The Van Eycks

     Before passing to Hubert van Eyck, the painter of the original of our next picture, please compare carefully the picture of Richard II. and this of the Three Maries, looking first at one and then at the other. The subject of the visit of the Maries to the Sepulchre is, of course,well known to you, but let us read the beautiful passage from St. Matthew telling of it, that we may see how faithfully in every detail it was followed by Hubert van Eyck.

     Surely this would be thought a beautiful picture had it been painted at any time, but when you compare it with the Richard II. diptych doesit not seem to you as though a long era divided the two? Yet one was painted less than fifty years after the other. It is the attitude of mind of the painter that makes the difference.

     In the diptych, although the portrait of Richard himself was a likeness,the setting was imaginary and symbolic. The artist wished to tell inhis picture how all the Kings who succeed one another upon the throne of England alike depend upon the protection of Heaven, and how Richardin his turn acknowledged that dependence, and pledged his loyalty tothe Blessed Virgin and her Holy Child. That picture was intended to take the mind of the spectator away from the everyday world and suggest grave thought, and such was likewise in the main the purpose of all paintings in the Middle Ages. But we are now leaving the Middle Agesbehind and approaching a new world nearer to our own.

     Hubert van Eyck, in attempting to depict the event at the Sepulchreas it might actually have occurred outside the walls of the City ofJerusalem, was doing something quite novel in his day. His picturemight almost be called a Bible illustration. It is at least painted in the same practical spirit as that of a man painting an illustration for any other book. It is not a picture meant to help one to pray, or meditate. It does not express any religious idea. It was intended to be the veracious representation of an actual event, shown as, and when, and how it happened, true to the facts so far as Hubert knew them.

     He has dressed the Maries in robes with wrought borders of Hebrewcharacters, imitated from embroidered stuffs, such as at that time were imported into Europe from the East. The dresses are not accurate copies of eastern dresses; Hubert would scarcely have known what those were like, but was doing his best to paint costumes that should look oriental. Mary Magdalen wears a turban, and the keeper on the righthas a strange peaked cap with Hebrew letters on it. Hebrew scholarshave done their best to read the inscriptions on these clothes, butwe must infer that Hubert only copied the letters without knowing what they meant, since it has not been possible to make any sense of them.In the foreground are masses of flowers most carefully painted, andso accurately drawn that botanists have been able to identify themall; several do not grow in the north of Europe. The town at the backis something like Jerusalem as it looked in Hubert van Eyck's own day. A few of the buildings can be identified still, and a general viewof Jerusalem taken in 1486, sixty years after the death of Hubert, bears some resemblance to the town in this picture. The city is paintedin miniature, much as it would look if you saw it from near at hand. Every tower, house, and window is there. You can even count the battlements. The great building with the dome in the middle of the picture, is the Mosque of Omar, which occupies the supposed site of Solomon's Temple.

     Some people have thought that perhaps Hubert van Eyck, and his brotherJohn, actually went to the East. Many men made pilgrimages in those days, and almost every year parties of Christian pilgrims went toJerusalem. It was a rough and even a dangerous journey, but not atall impossible for a patient traveller. Dr. Hulin, who has made wonderful discoveries about the early Flemish painters, found amention, in an old sixteenth-century list, of a 'Portrait of a Moorish King or Prince' by Van Eyck, painted in 1414 or perhaps 1418. If he painted a portrait of an oriental prince, he may have visited oneoriental country at least, or at any rate the south of Spain. Probably enough during that journey he made studies of the cypress, stone-pine, date-palm, olive, orange, and palmetto, which occur in his pictures.They grow in the south of Spain and other Mediterranean regions, butnot in the cold north where Hubert spent most of his days.

     It is difficult at first to realize what an innovation it was for Hubertvan Eyck to paint such a landscape. In the Richard II. diptych thereis just a suggestion of brown earth for the saints to stand upon, butthe rest of the background is of gold, as was the common practice atthe time. The great innovator, Giotto, in some of his pictures had attempted to paint landscape backgrounds. In his fresco of St. Francis preaching to the birds there is a tree for them to perch on, but it seems more like a garden vegetable than a tree. Even his building slook as though they might fall together any moment like a pack of cards. Hubert not only gives landscape a larger place than it ever had inany great picture before, but he paints it with such skill and apparent confidence that we should never dream he was doing it almost for the first time.

     St. Matthew says: 'As it began to dawn towards the first day of theweek, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the Sepulchre.'Even in this point Hubert wished to be accurate. The rising sun is hidden behind the rocks on the left side of the picture, for it wasnot until years later that any painter ventured to paint the sun in the heavens. But the rays from the hidden orb strike the castles onthe hills with shafts of light. The town remains in shadow, while the sky is lit up with floods of glory. An effect such as this must have been very carefully studied from nature. Hubert was evidently one wholooked at the world with observant eyes and found it beautiful. When he had flowers to paint, he painted the whole plant accurately, not the blossoms individually, like the painter of Richard II. He liked fine stuffs, embroideries, jewels, and glittering armour. He was novisionary trying to free himself from the earth and live in contemplation of the angels and saints in Paradise, like so many ofthe thirteenth and fourteenth century artists.

