“Masterpieces in Colour” Series

Others in Preparation.

VAN EYCK

TO MY MOTHER

IN TOKEN OF REVERENCE AND LOVE

[vii]

CONTENTS

[ix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[11]

John.     Hubert.

I
THE ADVENT OF THE VAN EYCKS

THE advent of the Van Eycks is the most
important landmark in the history of
painting in northern Europe. With them we
open an entirely new chapter, for although the
value of oil in various inferior processes of the
art had been ascertained and availed of at an
earlier period, it was entirely due to their long[12]
and painstaking experiments that its use was
perfected as the vehicle of colouring matter
in picture-painting. Unfortunately, time and
its worst incidentals have obliterated the evidence
which would have enabled us to follow
the development of this new method, just as
they have robbed us of all the earlier work of
its original expounders, leaving us at the same
time much too inconsiderable remains for a
comprehensive survey of the school of which
they were the finished product. It is a disconcerting
experience to encounter primarily the
lifework of two such eminent painters at a
stage when they were already in the plenitude
of their powers, and an experience that must
always tax the ingenuity of the student and
critic of their art. Particularly is this the case
in respect of the elder brother, for the ascertained
facts of Hubert’s history are restricted to the
last two years of his life (1425-26), while of the
masterpieces he bequeathed to posterity only
one can be said to be absolutely authenticated,
though of others generally ascribed to him
several may safely be accepted as genuine.
John’s career, on the other hand, can be traced
back to 1424, but the chronology from that date
to his death in 1441 is fairly ample, while he
has left us a rich heritage of attested paintings
to exemplify the varying aspects of his remarkable
genius.

It was in the nature of things that the
monastic institutions, which in the early Middle
Ages were exclusively the nurseries of learning
and of the arts and crafts, should have infected
these with the mystic spirit induced by the
more or less contemplative life its inmates led.
More especially must this have been so when
we consider that their labours were wholly in
the service of religion. As time went on, and
monasticism progressed from the pursuit to the
dissemination of knowledge, the pupils developed
under its influence were naturally imbued with
the same spirit, and so a tradition grew up and
spread which held undisputed sway for a considerable
period in the various centres where
artists congregated and formed schools. In the
earlier Rhenish school of Cöln this was the
dominant note of its art, which it cherished and[16]
sustained in all its purity and simplicity to a
later period than any of its offshoots and rivals;
for as its teaching extended, more particularly
northwards, we are conscious of a weakening
of its traditions, of a gradual evolution from
the spiritual idealism of its mystic brotherhood
to the more humanistic realism that is the
distinctive feature of Netherlandish art, from
the utter sinking of personality to the frank
assertion of individuality. Nor does this divergence
necessarily bespeak a weakening of
religious vitality: rather is it to be ascribed to
a marked difference of temperament and race
characteristics. Neither could this change have
been as abrupt as might appear from the scant
remains of the art of the period. It was a
natural growth, the one inherent quality of all
such developments, ever tending to the elaboration
of a higher type, and eventually producing
its finest exemplification in the person of Hubert
van Eyck. In his younger brother, on the other
hand, who almost belonged to another generation,
we soon note a more striking falling away
from the earlier ideals, and in the event an[17]
almost total emancipation from the canons of
the mystic school, the explanation of which is
probably to be sought in an equally marked
difference of character and temperament in the
two brothers: the one more poetic and imaginative,
the other more objective and materialistic;
the one drawing his inspiration from a
humble and devout cultivation of art by the
light of the sanctuary, the other from a devotion
to art for art’s sole sake, involving all the
difference that divides the expression of beauty
of thought and mere beauty of form, the spiritual
and the intellectual: each nevertheless supreme
in his own sphere, and wielding an influence and
authority destined to leave their impress on all
the after-work of the school.

II
HUBERT’S NOVITIATE

The small rural town of Maaseyck, on the
left bank of the Maas, in the old duchy of
Limburg, was the home of the Van Eycks[18]
and the birthplace of the elect of their stock,
Hubert’s coming being traditionally associated
with the year 1365, John’s with 1385. In the
absence of documentary evidence to the contrary,
these data are acceptable as founded on
reasonable conjecture. There is no record of
their parentage, but we know of a third
brother, named Lambert, and of a kinsman,
one Henry van Eyck, whose exact relationship
has not been established. As the early
instinct of genius revealed the true bent of
the elder lad’s disposition, the outstanding
advantages of a distinguished school of painting
within hail almost of their doors naturally
appealed to parents anxious to give effect to
their son’s aspirations; so to Maastricht they
turned, where the boy was duly apprenticed
to one or other of its recognised masters.
Having served his articles and in due course
been admitted to the rank of journeyman, the
youthful artist, now free to qualify for his
mastership, entered upon the most interesting
period of his education, a period largely spent,
according to the custom of the time, in foreign[19]
travel; and it is with this stage of Hubert’s
career that criticism first finds legitimate
occupation.

Futile as would be the attempt to trace a
definite itinerary, it is allowable to conjecture
that the mother school of Cöln would mark
the first stage in the young artist’s travels:
in the centre-piece of the great polyptych we
discover in the background architectural work
distinctly reminiscent of that city, and detail
unmistakably Rhenish in character, testifying
to a close acquaintance with the district. Evidence
of similar import, such as the cathedral
in the Louvre picture and the city view with
a faithful presentation of Old Saint Paul’s as
seen from the south in that of Baron Gustave
Rothschild’s collection, on the confident assumption
that these are from the brush of Hubert,
bespeak visits to France and England; while
the landscape work in all his paintings betrays
so intimate an acquaintance with central and
southern European scenery as almost to compel
us into the beaten tracks of the wandering
artist-student of the time through Switzerland[20]
and the south of France, to sunny Italy and
erubescent Spain. The variety of his mountain
scenery—undulating hills and snow-capped peaks,
rugged crags and Alpine heights; the depth
of his liquid skies and spacious firmaments,
with their marvellous cloud and light effects,
melodies in colour that breathe the warmth
of a southern sun; and the extent of his
botanical lore, embracing the olive and citron,
the stone pine and cypress, the date-palm and
palmetto, naturalised exotics of the Mediterranean
slopes—all these and other particulars
too numerous to list bear the hall-mark of
knowledge garnered in the observant pursuit
of local colouring.

