50 Fun Facts About Jan Van Eyck

In World War II, the Nazis hid Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece in which kind of underground site?

A salt mine at Altaussee in Austria held the altarpiece alongside thousands of other looted works. The stay badly damaged its paint and varnish before it went home to Belgium in 1945.

The woman gathering her green gown in the Arnolfini Portrait is often wrongly assumed to be what?

Pregnant is the usual guess, but art historians point to virgin saints painted in the same bunched-up dress. Yards of costly cloth were simply the fashion, and a way to show off wealth.

A 2020 restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece uncovered which animal's oddly human-looking face?

The lamb turned out to have forward-facing eyes that look straight at the viewer. Later overpainting had hidden the original face, which conservators uncovered when they cleaned the lower panels.

Which 2014 war film dramatises the Allied hunt for the Ghent Altarpiece and other looted art?

The Monuments Men follows art experts in uniform as they chase the stolen van Eyck across Europe. The real unit recovered it in 1945 and returned it to Belgium at a ceremony in Brussels.

The Latin line Jan van Eyck painted on the wall in the Arnolfini Portrait says he did what in 1434?

The line reads Jan van Eyck was here 1434, in the ornate script of legal documents. It is why some historians have read the painting as the witnessed record of a marriage.

Which tool is Jan van Eyck suspected of using for the tiniest highlights in the Arnolfini Portrait?

A magnifying glass would explain how he placed an individual highlight on each prayer bead hanging on the back wall. Slow-drying oils gave him the time to work at that scale.

In 1428 Jan van Eyck travelled to which country to paint a princess his duke hoped to marry?

Portugal was ridden with plague, so the embassy caught up with its wandering court at a remote castle. Van Eyck painted Princess Isabella so the duke could see his bride before the wedding.

Jan van Eyck often dressed the Virgin Mary in which colour, not the blue Italian painters chose?

Red marked out sacred figures in Netherlandish painting because the dye was among the most expensive of all. His tiny Madonna at the Fountain is one he painted in blue instead.

In Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, why are the Virgin Mary's words to the angel painted upside down?

For God to read is the accepted explanation: her reply is addressed to heaven, so it is lettered from a vantage point above. The same trick appears on the outside of the Ghent Altarpiece.

Right after the 1934 Ghent Altarpiece theft, the police chief left to look into a robbery at what?

A cheese shop nearby had also been robbed, and the Ghent commissioner hurried off to it after a brief look at the crime scene. The missing van Eyck panel has never been recovered.

Which animal stands at the couple's feet in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait?

A dog was a fashionable lap companion for wealthy women at court, so it also signals the couple's status. Unlike its owners, it looks straight out of the picture.

In which city did Jan van Eyck buy a house, marry and spend the last years of his life?

Bruges was home to rich foreign merchants such as the Arnolfini, a ready market for portraits. Van Eyck was buried at its church of St Donatian, first in the graveyard and later inside.

Which London museum bought Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait in 1842 for only 600 pounds?

The National Gallery was still a young institution when it bought the panel from James Hay, a Scottish colonel. Before that it had spent centuries in the Spanish royal collection in Madrid.

Which treaty made Germany hand back the Ghent Altarpiece panels it held after World War I?

The Treaty of Versailles covered both the panels seized in wartime and the wings an English collector had legitimately bought a century earlier. Germans bitterly resented the loss.

The Ghent Altarpiece was looted to Paris in the 1790s and came home after France lost which battle?

Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule in 1815, and the plundered centre panels returned to Ghent that year. The diocese then pawned the wings almost at once and never redeemed them.

Jan van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin hangs in which major European museum?

The Louvre took in the panel in 1800, after it was seized from Rolin's church in Autun during the French Revolution. The chancellor had himself painted kneeling in prayer opposite the Virgin and Child.

Slow-drying oils let Jan van Eyck blend colours in ways impossible with which older panel paint?

Tempera dries far faster than oil, so van Eyck's medium gave him time to work wet-in-wet. That is how he achieved such subtle shifts of light and shade on solid-looking forms.