     In this new delightful interest in the world as it is, he reflectedthe tendency of his day. The fifty years that had elapsed between the painting of Richard II.'s portrait and the work of the Van Eycks, had seen a great development of trade and industry in Flanders. Hubertwas born, perhaps about 1365, at Maas Eyck, from which he takes his name. Maas Eyck was a little town on the banks of the river Maas, near the frontier of the present Holland and Belgium. He may have spent most of his life in Ghent, the town officials of which city paid hima visit in 1425 to see his work, and gave six groats to his apprentices in memory of their visit. Where he learnt his art, where he worked before he came to Ghent, we do not know for certain, but there is reason to think that he was employed for a while in Holland by the Count.

     John, his brother, concerning whom more facts have been gathered, is said to have been twenty years younger than Hubert. He was a painter too, and worked in the employ of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Flanders, the grandson of Philip the Bold, who was one of those four sons of King John of France mentioned in our last chapter. Philip the Good continued the traditions of his family and was in his time a great art-patron. His grandfather had fostered an important school of sculpture in Flanders and Burgundy, which culminated in the superb statues still existing at Dijon. Like his brother the Duke ofBerry, he had given work to a number of miniature painters. The Countof Holland also employed some wonderful miniature painters to beautify a manuscript for him. This manuscript and one made for the Duke ofBerry were among the finest ever painted so far as the pictures inthem are concerned. The Count of Holland's book used to be in thelibrary at Turin, where it was burnt a few years ago, so we can see it no more. But the fortunate ones who did see it thought that the pictures in it were actually painted by the Van Eycks when they were young. The Duke of Berry's finest book is at Chantilly and is wellknown. Both this and the Turin book contained the loveliest early landscapes, a little earlier in date than this landscape in the 'Three Maries' picture. So you see why it is said that the illuminators first invented beautiful landscape painting, and that landscapes were painted in books before they were painted as pictures to hang on walls.

     The practical spirit in which Hubert van Eyck worked exactly matched the sensible, matter-of-fact Flemish character. The Flemings, even in pictures of the Madonna, wanted the Virgin to wear a gown made of the richest stuff that could be woven, truthfully painted, with jewels of the finest Flemish workmanship, and they liked to see a landscape behind her studied from their own native surroundings.

     No man could try to paint things as they looked, in the way Hubert did, without making great progress in drawing. If you compare the drawing of the angel appearing to the Maries with any of the angels wearing the badge of Richard II., you will see how much more life-likeis the angel of Hubert. The painter of Richard II. was not happy withhis figures unless they were standing up or kneeling in profile, but Hubert van Eyck can draw them with tolerable success lying down, or sitting huddled. He can also combine a group in a natural manner. The absence of formal arrangement in the picture of the Maries is quite new in medieval art.

     The painter of Richard II. had known very little about perspective.The science of drawing things as they look from one point of view has no doubt been taught to all of you. You know certain rules aboutvanishing points and can apply them in your drawing. But you would have found it very hard to invent perspective without being taught.I can remember drawing a match box by the light of nature, and very queer it contrived to become. Medieval artists were in exactly that same case. The artists of the ancient world had discovered some ofthe laws of perspective, but the secret was lost, and artists in the Middle Ages had to discover them all over again. Hubert van Eyck made a great stride toward the attainment of this knowledge. When you lookat the picture the perspective does not strike you as glaringly wrong, though there was still much that remained to be discovered by later men, as we shall see in our next chapter.

     The brothers Van Eyck were, first and foremost, good workmen. Few otherpainters in the whole of the world's history have aimed at anything like the same finish of detail. In the original of this picture the oriental pot which the green Mary holds in her hand is a perfect marvel of workmanship. There is no detail so small but that when you lookinto it you discover some fresh wonder. A story is told of how Hubertvan Eyck painted a picture upon which he had lavished his usual pains taking care. But when he put it in the sun to dry, the panel cracked down the middle. After this disappointment Hubert went to work and invented a new substance with which colours are made liquid, a 'medium'as it is called, which when mixed with colour dried hard and quickly.It was possible to paint with the new medium in finer detail than before, and the Flemish artists universally adopted it. While very little was remembered about the facts of Hubert van Eyck's life, his name was always associated with the discovery of a new method of painting, andon that account held in great honour.

