88: As I Can: How Jan van Eyck Changed the Way We See

Welcome back to the I Take History With My Coffee podcast where we explore history in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

Bartolomeo Fazio, “De Viris Illustribus,” 1456
“Jan of Gaul has been judged the leading painter of our time. He was not unlettered, particularly in geometry and such arts as contribute to the enrichment of painting, and he is thought for this reason to have discovered many things about the properties of colors recorded by the ancients and learned by him from reading Pliny and other authors.” 

It's May 6th, 1432, in the vibrant city of Ghent. Inside St. Bavo's Cathedral, a breathtaking altarpiece is being unveiled for the very first time. The excited crowd presses closer, witnessing something truly extraordinary that defies expectations.

A meadow extends endlessly — you can count the flowers in the foreground and see the glow on distant towers. Figures move toward an altar, their silk brocades reflecting light differently from the rough wool worn by nearby hermits. The Lamb of God is on the altar, and its blood—somehow, the artist makes you believe it is actually flowing into a golden chalice.

A witness later noted that the painter had found a new perspective on seeing. What makes this moment even more extraordinary is that the artist behind this revolution wasn't a monk or a scholar; he was a court functionary - what we might call a bureaucrat with a paintbrush. His name was Jan van Eyck.

And this is his story.

Quick note before we dive in: there are links to all the paintings in the episode description if you want to follow along visually.

To understand Jan van Eyck, we need to understand the world that shaped him—the glittering, ambitious, profoundly strange Burgundian court.

In the early 1400s, the Dukes of Burgundy controlled a patchwork of territories stretching from what's now eastern France into the Low Countries. They weren't quite kings, but they desperately wanted to look like them. Philip the Good - the duke who would become van Eyck's patron - threw himself into this project with obsessive energy.

When Philip's son Charles the Bold married Margaret of York in 1468, they celebrated their wedding with a grand ten-day festival that cost the equivalent of 52,000 skilled craftsmen's daily wages. Over 150 artists were brought in to craft stunning temporary displays—tableaux vivants portraying biblical scenes, a banquet hall assembled in Brussels and then shipped to Bruges, and fountains flowing with wine. The entire city seemed to transform into a vibrant stage, showcasing Burgundian splendor in every corner.

However, nearly none of that magnificence remains today. The tapestries were cut apart and reused, the valuable metalwork was melted down, and the temporary displays were dismantled and destroyed. The Burgundian dukes' most prized possessions—portable luxury items that showcased their wealth and authority—have been almost entirely lost over time.

Little is known about Jan van Eyck's early life. He was probably born around 1390 in Maaseik, in the prince-bishopric of Liège. He had at least two brothers who were also painters - Hubert, who likely trained him, and Lambert. He received an unusually good education for an artist, including knowledge of Latin and even the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. Yet the details of his youth remain largely mysterious.

What we know with certainty begins around 1422, when he appears in court records as an established painter with his own workshop. He was serving John of Bavaria, the ruler of Holland, and working on decorations for the Binnenhof palace in The Hague.

Then, around 1425, after John's death, van Eyck was appointed court painter to Philip the Good. His title was "varlet de chambre" (valet of the chamber), a rank he shared with grocers and other servants. He wasn't ranked particularly high among court servants.

Yet Philip treated van Eyck with unusual respect. In 1435, when the duke's accountants delayed paying van Eyck's pension, Philip wrote an angry letter: the artist's departure "would cause us great displeasure, for we would retain him for certain great works... we would not find his like more to our taste."

Van Eyck was sent on mysterious "secret" diplomatic missions - one likely a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 1426 and 1429, and a confirmed journey to Portugal in 1428-29 to negotiate Philip's marriage to Isabella of Portugal. For this mission, van Eyck was tasked with painting the princess so the duke could visualize his potential bride - a kind of Renaissance Tinder profile.

These diplomatic responsibilities show that van Eyck operated within circles of influence and global intrigue. He wasn't simply observing the world - he was dispatched to monitor, document, and depict particular individuals and locations for strategic reasons. 

Van Eyck also served another class of patron - the rising tide of bureaucrats and functionaries who kept the Burgundian state running. These were lawyers, financial advisors, and chancellors - well-educated, middle-class men who'd grown rich administering the duke's territories.

Men like Nicolas Rolin, Philip's chancellor, who amassed so much wealth that he could commission van Eyck to paint him in direct, intimate contact with the Virgin Mary herself - an audacious claim to spiritual status. Or wealthy Italian merchants in Bruges, such as the Arnolfini family, who used art to establish their legitimacy in Burgundian courtly circles.

These patrons sought more than just religious devotion from their paintings; they desired a form of material immortality. Their goal was to obtain proof of their existence and significance, depicted with such vivid realism that future generations would be compelled to recognize them.

And van Eyck gave them something they didn't even know they wanted: a new way to experience reality itself.

To see how van Eyck achieved this, we need to return to that moment in May 1432 - the unveiling in Ghent's St. Bavo's Cathedral that opened this episode.