For so much there is ample warrant, and
within the limits of such guarded conclusions the
critic incurs little danger from the many pitfalls
that beset the by-paths of deductive reasoning.
But seeing that the most of our knowledge of
Hubert’s life-work is arrived at by this method
of inquiry, it is essential that every inference
should at least stand the test of probability.
To argue, for example, from the presentation of[21]
a particular palm-tree a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land is to offend the laws of proportion; to
discern in the picture of the walled city of Jerusalem
in “The Three Marys at the Sepulchre”
work evidently “from a sketch made on the
spot” would appear more justifiable, until one
is reminded of the fact that the defences of the
Holy City, pulled down in 1239, were not rebuilt
until 1542; but surely it is speculation run
riot, in the attempt to vindicate a preconceived
theory, when the simple, unobtrusive artist is
made, “after the adventurous manner of his
time,” to join a crusade and journey to Palestine,
seeing that the last of these gallant enterprises
had taken place full seventy years before he
ever saw the light of day. Without, however,
incurring the reproach of outraging probability,
we may apportion the usual four years of
Hubert’s term of journeymanship between the
countries already indicated, his wanderings
likely enough terminating with the visit to
England before his return to the Low Countries
to settle down to his life’s work as a master
painter, his range of knowledge tremendously[22]
enlarged, his technique broadened and perfected
in the various schools and workshops through
which he had passed, his imagination fertilised,
his creative powers strengthened, his faculty of
utterance and expression developed—in short,
fully equipped at all points to startle the world
with the first-fruits of his as yet unrealised
genius.

III
THE GREAT POLYPTYCH

So, back to Maaseyck and to Maastricht:
to family rejoicings and the generous welcome
of old friends, no light matter when ordered
on the good old Netherlandish scale. Anxiety
there, of course, and much curiosity here, as
to how the promise of early talent would be
justified by the ripening fruit. Nor could the
issue have been long in doubt. The indispensable
test triumphantly passed, the customary
formalities duly complied with, and Hubert
van Eyck took his place among the master
painters of his time, soon to claim rank among
the élite of them all. Of wife or children not
a whisper, but in an age when civism spelt
patriotism, and marriage was recognised as
one of the prime moral obligations of a loyal
citizen, it is inconceivable that a man of his
sterling sense of duty should have done other
than conform to the established practice. His
home and workshop were from the outset probably
cheered by the presence of his younger
brother John, fired by the born artist’s enthusiasm
to follow in his senior’s footsteps. This
Maastricht studio no doubt also witnessed the
inception of that long series of experiments,
secretly shared in by the two brothers until
carried to perfection, which gave to the world
the new art of oil-painting, and so laid all the
after ages under the deepest obligation to
them.

John’s apprenticeship ended, and he in turn
started on his travels, Hubert would appear
to have removed to Holland, where painters
and miniaturists of the early years of the
fifteenth century repeatedly exhibit marked
traces of his influence; where also miniatures[26]
in a Book of Hours, of date 1412 to 1417, to
the order of Count William for the use of his
only daughter, the fair and ill-starred Jacqueline,
are judged to have been executed by him on
the strength of the many points of resemblance
they bear to the Great Polyptych. The commission
of the latter work itself is now confidently
attributed to the same prince. Observe
the prominence given to the tower of Saint
Martin’s at Utrecht and the adjacent view of
Cöln in the centre-piece, “The Adoration of the
Lamb,” and to St. Martin himself, the patron
saint of Utrecht, in the panel of “The Knights
of Christ,” the banner in his grasp, moreover,
charged with the arms of that town: the
Count’s territory was in the diocese of Utrecht
and the ecclesiastical province of Cöln. So
much depends on the origin of this commission
in apportioning the respective share each of
the brothers had in its execution that the
further fact must not be overlooked that Ghent,
for which the great work was completed, had
no sort of connection with either Utrecht or
Cöln, being in the diocese of Tournay and[27]
the ecclesiastical province of Rheims, while the
only saint in the altar-piece specially connected
with Ghent who is characterised by an emblem—St.
Livin, to wit—was also widely venerated
in Zeeland. Finally, not to labour this
aspect of the question unduly, the inscription
on the frame attributes, not the picture’s inception,
but its completion, to Jodoc Vyt, the
eventual donor—a form of words so singular
as to admit of no other interpretation than the
plain meaning the expression conveys.

Count William passed away on the 31st of
May 1417, leaving an only child, Jacqueline, aged
seventeen, by his wife, Margaret of Burgundy,
who had predeceased him. Her uncle, John of
Bavaria, Prince-Bishop of Liège, an unscrupulous
ruffian who clearly paid small deference to
women’s rights, at once set himself to rob the
unfortunate princess of her possessions. In
September 1418 he marched out on Dordrecht,
where he established his headquarters; Gorcum
and other strongholds speedily succumbed to
his arms, and after an interval, during which he
married Elizabeth of Görlitz, Duchess of Luxemburg[28]
and widow of Anthony of Burgundy, Duke
of Brabant and Limburg, he finally removed to
Holland and installed himself at The Hague,
free now to pursue his nefarious projects. For
thirteen years the country resounded with the
clash of arms and laboured in the rough and
tumble of civil warfare: hence an atmosphere
the least congenial to the cultivation and
patronage of high art. The cities of Flanders
and Brabant were the gainers by the exodus of
craftsmen that presently set in. Of their number,
sooner or later, was Hubert, who, prior to 1425
at any rate, had already settled at Ghent and
acquired the freedom of that city. News of the
unfinished polyptych remaining on his hands
soon came to the ears of Jodoc Vyt, a wealthy
burgher, who eagerly embraced the opportunity
of striking the bargain by which he acquired all
rights in the picture and so linked his name
and personality for all time with this ineffable
monument of the painter’s art.

