290. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1432).
Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). See 186.
A portrait of a friend of the artist, for it is inscribed "Leal Souvenir"—and a true recollection it obviously is, and was the more acceptable, one likes to think, for being so. "It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and his work that I want, ... but the actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself, nay, truer in a sense, Which the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and the Botcher never can" (Carlyle, Friedrich).