Of the many paintings executed by John van Eyck to which no precise date can be attached not one can with certainty be ascribed to this period, and yet it is difficult to believe that his duties in the three years he had already spent in the ducal service were exclusively of a non-professional character: surely the lost portrait of Bonne of Artois as Duchess of Burgundy, a copy of which is preserved in the store-room of the Royal Gallery at Berlin, was his work. The years immediately following, however, yielded a rich harvest of brilliant pictures, first among which, chronologically, two portraits of the Infanta Isabella of Portugal. Philip, on matrimonial projects still intent, was now turning his attention from the Courts of Spain to the neighbouring one of Portugal, and in the autumn of 1428 he decided on an embassy to John I. The mission was a princely one: at its head Sir John de Lannoy, councillor and first chamberlain; associated with whom were Sir Baldwin de Lannoy, governor of Lille—at some later date, too, a subject for our painter's brush—high dignitaries of the court and some of the leading gentry, a secretary, cupbearer, steward, clerk of accounts, and two pursuivants, and last, but not least, John van Eyck, whose relative standing may be gathered from the fact that in the distribution of gratuities at the ceremony of leave-taking only that of the chief ambassador exceeded his, the respective sums being 200l. and 160l. The mission, distributed between two Venetian galleys, sailed out of Sluus harbour on the 19th of October and arrived the next day at Sandwich, where three or four weeks were spent awaiting a further escort of two galleys from London. Forced by contrary winds to seek shelter, first at Shoreham and then at Plymouth and Falmouth, it was not till the 2nd of December that the convoy sailed out into the ocean. Nine days later they were at Bayona, a small seaport of Galicia, where they delayed three days, their long sea journey at length terminating on the 16th at Cascaës, whence they travelled overland to Lisbon. In the absence of the Court a letter explaining the object of the mission was entrusted to the herald Flanders, who pursued the King from Estremóz to Arrayollos and Aviz, in the province of Alemtéjo, where the embassy at last had audience of his Majesty on the 13th of January and presented to him the Duke's letters soliciting the hand of his daughter Isabella. The while the ambassadors were discussing their master's proposals with the King's Council John van Eyck was at his easel painting the Infanta's portrait, two copies of which were executed and despatched to the Court of Burgundy, one by sea and the other by land, the better to ensure safe delivery, with duplicate accounts of the mission's doings to date. The Duke's reply did not arrive until the 4th of June. A pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, and visits to John II., King of Castile, to the Duke of Arjona, a prince of the same royal blood, and to Mohammed, King of the City of Grenada, agreeably filled in the interval of waiting, Van Eyck naturally missing no opportunity of acquaintance with the leading painters of the day, enlarging the scope of his own observation, and no doubt leaving behind him the impress of his mastery. That the name of Van Eyck was already one to conjure with in these distant realms appears from the traditional ascription to him of a mass of painting certainly in his manner, but vastly too great to have ever been conceived by him within the limits of his stay in Portugal. Take that finest of all pictures there, the "Fons Vitae" in the board-room of the Misericordia at Oporto, and the series of twelve paintings in the Episcopal Palace at Evoca, locally claimed for Van Eyck; likewise the pictures in the church of S. Francisco at Evoca, in the round church of the Templars at Thomar, and elsewhere, which are at any rate thought there to be not unworthy of his technique, and scarcely inferior to his best masterpieces for brilliancy of colouring and beauty of portraiture. The one regrettable circumstance in relation to this visit to Portugal is that both portraits of the Infanta are to be numbered among the lost certain treasures of his art.

