresting herself.

Under the rule of the Burgundian the prosperity of the Netherlands rapidly increased. In Holland and in Flanders, in Brabant and in the other leading provinces, industry and wealth, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, were ever augmenting. While Philip, in the zenith of his power, flushed with the passion and success of territorial acquisition, busied himself with the glorification of his sovereignty by founding at Bruges, amid a {6} scene of indescribable splendour, the Order of the Golden Fleece, "to the honour of God, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the holy Andrew," a principle more potent than even territorial power was evolving. For in Haarlem an undistinguished sexton wrestled with the intricacies of the printing-press. Lorenz Coster was printing his book of the Dutch language. The question as to the time and place of the invention of printing will probably never be settled to the satisfaction of Holland and Germany; but the men of Haarlem still claim upon very sound and substantial evidence that between 1423 and 1440 their citizen was the first to employ movable type, which is generally considered the invention of printing proper, as distinguished from the more ancient block-printing.

Whatever objection may be legitimately raised to the application of the title "The Good" to a ruler of Philip's character, this Burgundian had many of the qualities that go to the making of a successful monarch. His military talents were considerable; his political methods, though despotic, were practicable. Though he taxed the wealth of his country, he protected and encouraged the commerce and {7} manufactures of Holland and Flanders, their arts and crafts, science and literature. He founded at Bruges the famous Burgundian Library. He remodelled, and to some extent endowed, the University of Louvain. His munificence and princely generosity attracted to his Court at Bruges men of letters like Oliver de la Marche and Philippe de Commines, and famous painters like Jan van Eyck, and perhaps, though we lack documentary evidence, his elder brother Hubert, who gave, perhaps, more to the art of painting than even did Coster to the art of printing, or Philip himself to the sciences of statesmanship and war.

The most salient points in the life and work of these two brothers, who close the period of stiff Gothic medievalism and stand on the threshold of modern art, and whose improvements in the technical methods of their art opened up to their successors unthought-of possibilities, are shrouded in deep mystery, and the most recent research to which a number of thoroughly competent scientific experts have devoted themselves, whilst producing many ingenious theories and deductions, has, in a certain sense, added to the confusion by throwing doubt upon the authenticity of documents {8} and inscriptions which had formerly passed undisputed, and formed the basis of the unstable edifice that had been erected around the vague fame of the brothers Van Eyck. This uncertainty begins with the parentage and the place and date of birth of the two masters, and extends to the two supreme achievements to which they owe their fame--the reputed invention of oil-painting, which was variously ascribed to Hubert and Jan, then denied to both of them, and, finally, given back to Hubert in the form of an improvement on the methods of oil-painting practised during the period; and the much-quoted inscription on the famous Ghent altar-piece, _The Adoration of the Lamb_, which has been, and must remain, the starting-point for all research in this matter, even though the late Henri Bouchot, Keeper of the Print Cabinet of the Bibliothèque Nationale, suggests that this inscription may have been added when the picture was restored in the middle of the sixteenth century. At every turn we are faced by similar doubts and contradictions, especially in the case of Hubert, about whose life and doings we have so little documentary evidence that we have to fall back entirely upon conjecture and deduction.

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HUBERT VAN EYCK

If Joes van Eyck and Margaret van den Huntfanghe, who are entered in the register of the Ghent Guild of Painters for 1391, are the parents of the two masters who have made the name of Van Eyck immortal, we should have proof of their descent from artistic stock, which may be taken for granted in view of the fact that not only Hubert and Jan, but also a third brother, Lambert, and a sister, Margaret, devoted themselves to the art of painting, though Lambert--if he really be responsible for the pictures which stand to his credit--was a man of but mediocre talent; whilst we have no evidence of the activity of Margaret, who was most probably a miniaturist or illuminator.

It is believed that Hubert (or Huybrecht) van Eyck was born at Maaseyck, or perhaps at the village of Eyck near that town, between 1366 and 1370, and that he received his artistic training either at Cologne or at Maastricht; but the first definite mention we have of him {10} is in Ghent, where he eventually settled, and where, in 1424, the archives record that he was paid certain sums for drawings. Though Mr. Weale and other authorities hold the view that, before settling in Ghent, Hubert must have travelled to the South of Europe, there is absolutely no evidence to this effect. The paintings of the two brothers certainly contain details which reveal intimate acquaintance with Southern vegetation and mountain formation; but, as will be seen later, Mr. Alfred Marks has fairly well established the fact that the younger brother, Jan, must be held responsible for such paintings or portions of paintings as prove the knowledge of Nature in the South of Europe.

