Eyck jan van biography books

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Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. In the oil painting at Vienna, which a little later was made from this drawing, there is considerable loss of expression. The forms have hardened and frozen. One senses a man of moral dignity and force, but not the various gifts of the diplomat Cardinal. And this raises the issue already posed by the unfinished St.

Barbara, whether all the portraits of Jan do not represent the loss of some drawing much finer than the painting we now see - whether, in short, his gift as a draughtsman was not superior to his gift as a painter. However that be, the procedure of painting a portrait not from the sitter but from a carefully prepared drawing remained standard for Western Europe for over two centuries.

It was the method of Hans Holbein, of the Clouets and their successors. It had many advantages over the practice of painting from the sitter, which grew up during the era of Renaissance art The final character of the portrait was established in a single intent act of observation. To attain this character, the significant forms had to be sought strenuously, and eliminations and syncopations made unsparingly.

On such intense initial observation the artist stood firmly. The painting was guided as to colour by notes on the drawing and by memory. Consequently colour and lighting were somewhat generalized. The painting went on confidently and one may imagine almost mechanically. There was no concern with small particularities of colouration, no confusion from change of mood or shifting of light.

Such portraiture was not precisely true to any momentary appearance, but it had a timeless sort of truth of its own, taking the sitter out of a changing world into a realm that is changeless. Simply as records, the portraits painted in this way seem to me the best and truest we have, if only because there is no division of interest in making them.

The great portraiture of the later Renaissance - by the Venetian Titian, the Dutchman Rembrandt and the Spaniard Velasquez - had to cope with the appearance, with actual illumination, with decorative fitness, with intimate interpretations, and while the harmonizing of these many endeavors produced much greater works of art than the late Gothic portraits, I doubt if it really produced, in the narrower sense, better portraits.

The portrait of a scholar labeled in Greek letters Tymotheos, at London, is dated October 10, Its general stiffness is at once enhanced and relieved by the awkward but natural action of the hand holding a scroll. The expression is searching, if a little worried and pathetic. There is an effort for intimate interpretation rare in Jan's portraits, which suggests that we have to do with someone dear to him.

As an apparition it is astonishingly real, and the workmanship is of the finest. The tension of the modeling and the unpleasant bricky ruddiness of the hue are, for me, sufficient evidence that within a year of this work Jan could not have painted much on the Ghent altarpiece. Its easy modelling and the lightness of its carnations are of quite a different sort.

Dated about a year later, the portrait of a Man in a Red Turban, in the National Gallery, London, differs only in being more linear and in the transparency of the shadows. It expresses an old age at once shrewd, wistful and defiant. Without good reason many critics regard this as a self-portrait. Despite, or perhaps because of a somewhat provincial and homemade look, it is one of the more pleasing of Jan's male portraits.

Sir Baldwin de Lannoy was one of Jan's companions on the Portuguese mission of Jan has searched all the concavities and convexities of the wasted face, omitting no wrinkle, with the result that the portrait is completely wooden and expressionless. It is a hard mask behind which there seems to be nothing. The collar of Lannoy's Golden Fleece sits rather badly, which may suggest that the portrait was painted early before the award of the order, and that the insignia were added later.

In that case it may be the earliest portrait by Jan that has come down to us. In any case it is one of the more aesthetically negligible. The portrait of the goldsmith, Jan de Leeuw, at Vienna, has more style than most of Jan's portraits. It is handsomely set in the frame, even if the hand holding a ring is awkwardly placed. The plastic effect is secured without over-emphasizing the modelling.

It is an attractive presentation of a capable and robust personality. It has nothing of the strenuously homemade look of many of Jan's portraits, rather an Italian simplicity, concentration and elegance. All this may suggest either that in painting a fellow craftsman Jan worked with exceptional sympathy, or, equally likely, that he had become conscious of his defects and was seeking a broader style.

By this time he must have seen the admirable portraits of Rogier van der Weyden - sensitive, broadly conceived, distinguished for tactful elimination - as well as his wonderful masterpiece Descent From the Cross He could not imitate them, his nature forbade that, but he could move their way. This was in Perhaps the finest of Jan's portraits is that of his wife Margaret, at Bruges, painted June 17, Whether as sensitive characterization or simply as so much finely disposed material, Jan painted nothing more handsome.

The pattern and the tinted whites of the headdress are perfect; the roseate carnations of the flesh have nothing of Jan's earlier unpleasant brickiness; the solid modelling is effected by infinitesimals of luminous shadow; the expression is of a patient and rather sad benignity and wisdom. Nothing is amiss save the ill-placed hand, which is a restorer's contribution.