On their return to Lisbon in the closing days of May the embassy rejoined the Court at Cintra on the ensuing 4th by special request of the king, and the Duke of Burgundy's reply came to hand the same evening: the princess's portrait had been to the Duke's liking. All the preliminaries being now in order events sped on apace, to the signing of the marriage contract at Lisbon on the 29th of July and the solemnisation of the espousals a day later; and after a period of brilliant festivities the bridal party, to the number of some two thousand, set sail for the land of Flanders. A fortnight later four weather-beaten ships, the Infanta's of the number, lumbered into Vivero harbour in Galicia, followed later by a fifth: the remainder of the original fleet of fourteen, after battling with contrary winds, had been effectually dispersed in the subsequent storm. Again a start was made on the 6th of November, but the state of prostration to which Sir John de Lannoy had been reduced by sea-sickness compelled a further delay of over a fortnight at Ribadeu. Here the convoy was reinforced by two Florentine galleys, also bound for Flanders, and on the 25th they eventually made good their leave of Portuguese waters. The afflicted ambassador, with members of his suite, had meanwhile transferred to the Florentine galleys, a step that nearly cost them their lives, as these vessels narrowly escaped shipwreck in the vicinity of the Land's End. The other five ships put into Plymouth harbour on the 29th, but the Florentines pushed on to Sluus, where they cast anchor on the 6th of December, Sir John de Lannoy making all speed to the Duke with the glad tidings of the Infanta's safe arrival in English waters. The preparations for her reception were quickly followed by the coming of the bride, who safely accomplished her long journey's end on Christmas Day. In the midst of a carnival of popular rejoicing the union was solemnised at Bruges on the 7th of January 1430.

John van Eyck's absence had extended to slightly over fourteen months, during which, seemingly, the two portraits of the Infanta were the sole yield of his art, except we couple with them the picture known as "La belle Portugaloise" and another portrait of a Portuguese maiden of which only verbal descriptions have come down to us. In the light of all the compelling evidence of John's consummate love of Nature, amply displayed in the mass of landscape work that enriches many of his finest productions, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that he never appears to have realised the possibilities of seascape as an avenue of Art. Only in one small panel do we remember any deviation from the type of slow-running river water that he usually affected, and there we are shown small craft exposed to the mean spiteful choppiness of a wind-exposed estuary, an unconvincing picture from the utter monotony of treatment of beaten water. Is it possible that the sea in all of its countless moods failed in its appeal to the aesthetic sense of the master, with its infinite variety of elemental energy and its chaste exuberance of exquisite colouring, with all the untold modulations, moreover, in that great symphony of the ocean which stirs so deeply the soul of the true poet? Or was it that the message baffled the apprehension of the artist, and left him helpless to respond to the call? Whatever the answer—or be it that, like his leader De Lannoy, he found the sea so severe a taskmaster in the more matter-of-fact sense as to blunt the edge of his finer feelings—whatever the answer, prolific as Art had already proved through the centuries by the manifold and luscious fruits it had borne, evidently it had not yet attained to the fulness of time in which it was to bring forth its apocalypse of the sea; nor was John van Eyck its consecrate expositor.

[V]
PERIOD OF GREAT ENDEAVOUR

We have now reached the most important period in our painter's career, coinciding from end to end with his residence in the Flemish capital, where he died on the 9th of July 1441—a period of over ten years, in which he produced the ten dated masterpieces we are about to review, besides a large unfinished triptych and a number of other paintings to which no exact date can be affixed. Hardly had he taken up his quarters in Bruges than the Duke summoned him to Hesdin to receive instructions with regard to the work on which he was to be employed. Meanwhile, no doubt, Jodoc Vyt had secured his services for the completion of the Ghent Polyptych: probably it had been an understood thing all along that John was to finish the work at the first opportunity. From the account of his movements during the five years that had elapsed since his brother's death it is obvious that he could have spared but very brief intervals of leisure for what must, after all, have been to him a labour of love; the conclusion being that whatever proportion of the sixteen months immediately following his return from Portugal he was able to devote to the picture must stand for his share in the monumental altar-piece that at Hubert's death had already been ten years in the making.

PLATE VII.—PORTRAIT OF MARGARET VAN EYCK THE PAINTER'S WIFE

(By John van Eyck)

The daughter of the subject of [Plate IV.] and probably the sister of Joan Cenani in [Plate V.], with both of which it should be compared. In the Town Gallery, Bruges. See page [66].