Eyck
Eyck names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Eyck HUBERT VAN (ik)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
HUBERT VAN (ik), a noted Flemish painter; born in Maaseyck, near Liège, Belgium, in 1366. It has been claimed that he and his brother JAN were the inventors of oil painting. For transparent and brilliant coloring and minute finish their works have never been surpassed. Their masterpieces are for the most part in Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Berlin, Munich, and Paris. The only painting that can now certainly be assigned to Hubert is the altar-piece with folding doors, "The Adoration of the Lamb," begun by him and finished by Jan, and afterward presented to the Cathedral of St. Bavon, Ghent, where only the two central divisions now remain, the wings being in the Gallery at Berlin, with the exception of those representing Adam and Eve, which are in the Brussels Museum. Hubert died in Ghent, Flanders, Sept. 18, 1426.
Eyck JAN VAN, a Flemish painter
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JAN VAN, a Flemish painter, brother of HUBERT; born in Maaseyck, about 1386. He was court painter of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and practiced his art chiefly at Bruges. In the National Gallery, London, there are three pictures of Jan van Eyck. These are portraits of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne de Chenany, his wife signed and dated 1434; the portrait of a man in a cloak and fur collar, with a red handkerchief twisted round the head as a turban-painted Oct. 21, 1433; and the portrait of a man with a dark-red dress and a green head-covering-signed and dated Oct. 10, 1432. In the Louvre is his exquisitely finished little picture of "Chancellor Rollin kneeling before the Virgin." Jan died in Bruges, July 9, 1440, and lies buried in St. Donatus Church.
Eyck MARGARET VAN, a Flemish painter
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARGARET VAN, a Flemish painter, sister of HUBERT and JAN VAN EYCK. A "Virgin and Child," in the National Gallery, London, formerly assigned to her, is attributed to an unknown painter of the Early Flemish school. She is believed to have executed the miniatures in the missal of the Duke of Bedford. She died before 1431.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it repeated the old claim that Hubert and Jan "were the inventors of oil painting"; scholars now credit them not with inventing the medium, which was in use long before, but with perfecting the layered oil glazes that give their panels their depth. The account also has the Ghent altarpiece scattered — wings in Berlin, Adam and Eve in Brussels — but Germany surrendered the Berlin panels under the Treaty of Versailles and by 1920 the "Adoration of the Lamb" was reassembled in St Bavo's, where it remains, minus the Just Judges panel stolen in 1934 and never recovered. Hubert himself has shrunk: with almost no documented work, many art historians now doubt how much of the altarpiece he painted, and Margaret van Eyck, given her own entry here, is generally treated as a figure without solid documentary support. A cleaning campaign completed in 2019 stripped sixteenth-century overpaint from the altarpiece and revealed the Lamb's startlingly humanlike original face, which drew worldwide attention.
Written for this edition, 2026.