The name of Hubert van Eyck occurs in two other documents, quoted by Edmond de Busscher in his "Recherches sur les Peintres Gantois," but the authenticity of both these entries has lately been questioned. The first of them, which is proved to be a forgery, records the admission of Hubert and of his sister, Margaret, into the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Rays at Ghent in 1419; the other the affiliation of Hubert and Jan, in 1421, to the Corporation of Painters and Sculptors of Ghent. {11} According to the wording of the latter entry, it may be gathered that the election of the two masters was so enthusiastic and unanimous that the Corporation dispensed with the conditions and formalities usual on the admission of free masters to the guild. This unusual affiliation, of which the _Livre du Métier Gantois_ does not reveal another example, is there quoted as a homage rendered to the memory of Michelle de France, Countess of Flanders, and first wife of Philip the Good, who appears to have held the two brothers in special favour. The Corporation, in thus granting to them the professional franchise of Ghent, at the same time expressed their esteem for their talent, and the pious remembrance in which they held the memory of their Queen Consort.

Of Hubert's early work we have absolutely no record, and no picture is known which bears his signature. Indeed, the only paintings which can with absolute certainty be assigned to him are the great Ghent altar-piece, painted for Jodoc Vydt, on which he was engaged at the time of his death, and which was finished six years later by his brother Jan; and the shutter of a triptych at the Royal Gallery at {12} Copenhagen, which represents Robert Poortier, of Ghent, protected by St. Anthony, with the Angel Gabriel on the reverse. Robert Poortier's will, made in 1426, a few months before Hubert's death, mentions this triptych as being in the master's workshop. On the internal evidence of these two authentic works attempts have been made to trace Hubert's hand in several other pictures, though their number is so far restricted to only seven. It has been suggested that Hubert may in the earlier years of his career have devoted himself to miniature painting; and the wonderful Turin miniatures published by M. Paul Durrieu in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (January and February, 1903), which date from the same period, show such marked kinship with Hubert's conception and style that they may well be the work of his own hand. The scarcity of his paintings would thus be accounted for if, anterior to the experiments which led to the invention of the new method of oil-painting about 1410, Hubert had exercised his rare gifts in a different field.

From the wording of his epitaph, which has been handed down to us, it is made clear that Hubert died on September 18, 1426. As translated by Sir Charles Eastlake, in his "Materials {13} for a History of Oil-Painting," this epitaph runs as follows: "Take warning from me, ye who walk over me. I was as you are, but am now buried dead beneath you. Thus it appears that neither art nor medicine availed me. Art, honour, wisdom, power, affluence, are not spared when death comes. I was called Hubert van Eyck; I am now food for worms. Formerly known and highly honoured in painting, this was all shortly after turned to nothing. It was in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and twenty-six, on the eighteenth day of September, that I rendered up my soul to God, in sufferings. Pray God for me, ye who love art, that I may attain to His sight. Flee sin, turn to the best, for you must follow me at last." Hubert was buried in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. Bavo at Ghent. When, owing to some structural alterations to the church, this crypt was destroyed, the tombs, including Hubert's, were removed and the bones dispersed. Only Hubert's right arm was placed in an iron case and exhibited as a relic.

{14}

JAN VAN EYCK

The date of Jan van Eyck's birth is as uncertain as that of his brother's. Tradition has it that the two brothers are portrayed on the panel of the great Ghent altar-piece, which represents _The Just Judges_. These portraits suggest a difference of about twenty years between the two, so that the birth of Jan would have to be placed somewhere between 1386 and 1390. Hubert being thus about twenty years his senior, it is natural to suppose that Jan received from him his early education in matters of art. Guicciardini, van Mander, and other early writers, affirm that the two brothers worked in collaboration, and there is no reason to doubt that Jan in his early years assisted his brother in many or most of his paintings--perhaps even in the Ghent altar-piece, which he finished after the elder brother's death. It is certainly a curious fact that, with a single exception--the completely over-painted _Enthronement of St. Thomas of Canterbury_ at {15} Chatsworth--all the signed pictures by Jan bear dates posterior to the death of Hubert. And it is equally significant that the first of this series of ten signed pictures is dated 1432, the year of the completion of the Ghent altar-piece, which was the last work in which both brothers had a share.

