The date of Jan van Eyck's birth is as uncertain as that of his brother's. Tradition has it that the two brothers are portrayed on the panel of the great Ghent altar-piece, which represents _The Just Judges_. These portraits suggest a difference of about twenty years between the two, so that the birth of Jan would have to be placed somewhere between 1386 and 1390. Hubert being thus about twenty years his senior, it is natural to suppose that Jan received from him his early education in matters of art. Guicciardini, van Mander, and other early writers, affirm that the two brothers worked in collaboration, and there is no reason to doubt that Jan in his early years assisted his brother in many or most of his paintings--perhaps even in the Ghent altar-piece, which he finished after the elder brother's death. It is certainly a curious fact that, with a single exception--the completely over-painted _Enthronement of St. Thomas of Canterbury_ at {15} Chatsworth--all the signed pictures by Jan bear dates posterior to the death of Hubert. And it is equally significant that the first of this series of ten signed pictures is dated 1432, the year of the completion of the Ghent altar-piece, which was the last work in which both brothers had a share. [Illustration: THE ENTHRONEMENT OF THOMAS À BECKET, BY JAN VAN EYCK.] The chief events in the life of Jan van Eyck can be gathered fairly accurately from contemporary records and documents. In 1422 Jan entered the service of John of Bavaria, at that time Duke of Luxembourg, whose household accounts show the payment of a weekly wage to the artist, from October 25, 1422, till September, 1424, for the decoration of the palace at the Hague. M. Bouchot mentioned an earlier record of Jan's doings, when he believed he discovered him at Cambrai decorating a Paschal candle. But the eminent French critic probably confused Jan van Eyck with one Jan de Yeke, whose name occurs in the accounts of the Cathedral of Cambrai as that of a man employed in 1422 and many following years in painting crosses, clocks, and candles on the outer wall of the cathedral to deter the passers-by from committing nuisances!