In the centre-piece, “The Adoration of the
Lamb” (frontispiece), we discover the keynote
to the scheme of the work, in the Apocalyptic[29]
Vision of St. John the source of its inspiration.
The Lamb without spot, the blood from its
breast pouring into a chalice, is stood on an
altar, the white cloth over which bears on its
superfrontal the text from the Vulgate, “Behold
the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of
the world,” and on its stole-ends the legend,
“Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Worshipping angels gather around, some bearing
instruments of the Passion, others swinging
censers, their smoke laden with the prayers of
the saints. In the foreground the Fountain of
Life, flowing down through the ages along the
gentle slope of flower-bejewelled sward, or dispensing
its waters in vivifying jets from the
gurgoyles beneath the feet and from the vases
in the hands of the winged angel above its
standard. To the four quarters groups of the
elect: on the near right those of the Old Law
and among the Gentiles who had lived in expectation
of the Redeemer, the balancing group
on the left typical of the New Law—prophets,
doctors, philosophers, and princes in the former,
the Apostles, popes, bishops, abbots, deacons,[30]
monks, and clerics among the latter. The corresponding
groups back of the altar represent
the army of martyrs whose blood is the seed
of the Church, and the multitude of virgins.
Over all, from the Holy Dove poised high over
the altar, dart rays of light, emblematic of the
Wisdom which had inspired their lives and of
the fire of Love that had heartened their sacrifice.
A carpet of flowers fills in all the open space
fore of the altar, flowering shrubs and trees
that of the mid-distance, while the entire background
is an exquisite example of the realistic
landscape-work that is an abiding charm of the
Netherlandish school. The wonderful harmony
of colour appeals at once to the senses; but
more arresting, on nearer acquaintance, for its
quality and felicity, is the wide range of portraiture
that distinguishes the piece. From the
two lateral panels in the dexter shutter the
Knights of Christ and the Just Judges are pressing
forward to the scene of the Vision, from
the corresponding ones in the sinister shutter
the Holy Hermits and the Holy Pilgrims: the
former on spirited horses—an animal for which[31]
the painter evinces a special affection—the latter
on foot. These panels are even more remarkable
perhaps than the centre-piece for the diversity
and multiplicity of the types portrayed, and for
the wealth of landscape relieved by bird life
lavished in their embellishment.

The “Adoration of the Lamb” is dominated
in the upper zone by a triple panel, the centre
framing the Almighty enthroned in majesty,
whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory—a
supreme conception of the Eternal Father,
unequalled for majestic stillness of face, intellectual
power of brow, and depth and placidity
of vision; on His right is the Mother of Christ,
testifying to the full the lowliness of the handmaiden
of the Lord, on His left St. John
the Baptist, an earnest type, long of hair and
rugged of beard, barefooted, and in a raiment
of brown camel’s hair girdled about the loins,
intensifying the austerity of life ordained for
him who was to prepare the way of the Lord
and make straight His paths. In the “Choir
of Angels” (Plate II.), which is the subject of
the first lateral panel in the dexter shutter, we[32]
have one of the choicest gems of the polyptych,
and it affords us a measure of the distance the
realistic tendencies of the painter had carried
him from the traditions of the mystic school.
Justified by the warrant of Scripture, he translates
these spirit beings into purely human
frames, but with a nerve system attuned to
material sensations. In these angels there is
no suggestion of trance-like ecstasy in contemplation
of the Beatific Vision; they are
angels materialised whose features reflect the
strain of sustained effort and the underlying
sense of pain which in man is inseparable from
the sensing of intense joy. Evidently the master
had fathomed the secrets of the human heart:
the sense possibilities of the spirit world were
without his ken, so he humanised his angels
and evolved types understandable of the people,
and at the same time one of the finest angel
groups of all art. So inexpressibly realistic are
his conceptions that to the poet-biographer Van
Mander, at any rate, it was actually possible to
discern “the different key in which the voice
of each is pitched.” But poets are privileged
beings. Accompanying the Choir in their song
of praise with organ, harp, and viol are the
balancing group of angels in the corresponding
compartment of the sinister shutter, types that,
strangely enough, are in striking contrast to
the former, their features moulded in placid contentment.
The extreme panels of this zone
are occupied by life-size presentations of our
First Parents after the Fall, nude figures painted
from the life, with absolute fidelity to nature
and masterly conception of type: in a demi-lunette
over the figure of Adam we see Cain
and Abel making their offerings unto the Lord,
and in that over Eve the slaying of Abel at
the hands of his brother. There is a tradition
extant that the altar-piece was originally furnished
with a predella painted in distemper, a
picture probably of Limbo or of Purgatory, but
no trace of this remains.

The closed shutters display, filling in the
full width of the middle zone, the scene of the
Annunciation. The Ethyrean Sibyl and the
Cumaean Sibyl occupy the demi-lunettes above
the middle portion of the Virgin’s chamber, the[36]
lunettes above the lateral divisions showing
half-length figures of the Prophets Zacharias
and Micheas. Of the four compartments of the
lower zone the inner ones contain statues in
grisaille of St. John the Baptist and St. John
the Evangelist, the outer ones figures in the
attitude of prayer, eminently life-like, of the
donor, Jodoc Vyt, and his wife, Elizabeth
Borluut. Jodoc was the second son of Sir
Nicholas Vyt, Receiver of Flanders,—a wealthy
citizen who owned the lordships of Pamele and
Leedberghe, besides several mansions in Ghent,
of which city he was burgomaster in 1433-34,
after filling various minor municipal offices: by
no means a handsome type, though manifestly a
capable and kindly burgher, well-set, with a somewhat
low forehead, small grey eyes, and a large
mouth with broad under-lip; neither do the short-cropped
hair and growing baldness or the three
warts on upper-lip, nose, and forehead make for
attractiveness. In respect of looks his wife is
the better favoured, striking the beholder as an
indulgent lady, with much of the homely dignity
and serenity of the finer type of Flemish matron.

[37]

The Great Polyptych had not yet reached
completion when, on the 18th of September 1426
Hubert van Eyck passed away after a painful
illness. How much of the work remained to be
accomplished none can tell with any hope of
approach to certainty. A whole volume would
not suffice for a critical examination of the
mass of contending theories that for the best
part of a century has been squandered in the
endeavour to allocate to the two brothers their
respective shares in the execution of the picture.
Remember that it had already been some ten
years in the making, and that, although it did
not receive its final touches from the brush of
John van Eyck until 1432, nearly six years after
his brother’s death, this period of John’s life,
as we shall presently discover, was too fully
occupied in the service of Duke Philip of
Burgundy to have allowed of his spending any
considerable proportion of it in the task of completion.
Remembering also that John’s art had
been closely modelled on that of his brother, that
none better comprehended his ideals or was
more intimately acquainted with the working[38]
out of his conceptions, mindful, moreover, of the
deep veneration in which he held his master’s
genius, we must suppose that he realised the
obligation of conscientiously adhering to the
art and technique of the picture as he found it,
any obtruding originality in violation of which
would have amounted almost to sacrilege: all
this further enhances the difficulty of differentiating
between the work of the two painters.
Indeed, if so minded, the reader is probably as
well equipped as the writer to solve the puzzle.

