In the spring of 1425 Jan van Eyck was {16} appointed _varlet de chambre_ to Philip the Good, and though this princely patron availed himself of the master's services as a painter, it would appear from a letter signed by Philip, and bearing the date March 12, 1434, that the appointment of Jan to the position of Court painter to the Burgundian Prince only took place in that year (1434). Still, as _varlet de chambre_ Jan van Eyck must have enjoyed a position of considerable trust and emolument at the hands of his august master, for on more than one occasion we find him entrusted with important missions, some of which took him to the Portuguese Court. The first of these excursions took place when he had resided for three months at Bruges. On his return he went at Philip's order to live at Lille, where he remained until 1428. His missions were generally of a secret nature, but on one of these occasions, in the year 1428, we find Jan again absent in Portugal, returning to the Court of Philip in the suite of Isabella of Portugal, who was destined to become the royal consort. Gachard, in the _Collection de Documents Inédits concevnant l'Histoire de Belgique_, gives a detailed account of the artist's movements from his departure from Écluse on October 19, 1428, to his {17} return in January, 1430. According to these dates, which are gathered from contemporary documents, the ambassadors with the Infanta set out from Lisbon on October 8, 1429. The apparent discrepancy between these dates and that of January 10, 1429, which, at the Golden Fleece Exhibition at Bruges in 1907, was given as the date of the foundation of this Order, and consequently of the nuptials of Philip and Isabella and of Jan's return to Bruges, is easily accounted for if we remember that the beginning of the year was then reckoned from March 1, so that January, 1430, of our own reckoning would tally with January, 1429, of the contemporary calendar. Jan's first duty on arrival at the Portuguese Court was to paint the portrait of the Princess. It appears that he was at work upon this picture for a month. Several portraits of Isabella are still extant painted in the manner of the van Eycks, and pointing to the same origin, but none has so far been discovered to possess qualities or details which would justify its identification as Jan's original panel. Evidently Jan's portrait was pleasing to the eye of the Lowland monarch, for upon Philip expressing his satisfaction with the personal appearance {18} of Isabella, the ambassadors and the bride immediately embarked on the homeward journey. Soon after his return--namely, in 1431--Jan bought a house in Bruges, where he married and continued to work, after the completion of the Ghent altar-piece in the following year, until his death, which took place about the end of June, 1441. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Donatian at Bruges, but his body was subsequently removed to a vault near the font of that church.