BACK TO 1410: THE BEGINNINGS OF EYCKIAN ART?Author(s): Colin EislerSource: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring 1999), pp. 9-10Published by: Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23205062 .

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BACK TO 1410:

THE BEGINNINGS OF EYCKIAN ART?

Exact dates do not abound in the oeuvre of

early Northern masters. Jan van Eyck re mains unique among all European painters, not least for providing so many signatures and complete indications—down to the

veiy day, month, and year—inscribed upon his paintings' frames (ten),1 making him a

pioneer in pictorial self-documentation. Scholars may always argue as to Jan's birth date (Was it c. 1390? Did it take place in the

previous decade or closer to 1400?). If he was a child of the fourteenth century, to what extent were Jan's values shaped by the so-called International Style? That issue would gain still greater valence if his birth date were seen as taking place as early as

possible—c. 1390. A new view of the problem of the approx

imate period of Jan's birth and first formu lation of his or his older brother Hubert's art

may perhaps be found in Luigi Guicci ardini's account of his travels, published in 1567.2 There, a date of 1410 is given for the invention of oil painting.3 This year is

repeated in Karel van Mander's Schilder

boeck, first published in 1604.4 Though aspects of painting with an oil medium go back long before the period of the Brothers van Eyck, special attention should be paid to the Guicciardini date and to its citation by the "Vasari of the North," van Mander

(1548-1606). According to the excellent van Eyck monograph by Elisabeth Dhan

ens, Vasari, in 1568, erroneously repub lished the Guicciardini date as 1510.5 Van

Colin Eisler

Mander returned to the correct date of 1410 in his Schilder-boeck. The Flemish painter historian in all likelihood revived Guicci ardini's 1410 annum mirabilis for the oil medium's genesis because that date ap peared on a major (lost) Eyckian painting in that medium, very probably on a picture seen by the Italian traveler, one that could also have been known to van Mander.

Although van Mander is generally and

sensibly thought of as "Dutch" since he was most active in Haarlem (living there for

twenty years), the painter-writer was actual

ly born in West Flanders and was also active in Italy and Austria.6 Mennonites, the van Manders were on the run, unusually benefi cial for art history since Karel and his fam

ily resided in Kortrijk and Bruges before

finally moving to Haarlem. In these centers, early Eyckian works could also have been seen.

Van Mander's Humanistic gifts and con cerns come close to Jan van Eyck's aspira tions—Karel, a master of Latin and Greek as well as French and Italian; Jan, who

incorporated Greek and Latin references in his oeuvre. Both artists were unusually widely traveled and interested in Ovid.

Appropriately, it is Hubert's and Jan's lives that provide the opening Vitae of the Levens van de beroemde Nederlandse en Hoog duitse schilders, the first part of the Schilder-boeck (1604). Especially signifi cant, and anticipating twentieth-centuiy art

history, is van Mander's telling comparison

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10

between the visual cultures ot trecento Florence and Bruges to Cimabue and Jan van Eyck.7

Jan van byck is iirst documented at lhe

Hague in 1422, working for the court of John II, count of Holland. Guicciardini and/or van Mander might have seen now lost Eyckian works there, but these would

probably not have dated as early as 1410. John may have "discovered" Jan when the count was bishop (1389-1410) of the prin cipality of Liege.8 The terminal date for John IPs episcopacy coincides with Guicci ardini's for the invention of oil painting. Could there have been a major lost work in the environs of Liege? On the Meuse, that center was near the place of origin of the van

Eycks at Maaseyck or Maastricht. A Magister Hubertus pictor received

payment for panels in Tongeren in 1409. He is presumably Jan van Eyck's older brother, and, once again, that date comes very close

to the Guicciardini date for the genesis of

Eyckian technique. An artist generally thought of as identical to that artist, a Master

Hubert, painted a panel that was bequeathed by Jan de Visch van der Capelle to his

daughter Mary in 1413.9 Since Jan van Eyck was dead in 1441, his

art having been fully formed considerably before the first surviving date—1432—on the Ghent Altar and the Tymotheus, it seems

likely that he (or his older brother Hubert) would have dated a work 1410. If that as

sumption is correct, then the date given by Guicciardini and repeated by van Mander for the genesis of the oil medium is worthy of special consideration. Supporting such a view is the interpretation of the Man in the Red Turban (1433) as a self-portrait since that headgear is often found in depictions of Saint Luke, patron of painters and titular saint of their guild. The sitter for the London

portrait looks on the far side of forty, mak

ing the possibility of a talent fully realized

by 1410 all the likelier.

NOTES

1. That figure includes copies that seem reli able in their following of lost originals.

2. L. Guicciardini, Description du touts les Pays-Bas, autrementes appelles La Germanie

Inferieure, ou Basse Allemagne (Antwerp: 1582).

3. For a fine bibliography of the literature of the genesis of the oil technique, see Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's Schilderboek (Chicago: 1991), p. 237, n. 48; p. 253, n. 1.

4. Hessel Miedma, Karel van Mander—The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and

German Painters, from the First Edition of the Schilderboek (1603-1604) (Doornspijk: 1994), I, pp. 54-73 (the lives of Jan and Hubert).

5. Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van

Eyck (New York: 1980), pp. 68-69. 6. An excellent introduction to van Mander is

provided by E. K. J. Reznicek, "Karel van Man der I," in Dictionary of Art, XX, pp. 244-249.

7. Miedma, I, p. 54. 8. An excellent summary of the Eyckian lives

and works is given by Anne Hagopian van Buren, in Dictionary of Art, X, pp. 703-714.

9. Dhanens, p. 23.

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