Hubert van Eyck was laid to rest in the
crypt of the chapel for which he had painted
his masterpiece, but in 1533, when chapel and
crypt had to make way for a new aisle, his
remains were transferred to the churchyard, all
except the bone of the right fore-arm, which
was suspended in an iron casket in the porch
of the Cathedral. The brass plate bearing the
well-known epitaph was at the same time placed
in the transept, only to become the spoil of
the Calvinist Iconoclasts in 1578, when already
the casket had somehow or other long since
disappeared. But what of the painter’s fame,
to whose workshop laymen of the highest distinction
had felt it a privilege to be admitted,
about whose easel journeymen painters had
flocked, and whom the leading contemporary
artists of the Netherlands had been proud to
call master? During his lifetime, and for a considerable
period after his death, his was a dominating
influence in the Art of the North, and
Van Mander has it on record that whenever the
polyptych was freely exposed to the public gaze
crowds flocked to it from morning till night
“like flies and bees in summer round a basket
of figs and grapes.” But in the stress and
turmoil of succeeding generations his memory
gradually faded away; his work, uncared for,
lost hold on the imagination; even his great
masterwork narrowly escaped destruction. Even
so it did not escape dismemberment, or profanation
at the hands of the “restorer.” Saved
from the fury of the Iconoclasts in 1566, and
subsequently rescued from the Calvinist leaders
who contemplated its offer to Queen Elizabeth
in acknowledgment of her subsidies, it eventually
became the spoil of the French Republicans;[42]
but after the battle of Waterloo restitution was
effected, and the main portion of the altar-piece,
all that remains of it in Ghent, was reinstated
in its present position. The Adam and Eve
panels, which in 1781 had offended the unsuspected
modesty of Joseph II., and in consequence
been deferentially removed, were ultimately
ceded to the Belgian Government, and now rest
in the Royal Gallery at Brussels; while the other
six shutter panels, which had been safeguarded
through the French occupation, were shamelessly
sold to a dealer in 1816 by the Vicar-General
and churchwardens—in the absence, it
is right to say, of the Bishop—for a paltry 3000
florins, subsequently changing hands for 100,000
francs, and eventually becoming the property of
the Prussian Government for four times that
amount.

IV
IN THE SERVICE OF BURGUNDY

During the five years that followed the death
of William IV., Count of Holland and Zeeland,[43]
the usurping John of Bavaria had so far succeeded
in asserting his power as to be able to
permit his interest to wander to the lighter occupations
of life, the while the niece he had
dispossessed was supplementing the tale of her
political woes with all the domestic misery
attendant upon a succession of unhappy marriages.
Thus in 1422 we find John van Eyck
attached to the Count’s household as painter
and “varlet de chambre,” and, as we gather
from the prince’s household accounts, engaged
in the decoration of the palace at The Hague
from the 24th of October in that year till the
11th of September 1424. Another member of
the household at the time was his kinsman,
Henry van Eyck, the record of whose faithful
services won him in February 1425 the post
of master of the hunt to Jacqueline’s second
husband, John IV., Duke of Brabant. John of
Bavaria died on the 25th of January 1425, and,
as might have been expected, civil war immediately
broke out. The situation proving uncongenial,
the whilom court painter lost no time
in taking the road to Flanders, where Philip III.,[44]
Duke of Burgundy, was lording it as the most
munificent patron of the arts and sciences and
of letters. With a keen eye for available talent,
this princely despot at once enlisted him in his
service. No doubt he had become acquainted
with the Van Eycks during his residence at
Ghent in the days of his heir-apparentship and
before the younger artist’s removal to The
Hague; probably the portrait of Michelle of
France, the Duke’s first wife (who died in July
1422), copies of which exist, was painted by
John: at any rate we have Philip’s own words
for the fact that it was personal knowledge of
John’s skill that determined his appointment on
the 19th of May 1425 as painter and “varlet
de chambre,” with “all the honours, privileges,
rights, profits, and emoluments” attaching to
the office; moreover, with characteristic prudence,
he secured a first lien on his services by
awarding him a retaining fee—call it salary or
call it pension—equivalent to £5, 11s. 1-1/3d. in contemporary
English currency, or anything from
ten to twelve times that sum at the present day.

Having made good his position, John’s first[45]
move apparently was in the interest of his
kinsman, for whom he secured the position of
falconer in the ducal household. As we have
no further concern with this member of the
Van Eyck family, it may be said that in 1436
he was employed by the Duke on a secret
mission of some importance, that on the occasion
of his marriage in 1444 to the daughter of
the master-falconer Philip made him a present of
100l., and that in 1461 he became baillie of the
town and territory of Termonde, continuing in
that office, with the additional distinctions of
councillor and chamberlain to the Duke, besides
a knighthood, until his death in November 1466.

The new court painter was something more
than a master of his art: a man evidently of
sterling qualities of mind and heart, of wide accomplishments
and business capacity—in every
way persona grata at the most brilliant court
of the age. Not many months after his appointment
he removed to Lille by order and at
the expense of the Duke, by whom also was
paid the rent of the house he occupied there
from 1426 to 1428, from midsummer to midsummer.[46]
Of his professional work at this period
nothing is known. The chroniclers in the
Duke’s service did not concern themselves with
such minor matters. As De Comines himself
boasted, they wrote “not for the amusement
of brutes and people of low degree, but for
princes and other persons of quality,” little bethinking
themselves what store the after ages
would have set by their gossip had it busied
itself with the doings, for example, of court
painters. In other respects, however, we are
better served, and in the early part of 1426 we
find John van Eyck commissioned, after the
pious custom of the time, to undertake a pilgrimage
in the interest of the ducal health, and in
August of the same year despatched on some
distant foreign mission. His return was saddened
by tidings of the death of his brother
Hubert, who had passed away in his absence.
Further tokens of the ducal favour in 1427 took
the form of presents of 20l. and 100l. respectively.

