Eyck, Hubert van, 1366-1426; Eyck, Jan van, 1390-1440
John's apprenticeship ended, and he in turn started on his travels,
Hubert would appear to have removed to Holland, where painters and
miniaturists of the early years of the fifteenth century repeatedly
exhibit marked traces of his influence; where also miniatures in a Book
of Hours, of date 1412 to 1417, to the order of Count William for the
use of his only daughter, the fair and ill-starred Jacqueline, are
judged to have been executed by him on the strength of the many points
of resemblance they bear to the Great Polyptych. The commission of the
latter work itself is now confidently attributed to the same prince.
Observe the prominence given to the tower of Saint Martin's at Utrecht
and the adjacent view of Cöln in the centre-piece, "The Adoration of the
Lamb," and to St. Martin himself, the patron saint of Utrecht, in the
panel of "The Knights of Christ," the banner in his grasp, moreover,
charged with the arms of that town: the Count's territory was in the
diocese of Utrecht and the ecclesiastical province of Cöln. So much
depends on the origin of this commission in apportioning the respective
share each of the brothers had in its execution that the further fact
must not be overlooked that Ghent, for which the great work was
completed, had no sort of connection with either Utrecht or Cöln, being
in the diocese of Tournay and the ecclesiastical province of Rheims,
while the only saint in the altar-piece specially connected with Ghent
who is characterised by an emblem--St. Livin, to wit--was also widely
venerated in Zeeland. Finally, not to labour this aspect of the question
unduly, the inscription on the frame attributes, not the picture's
inception, but its completion, to Jodoc Vyt, the eventual donor--a form
of words so singular as to admit of no other interpretation than the
plain meaning the expression conveys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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