The Ghent Altarpiece begins with a mystery that scholars still haven't fully solved. An inscription on the frame tells us that Hubert van Eyck, "greater than whom is not to be found," began the work, and that his brother Jan, "second in the art," completed it on May 6, 1432, at the request of a wealthy Ghent merchant, Joos Vijd.

Hubert died in 1426, leaving Jan with at most two years of concentrated work to complete it, since he spent 1426-1429 on those diplomatic missions. How much did each brother contribute? We'll never know for sure.

What we do know is what confronted viewers in 1432 when those panels swung open.

Imagine standing before this massive altarpiece. When closed, it depicts the Annunciation—but van Eyck doesn't place Mary and Gabriel in heaven. They're in a real Flemish tower room, with wooden ceiling beams and light streaming through the windows. You can practically see dust motes in the air.

Now the panels swing open, and the scale shifts entirely.

In the upper tier, a figure sits enthroned, wearing the papal tiara—is it God the Father or Christ himself? The ambiguity is deliberate. Beside him, the Virgin Mary reads, crowned as Queen of Heaven. On the other side, John the Baptist gestures toward the scene below. Between them, angels sing—their mouths open at different angles, suggesting you're hearing polyphonic music.

On the outer edges, something unprecedented: life-sized, anatomically accurate figures of Adam and Eve. Not idealized—Adam's toes grip the painted floor, and Eve shows the body of a woman who has given birth. This would have been shocking.

But the lower register holds the revolutionary vision.

Picture a meadow stretching to the horizon. In the foreground, an altar draped in crimson cloth. On it, a lamb whose white wool catches the light differently from the fabric beneath. From the lamb's breast, blood flows—appears to flow—into a golden chalice.

Groups advance from all directions. Church dignitaries in rich robes. Hermits in rough wool. The contrast between materials—silk brocade and coarse fabric—is so precise you could identify the weave. In the far distance, tiny figures emerge from forests, all moving toward this single point.

And in the front, a fountain with a Latin inscription calling it the 'fountain of water of life.' The water seems to spill over the panel's edge, as if it might splash onto the real altar below.

What was truly astonishing was the extraordinary level of detail and the manipulation of light, which had never been seen before.

Van Eyck had mastered oil painting in a way no previous artist had. By building up thin, translucent glazes, he could make light seem to penetrate surfaces rather than merely bounce off them. Gems don't just shine - they glow from within. Fabric doesn't just fold - it reveals the weight and texture of different materials.

In the meadow of the Adoration of the Lamb, you can distinguish individual plant species—daisies, irises, lilies, columbines—each rendered with botanical accuracy that resembles a scientific illustration. However, this detail wasn't merely for display; the plants held symbolic significance: lilies represented purity, irises symbolized Mary's sorrow, and strawberries denoted the fruits of paradise.

The space recedes convincingly into depth—something that shouldn't work given the multiple eye levels and perspective systems van Eyck employed. Somehow, your eye accepts it all as a coherent space.

The Ghent Altarpiece was theology made visible, but it was also something else: proof that painting could rival reality itself. Not by copying what's seen, but by creating a reality so convincing, so detailed, so rich in light, texture, and space that it demanded to be experienced as true.

One contemporary scholar suggested that van Eyck must have invented oil painting—how else could these effects be possible? The legend persisted for three centuries before being debunked, but it captures something real: what van Eyck achieved felt like magic.

This was more than just art; it was a revolutionary way of perceiving the world.

Two years after the Ghent Altarpiece, in 1434, van Eyck painted something much smaller yet equally revolutionary: what we now call the Arnolfini Portrait.

At first glance, you're looking at a well-dressed couple in a wealthy interior - him in expensive purple and black, her in green with elaborate trim, a small dog at their feet. But the longer you look, the stranger it seems.

Look at the back wall. A convex mirror reflects the entire room—including two figures standing in the doorway where you, the viewer, would be. One might be van Eyck himself. Around the mirror's frame are ten miniature scenes from Christ's passion.

Over it, elaborate script as if carved into the wall: 'Jan van Eyck was here. 1434.' Not 'made this'—was here. Like he's signing as a witness, not merely claiming authorship.

Now notice the chandelier. Six branches, yet only one candle burns—in broad daylight, with light flooding through the window. Why light a candle when the sun is shining?

The floor: an Anatolian rug, one of the most prized possessions a merchant could own. The woman gathers her heavy green gown, lifting the fabric in a gesture that has sparked centuries of debate. Oranges—luxury items in northern Europe, sometimes called 'Adam's apples'—rest on the windowsill and the chest.

Everything is rendered with such precision that it feels like evidence. But evidence of what?

For centuries, this was understood as a wedding portrait. Van Eyck served as a legal witness to a marriage.

Then scholars discovered something. The man isn't who we thought—he's Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini, another member of the family. Giovanni di Nicolao married in 1426, and his wife died in 1433.

One year before this painting.

Suddenly, everything changes. The candle? It represents the light of life—burning for those who are alive. The dog? A symbol of loyalty, as seen in tomb carvings. The woman's gesture? Maybe not an indication of pregnancy, but rather a formal stance of remembrance and tradition.

