''Portrait of Jan de Leeuw'' is a small 1436

oil on wood A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel of wood, either a single piece or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, panel painting was the normal method, when not pain ...

painting by the

Early Netherlandish Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especiall ...

master Jan van Eyck, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. De Leeuw was a

goldsmith A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and servicea ...

living in

Bruges Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the country by population. The area of the whole city a ...

; most art historians accept that, given the familiarity of the portrait, that he and van Eyck knew each other and were on good terms. The work is still in its original frame, which is painted over to look like bronze.Bauman, 35 Like the London self-portrait, the painting is dominated by black and dark brown hues, with red overtones. De Leeuw is presented as a serious young man with a rather intense gaze. He is wearing a black chaperon and black fur lined jacket.Borchert, 42 He turns to look at the viewer while holding a gold ring band with a red jewel, a symbol of his profession,O'Rourke Boyle, 176 although some have suggested that it might indicate a recent marriage engagement, or even, given his direct gaze, that the painted is meant for his intended. Formally and tonally, it closely resembles van Eyck's supposed self-portrait in the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

, London. In both works, the head is oversized in relation to the torso. The Vienna panel is still in its original frame, which closely resembles that of the London panel, the central panel of the ''

Dresden Triptych The ''Dresden Triptych'' (or ''Virgin and Child with St. Michael and St. Catherine and a Donor'', or ''Triptych of the Virgin and Child'') is a very small hinged-triptych altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It consists ...

'', and a number of works by his workshop; likely they were all put together by the same craftsman. The frame is painted over to look like bronze.Bauman, 35 Portrait of a Man in a Turban (Jan van Eyck) with frame

Portrait of a Man in a Turban (Jan van Eyck) with frame

The panel's borders contains a fictive frame, which is heavily inscribed on all sides. The letters are painted in black,Hudson, 99 and are in the

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

vernacular. The numerals are rendered in Arabic script. The lettering addresses the viewer directly, and reads, IAN DE OP SANT ORSELEN DACH / DAT CLAER EERST MET OGHEN SACH, 1401 / GHECONTERFEIT NV HEEFT MI IAN / VAN EYCK WEL BLIICT WANNEERT BEGA(N) 1436Hudson, 97 ''(Jan De eeuw', who First Opened His Eyes on the Feast of St Ursula

1 October Events Pre-1600 *331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela. * 366 – Pope Damasus I is consecrated. * 959 – Edgar the Peaceful becomes king of all England, in succession to Eadwig. * ...

1401. Now Jan Van Eyck Has Painted Me, You Can See When He Began it. 1436). The word "Leeuw" is substituted for a pictogram of a golden lion, a play on the sitter's surname - "Leeuw", means lion in Dutch. Parts of the lettering are carved into the fictive frame's border, other pieces are raised from it in

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

. The inscription seems to contain three of

chronogram A chronogram is a sentence or inscription in which specific letters, interpreted as numerals (such as Roman numerals), stand for a particular date when rearranged. The word, meaning "time writing", derives from the Greek words ''chronos'' (χ ...

s, "a type of sophisticated word puzzle popular among humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries",Bauman, 36 where the years in the text are represented when the values of the Roman numerals are summed. According to Bauman they can be found in its year of completion, the year of the sitter's birth and his age, although both Max Friedländer and

Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 in Hannover – March 14, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a German-Jewish art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work represents a high ...

only accepted the first two.Hudson, 96–97 Addressing the frank and direct aspect of the inscription, art historian

Till-Holger Borchert Till-Holger Borchert (born 4 January 1967, in Hamburg) is a German art historian and writer specialising in 14th and 15th-century art. He has been the chief curator of the Groeningemuseum and Arentshuis museums in Bruges, Belgium, between 2003 and ...

remarked that the picture "appears to be speaking: the portrait address the viewer in the first person singular. The dialogue with the viewer initiated by the challenging gaze of the sitter is continued in the "spoken" address on the frame". This sentiment is echoed by Guy Bauman of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

who wrote in 1986 that, "Van Eyck seems, in a God-like way, not only to have endowed the sitter with sight and to have affected his rebirth, but also, recalling Fazio's remark, to have given the portrait a voice".

References

Notes

Sources

* Bauman, Guy. "Early Flemish Portraits, 1425–1525". '' Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin'', vol 43, no. 4, Spring, 1986 * Borchert, Till-Holger. ''Van Eyck''. London: Taschen, 2008. * Campbell, Lorne. ''The Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Paintings''. London: National Gallery, 1998. * Dhanens, Elisabeth. ''Hubert and Jan van Eyck''. Antwerp: Alpine, 1981. * Harbison, Craig. "Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism". Reaktion Books, 1997. * Hudson, Hugh. "The chronograms in the inscription of Jan van Eyck's 'Portrait of Jan de Leeuw'". ''Oud Holland'', 116, No. 2, 2003. 96–99 * O'Rourke Boyle, Marjorie. ''Divine Domesticity: Augustine of Thagaste to Teresa of Avila (Studies in the History of Christian Thought''. Brill, 1996. {{Authority control 1430s paintings Portraits by Jan van Eyck Paintings in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum