Of the many paintings executed by John van Eyck to which no precise date can be attached not one can with certainty be ascribed to this period, and yet it is difficult to believe that his duties in the three years he had already spent in the ducal service were exclusively of a non-professional character: surely the lost portrait of Bonne of Artois as Duchess of Burgundy, a copy of which is preserved in the store-room of the Royal Gallery at Berlin, was his work. The years immediately following, however, yielded a rich harvest of brilliant pictures, first among which, chronologically, two portraits of the Infanta Isabella of Portugal. Philip, on matrimonial projects still intent, was now turning his attention from the Courts of Spain to the neighbouring one of Portugal, and in the autumn of 1428 he decided on an embassy to John I. The mission was a princely one: at its head Sir John de Lannoy, councillor and first chamberlain; associated with whom were Sir Baldwin de Lannoy, governor of Lille--at some later date, too, a subject for our painter's brush--high dignitaries of the court and some of the leading gentry, a secretary, cupbearer, steward, clerk of accounts, and two pursuivants, and last, but not least, John van Eyck, whose relative standing may be gathered from the fact that in the distribution of gratuities at the ceremony of leave-taking only that of the chief ambassador exceeded his, the respective sums being 200_l._ and 160_l._ The mission, distributed between two Venetian galleys, sailed out of Sluus harbour on the 19th of October and arrived the next day at Sandwich, where three or four weeks were spent awaiting a further escort of two galleys from London. Forced by contrary winds to seek shelter, first at Shoreham and then at Plymouth and Falmouth, it was not till the 2nd of December that the convoy sailed out into the ocean. Nine days later they were at Bayona, a small seaport of Galicia, where they delayed three days, their long sea journey at length terminating on the 16th at Cascaës, whence they travelled overland to Lisbon. In the absence of the Court a letter explaining the object of the mission was entrusted to the herald Flanders, who pursued the King from Estremóz to Arrayollos and Aviz, in the province of Alemtéjo, where the embassy at last had audience of his Majesty on the 13th of January and presented to him the Duke's letters soliciting the hand of his daughter Isabella. The while the ambassadors were discussing their master's proposals with the King's Council John van Eyck was at his easel painting the Infanta's portrait, two copies of which were executed and despatched to the Court of Burgundy, one by sea and the other by land, the better to ensure safe delivery, with duplicate accounts of the mission's doings to date. The Duke's reply did not arrive until the 4th of June. A pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, and visits to John II., King of Castile, to the