Which Italian biographer of artists spread the myth that Jan van Eyck invented oil painting?

Giorgio Vasari gave van Eyck the credit in his famous book of artists' lives, but oil paint is far older. Buddhist painters in Afghanistan were using it in the 7th century.

Which Duke of Burgundy hired Jan van Eyck as court painter and let him paint whenever he pleased?

Philip the Good valued him so highly that he paid van Eyck's widow a full year's salary when the painter died. He also sent him abroad as an envoy of the court.

Which brother of Jan van Eyck is credited with starting the Ghent Altarpiece but died in 1426?

Hubert left no other work that scholars agree is his, so nobody knows what his painting looked like. Most of the altarpiece is thought to be Jan's hand, completed by 1432.

Which panel of Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece was stolen in 1934 and has never been found?

The Just Judges vanished overnight, and the thief demanded a million Belgian francs. The man who claimed the crime died months later insisting only he knew where it lay; a copy now fills the gap.

Which Albert Camus novel has its narrator keeping the Ghent Altarpiece's stolen panel in Amsterdam?

The Fall is a confession by Clamence, once a wealthy Paris lawyer, delivered in an Amsterdam bar. He claims the missing van Eyck has ended up in his own keeping.

In 1942 Hitler ordered Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece seized and stored in which Bavarian castle?

Neuschwanstein was a major Nazi depot, where thousands of looted items were later found. Allied air raids later made it too dangerous for the van Eyck, which was moved yet again.

Where was Belgium sending the Ghent Altarpiece for safekeeping in 1940 when it got stuck in France?

The Vatican was the goal, but Italy joined the war on Germany's side while the painting was still in France. It sat in a museum in Pau until German officials seized it two years later.

In the Ghent Altarpiece's lost frame inscription, how did Jan van Eyck rank himself as a painter?

Second best in the art was his phrase, because the same verse called his late elder brother greater than anyone. It credits one with starting the work and the other with finishing it in 1432.

Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece was made for which church, where it can still be seen today?

St Bavo's Cathedral was still the parish church of St John the Baptist when the altarpiece was consecrated in 1432. The Duke of Burgundy's infant son was baptised there that same day.

In Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, what on the back wall shows two more people entering the room?

A convex mirror shows the room from behind, with two tiny visitors in the doorway, one of whom may be van Eyck himself. He painted it larger than such mirrors could then be made.

Which costly imported fruit lies by the window in the Arnolfini Portrait as a sign of wealth?

Oranges were rare and very expensive in the Low Countries, and may have been among the wares Arnolfini traded. In Italy they also stood for fertility in marriage.

The merchant Giovanni Arnolfini, thought to be painted twice by Jan van Eyck, came from which Tuscan city?

Lucca specialised in weaving expensive cloth, and the Arnolfini were among its most powerful families. Giovanni spent most of his life in Flanders, far from home.

The Arnolfini Portrait once hung in Madrid's royal palace and likely inspired which Velázquez work?

Las Meninas borrows the idea of a small reflection on the far wall that reveals people standing where the viewer is. Velázquez worked in the very palace where the van Eyck then hung.

What was the first name of Jan van Eyck's wife, whose portrait he signed as her husband in 1439?

Margaret speaks through the frame of her own portrait, which says her husband Johannes completed her in 1439 when she was 33. It is among the earliest European portraits of a painter's spouse.

Jan van Eyck's widow is recorded putting part of her pension from the city into what?

A lottery took at least some of the modest pension the city granted her as the widow of a renowned painter. Very little else is known about her; even her maiden name is lost.

Jan van Eyck is thought to have been born in which town on the River Meuse?

Maaseik was once spelled Maaseyck, which is where the family name comes from. His daughter Lievine later entered a convent there, and his notes on one portrait sketch are in the local dialect.

Jan van Eyck's first recorded job was as court painter in which Dutch city, redecorating a palace?

