Jan van Eyck
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50 free Jan Van Eyck trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jan van Eyck painted with a precision that still looks impossible six centuries on. Working in the Low Countries in the early 1400s, he pushed oil paint further than anyone before him, and his panels are packed with details that reward a close look: reflections, inscriptions, jokes and puzzles that scholars are still arguing about. This quiz collects the most surprising fun facts about him. It covers his life as a court painter and occasional envoy, the Arnolfini Portrait and its many riddles, and the Ghent Altarpiece, a work so coveted that it has been looted, pawned, hidden and stolen again and again. There are questions on his technique, his patrons, his family and where his paintings hang today. It is written for art lovers, students and anyone planning a museum visit. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In World War II, the Nazis hid Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece in which kind of underground site?
A salt mine
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.
Q 02The woman gathering her green gown in the Arnolfini Portrait is often wrongly assumed to be what?
Pregnant
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.
Q 03A 2020 restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece uncovered which animal's oddly human-looking face?
The lamb
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.
Q 04Which 2014 war film dramatises the Allied hunt for the Ghent Altarpiece and other looted art?
The Monuments Men
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.
Q 05The Latin line Jan van Eyck painted on the wall in the Arnolfini Portrait says he did what in 1434?
Was here
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.
Q 06Which tool is Jan van Eyck suspected of using for the tiniest highlights in the Arnolfini Portrait?
A magnifying glass
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.
Q 07In 1428 Jan van Eyck travelled to which country to paint a princess his duke hoped to marry?
Portugal
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.
Q 08Jan van Eyck often dressed the Virgin Mary in which colour, not the blue Italian painters chose?
Red
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.
Q 09In Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, why are the Virgin Mary's words to the angel painted upside down?
For God to read
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.
Q 10Right after the 1934 Ghent Altarpiece theft, the police chief left to look into a robbery at what?
A cheese shop
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.
Q 11Which animal stands at the couple's feet in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait?
A dog
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.
Q 12In which city did Jan van Eyck buy a house, marry and spend the last years of his life?
Bruges
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.
Q 13Which London museum bought Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait in 1842 for only 600 pounds?
The National Gallery
Q 21Which panel of Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece was stolen in 1934 and has never been found?
The Just Judges
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.
Q 22Which Albert Camus novel has its narrator keeping the Ghent Altarpiece's stolen panel in Amsterdam?
The Fall
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.
Q 23In 1942 Hitler ordered Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece seized and stored in which Bavarian castle?
Neuschwanstein
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.
Q 14Which treaty made Germany hand back the Ghent Altarpiece panels it held after World War I?
Versailles
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.
Q 15The Ghent Altarpiece was looted to Paris in the 1790s and came home after France lost which battle?
Waterloo
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.
Q 16Jan van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin hangs in which major European museum?
The Louvre
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.
Q 17Slow-drying oils let Jan van Eyck blend colours in ways impossible with which older panel paint?
Tempera
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.
Q 18Which Italian biographer of artists spread the myth that Jan van Eyck invented oil painting?
Giorgio Vasari
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.
Q 19Which Duke of Burgundy hired Jan van Eyck as court painter and let him paint whenever he pleased?
Philip the Good
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.
Q 20Which brother of Jan van Eyck is credited with starting the Ghent Altarpiece but died in 1426?
Hubert
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.
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.
Q 24Where was Belgium sending the Ghent Altarpiece for safekeeping in 1940 when it got stuck in France?
The Vatican
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.
Q 25In the Ghent Altarpiece's lost frame inscription, how did Jan van Eyck rank himself as a painter?
Second best
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.
Q 26Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece was made for which church, where it can still be seen today?
St Bavo's Cathedral
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.
Q 27In Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, what on the back wall shows two more people entering the room?
A convex mirror
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.
Q 28Which costly imported fruit lies by the window in the Arnolfini Portrait as a sign of wealth?
Oranges
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.
Q 29The merchant Giovanni Arnolfini, thought to be painted twice by Jan van Eyck, came from which Tuscan city?
Lucca
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.
Q 30The Arnolfini Portrait once hung in Madrid's royal palace and likely inspired which Velázquez work?
Las Meninas
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.