Hubert van Eyck (; – 18 September 1426) was an
Early Netherlandish painter and older brother of
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...
, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have completed continues to make an assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting is the body of work by artists active in the Burgundian Netherlands, Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period, once known as the Flemish Primitives. It flour ...
.
[.]
Life and career
He was probably born in
Maaseik, in what is now the
Belgian province of Limburg, into a family in the
gentry
Gentry (from Old French , from ) are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to Landed property, landed es ...
.
As the name was not a very common one, he is probably the "Magister Hubertus, Pictor" recorded as having been paid in 1409 for panels in the church of Onze Lieve Vrouwe,
Tongeren
Tongeren (; ; ; ) is a city and former municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg, in the southeastern corner of the Flemish region of Belgium. Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium, as the only Roman administrative capital wit ...
. He is probably also Master Hubert who had painted a panel bequeathed in 1413 by Jan de Visch van der Capelle to his daughter, a Benedictine nun near
Grevelingen; however he does not appear in
guild
A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular territory. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradespeople belonging to a professional association. They so ...
records, and his heirs did not include any children, so it has been suggested that he may have been in
minor orders, perhaps attached to what was then the abbey, now the cathedral, of
St Bavo at Ghent, where his ''
Ghent Altarpiece'' still remains, settling in
Ghent
Ghent ( ; ; historically known as ''Gaunt'' in English) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the Provinces of Belgium, province ...
by .
Around the time of his settlement, or shortly afterward, he began his only surviving documented work, the ''Ghent Altarpiece'' in St Bavo's. However, the painting was not finished until six years after his death, in 1432, so the degree to which the surviving altarpiece reflects his work, rather than that of Jan who took it over, remains much discussed. An inscription on the frame, which was destroyed in the ''
beeldenstorm'' in 1566, stated that Hubert van Eyck "maior quo Nemo reports" (greater than anyone) started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck – calling himself "arte Secundus" (second-best in the art) – completed it in 1432.
[.]
Writing in 1933, art historian Bryson Burroughs, who at that time attributed to Hubert the ''
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych'', describing him as "the fountainhead of northern painting", suggests he did the
underdrawing for the ''Ghent Altarpiece'' with Jan painting in after his brother's death;
some form of this view remains common among specialists. Modern scientific investigation reveals various changes between the finished work and the lower painted levels and the
underdrawing. Today the inscription is often regarded as an overgenerous fraternal tribute.
Given the circumstances, the Ghent Altarpiece is a difficult work to use for comparison when assessing other attributions, especially as several other artists from the brothers' workshops probably worked on it as well.
The town
magistrate
The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judi ...
s of Ghent visited his workshop in 1425; the city had commissioned two designs for a painting from him.
He died on or before 18 September 1426,
[; .] probably still in his thirties, and was buried in Saint Bavo's Cathedral, next to his sister Margareta according to the 16th-century writer van Vaernewijck, who says she was also a painter and unmarried. His heirs paid taxes relating to properties in Ghent.
A copper inscription recording his date of death was engraved on the tombstone, but is now missing.
According to a tradition from the 16th century, his arm was preserved as a relic in a casket above the portal of Saint Bavo of Ghent.
Van Vaernewijck also records the local tradition that Jan van Eyck was trained by his brother, though when Jan is first documented in August 1422 he was already a "
master" and working in
The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
.
Legacy
The division of surviving works between Hubert, early Jan van Eyck, and other painters has been the subject of great debate among art historians, involving the ''Ghent Altarpiece'', the many different hands that can be detected in the
Turin-Milan Hours, and other pieces. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the inscription on the ''Ghent Altarpiece'' was usually taken at face value, and most unsigned works now given to the early years of his brother Jan were attributed to Hubert. After a period in the mid-20th century when there was a strong tendency to attribute work away from Hubert, he has made something of a comeback in recent decades, but there is still a wide range of opinion among specialists. He is likely to have begun
The Three Marys at the Tomb now in the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...
in
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...
, but this seems to have been finished by another artist some decades later and has suffered from the restoration.
Drawings in the
Albertina, Vienna of the Apostles have been attributed to him and the
British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
has a drawing copying a lost ''Capture of Christ'' that relates to parts of the ''Ghent Altarpiece''.
Notes
References
Sources
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External links
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Entry for Hubert van Eyckon the
Union List of Artist Names
Hubert van Eyck at Artcyclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eyck, Hubert Van
Early Netherlandish painters
14th-century births
1426 deaths
Catholic painters