222. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1433).
Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). See 186.
See also (p. xxi)
One of Van Eyck's obviously truthful portraits, so highly finished that the single hairs on the shaven chin are given. On the upper part of the frame is the inscription, "Als ich kan"—as I can, the first words of an old Flemish proverb, "As I can, but not as I will,"—an inscription beautifully illustrative of a great man's modesty; accurately true also as a piece of criticism. No pictures are more finished than Van Eyck's, yet they are only "as he can," not as he would. "Let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race he brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this respect" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt iv. ch. ix. § 5).