Hubert van Eyck
Paintings
Christ on the cross between Mary and John
The Three Marys at the Tomb of Christ
Ghent Altarpiece : Praying Donors
Ghent Altarpiece : Praying Founder
Ghent Altarpiece : St John the Baptist
Ghent Altarpiece : St John the Evangelist
Ghent Altarpiece : St John the Evangelist , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Angel of the Annunciation
Ghent Altarpiece : Angel of the Annunciation , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Virgin of the Annunciation
Ghent Altarpiece : Virgin of the Annunciation , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : arcade windows and cityscape
Ghent Altarpiece : Niche with bowl , jug and towel
Ghent Altarpiece : Prophet Zacharias
Ghent Altarpiece : The prophet Micah
Ghent Altarpiece : The Sibyl of Erythtraea
Ghent Altarpiece : The Sibyl of Cumae
Ghent Altarpiece : View of the open altar
Ghent Altarpiece : The Three Kings
Ghent Altarpiece : The Righteous Knights ( copy)
Ghent Altarpiece : The Righteous Knights ( copy) , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
Ghent Altarpiece : Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : The pilgrims
Ghent Altarpiece : The hermit , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Adam , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Angels Making Music
Ghent Altarpiece : The Virgin Enthroned
Ghent Altarpiece : Madonna Enthroned , Detail
Ghent Altarpiece : enthroned God the Father
Ghent Altarpiece : enthroned God the Father , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Enthroned John the Baptist
Ghent Altarpiece : Enthroned John the Baptist , detail
Ghent Altarpiece : Angels Making Music
Ghent Altarpiece : Eve , detail
Hubert van Eyck (also Huybrecht van Eyck) (c. 1385–90 – 18 September 1426) was a Flemish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have been completed continues to make assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of Early Netherlandish painting.
Life and career
He was probably born in Maaseik, in what is now the Belgian province of Limburg, into a family in the gentry.
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. He is probably also the 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 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 by c. 1420.[2]
Around the time of his settlement, or short afterwards, 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 repertus" (greater than anyone) started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck – calling himself "arte secundus" (second best in the art) – completed it in 1432.[3]
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;[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
The Three Marys at the Tomb, painted or begun by Hubert, perhaps between 1410 and 1420, and completed by another artist.
The town magistrates of Ghent visited his workshop in 1425; the city had commissioned two designs for a painting from him.[7] He died on 18 September 1426,[8] 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.[9][10] 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.[11] 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.[12]
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 was 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 in Rotterdam, but this seems to have been finished by another artist some decades later, and has suffered from restoration.[13] Drawings in the Albertina, Vienna of the Apostles have been attributed to him and the British Museum has a drawing copying a lost Capture of Christ that relates to parts of the Ghent Altarpiece.[14]
Notes
van Buren
van Buren
Burroughs, 184–193
Burroughs, 184–193
van Buren
Snyder, 90-97; Harbison, 194-195
van Buren
van Buren; by or before that day according to Snyder, 90
van Buren
Web Gallery of Art: EYCK, Hubert van
Weale, Frances. Hubert and John van Eyck. New York: Longmans, 1903. p. 4
van Buren, "Jan van Eyck"
van Buren; Snyder, 90
van Buren
References
Burroughs, Bryson. "A Diptych by Hubert van Eyck". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Volume 28, No. 11, Part 1, November 1933. 184–193
van Buren, Anne Hagopian, "Eyck, van" and "Eyck, Hubert van.", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press. accessed 9 Dec. 2012, online
Harbison, Craig, Jan van Eyck, The Play of Realism, Reaktion Books, London, 1991, ISBN 0948462183
Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art, 1985, Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0136235964
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