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.

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.