It is hard to realize that this is a woman in the early thirties. Seen by an eye respectful, one hopes loving, but also relentlessly observant, after five centuries she is tremendously alive in her fading comeliness. For a similar rightness and beauty of workmanship the undated portrait now in Berlin and generally called John Arnolfini must have been painted about the same time.

It seems to me that it bears only a casual resemblance to the famous John Arnolfini and his Wife in the National Gallery, London, and that the identification lacks a sound base. Of all Jan's portraits it is one of the best composed. The long horselike mask has an odd deadness, a relaxation which is perhaps only a sign of self-control. The fleshless eye sockets and tired eyes seem to me that of an ailing person.

Traditionally this is a self-portrait, and such may very well be the case. It suggests the hard-won imperturbability of a man who had to double the function of painter with that of secret agent and courtier. However that be, and despite its considerably damaged condition, this seems to me one of Jan's latest portraits and one of his best.

It has the elegance which seems to be an attainment of his last years. If the celebrated portrait of John Arnolfini and his Wife, at London is being treated out of its chronological order, it is because it is exceptional in Jan's activity, and his masterpiece. Fundamentally it is a portrait of a richly appointed room. Everything is included and defined - windows with bull's-eyes transmitting cool light, a most elaborate chandelier of yellow metal, a diminishing mirror with the reflection of two figures entering the room from the front, its tiny medallions of glass or enamel with passion scenes in the mirror frame.

But there is no confusion or over-emphasis, merely a harmony of great richness; everything keeps its place in a scene impregnated with an opulent restfulness. In many ways this picture anticipates later triumphs of portraiture of rooms by Jan Vermeer of Delft, but when we come to the figures the analogy fails. Vermeer's figures belong.

One may regard them as a necessary emanation from the space, or the space as a sort of extension of the figures. Jan van Eyck's husband and wife have no air of being at home; they stand stiffly and awkwardly like visitors enduring the discomfort of being portrayed. The portraits are admirable. List of Illustrations. Purtle Cathedral certainly Christ Child Christian Church clerical commissioned complex confession contemporary courtly cult statue detail Dhanens diptych discussed doctrine documented Donatian donor Duke Philip early Netherlandish art early Netherlandish painting ecclesiastical especially Eucharist Eyck's image Eyck's painting Eyckian fifteenth century figures Flemish frame functionaries Ghent Altarpiece Gothic Holy human icon ideal illus imagery Immaculate Conception inscription interior interpretation Jan van Eyck Lucca Lucca Madonna Mary Mass meaning medieval Museum Nicolas Rolin notion Paele Paele's painter painting illus panel painting Panofsky patron perhaps pilgrimage prayer present realism reflectogram relation religious Robert Campin Rogier Rolin painting sacrament Sacred Heart scene sense specific St Catherine St Donatian's suggested symbolic theological Tongeren Tournai traditional underdrawings van der Paele viewers Virgin and Child vision visual Weyden wings.

Preface to the Second Edition. It is frustrating that given how acclaimed he was during his lifetime, as court painter and ambassador to the phenomenal Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good , that we have no more documentation on him. We know of one of his trips — to Portugal — to paint the prospective Duchess. But he also went on other missions.

His painterly abilities certainly left a trace of admiration, but the echoes were so widespread that without further proofs it is hard to say what was the direct bearing he had on other artists, in other lands. The two genres fully explored are the portraits and the altarpieces, which always depicted a Marian scene.

Eyck jan van biography books

I however suspect that the Louvre Madonna with Chancellor Rolin will not have travelled to Ghent but I hope that the possible self-portrait from the National Gallery in London will have jumped over the Channel. As someone living in Madrid I would love to have his Arnolfini marriage, which as Borchert explains it is no longer considered as a marriage document, with the painter as witness, since the portrayed is the brother of the person originally thought — Giovanni di Nicolao and not Giovanni di Arrigo--, and this painting would be in memoriam of his wife who died more than ten years before the portrait was painted.

This painting was part of the looting that King Joseph Bonaparte took with him back to France, and when intercepted by Wellington ended up in London. In particular the section dedicated to the manuscript the Turin-Milan hours, which I also hope to see someday. Only Jan van Eyck would paint the Mass of the Dead with the upper corner of the Gothic arch traversing the golden frame of the painted page.

And that is why, less selfishly, I am very glad I got my plane and train tickets to Brussels and Ghent. For a ten dollar book this has some really great looking reproductions.