     The 'Three Maries' is in many respects the most attractive of the pictures ascribed to Hubert, but his most famous work was a larger picture, or assemblage of pictures framed together, the 'Adoration of the Lamb,' in St. Bavon's Church at Ghent. It is an altar-piece—apainting set up over an altar in a church or chapel to aid the devotions of those worshipping there. Many of the panels of the Ghent altar-pieceare now in the Museums of Berlin and Brussels. They belonged to thewings or shutters which were made to close over the central parts, and which used also to be painted outside and inside with devotionalor related subjects. The four great central panels on which theseshutters used to close are still at Ghent. The subject of the 'Adorationof the Lamb' was taken from Revelations, where before the Lamb has opened the seals of the book, St. John says:

     Hubert has figured this verse by assembling, as in one time and place, representatives of Christendom. They who worship are the prophets, apostles, popes, martyrs, and virgins. On each side of the central panel the just judges, the soldiers of Christ, the hermits, and the pilgrims, advance to join the throng around the Lamb. Most beautiful of all is the crowd of virgin martyrs bearing palms, moving over the green grass carpeted with flowers, to adore the Lamb of God, the Redeemer of the World. Above, God the Father, the Virgin Mother, andSt. John the Baptist, with crowns of wonderful workmanship, are thronedamid choirs of singing and playing angels on either hand.

     The picture does not illustrate the description of the Adoration ofthe Lamb in the fifth chapter of Revelations so faithfully as thepicture of the 'Three Maries' illustrated St. Matthew. The Lamb hasnot seven horns and seven eyes, and the four beasts and twenty-fourelders are not falling down before it and adoring. The Lamb is anordinary sheep, and the picture is a symbolic expression of the Catholic faith, founded upon a biblical text, but not what could bedescribed as 'a Bible illustration.' People in the Middle Ages likedto embody their faith in a visible form, and we are told that the ologians frequently drew up schemes of doctrine which painters did their best to translate into pictures, and sculptors into sculpture. Such works of art were for instruction rather than beauty, though some also served well the purpose of decoration.

     Josse Vyt, who ordered the picture, and whose portrait, with that ofhis wife, is painted on the shutters, no doubt explained exactly whathe wanted, and Hubert sought to please him.[1] But although the designof the central panel was old-fashioned and symbolic, Hubert was ableto do what he liked with the landscape, and with the individual figures.They are real men and women with varieties of expression such as hadnot been painted before, and the landscape is even more beautiful thanthe one at the back of the 'Three Maries.' Snow mountains rise in thedistance, and beautiful cypresses and palms of all kinds clothe thegreen slopes behind the Lamb. There are flowers in the grass and jewels for pebbles in the brook. Behind, you can see the Cathedrals of Utrechtand Cologne, St. John's of Maestricht, and more churches and houses besides, and the walls of a town, and wide stretches of green country.

     [Footnote 1: There are reasons for thinking that the picture may havebeen ordered by some prince who died before it was finished, and that Vyt only acquired it later, in time to have his own and his wife's portraits added on the shutters.]

     Hubert van Eyck died in 1426, and the picture was finished by his younger brother John, of whose life, though more is known than of Hubert's, we need not here repeat details. Many of his pictures still exist, and the most delightful of them for us are his portraits. Hewas not the first man to paint good portraits, but few artists have ever painted better likenesses. It seems evident that the people in his pictures are 'as like as they can stare,' with no wrinkle or scratch left out. Portraits in earlier days than these were seldom paintedfor their own sake alone. A pious man who wanted to present analtar-piece or a stained-glass window to a church would modestly havehis own image introduced in a corner. By degrees such portraits grewin size and scale, and the neighbouring saints diminished, till atlast the saints were left out and the portrait stood alone. Then it came about that such a picture was hung in its owner's house rather than in a church. One of the best portraits John van Eyck ever paintedis at Bruges—the likeness of his wife. The panel was discovered about fifty years ago in the market-place of Bruges, where an old woman was using the back of it to skin eels on; but so soundly had the picture been painted that even this ill-usage did not ruin it. The lady wasa very plain Flemish woman with no beauty of feature or expression, but John has revealed her character so vividly that to look at her likeness is to know her. It is indeed a long leap from the RichardII. of fifty years before, with its representation of the outline ofa youth, to this ample realization of a mature woman's character.

     John lived till 1441, and had some pupils and many imitators. One of these, Roger van der Weyden by name, spread his influence far and wide throughout the whole of the Netherlands, France, and Germany. How important this influence was in the history of art we shall see later.Many of the imitators of John learnt his accuracy and thoroughness of workmanship, but none of them attained his deep insight into character.

     During the next fifty years many and beautiful were the pictures produced throughout Flanders. All of them have a jewel-like brilliance of colour, approaching in brightness the hues of the Richard II. diptych. The landscape backgrounds are charming miniatures of towns by the side of rivers with spanning bridges. The painting of textures is exquisite. But the Flemish face, placid, plump, and fair-haired, prevails through out. In the pictures of Paradise, where the saints and angels play with the Infant Christ, we still feel chained to theearth, because the figures and faces are the unidealized images of those one might have met in the streets of Bruges and Ghent. This isnot a criticism on the artists. The merit of their work is unchallenged;and how could they paint physical beauty by them scarce ever seen? Yet when all has been said in praise of the Flemish School, the brothers Van Eyck, the founders of it, remain its greatest representatives, and their work is still regarded with that high and almost universal veneration which is the tribute of the greatest achievement.