The chief events in the life of Jan van Eyck can be gathered fairly accurately from contemporary records and documents. In 1422 Jan entered the service of John of Bavaria, at that time Duke of Luxembourg, whose household accounts show the payment of a weekly wage to the artist, from October 25, 1422, till September, 1424, for the decoration of the palace at the Hague. M. Bouchot mentioned an earlier record of Jan's doings, when he believed he discovered him at Cambrai decorating a Paschal candle. But the eminent French critic probably confused Jan van Eyck with one Jan de Yeke, whose name occurs in the accounts of the Cathedral of Cambrai as that of a man employed in 1422 and many following years in painting crosses, clocks, and candles on the outer wall of the cathedral to deter the passers-by from committing nuisances!

In the spring of 1425 Jan van Eyck was {16} appointed _varlet de chambre_ to Philip the Good, and though this princely patron availed himself of the master's services as a painter, it would appear from a letter signed by Philip, and bearing the date March 12, 1434, that the appointment of Jan to the position of Court painter to the Burgundian Prince only took place in that year (1434). Still, as _varlet de chambre_ Jan van Eyck must have enjoyed a position of considerable trust and emolument at the hands of his august master, for on more than one occasion we find him entrusted with important missions, some of which took him to the Portuguese Court. The first of these excursions took place when he had resided for three months at Bruges. On his return he went at Philip's order to live at Lille, where he remained until 1428. His missions were generally of a secret nature, but on one of these occasions, in the year 1428, we find Jan again absent in Portugal, returning to the Court of Philip in the suite of Isabella of Portugal, who was destined to become the royal consort. Gachard, in the _Collection de Documents Inédits concevnant l'Histoire de Belgique_, gives a detailed account of the artist's movements from his departure from Écluse on October 19, 1428, to his {17} return in January, 1430. According to these dates, which are gathered from contemporary documents, the ambassadors with the Infanta set out from Lisbon on October 8, 1429. The apparent discrepancy between these dates and that of January 10, 1429, which, at the Golden Fleece Exhibition at Bruges in 1907, was given as the date of the foundation of this Order, and consequently of the nuptials of Philip and Isabella and of Jan's return to Bruges, is easily accounted for if we remember that the beginning of the year was then reckoned from March 1, so that January, 1430, of our own reckoning would tally with January, 1429, of the contemporary calendar.

Jan's first duty on arrival at the Portuguese Court was to paint the portrait of the Princess. It appears that he was at work upon this picture for a month. Several portraits of Isabella are still extant painted in the manner of the van Eycks, and pointing to the same origin, but none has so far been discovered to possess qualities or details which would justify its identification as Jan's original panel. Evidently Jan's portrait was pleasing to the eye of the Lowland monarch, for upon Philip expressing his satisfaction with the personal appearance {18} of Isabella, the ambassadors and the bride immediately embarked on the homeward journey. Soon after his return--namely, in 1431--Jan bought a house in Bruges, where he married and continued to work, after the completion of the Ghent altar-piece in the following year, until his death, which took place about the end of June, 1441. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Donatian at Bruges, but his body was subsequently removed to a vault near the font of that church.

Mr. Weale, while arranging the archives of St. Donatian at Bruges, discovered in the account of the fabric of the church for the year beginning June 25, 1440, and ending June 24, 1441, entries of sums received for the grave of Jan van Eyck and for the ringing of the funeral bell, and in the obituary of the church his anniversary set down as celebrated on July 9. In an article in the _Burlington Magazine_ (1904) Mr. Weale makes the following comment: "Hence it appears certain that he died on July 9, 1440. This date, now generally accepted, is, however, incorrect. Two entries in the account of Walter Poulain, Receiver-General of Flanders for the year ending December 31, 1441, prove that John's death {19} took place in 1441, but leave the exact day uncertain." Three entries show that Jan died about the end of June, and that on July 22 a grant of 360 livres--the equivalent of her husband's salary for half a year--was made to Jan's widow by the Duke Philip in recognition of the services rendered by her deceased husband. It also shows that Jan's wife was named Margaret, and that he left at least two children--one, the Duke's godchild, Philip or Philippina, born in June, 1434; the other, Lyennie, who became a nun at Maaseyck in 1449, which lends colour to the theory that Maaseyck was her father's birthplace.

His epitaph, as translated by Sir Charles Eastlake, runs: "Here lies Joannes, who was celebrated for his surpassing skill, and whose felicity in painting excited wonder. He painted breathing forms, and the earth's surface, covered with flowery vegetation, completing each work to the life. Hence Phidias and Apelles must give place to him, and Polycletus be considered his inferior in art. Call, therefore, the Fates most cruel, who have snatched from us such a man. Yet cease to weep, for destiny is immutable; pray only now to God that he may live in heaven."

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THE INVENTION OF OIL-PAINTING