The brothers Van Eyck

JAN ARNOLFINI AND JEANNE DE CHENANY. BY JAN VAN EYCK.
Bell's Miniature Series of Painters
P. G. KONODY
LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1907
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


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 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 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.