Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was the greatest painter of the early Netherlandish school and brought oil painting to a level of optical precision that had no precedent. Born around 1390, probably near Maaseik in present-day Belgium, almost nothing is known of his training. He worked for John of Bavaria and from 1425 for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who paid him well, stood godfather to one of his children, and sent him on confidential diplomatic missions, including to Portugal in 1428 to negotiate a marriage. He did not invent oil paint, as Vasari claimed, but he transformed its use, building images in thin translucent glazes over a light ground so that light passes through the layers and reflects back. The result was a depth of colour and a rendering of texture — fur, brass, glass, skin, the weave of cloth — that tempera could not approach. The Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432 and inscribed as begun by his brother Hubert, is a polyptych of twelve panels and remains among the most studied objects in European art; it has been stolen or dismembered repeatedly, and one panel taken in 1934 has never been recovered. The Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 shows a couple in a Bruges interior, with a convex mirror on the back wall reflecting two further figures in the doorway and the inscription that Jan van Eyck was here. Its meaning is still argued over. He signed and dated his paintings, which was unusual, and used the motto als ich can — as I can. He died in Bruges in 1441.

• Lived: 1390 CE – 1441 CE
• Nationality: Dutch
• Roles: painter