In the next 10 minutes we will look at what is believed to be Jan van Eyck's self-portrait. We'll revel
in its extraordinary details and supremely clever conceit, and we will find out what it
reveals of the artist himself, his self-confidence and his status, something that has been recently
illuminated by a new discovery. Jan van Eyck was one of the most renowned painters of his day.
His reputation extended well beyond his native Netherlands and as far as Italy. Despite his fame,
most of his biography remains shrouded in mystery. We do not know when or where he was born exactly,
nor with whom he trained. What we do know is that he was sought after by the most brilliant patrons
of his day, including the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good, who ruled over much of modern day Belgium
and Northern France, a region which was at the time the most prosperous in Europe, making the duke a
very powerful player indeed. Philip seems to have held his painter in exceptionally high regard.
He paid him handsomely and even went as far as to intervene when his accountant failed to deliver
Van Eyck's salary on time. He never employed Van Eyck in the more mundane tasks that usually occupied
court painters, such as the painting of banners or the making of decorations for festivities. Instead,
he sent him on secret voyages to distant lands, and requested him to perform a pilgrimage on his
behalf, testifying to an altogether different relationship between the two men. So we don't
have much evidence about Van Eyck's life, but the little we have concurs ensuring that he attained
during his lifetime a position very rarely achieved by painters before him. In 1431 Van Eyck
settled in the thriving and cosmopolitan city of Bruges. In the following year he completed the
phenomenal Ghent altarpiece, which had been left unfinished by his brother Hubert before his death.
In the decade that followed, Van Eyck produced a slew of commissions, both religious pictures and
portraits for the city's elite. Only 20 pictures by Van Eyck survive today, spreading collections
across the world, and the National Gallery is fortunate to have three of them, including
the iconic Arnolfini portraits, so if you're keen on Van Eyck do come and visit us. And it only takes
looking at these pictures to understand why Van Eyck attained such reputation during his lifetime.
Indeed, they all seem to proclaim his seamless ability to convey a convincing illusion of reality
through the medium of oil paint, so much so that he was long wrongly credited for having invented
the medium itself. Rather, Van Eyck seems to have perfected it through his extraordinary command
of the medium and technical prowess, but also through his prodigious powers of observation,
the way he scrutinised the world to understand, for instance, the way light reflects on different
materials, the way texture can be conveyed, as well as details, and all of these qualities are
evident in the panel behind me. Emerging from a dark background, the sitter gazes out intensely
at us. He's wearing a dark fur lined robe but it is his eye-catching red headgear that steals the show.
Although it resembles a turban, it is actually a typical 15th-century piece of headwear, a 'chaperon',
which consisted of a circular structure, the 'bourrelet', from which hung a hood and a decorative tail, the
'cornette'. Here the sitter has wrapped the cornette in and around the bourrelet in a fabulously complex
and exuberant fashion, creating a symphony of deep-fried folds, and a powerful sculptural effect.
There is a kind of sprezzatura or studded carelessness in this impressive arrangement,
crowned by this flamboyant headpiece. Our attention is focused on the sitter's face,
boldly illuminated from the left. Again, one is struck by how carefully muddled the face is,
highlighting his cheekbones and the veins that protrude from his temple. His doublet is masterfully
rendered, with an alternation of darker and lighter dots suggesting the light catching
individual hair. Most impressive, perhaps, is the rendition of the sitter's piercing blue eyes.
Slightly bloodshot, they are animated by lively catch lights and highlighted by a fine network
of radiating wrinkles, which focus our attention on them. However minute and masterful, these features
are painted with great speed and economy, often with single individual strokes or dabs of paints.
Another remarkable feature of this portrait is that it has kept its original frame. Van Eyck
conceived very carefully of his frames, using their shape, surface treatment, and inscriptions to convey
meaning. While most of his surviving original frames were painted in imitation of marble,
this portrait stands out as the only instance in Van Eyck's work of a gilded frame, and it is this
frame which gives us a clue as to the sitter's identity. On the bottom edge of the frame, Van Eyck
has signed and dated the work in Latin with the phrase 'Jan van Eyck made me on the 21st of October'.
On the top edge of the frame, Van Eyck has appended his motto 'Als Ich Kan', which translates from
the Dutch to 'As I can', and was probably a pun on Van Eyck's surname, playing on the consonants between
the Dutch words for I, ich, and Van Eyck. What the motto seems to imply is, as only I, Van Eyck, can -
I am the only one able to produce a likeness that is so faithful and true to life, so immediate,
once again a statement on the artist's amazing self-confidence and awareness. While Van Eyck
inscribed his motto on several other works, here it is far larger and more prominent than anywhere
else. In addition, he positioned it on the upper part of the frame, which in other portraits that
have survived by him was usually the place where he inscribed his sitter's name, so here it seems
like the motto could stand for the sitter's identity, suggesting therefore that we are standing in
front of a self-portrait, and this is confirmed by the sitter's direct gaze which meets the viewers.
What Van Eyck seems to emphasise here is this ultimate attribute of the artist, his inquisitive
eye, so Van Eyck seems to have set his incredible abilities and skills in this portrait, and this
very much chimes with what we know, and what we've already discussed, of the social position, wealth,
and status that he achieved during his lifetime, something that no mere craftsman or painter
had really achieved before him, and this particular status he attained has been recently confirmed by
a new document uncovered in the Vatican archives by the historian Hendrik Calavere,
a request that Van Eyck made to the Pope in order to obtain a confessional letter, that is, a permit
that allowed him to choose his own confessor, rather than relying on the local parish priest.
What's significant here is that these requests to the Pope were not only very expensive, they
were also the preserve of the highest social classes, the nobility, the financial and political
elites. The letters themselves once obtained were kind of status symbols into themselves, so what
Van Eyck was doing in requesting that privilege was aligning himself with his most prominent clients,
his abilities, his skills, his talent and his network allowing him somehow to share and partake
into their lavish lifestyles. This discovery is hugely exciting, first of all because it shows how
alive research is in this field, clearly there are more things to be found out about Van Eyck,
and this is hugely exciting. It's also invaluable to us here, as this new insight into Van Eyck's status
deepens our understanding of the extraordinary self-confident way he decided to portray himself
in the National Gallery self-portrait. If you're interested to learn more about art history,
click here or here, thank you very much for watching, and we'll see you again soon.