The Hague was the seat of John of Bavaria, ruler of Holland, whose accounts list payments to a Master Jan the painter from 1422. He worked on the Binnenhof with one and then two assistants.

In which alphabet did Jan van Eyck usually letter his personal motto on his picture frames?

Greek letters were a show of learning few painters could match; van Eyck also knew Latin and used Hebrew script in other inscriptions. His grasp was shaky, though, and he made mistakes.

Jan van Eyck signed his frames with a motto that puns on his surname and means what?

As I can, written ALS ICH KAN with the ICH doubling as Eyck, sounds modest, yet he lettered it large, first on what may be his self-portrait.

The headdress in Jan van Eyck's probable self-portrait looks like a turban but is really what?

A chaperon is a hood whose long tail normally hangs down; here it is tied up over the top of the head. The same kind is worn by a tiny figure in his Madonna of Chancellor Rolin.

Jan van Eyck hid his own tiny reflection on which armoured figure in the van der Paele altarpiece?

Saint George is the donor's namesake, and doffs his helmet to present Joris van der Paele to the Virgin. The painter stands at his easel in the gleam of the knight's shield.

Two near-identical little panels credited to Jan van Eyck show which saint receiving the stigmata?

Francis kneels by a rock in both versions, one in Turin and a smaller one in Philadelphia that is only about 13 cm tall. It was the first such scene in northern Renaissance art.

Which New York museum owns Jan van Eyck's tiny Crucifixion and Last Judgement panels?

The Met bought the pair in 1933, when they were credited to his brother. Each panel is under 20 cm wide, and Russian writing on the backs records their transfer to canvas in 1867.

Stalin's government sold Jan van Eyck's Annunciation in 1930 from which Russian museum?

The Hermitage lost it to the American banker Andrew Mellon, who bought 21 paintings from the Soviets. A tsar had acquired the panel for the museum at auction in 1850.

Jan van Eyck's signed Saint Barbara of 1437 stands apart from his other panels because it is what?

A drawing on a prepared panel, it shows the saint reading before a huge unfinished Gothic building swarming with workmen. Scholars still argue over whether he meant to paint over it.

Jan de Leeuw, shown holding a ring in Jan van Eyck's 1436 portrait of him, followed which trade?

Goldsmith fits the ring he holds up, and the frame speaks in his voice, saying he first opened his eyes in 1401 and that van Eyck has now painted him. The two men were probably friends.

Jan van Eyck's portraits spread which angle on a sitter's face, which he revived from antiquity?

Three-quarter view soon spread across Europe, usually with the sitter lit from one side against a flat dark background. Nine of his portraits in the pose survive.

Like most early Netherlandish panels, Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait is painted on which wood?

Oak, often imported from the Baltic, was the usual support for Netherlandish painters, cut radially so the boards were less likely to warp. The tree rings now help to date the pictures.

Jan van Eyck's only surviving triptych, a tiny folding altarpiece, is named after which German city?

Dresden's Old Masters gallery keeps the little triptych in its original frames. It may have been made as a portable altar for a travelling cleric, and its damaged coats of arms point to a Genoese family.

After Jan van Eyck's death, which follower became his city's leading painter and copied his designs?

Petrus Christus led painting in the city for some twenty years and made his own version of a van Eyck Madonna. He was then so forgotten that scholars had to rediscover him in the 1800s.

Which art historian argued in 1934 that the Arnolfini Portrait was a painted marriage certificate?

Erwin Panofsky read the signature as a witness statement and the household objects as disguised symbols. Not everyone accepts the certificate idea, but his reading of the symbols is broadly agreed.

Jan van Eyck's first known employer, John of Bavaria, ruler of Holland, bore which grim nickname?

The Pitiless earned the name as bishop of Liège, where he had rebellious townsmen beheaded or drowned in the Meuse. He later gave up the church to rule Holland.

Court records use which word for the well-paid journeys Jan van Eyck made for his duke?

Secret is how the accounts describe the trips, for which he was paid several times his yearly salary. One took him to certain distant lands, perhaps as far as the Holy Land.