The real interest of the Cathedral centres, however, not in St. Bavon, nor in his picture by Rubens, but in the great polyptych of =the Adoration of the Lamb=, the masterpiece of =Jan van Eyck= and his brother =Hubert=, which forms in a certain sense the point of departure for the native art of the Netherlands. This is therefore a convenient place in which to consider the position of these two great painters. They were born at Maaseyck or Eyck-sur-Meuse near Maastricht; Hubert, the elder, about 1360 or 1370; Jan, the younger, about 1390. The only undoubted work of Hubert is the altar-piece in St. Bavon, and even this is only his in part, having been completed after his death by his brother Jan. =Hubert= probably derived his teaching from the School of the Lower Rhine, which first in the North attained any importance, and which had its chief exponents at Maastricht and Cologne. Of this School, he was the final flower. Though not, as commonly said, the inventor of =oil-painting=, he was the first artist who employed the process in its developed form, and he also made immense advances in naturalness of drawing and truth of spirit. =Jan= was probably a pupil of Hubert; he lived at Ghent while the great picture of the Adoration of the Lamb was still being completed; later, he was painter by appointment to the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, and had a house at Bruges, where he died in 1440. He was also employed on various missions abroad, accompanying embassies as far as to Portugal. His painting, though less ideal and beautiful than that of his great successor Memling, is marvellous in its truth: it has an extraordinary charm of purity of colour, vividness of delineation, and fine portrayal of character. Indeed, all the early Flemish artists were essentially =portrait painters=; they copied with fidelity whatever was set before them, whether it were fabrics, furniture, jewellery, flowers, or the literal faces and figures of men and women. Hubert and Jan van Eyck, however, were not so much in strictness the _founders_ of a school as the culminating point of early German art, to which they gave a new Flemish direction. Their work was almost perfect in its own kind. Their successors did not surpass them: in some respects they even fell short of them.