The man is shown in a formal pose, holding a wooden stick in his right hand, and a gold ring on his little finger. Van Eyck's surviving early portraits typically show the sitter holding an emblem of his profession and class.[2]
Description
Portrait of Edward Grimston, Petrus Christus, 1446. National Gallery, London. Christus was influenced by van Eyck, and this formal portrait served a similar function to de Lannoy's, in that it marks his entry to the Order of the Golden Fleece.
The man is dressed in ceremonial robes, with the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece around his neck. His coat contains dark embroidered motifs in gold, shaped like oak leaves or ferns. The coat contains large strands of red fur lining at the neck and each wrist. His large black felt hat is similar to that worn by Giovanni Arnolfini in van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait of 1434.[3]
Van Eyck has taken a number of liberties with reality to accentuate the features of his model. In particular, the man's head is out of proportion to his body. However, the artist has done nothing to embellish the portrait, presenting the man as he actually looked, with no hit or trace of the idealisation of the early 15th century.[4]
Campbell, Lorne. "The Authorship of the Recueil d'Arras". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 40, 1977. pp.301–313
Ferrari, Simone. Van Eyck: Masters of Art. Munich: Prestel, 2013. ISBN3-7913-4826-4
Harbison, Craig. Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism. London: Reaktion Books, 1991. ISBN0-948462-18-3
Klein, Peter. Dendrochronological Analyses of the Two Panels of "Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata". In Rishel, Joseph: Jan Van Eyck's Two Paintings of Saint Francis: Receiving the Stigmata. PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1997. ISBN0-8763-3115-0
Upton, Joel Morgan. Petrus Christus: His Place in Fifteenth-Century Flemish painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. ISBN0-271-00672-2
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.
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.
The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 1434 and now in the National Gallery, London. It is a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their residence at the Flemish city of Bruges.
Portrait of a Young Girl is a small oil-on-oak panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It was completed towards the end of his life, between 1465 and 1470, and is held in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It marks a major stylistic advance in contemporary portraiture; the girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, and stares out at the viewer with a complicated expression that is reserved, yet intelligent and alert.
The decade of the 1430s in art involved some significant events.
The Dresden Triptych is a very small hinged-triptych altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It consists of five individual panel paintings: a central inner panel, and two double-sided wings. It is signed and dated 1437, and in a permanent collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, with the panels still in their original frames. The only extant triptych attributed to van Eyck, and the only non-portrait signed with his personal motto, ALC IXH XAN, the triptych can be placed at the midpoint of his known works. It echoes a number of the motifs of his earlier works while marking an advancement in his ability in handling depth of space, and establishes iconographic elements of Marian portraiture that were to become widespread by the latter half of the 15th century. Elisabeth Dhanens describes it as "the most charming, delicate and appealing work by Jan van Eyck that has survived".
The Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati is a painting by early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dating to around 1431 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria. Niccolò Albergati was traditionally identified as the subject of the portrait, but modern scholarship suggests that Henry Beaufort is more likely to be its subject. If the portrait is of Henry Beaufort, it would be the earliest realistic portrait of an Englishman. Other scholars maintain it does not depict a cardinal at all.
Portrait of Margaret van Eyck is a 1439 oil on wood painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck. It is one of the latest of his surviving paintings, and one of the earliest European artworks to depict a painter's spouse. Completed when Margaret van Eyck was around 34, it was hung until the early 18th century in the Bruges chapel of the Guild of painters. The work is thought to be a pendant or diptych panel for either a now lost self-portrait known from records until 1769, or of Jan van Eyck's likely self-portrait now in the National Gallery in London. It is in the collection of the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium.
The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele is a large oil-on-oak panel painting completed around 1434–1436 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It shows the painting's donor, Joris van der Paele, within an apparition of saints. The Virgin Mary is enthroned at the centre of the semicircular space, which most likely represents a church interior, with the Christ Child on her lap. St. Donatian stands to her right, Saint George—the donor's name saint—to her left. The panel was commissioned by van der Paele as an altarpiece. He was then a wealthy clergyman from Bruges, but elderly and gravely ill, and intended the work as his memorial.
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.
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. A number of art historians, including Erwin Panofsky, have detected mournfulness in his expression. 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.
Craig S. Harbison was an American art historian specialising in 15th and 16th-century Flemish and Northern Renaissance painting. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. While attending Princeton University in the early 1970s, he studied iconographic analysis under Erwin Panofsky and Wolfgang Stechow. He had previously studied at Oberlin College, Ohio.
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.
Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini is a small c. 1438 portrait by Jan van Eyck believed to be the same person as in the famous 1434 Arnolfini Portrait due to the similarities of facial features. Thus, the work is van Eyck's second portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, a wealthy merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany in central Italy, who spent most of his life in Flanders.
The Recueil d'Arras is a mid 16th century manuscript. Tentatively attributed to the Netherlandish artist Jacques Le Boucq, the recueil (miscellany) comprises 293 paper folios, of which 289 contain copies of portraits of named historical people.
Study for Cardinal Niccolò Albergati is a silverpoint drawing attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, made in preparation for his Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati of 1431. Niccolò Albergati was traditionally identified as the subject of the drawing and portrait, but modern scholarship suggests that Henry Beaufort is more likely the subject. The drawing is held in the collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden.
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.
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