Duke Philip’s matrimonial ventures hitherto
had not been crowned with success. Neither[47]
his first wife, Michelle of France, nor Bonne of
Artois, whom he wedded and lost within the
ten months (she died in September 1425), had
provided him with an heir. Anxious to secure
the succession in the direct line, towards the
middle of 1427 he despatched ambassadors to
the court of Alphonsus V., King of Aragon, to
obtain for him the hand of Isabella, eldest
daughter of James II., Count of Urgel, and
John van Eyck was attached to the mission.
Arriving at Barcelona in July, only to find that
the earthquakes in Catalonia had driven the
Court to escape by sea to Valencia, the embassy
followed in the royal track and reached this
city early in August, in time for the floral
games and bull-fight with which the Jurats
honoured the King. The mission led to nothing,
not even to a portrait of the princess, who in
September 1428 was married to Peter, Duke of
Coimbra, third son of John I., King of Portugal;
but it is interesting to find Alphonsus V.
in later years acquiring paintings by Van Eyck
for his collection. The return journey included
a short halt at Tournay, where the magistrates[48]
very appropriately paid Van Eyck the
compliment of a wine of honour on the 18th of
October, St. Luke’s Day, the local guild, moreover—Robert
Campin, Roger de la Pasture, and
James Daret doubtless distinguished among its
members—being favoured with his company in
the celebration of the feast of its patron saint.
A like wine of honour was presented to the
ambassadors on the 20th.

An illuminating dispute between the Duke,
the Receiver of Flanders, and John van Eyck
helped to relieve the tedium of life in the intervals
of employment on foreign missions at
this stage of the painter’s career. Philip’s
munificence was largely tempered by prudent
frugality in the ordering of his household, and
in the process of curtailing his domestic expenses
in 1426 he published an edict bearing
date December 14 regulating its constitution
and the wages of its members. By some inadvertence
John’s name was omitted from the new
roll, and the Receiver of Flanders summarily
stopped payment of his salary. An ineffectual
protest was lodged, complaints followed reinforced
by threats, to such good purpose that
eventually, though not until after many months’
persistent badgering, the aggrieved party
emerged with flying colours from the triangular
duel, securing letters patent under date
March 3, 1428, confirming his appointment and
commanding the payment of all arrears.

Of the many paintings executed by John
van Eyck to which no precise date can be
attached not one can with certainty be ascribed
to this period, and yet it is difficult to
believe that his duties in the three years he
had already spent in the ducal service were
exclusively of a non-professional character:
surely the lost portrait of Bonne of Artois
as Duchess of Burgundy, a copy of which is
preserved in the store-room of the Royal Gallery
at Berlin, was his work. The years immediately
following, however, yielded a rich harvest
of brilliant pictures, first among which, chronologically,
two portraits of the Infanta Isabella
of Portugal. Philip, on matrimonial projects
still intent, was now turning his attention from
the Courts of Spain to the neighbouring one[52]
of Portugal, and in the autumn of 1428 he decided
on an embassy to John I. The mission
was a princely one: at its head Sir John de
Lannoy, councillor and first chamberlain; associated
with whom were Sir Baldwin de Lannoy,
governor of Lille—at some later date, too, a
subject for our painter’s brush—high dignitaries
of the court and some of the leading gentry, a
secretary, cupbearer, steward, clerk of accounts,
and two pursuivants, and last, but not least,
John van Eyck, whose relative standing may
be gathered from the fact that in the distribution
of gratuities at the ceremony of leave-taking
only that of the chief ambassador exceeded
his, the respective sums being 200l.
and 160l. The mission, distributed between
two Venetian galleys, sailed out of Sluus harbour
on the 19th of October and arrived the
next day at Sandwich, where three or four
weeks were spent awaiting a further escort
of two galleys from London. Forced by contrary
winds to seek shelter, first at Shoreham
and then at Plymouth and Falmouth, it was
not till the 2nd of December that the convoy[53]
sailed out into the ocean. Nine days later
they were at Bayona, a small seaport of
Galicia, where they delayed three days, their
long sea journey at length terminating on
the 16th at Cascaës, whence they travelled
overland to Lisbon. In the absence of the
Court a letter explaining the object of the
mission was entrusted to the herald Flanders,
who pursued the King from Estremóz to
Arrayollos and Aviz, in the province of Alemtéjo,
where the embassy at last had audience
of his Majesty on the 13th of January and
presented to him the Duke’s letters soliciting
the hand of his daughter Isabella. The while
the ambassadors were discussing their master’s
proposals with the King’s Council John van
Eyck was at his easel painting the Infanta’s
portrait, two copies of which were executed
and despatched to the Court of Burgundy, one
by sea and the other by land, the better to
ensure safe delivery, with duplicate accounts
of the mission’s doings to date. The Duke’s
reply did not arrive until the 4th of June. A
pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, and[54]
visits to John II., King of Castile, to the Duke
of Arjona, a prince of the same royal blood,
and to Mohammed, King of the City of Grenada,
agreeably filled in the interval of waiting, Van
Eyck naturally missing no opportunity of acquaintance
with the leading painters of the
day, enlarging the scope of his own observation,
and no doubt leaving behind him the impress
of his mastery. That the name of Van Eyck
was already one to conjure with in these distant
realms appears from the traditional ascription
to him of a mass of painting certainly
in his manner, but vastly too great to have
ever been conceived by him within the limits
of his stay in Portugal. Take that finest of
all pictures there, the “Fons Vitae” in the
board-room of the Misericordia at Oporto, and
the series of twelve paintings in the Episcopal
Palace at Evoca, locally claimed for Van Eyck;
likewise the pictures in the church of S. Francisco
at Evoca, in the round church of the
Templars at Thomar, and elsewhere, which are
at any rate thought there to be not unworthy of
his technique, and scarcely inferior to his best[55]
masterpieces for brilliancy of colouring and
beauty of portraiture. The one regrettable circumstance
in relation to this visit to Portugal
is that both portraits of the Infanta are to be
numbered among the lost certain treasures of
his art.

On their return to Lisbon in the closing days
of May the embassy rejoined the Court at
Cintra on the ensuing 4th by special request of
the king, and the Duke of Burgundy’s reply
came to hand the same evening: the princess’s
portrait had been to the Duke’s liking. All the
preliminaries being now in order events sped on
apace, to the signing of the marriage contract
at Lisbon on the 29th of July and the solemnisation
of the espousals a day later; and after a
period of brilliant festivities the bridal party, to
the number of some two thousand, set sail
for the land of Flanders. A fortnight later
four weather-beaten ships, the Infanta’s of the
number, lumbered into Vivero harbour in Galicia,
followed later by a fifth: the remainder of the
original fleet of fourteen, after battling with
contrary winds, had been effectually dispersed[56]
in the subsequent storm. Again a start was
made on the 6th of November, but the state of
prostration to which Sir John de Lannoy had
been reduced by sea-sickness compelled a further
delay of over a fortnight at Ribadeu. Here
the convoy was reinforced by two Florentine
galleys, also bound for Flanders, and on the
25th they eventually made good their leave of
Portuguese waters. The afflicted ambassador,
with members of his suite, had meanwhile transferred
to the Florentine galleys, a step that
nearly cost them their lives, as these vessels
narrowly escaped shipwreck in the vicinity of
the Land’s End. The other five ships put into
Plymouth harbour on the 29th, but the Florentines
pushed on to Sluus, where they cast anchor
on the 6th of December, Sir John de Lannoy
making all speed to the Duke with the glad
tidings of the Infanta’s safe arrival in English
waters. The preparations for her reception
were quickly followed by the coming of the
bride, who safely accomplished her long journey’s
end on Christmas Day. In the midst of
a carnival of popular rejoicing the union was[57]
solemnised at Bruges on the 7th of January
1430.

John van Eyck’s absence had extended to
slightly over fourteen months, during which,
seemingly, the two portraits of the Infanta were
the sole yield of his art, except we couple with
them the picture known as “La belle Portugaloise”
and another portrait of a Portuguese
maiden of which only verbal descriptions have
come down to us. In the light of all the compelling
evidence of John’s consummate love of
Nature, amply displayed in the mass of landscape
work that enriches many of his finest productions,
one cannot help but be struck by the
fact that he never appears to have realised the
possibilities of seascape as an avenue of Art.
Only in one small panel do we remember any
deviation from the type of slow-running river
water that he usually affected, and there we
are shown small craft exposed to the mean
spiteful choppiness of a wind-exposed estuary,
an unconvincing picture from the utter monotony
of treatment of beaten water. Is it possible
that the sea in all of its countless moods failed[58]
in its appeal to the aesthetic sense of the master,
with its infinite variety of elemental energy and
its chaste exuberance of exquisite colouring,
with all the untold modulations, moreover, in
that great symphony of the ocean which stirs
so deeply the soul of the true poet? Or was it
that the message baffled the apprehension of
the artist, and left him helpless to respond to
the call? Whatever the answer—or be it that,
like his leader De Lannoy, he found the sea so
severe a taskmaster in the more matter-of-fact
sense as to blunt the edge of his finer feelings—whatever
the answer, prolific as Art had already
proved through the centuries by the manifold
and luscious fruits it had borne, evidently it had
not yet attained to the fulness of time in which
it was to bring forth its apocalypse of the
sea; nor was John van Eyck its consecrate
expositor.

V
PERIOD OF GREAT ENDEAVOUR

We have now reached the most important
period in our painter’s career, coinciding from
end to end with his residence in the Flemish
capital, where he died on the 9th of July 1441—a
period of over ten years, in which he produced
the ten dated masterpieces we are about to
review, besides a large unfinished triptych and
a number of other paintings to which no exact
date can be affixed. Hardly had he taken up
his quarters in Bruges than the Duke summoned
him to Hesdin to receive instructions with regard
to the work on which he was to be employed.
Meanwhile, no doubt, Jodoc Vyt had secured
his services for the completion of the Ghent
Polyptych: probably it had been an understood
thing all along that John was to finish the work
at the first opportunity. From the account of
his movements during the five years that had
elapsed since his brother’s death it is obvious
that he could have spared but very brief intervals
of leisure for what must, after all, have been
to him a labour of love; the conclusion being
that whatever proportion of the sixteen months
immediately following his return from Portugal
he was able to devote to the picture must stand
for his share in the monumental altar-piece that[62]
at Hubert’s death had already been ten years
in the making.

In the early days of December 1431 Cardinal
Albergati, special ambassador from Pope
Martin V. to the Courts of France, Burgundy,
and England with a view to bringing about a
general peace, spent three days at the Charterhouse
in Bruges as the honoured guest of the
Duke, from whom Van Eyck received urgent
instructions to paint the portrait that is now
the property of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.
The time being all too short for the purpose,
John had to be content with the exquisite
drawing in silver-point on a white ground which
is still preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Prints
at Dresden, and which is particularly interesting
because of the marginal memoranda in pencil
embodying the most minute observations in the
artist’s own handwriting for his guidance in the
execution of the painting. A remarkable portrait
of a most remarkable man: for this prince of
the Church, a humble son of the austere Order
of the Carthusians, though raised to the Cardinalate
and time after time called upon to serve[63]
the Holy See on important embassies requiring
consummate prudence in regard to matters of
temporal policy, discarding his family arms for
a simple cross, persevered to the end in such
austerities of the cloister as the wearing of a
hair shirt, total abstinence from flesh-meat,
and the use of bare straw for his rude pallet: a
type that must have appealed to Van Eyck, for
the picture is a valuable index of the painter’s
genius for portraiture. In or about August of
the following year the Burgomasters and Town
Council honoured John with a visit to his
workshop, to inspect the various pictures he
was then engaged on. Among these, probably,
was the portrait of “Tymotheos,” bearing date
October 10, 1432, acquired by the National
Gallery in 1857 for the modest sum of £189, 11s.
(Plate III.), and the “Our Lady and Child” in the
collection at Ince Hall, Ince Blundell, Liverpool,
although it was not completed till 1433. The
latter is a delightful instance of the singular
love of domesticity which Van Eyck exemplifies
with supreme confidence and success in the
Arnolfini tableau, of which more anon. In the[64]
former we have a man verging on middle
age, with dark complexion, blue eyes, angular
features, heavy jaw, thick lips, prominent cheekbones
and uplifted nose; presumably a Greek
humanist and a friend of the painter, from the
man’s Christian name on the parapet being in
Greek character and the manuscript roll he holds
in his hand, and from the inscription “Léal
Souvenir”: by no means a handsome type, but
true to nature, and presented with all the charm
that Van Eyck was able to endow his least
promising subjects with, the modelling being
excellent, and the harmonious colouring aptly
relieved by a dark background.

