This is a 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 [1]
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").
| Image | Title | Date | Current location | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Turin-Milan Hours | c. 1420 | Turin City Museum of Ancient Art | The miniatures done by Hand "G", of which three survive are generally believed to be by either Jan van Eyck or his brother Hubert |
| Image | Title | Date | Current location | Dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Study for Cardinal Niccolò Albergati | c. 1432 | Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden | 21.4 cm x 18 cm |
 | Saint Barbara | 1437 | Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp | 34 cm x 18.5 cm |
 | Crucifixion | c. 1440 | Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam | 25.4 cm x 18.7 cm [3] |
| Image | Title | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Portrait of Isabella of Portugal | c.1428-29 | Known only from copies |
  | Saint Christopher | Unknown | Known through two copies: a painting held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a drawing held by the Louvre |
 | Woman Bathing | c. 1434 | Known through two copies: one at Antwerp and one in the Harvard Art Museums |
 | Vera Icon | before 1438 | Known from three contemporary workshop copies |
  | Madonna of Nicolas van Maelbeke | after 1440 | Known from an 18th century replica and several contemporary silverpoint drawings |
| Image | Title | Date | Current location | Dimensions | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | The Three Marys at the Tomb | c. 1410-26 | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam | 71.5 cm x 90 cm | Now usually attributed to Hubert van Eyck |
 | The Fountain of Life | c. 1432 | Museo del Prado, Madrid | 181 cm c 119 cm | Usually attributed to the workshop of Van Eyck |
 | Portrait of a Man with Carnation | c. 1436 | Gemäldegalerie, Berlin | 40 cm x 31 cm | Attributed to Van Eyck or a member of his workshop |
| Image | Title | Current location | Dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Crucifixion (after van Eyck?) | Ca' d'Oro, Venice | 46 cm x 31 cm |
 | Ince Hall Madonna (Virgin and Child Reading) | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne | 26.5 x 19.5 |
 | Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and Saint John | Gemäldegalerie, Berlin | 43 cm x 26 cm |
 | Saint Jerome in his Study | Detroit Institute of Arts | 20.6 x 13.3 |
Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel or copper for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser color, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied.
Jan van Eyck 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.
Hubert van Eyck was an Early Netherlandish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have completed continues to make an assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of Early Netherlandish painting.
The Ghent Altarpiece, also called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is a very large and complex 15th-century polyptych altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. It was begun around the mid-1420s and completed by 1432, and it is attributed to the Early Netherlandish painters and brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The altarpiece is a prominent example of the transition from Middle Age to Renaissance art and is considered a masterpiece of European art, identified by some as "the first major oil painting."
Robert Campin, now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle, was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance.
Early Netherlandish painting is the body of work by artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period, once known as the Flemish Primitives. It flourished especially in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen, Leuven, Tournai and Brussels, all in present-day Belgium. The period begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the 1420s and lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, although many scholars extend it to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568–Max J. Friedländer's acclaimed surveys run through Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Early Netherlandish painting coincides with the Early and High Italian Renaissance, but the early period is seen as an independent artistic evolution, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in Italy. Beginning in the 1490s, as increasing numbers of Netherlandish and other Northern painters traveled to Italy, Renaissance ideals and painting styles were incorporated into northern painting. As a result, Early Netherlandish painters are often categorised as belonging to both the Northern Renaissance and the Late or International Gothic.
Stefan Lochner was a German painter working in the late International Gothic period. His paintings combine that era's tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Based in Cologne, a commercial and artistic hub of northern Europe, Lochner was one of the most important German painters before Albrecht Dürer. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts, which often feature fanciful and blue-winged angels. Today some thirty-seven individual panels are attributed to him with confidence.
Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444, where, along with Hans Memling, he became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. He was influenced by van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and is noted for his innovations with linear perspective and a meticulous technique which seems derived from miniatures and manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him. The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl ; both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.
Portrait of a Man is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, from 1433. The inscription at the top of the panel, Als Ich Can was a common autograph for van Eyck, but here is unusually large and prominent. This fact, along with the man's unusually direct and confrontational gaze, have been taken as an indication that the work is a self-portrait.
Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols.
Virgin and Child with Four Angels is a small oil-on-panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Gerard David. Likely completed between 1510 and 1515, it shows the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus, while she is crowned Queen of Heaven by two angels above her, accompanied by music provided by another two angels placed at either side of her. In its fine detail and lush use of colour the work is typical of both David and late period Flemish art.
Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–1440, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon. Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life. In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Like other Byzantine depictions of the Madonna, van Eyck depicts a monumental Mary, unrealistically large compared to her surroundings. The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral's windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary's virginal purity and God's ethereal presence.
The Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych consists of two small painted panels attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, with areas finished by unidentified followers or members of his workshop. This diptych is one of the early Northern Renaissance oil-on-panel masterpieces, renowned for its unusually complex and highly detailed iconography, and for the technical skill evident in its completion. It was executed in a miniature format; the panels are just 56.5 cm (22.2 in) high by 19.7 cm (7.8 in) wide. The diptych was probably commissioned for private devotion.
Léal Souvenir is a small oil-on-oak panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 1432. The sitter has not been identified, but his highly individual features suggest a historical person rather than the hypothetical ideal usual at the time in northern Renaissance portraiture; his slight and unassuming torso is contrasted with a sophisticated facial expression. His features have been described as "plain and rustic", yet thoughtful and inward-looking. The sitter was apparently significant enough a member of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good's circle that his court painter portrayed him.
Saint Barbara is a small 1437 drawing on oak panel, signed and dated 1437 by the Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck. It is unknown if the work is a chalk ground study in pencil for a planned oil painting, an unfinished underdrawing or a completed work in of itself, although the latter is deemed more likely. The panel shows Saint Barbara imprisoned in a tower by her pagan father to preserve her from the outside world, especially from suitors he did not approve of. While there, she converted to Christianity, enraging her father and leading to her murder and martyrdom.
Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon is a very small oil on panel portrait of an unidentified man attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck.
Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata is the name given to two unsigned paintings completed around 1428–1432 that art historians usually attribute to the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. The panels are nearly identical, apart from a considerable difference in size. Both are small paintings: the larger measures 29.3 cm x 33.4 cm and is in the Sabauda Gallery in Turin, Italy; the smaller panel is 12.7 cm x 14.6 cm and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The earliest documentary evidence is in the 1470 inventory of Anselm Adornes of Bruges's will; he may have owned both panels.
Portrait of Jan de Leeuw is a small 1436 oil on wood painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. De Leeuw was a goldsmith living in Bruges; most art historians accept that, given the familiarity of the portrait, that he and van Eyck knew each other and were on good terms. The work is still in its original frame, which is painted over to look like bronze.
The Annunciation is an oil on wood in grisaille painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, dated by art historians as between 1434 and 1436. The panels form a diptych, and are currently in the collection of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
The Madonna of Jan Vos is a small oil panel painting begun by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck c. 1441 and finished by his workshop after his death in 1442. As he died during the period of its completion, it is generally considered to be his last work.
