A new assessment of the inventive and influential artist Jan van Eyck. Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) was one of the most inventive and influential artists in the entire European tradition. The realism of his paintings continues to astound observers more than six centuries on, even though our world is saturated by high-resolution images. However, viewers today are as like to be absorbed by Van Eyck’s personality as his realism. While he sometimes directly painted himself into his works, he also suggested his presence through an array of inscriptions, signatures, and even a personal motto. Incorporating a wealth of new research and recent discoveries within a fresh exploration of the paintings themselves, this book reveals how profoundly Jan van Eyck transformed the very idea of what an artist could be.

The surviving work of Flemish painter Jan van Eyck (c. 1395–1441) consists of a series of painstakingly detailed oil paintings of astonishing verisimilitude. Most explanations of the meanings behind these paintings have been grounded in a disguised religious symbolism that critics have insisted is foremost. But in Jan van Eyck, Craig Harbison sets aside these explanations and turns instead to the neglected human dimension he finds clearly present in these works. Harbison investigates the personal histories of the true models and participants who sat for such masterpieces as the Virgin and Child and the Arnolfini Double Portrait. This revised and expanded edition includes many illustrations and reveals how van Eyck presented his contemporaries with a more subtle and complex view of the value of appearances as a route to understanding the meaning of life.

In 1842, Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) was acquired by the National Gallery in London. It quickly exerted an influence on British artists, none more so than the young painters of the nascent Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who were drawn to van Eyck's luminous palette, attention to detail, and refined manipulation of oil paints. This book presents the Arnolfini Portrait with a selection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings it inspired. The authors explore how Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt, among others, were influenced by the Arnolfini Portrait, informing their belief in empirical observation and inspiring them to explore how everyday objects could be endowed with symbolic meanings. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London (10/02/17-04/02/18)

This book investigates Jan Van Eyck's patronage by the Crown of Portugal and his role as diplomat-painter for the Duchy of Burgundy following his first voyage to Lisbon in 1428-1429, when he painted two portraits of Infanta Isabella, who became the third wife of Philip the Good in 1430. New portrait identifications are provided for the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and its iconographical prototype, the lost Fountain of Life. These altarpieces are analysed with regard to King Joao I's conquest of Ceuta, achieved by his sons, who were hailed as an "illustrious generation." Strong family ties between the dynastic houses of Avis and Lancaster explain Lusitania's sustained fascination with Arthurian lore and the Grail quest. Several chapters of this book are overlaid with a chivalric veneer. A second "secret mission" to Portugal in 1437 by Jan van Eyck is postulated and this diplomatic visit is related to Prince Henry the Navigator's expedition to Tangier and King Duarte's attempts to forge an alliance with Alfonso V of Aragon. Late Eyckian commissions are reviewed in the light of this ill-fated crusade and additional new portraits are identified. The most significant artist of Renaissance Flanders appears to have been patronized as much by the House of Avis as by the Duchy of Burgundy. Barbara von Barghahn is Professor of Art History at George Washington University and a specialist in the art history of Portugal, Spain, and their colonial dominions, as well as Flanders. In 1993, she was conferred O Grao Comendador in the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. She has spent nearly a decade completing research about Jan van Eyck's diplomatic visits to the Iberian Peninsula.