remembered about the facts of Hubert van Eyck's life, his name was
always associated with the discovery of a new method of painting, and
on that account held in great honour.

The 'Three Maries' is in many respects the most attractive of the
pictures ascribed to Hubert, but his most famous work was a larger
picture, or assemblage of pictures framed together, the 'Adoration
of the Lamb,' in St. Bavon's Church at Ghent. It is an altar-piece--a
painting set up over an altar in a church or chapel to aid the devotions
of those worshipping there. Many of the panels of the Ghent altar-piece
are now in the Museums of Berlin and Brussels. They belonged to the
wings or shutters which were made to close over the central parts,
and which used also to be painted outside and inside with devotional
or related subjects. The four great central panels on which these
shutters used to close are still at Ghent. The subject of the 'Adoration
of the Lamb' was taken from Revelations, where before the Lamb has
opened the seals of the book, St. John says:

And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard
I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

Hubert has figured this verse by assembling, as in one time and place,
representatives of Christendom. They who worship are the prophets,
apostles, popes, martyrs, and virgins. On each side of the central
panel the just judges, the soldiers of Christ, the hermits, and the
pilgrims, advance to join the throng around the Lamb. Most beautiful
of all is the crowd of virgin martyrs bearing palms, moving over the
green grass carpeted with flowers, to adore the Lamb of God, the
Redeemer of the World. Above, God the Father, the Virgin Mother, and
St. John the Baptist, with crowns of wonderful workmanship, are throned
amid choirs of singing and playing angels on either hand.

The picture does not illustrate the description of the Adoration of
the Lamb in the fifth chapter of Revelations so faithfully as the
picture of the 'Three Maries' illustrated St. Matthew. The Lamb has
not seven horns and seven eyes, and the four beasts and twenty-four
elders are not falling down before it and adoring. The Lamb is an
ordinary sheep, and the picture is a symbolic expression of the
Catholic faith, founded upon a biblical text, but not what could be
described as 'a Bible illustration.' People in the Middle Ages liked
to embody their faith in a visible form, and we are told that
theologians frequently drew up schemes of doctrine which painters did
their best to translate into pictures, and sculptors into sculpture.
Such works of art were for instruction rather than beauty, though some
also served well the purpose of decoration.

Josse Vyt, who ordered the picture, and whose portrait, with that of
his wife, is painted on the shutters, no doubt explained exactly what
he wanted, and Hubert sought to please him.[1] But although the design
of the central panel was old-fashioned and symbolic, Hubert was able
to do what he liked with the landscape, and with the individual figures.
They are real men and women with varieties of expression such as had
not been painted before, and the landscape is even more beautiful than
the one at the back of the 'Three Maries.' Snow mountains rise in the
distance, and beautiful cypresses and palms of all kinds clothe the
green slopes behind the Lamb. There are flowers in the grass and jewels
for pebbles in the brook. Behind, you can see the Cathedrals of Utrecht
and Cologne, St. John's of Maestricht, and more churches and houses
besides, and the walls of a town, and wide stretches of green country.

[Footnote 1: There are reasons for thinking that the picture may have
been ordered by some prince who died before it was finished, and that
Vyt only acquired it later, in time to have his own and his wife's
portraits added on the shutters.]

Hubert van Eyck died in 1426, and the picture was finished by his
younger brother John, of whose life, though more is known than of
Hubert's, we need not here repeat details. Many of his pictures still
exist, and the most delightful of them for us are his portraits. He
was not the first man to paint good portraits, but few artists have
ever painted better likenesses. It seems evident that the people in
his pictures are 'as like as they can stare,' with no wrinkle or scratch
left out. Portraits in earlier days than these were seldom painted
for their own sake alone. A pious man who wanted to present an
altar-piece or a stained-glass window to a church would modestly have
his own image introduced in a corner. By degrees such portraits grew
in size and scale, and the neighbouring saints diminished, till at
last the saints were left out and the portrait stood alone. Then it
came about that such a picture was hung in its owner's house rather
than in a church. One of the best portraits John van Eyck ever painted
is at Bruges--the likeness of his wife. The panel was discovered about
fifty years ago in the market-place of Bruges, where an old woman was
using the back of it to skin eels on; but so soundly had the picture
been painted that even this ill-usage did not ruin it. The lady was
a very plain Flemish woman with no beauty of feature or expression,
but John has revealed her character so vividly that to look at her
likeness is to know her. It is indeed a long leap from the Richard
II. of fifty years before, with its representation of the outline of
a youth, to this ample realization of a mature woman's character.

John lived till 1441, and had some pupils and many imitators. One of
these, Roger van der Weyden by name, spread his influence far and wide
throughout the whole of the Netherlands, France, and Germany. How
important this influence was in the history of art we shall see later.
Many of the imitators of John learnt his accuracy and thoroughness
of workmanship, but none of them attained his deep insight into
character.