Somewhere about this time John’s thoughts,
somewhat later in life than was the custom of
the age, must have been turning on matrimony
on his own account, for we find him purchasing
a house in the parish of Saint Giles, a quarter
much affected by painters, and shortly afterwards
engaged on a portrait of the man appointed
to be his father-in-law; and we can
picture the Duke, with whom he was ever a
special favourite, being made the confidant of[65]
his intentions on the occasion of his visit to Van
Eyck’s workshop on the 19th of February 1433,
and pleasantly encouraging him with a promise
to stand sponsor for his first-born. At any rate
the wedding took place, and in due course Sir
Peter de Beaufremont, Lord of Chargny, held
the infant at the baptismal font as proxy for
Philip, whose present took the form of six silver
cups weighing 12 marks, the order for payment
of the account, amounting to 96l. 12s., to a local
goldsmith, John Peutin, bearing date June 30,
1434; and this is the nearest approach we can
get at to the date of either event. Indeed, we
have no information as to the sex of the child,
nor are we even acquainted with the maiden
name of Van Eyck’s wife, though it has been
suggested, with some show of reason, that she
was a sister of Joan Cenani, the wife of John
Arnolfini, already referred to; and it is only
within quite recent days that the painting in
the National Gallery commonly spoken of as
“the man with the turban” has been identified,
on purely scientific lines, as the portrait of her
father. If the reader will compare this likeness[66]
(Plate IV.) with that of Margaret van Eyck
(Plate VII.) he must immediately be struck by
the close resemblance that irresistibly suggests
the relationship: the marvel is that the absolute
identity of features in the two portraits escaped
notice so long. The fanciful style of head-dress,
except it was intended to symbolise occupation
or profession, remains a puzzle; for it is difficult
to conceive a man of his earnest and dignified
disposition masquerading in strange attire for
the mere sake of effect. The best authorities
speak of him as a well-to-do merchant—specialising
perhaps in Eastern wares, such as crowded
the marts of the Flemish capital in the heyday
of its prosperity—apparently about sixty-five
years of age, the face being delicately painted
in reddish-brown tones, and showing every detail
with uttermost faithfulness, even to the
pleats of the eyelids and at the root of the
nose, and to every vein and wrinkle of the forehead.
It is one of the finest exemplifications of
John’s rare gift of portraiture, the pleasing
modesty of the artist—as revealed in the inscription
“Als ich kan” (to the best of my ability)—adding,[67]
indeed, to the charm of the picture, which
bears date October 21, 1433, and passed into the
keeping of the National Gallery in 1851 for the
sum of £315.

It is difficult to refrain from what would
appear an over-use of the superlative in dealing
with John van Eyck’s works, but if the writer
might be allowed an indulgence he would unhesitatingly
avail himself of it to the full in
connection with the exquisite panel (Plate V.)
for the possession of which we are indebted
to the honourable wounds which were the seal
of Major-General Hay’s part in the battle of
Waterloo. After wandering about Europe as
the cherished possession first of Don Diego de
Guevara, councillor of Maximilian and Archduke
Charles and Major-domo of Joan, Queen of
Castile; next of Margaret of Austria, Governess
of the Netherlands; subsequently of Mary of
Hungary, and eventually of Charles III. of
Spain, it fell into the acquisitive hands of the
French invader of the Peninsula, and by some
strange freak of fortune strayed to the apartments
at Brussels in which the gallant major-general[68]
was nursed to recovery, from whose
landlord he purchased it, the National Gallery
in the end becoming its owner, in 1842, for the
trifling sum of £730. It is the picture of a
newly married couple in a homely Flemish interior,
and in their attempts to solve an imaginary
riddle critics have given their somewhat
prolific powers of imagination an unusually free
rein. For instance, the peculiar manner in
which the bride sustains the gathered folds of
her skirt—shown by comparison with figures
of virgin saints in other of Van Eyck’s paintings
to have been a passing fashion of the day,
if an ungraceful one—suggested to some the
near approach of her lying-in, the bedstead in
the background as well as the figure of St.
Margaret (a favourite of women in expectation
of childbirth) surmounting the back of the arm-chair
naturally tending to confirm the impression;
in corroboration of which the attitude of
husband and wife—though the direction of look
in neither lends support to the theory—is explained
as a venture in chiromancy, the adept
bridegroom endeavouring to read in the lines
of his wife’s hand the future of the coming
infant: a variant elucidation representing the
husband as solemnly protesting his paternity
to an inexistent crowd of neighbours at the
open door, seeing that the ingenious reflection
of the scene in the circular convex mirror on
the far wall reveals but two additional figures,
probably the painter and his apprentice. Without
recourse to fancy, the attitude of bridegroom
and bride, hand in hand, might readily have been
seen to symbolise the perfect union begot of a
happy marriage. John’s love of domesticity is
abundantly displayed in all the detail of the
work—the chandelier, with lighted taper, dependent
from the ceiling, the aumbry with its
couple of oranges, the cushioned bench by the
window, the dainty pair of red shoes on the
carpet by the bedside, the pattens of white
wood with black leather latchets in the foreground,
even to the dusting-brush hung on the
arm-chair, and the pet griffin terrier, all helping
to heighten the intimacy of the scene; while
the cherry-tree in full bloom, seen through the
open window against a sky of clear blue, serves[72]
to fix the season of the year in which the
picture was painted. The portraits are of John
Arnolfini and Joan Cenani: the former, in later
years, was knighted and appointed a chamberlain
at his court by Duke Philip, and from the
circumstance of his burial in the chapel of the
Lucchese merchants at the Austin Friars’ we
may presume both his nationality and calling;
the latter, considered in respect of certain
features, especially the eyes, eyebrows, and nose,
suggests a sufficient likeness to warrant the
surmise that she was a younger sister of Van
Eyck’s wife. The panel, which is in an almost
perfect state of preservation, is a fine example
of the painter’s vigour of delineation and perfect
blending of colour, both as regards the interior
and the figures, the transparency of shadow in
the flesh-tints showing the utmost delicacy of
touch. The picture bears date 1434.

