The brothers Van Eyck

by Paul G. Konody

The portrait known as The Man with the Pinks at the Berlin Museum, is one of the most characteristic of Jan's portraits. It shows an elderly man in a dark grey coat with fur cuffs and collar and a broad-brimmed beaver hat. At the neck the brocade collar of a tunic shows above the fur collar of the coat. The ornament of this brocade seems to consist of the alternating letters Y and C, which occur in one or two other portraits of the period, and may eventually afford some clue as to the identity of the sitter. Round the neck is a twisted wire chain, from which hangs a headless cross and the bell of St. Anthony. Both hands are raised as high as the breast, the fingers and thumb of the left holding three pinks. A handsome ring with two stones is on the third finger. The face, wrinkled and lined, is full of expression and life; the lips are parted, as though about to give utterance to speech. Though the drawing is almost hard in its exact delineation, it is far from rigid. It is altogether an admirable example of Jan's lifelike realism, that loves to dwell on every little ugly detail—ill-shapen ears, puffy "tear-bags," warts and wrinkles—and yet infuses the whole thing with the beauty of life and character.

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THE VAN DER PAELE ALTAR-PIECE.
BY JAN VAN EYCK.

The Virgin and Child, with St. Donatian, St. George, and the Donor, George van der Paele, Canon of the ancient Cathedral of St. Donatian at Bruges, bears the date 1436, and is the most important of Jan van Eyck's religious compositions. The scene is in the circular apse of a Romanesque church, lighted by the soft rays that filter through the leaded windows. The Virgin, draped in a red cloak, is seen in the centre under a green canopy, holding the Christ-Child in her lap. She has the same heavy, matronly features as the Virgin of The Annunciation in St. Petersburg and of the Chancellor Rolin picture in Paris, and is no more idealised than the by no means attractive infant Saviour, who is playing with a parrot. It is all very human and wonderfully true, and for that very reason lacking in spiritual significance. On the left stands St. Donatian in a gorgeous and marvellously painted brocade robe, whilst on the right St. George, in armour, presents the kneeling Canon van der Paele to the Virgin. The patron saint, again, is obviously painted from a model of low rank in life—perhaps a peasant or a stableman; whilst the rugged irregular features of the donor are set down with an honest and painstaking straightforwardness that seems to delight in doing full justice to all the sitter's ugliness. As objective portraiture pure and simple, this head of van der Paele has probably never been surpassed in the whole history of art. The supreme mastery of Jan van Eyck manifests itself in the creation of a work of unforgettable beauty and sumptuous splendour from such unpromising material. The ugliness of the types chosen is forgotten when one's eyes revel in the rich scheme of colour, the extraordinary beauty of the painting of all the stuffs and accessories, the perfect modelling of the features, and, above all, the (for the time) amazing knowledge of the effect of light. With all the richness of pigment there is not a single note in this whole large panel that is not absolutely "in tone"; nothing is forced, nothing arbitrary, as though the fifteenth-century master had already adopted the principle of the nineteenth-century impressionists—"the first subject of a picture is light."

The van der Paele altar-piece was in the sacristy of the church of St. Donatian when the old basilica was destroyed by the revolutionary troops. It was taken to Paris, together with much other artistic booty, but was returned to Bruges in 1814, and is now in the Museum of the Academy of that city. The drapery round the loins of the infant Saviour is a later addition which does not appear in the excellent early copy at the Antwerp Museum, from which our illustration is a reproduction. The original at Bruges bears the inscription in small Gothic letters: Hoc opus fecit fieri magister Georgius de Pala, huius ecclesie canonicus, per Johannem de Eyck pictorem. Et fundavit hic duas capellanias de gremio chori domini M. ccc°. xxxiiij°., completing anno 1436°.

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At the Museum of Antwerp is the exquisite unfinished little painting of St. Barbara, signed and dated: JOHES DE EYCK ME FECIT 1437. The saint, with an open book on her lap and a palm-branch in her hand, is seated in front of an elaborately designed Gothic tower in course of construction. Around the tower are numerous figures of labourers, masons, horsemen, and others; and the background shows a landscape with mountains, castles, rivers, fields and trees, and a town on a hill. Technically, this picture is supremely interesting, as it shows that at a comparatively late period of his life—a quarter of a century after the reputed discovery of oil-painting—Jan has not altogether discarded the practice of tempera-painting. For the whole composition, the pensive-looking saint and the widespread angular folds of her garment, the tower and the figures, are carefully drawn and shaded in brown tempera colour on a preparation of gum or white of egg. Only the part which required no special design, the sky, is painted in oil-colour. It may thus be assumed that it was the practice of the brothers van Eyck to work with oil-colours on a tempera foundation.

The St. Barbara also confirms Karel van Mander's statement that Jan's sketches were more complete and more carefully wrought than the finished paintings of other artists. M. Henri Hymaus suggests that this St. Barbara is the very painting which van Mander mentions as being in the possession of his master Lucas de Heere at Ghent, and "representing a woman behind whom was a landscape; it was but a preparation, and yet extraordinarily beautiful."