Jan Van Eyck - Reputation and Legacy

Reputation and Legacy

In the earliest significant source on van Eyck, a 1454 biography in Genoese humanist Bartolomeo Facio's De viris illustribus, Jan van Eyck is named "the leading painter" of his day. Facio places him among the best artists of the early 15th century, along with Rogier van der Weyden, Gentile da Fabriano, and Pisanello. It is particularly interesting that Facio shows as much enthusiasm for Netherlandish painters as he does for Italian painters. This text sheds light on aspects of Jan van Eyck's production now lost, citing a bathing scene owned by a prominent Italian, but mistakenly attributing to van Eyck a world map painted by another. Facio records that van Eyck was a learned man, and that he was versed in the classics, particularly Pliny the Elder's work on painting. This is supported by records of an inscription from Ovid's Ars Amatoria, which was on the now-lost original frame of the Arnolfini Portrait, and by the many Latin inscriptions in van Eyck paintings, using the Roman alphabet, then reserved for educated men. Jan van Eyck likely had some knowledge of Latin for his many missions abroad on behalf of the Duke.

Jan van Eyck died in Bruges in 1441 and was buried in the Church of St Donatian, which was later destroyed during the French Revolution.