This might be a memorial, painted for the first anniversary of his wife's death.

What is truly remarkable is that we'll never know for sure. Van Eyck produced an image so detailed and carefully crafted that it appears to capture reality. However, it remains ambiguous in its meaning.

This was new. Earlier religious paintings told you what to think through established symbolic vocabularies. Van Eyck's painting presents a domestic interior rendered with such specificity that it feels like a historical document, yet it withholds its ultimate meaning.

The precision itself becomes a puzzle. Why that particular dog? Why those specific gestures? Why sign it that way? Each detail is rendered with such care that it must mean something. 

Van Eyck had discovered that hyper-realism could create mystery rather than resolve it. The more precisely you describe the material world, the more questions arise.

This would become a defining feature of Netherlandish painting - the sense that ordinary objects in ordinary rooms carry hidden significance, if only you could decode them.

But van Eyck also worked in a completely different register. A year before the Arnolfini portrait—on October 21, 1433—he painted a man wearing a red turban. The painting is small—just over 10 inches tall. Unlike the grand altarpiece or the mysterious double portrait, this painting feels immediate, intimate, almost uncomfortable.


The man stares directly at you. His eyes lock onto yours with an intensity that's almost confrontational. Not past you, not through you—at you. This was revolutionary. Van Eyck was among the first painters to use this direct gaze in portraits that stood alone, rather than kneeling before saints or Madonnas.

Light rakes across his face from the left, and van Eyck captures everything it reveals. Individual stubble on his chin and cheeks. The elaborate red chaperon—that turban-like headdress—with fabric catching light differently in every fold and shadow. Fur trim on his collar rendered hair by hair.

This is a face studied for hours, the sitter forced to remain absolutely still while the artist transferred not just appearance but something closer to presence itself onto the panel.

On the frame, van Eyck inscribed his personal motto: "ALS ICH XAN." As I can, or, more fully, as well as I can.

It's simultaneously humble and proud. The motto references medieval scribal practice—the acknowledgment that human craft always falls short of perfection. But by inscribing it on a painting of this quality, van Eyck also makes a claim: this is as well as it can be done.

The motto uses Greek letters to spell Dutch words - another of van Eyck's scholarly games, constructing what one scholar calls "a kind of ancient or historical lineage" for his art.

And there's a pun embedded: ALS ICH - "as I" - sounds like EYCK. As I/Eyck can.

Many scholars believe this is a self-portrait. We know van Eyck painted one. It's documented as hanging alongside his wife's portrait in the Bruges painters' chapel. It's never been conclusively identified.

This painting has the right feel. The intimacy, the direct engagement, the personal motto on the frame, and the lack of identification of the sitter all suggest that van Eyck might be examining himself with the same unflinching precision he brought to everything else.

If so, it's revealing. This isn't the image of an inspired genius or a courtly sophisticate. It's the face of a craftsman—shrewd, observant, perhaps a bit wary, yet fundamentally confident in his abilities.

The painting says: this is what I look like. This is what I can do. This is me, existing in this moment, captured with as much reality as paint can hold.

Whether or not this is actually van Eyck's face, it represents what his entire career achieved: the transformation of painting into a technology for preserving presence.

Presence goes beyond looks - it's the feeling that someone existed at a particular moment, appeared in a certain way, and inhabited their face and body in a way that leaves traces we can still interpret.

Jan van Eyck died in Bruges on July 9, 1441. He was probably in his late forties or early fifties. Philip the Good paid his widow, Margaret, a one-time sum equal to van Eyck's annual salary, a remarkable gesture recognizing the artist's value.

Early in 1442, his brother Lambert had Jan's body exhumed from the churchyard of St. Donatian and reburied inside the cathedral. The church records call him "solemnissimus pictor," the most distinguished painter.

Within a decade, his reputation had spread across Europe. In 1454, the Italian humanist Bartolomeo Fazio named him "the leading painter" of his age, praising paintings that made viewers believe they were seeing not representations but reality itself.

What van Eyck achieved went beyond technique. He discovered that painting could be a way to examine the world with unprecedented precision - and that this precision could create new forms of meaning, mystery, and presence.

His influence shaped Netherlandish painting for generations. Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, and Rogier van der Weyden all built on his foundations. Even Italian artists, working in entirely different traditions, recognized his achievement. Raphael's father attested that van Eyck's fame reached Italy during his lifetime.

But perhaps his deepest legacy is this: he showed that careful looking, patient observation, and technical mastery could capture something essential about existence itself. That material reality—light on fabric, the texture of skin, the way space recedes and returns—contains its own form of truth.

When you stand before a van Eyck painting today, you're not just seeing what a fifteenth-century merchant or madonna looked like. You're experiencing what it means to be truly seen by someone who looked at the world with uncommon precision and care.

Jan van Eyck was here. Through these paintings, in a sense, he still is.

Burgundy in the 15th century was not only a center of art but also a leading center of music.  In our next episode, we’ll explore the Burgundian School of music and one of the great composers to emerge from it: Guillaume du Fay. 

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