About this time Van Eyck was once more in
trouble with the Receiver of Flanders and his
officials. Philip, adding one more to the many
marks of favour reserved for his predilect painter,
had bestowed on him a life-pension of 4320l. in[73]
lieu of the salary of 100l. parisis awarded him
at the time of his engagement. In the absence
of any explanation of this enormous increase,
the mystified accountants at Lille declined registration
of the letters patent; but they were
speedily brought to their senses by John’s threat,
without further waste of words, to throw up his
appointment there and then: so they referred
the matter back to the Duke, who by letters of
March 12, 1435, commanded immediate registration
of the patent and payment of the pension
under penalty of his extreme displeasure, protesting
that, being about to employ Van Eyck
on works of the highest importance, he “could
not find another painter equally to his taste
or of such excellence in his art and science.”
Matters being thus satisfactorily composed, John
was free to attend to his patron’s behests; in
addition to which he had the gilding and polychroming
in 1435 of six of the eight statues of
counts and countesses of Flanders executed by
local sculptors for the front of the new Townhouse,
probably from his own designs. Yet
another present of six silver cups, perhaps as[74]
a salve for his wounded feelings, and employment
on a further secret mission to distant parts
in 1436 testify to the Duke’s abiding trust and
approbation. These undertakings, however, did
not exhaust the painter’s marvellous capacity
for work, for this year also witnessed the completion
of one of the largest of his pictures, the
altar-piece to the order of Canon Van der Paele,
for the collegiate church of Saint Donatian at
Bruges (Plate VI.), which since its recovery
from the French in 1815 has graced the collection
of the local Town Gallery. John’s love of
the Romanesque probably accounts for his
neglect of the architecture of that church in
designing the apse of the transept in which the
Virgin and Child sit enthroned, but the scenic
effect produced by his treatment of the series
of round arches on cylindrical columns and of
the pillared ambulatory goes far to compensate
for the omission; the beauty of the picture being
further enhanced by the ornate carving of the
capitals and throne, the gorgeous display of
cloth-of-gold and tapestry, and the rich variety
of dress and costume, culminating in all the[75]
splendour of the archiepiscopal vestments, yet
not so overpowering as to dwarf interest in the
noble countenance of the wearer. Howbeit, the
artist was singularly unfortunate in the subjects
appointed to pose for the Virgin and St. George,
while the Divine Child is probably the least
pleasing of his Infant Christs. St. Donatian,
however, and the homely yet dignified ecclesiastic
typified as the Donor, largely redeem the
figure-work from the charge of insignificance.
It would appear that the life-size bust of Canon
Van der Paele at Hampton Court Palace was a
study for the full-length portrait, for at the time
the altar-piece was being executed the worthy
Canon was already so feeble that since September
1434 he had been dispensed by the
Chapter from attendance in choir on the score
of infirmity and advanced age.

The “Portrait of John De Leeuw, goldsmith,”
in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna (1436), and two
charming pictures in the Antwerp Museum—”Saint
Barbara” (1437) and the “Our Lady and
Child by a Fountain” (1439)—come next in order
of the artist’s dated pieces, the series closing[76]
with the “Portrait of Margaret van Eyck”
(Plate VII.) in the Town Gallery at Bruges,
which bears date June 17, 1439: a work of marvellous
delicacy and finish, and a tribute of love
worthy alike of the painter-husband and his devoted
wife; the latter an intelligent type of the
competent Flemish housewife, clear and steady
of eye and firm of mouth, portrayed with infinite
minuteness and not the least concession to
vanity. Formerly the property of the Guild of
Painters and Saddlers, it used annually to be
exhibited in their chapel on St. Luke’s Day,
amply secured, if we believe the popular legend,
with chain and padlock, because of the companion
picture, Van Eyck’s own portrait, having
been stolen through lack of similar precautions.

The sad loss to Art sustained by John van
Eyck’s death on the 9th of July 1441 is accentuated
by the unfinished state in which he left
the great triptych on which he was engaged
for Nicholas van Maelbeke, Provost of Saint
Martin’s at Ypres, his largest painting and, had
he but lived to complete it, in every respect his[77]
masterpiece. As a member of the Duke’s household
John was buried within the precincts of
the collegiate church of St. Donatian, and his
remains finally laid to rest some months later
within the building, near the font; and an anniversary
Requiem Mass, founded at the time,
continued to be celebrated until the French
invasion in 1792. In death as in life Duke Philip
never forgot his faithful friend and servant:
within a few days of his decease he sought to
solace the widow’s grief with a gratuity of 360l.
in token of his appreciation of the great master
whose death they all mourned, and years after
he graciously assisted Livina, the one surviving
child of the marriage, and a sister of his own
godchild, to enter the Convent of St. Agnes at
Maaseyck.

A NOTE IN CONCLUSION

However representative the great masterpieces
which it has been possible to notice within
the scope of this monograph, we are far yet from[78]
having covered the art of the Van Eycks; and,
strangely enough, the same difficulty that is met
in apportioning to each his share in the Great
Polyptych recurs when seeking to ascribe a
number of other paintings which are certainly
the work of one or other of the brothers. The
study of these will always appeal to the intelligent
student of their art, and as a typical example
of the group we present the altar-piece known
as “The Blessed Virgin and Child and Chancellor
Rolin” (Plate VIII.), in the Louvre, Paris: a
remarkable work in respect of types, of portraiture,
and of landscape, every detail of which
has been elaborated to a degree scarcely conceivable.
Many other of their paintings are to
be found scattered over Europe, along with much
that is the work of copyist, pupil, or imitator,
too often with idle claims to authenticity; for the
influence of the Van Eycks was coextensive
with the art world of their day. Truthfulness, it
has been observed, was the dominant note of
their art, and by their sedulous cultivation of
Truth they dominated the art of their age. With
John this love of truth amounted well-nigh to a[79]
passion; and the reproach of the carping critic to
whom beauty of feature alone makes for beauty
of portraiture fails of its effect on the true artist
mind, to whom the faithful record of all trifling
blemishes of the face is but an added testimony
and guarantee of the fidelity of the portrait as a
portrait of the inner as well as of the outer man.
Even a great painter may enhance his present
popularity and widen his clientèle by a flattering
suppression of personal disfigurement, but only
to the injury of his fame and the hurt of his own
self-respect. John van Eyck scorned to grovel
at the feet of Vanity, and with this acknowledgment
of the sense and honesty of his sitters he
combined the fulfilment of a duty to posterity,
for with the true instinct of genius he knew that
he was painting not for his own brief day, but for
all time, and that, as the founder of a great
school of portraiture and the father of landscape
art, it behoved him to set an example of the
cardinal principle which should direct them.
Under any conditions John van Eyck’s genius
must have asserted itself, but happily it was
fortunate in its setting, for the brilliancy of the[80]
great Burgundian court and the sumptuous
patronage of Duke Philip in the full blaze of his
power and glory were invaluable aids to the production
and dissemination of his art. Nor did
success spoil his sterling nature: amidst all the
triumphs of his life his character remained singularly
free from the tarnish of empty pride, to the
last the exquisite yield of his art being given
to the world in a charming spirit of apology
so aptly embodied in the simple motto of his
choosing, “Als ich kan.” And who among all
the great painters of the after ages has done
better?

The plates are printed by Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., London and Derby
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh