Best of Boijmans - The Road to Van Eyck | ENG

Van Eyck is one of the greatest revolutions maybe even the greatest revolution in painting Actually Landgots comes from nowhere it is the first painting known by Van Eyck This is detailed in 1432 And actually it seems like a kind of UVO lesson in art history This is a picture of people who are not only standing there as we do today You had it not only 100 years ago They also had it in the 15th and 16th centuries Dus Dürer Vasari and van Maander all express the same view that Jan van Eyck He is a pioneer a visionary and the founder of an entire school of painting Unfortunately we know almost nothing about Van Eyck's early years We don't even know when he was born We estimate around 1390 1400 And likely in Maaseike he is called Van Eyck And likely it is derived from the small village of Maaseike in Limburg In this exhibition we are trying for the first time to design a panorama of Van Eyck's painting art Of course with the focus on the Netherlands But also with a look towards France and West Germany Only because art was international at that time The art around 1400 is usually referred to as International Gothic or the International Style And that is not without reason There is a style from around 1400 that was actually widespread throughout northwest Europe which looks extremely similar to each other Whether you're in Cologne the Netherlands or France artists of all styles They work more or less in the same style And that is primarily because artists are very used to traveling For example you get training in Cologne then you move to the Netherlands and many artists went to Paris Paris as you can imagine was the cultural heart of Europe at that time 200 000 inhabitants All the important noble families had their palaces there It was really the hub you went to if you were an ambitious artist wanting to do something Beside Paris Dijon was one of the most important cities There the Duke of Burgundy resided Around 1400 it was Philips the Stout And that one specifically had a cloister built With magnificent images and beautiful paintings He brings works from all over Europe but especially from Dutch artists The best artists there are And they have to specially create really beautiful statues and paintings for him in Dijon Artworks also travel of course That means under certain conditions Namely when a leader has ordered them for a remote location The most famous examples are naturally the large paintings They commissioned Jacques de Barthes and Melchior Broederlam for the Duke of Burgundy For his charterhouse in Chamolles near Dijon made They were first painted by Jacques de Barthes in Vendamonde They will probably be taken to Dijon at some point He was brought back captured by Melchior Broederlam in Ypres And then taken back to Dijon and placed there This is a journey of about 500 kilometers These altars are tons heavy They had them when they wanted to paint a picture or make a sculpture they had examples at hand This kind of example can have a very long tradition For example we have a little man sitting and drinking under a tree There is a small dog sitting there And we find that in 1350 in a manuscript But we find it just as hard in 1380 in a painting And again in 1450 in a painting by Peter Christus a pupil of Jan van Eyck It's likely that he hasn't seen any of the paintings that were on display here But that doesn't matter because Jan van Eyck has certainly seen paintings And back to the beginning of his own art to a certain extent They were very similar to the paintings we have here You must always keep it in mind We may have discovered 25 25 or 30 paintings from this period But there must have been many many thousands of them We know from old archival documents that large mural paintings were created Everyone lost But also large paintings with very beautiful narrative representations You can read it from the documents yes but then you don't have a visual image with it Luckily in the late 15th century in the 16th century people made copies painted copies To the early examples from 1400 And in the exhibitions we show some of them And one of the most beautiful is a life of Saint Anthony who is tempted by beautiful ladies This painting was probably made around 1550 But according to an example very precisely copied from an example from 1420 And it is a very crucial piece because suddenly it turns out that around 1420 Large paintings were made in a landscape with very narrative representations It is precisely the narrative representations that Jan van Eyck began to develop in great detail around 1420 1430 Jan van Eyck is now unemployed but later that same year he joins the service of Philip the Good of Burgundy Philip de Goede becomes the successor as Count of Holland to Johan van Bayern and occasionally takes over Jan van Eyck as his court painter Jan makes various trips for the research This is known to us through documents Although we don't exactly know where he actually went At least we usually don't know Apart from a trip he took to Portugal in 1428 and 1429 With a Burgundian family where it was about winning the hand of the Portuguese princess Isabella for Philip of Burgundy On that occasion Jan van Eyck had to paint a portrait of the princess He did so It was in January 1429 In January 1429 he had painted this image And this was later sent by boat along with writings that characterized the princess to Philip the Good in the Netherlands so that he could form an image of his future wife Why is Jan van Eyck so incredibly important What is this revolution actually He has some things that he is completely new to One of them is that he is going to paint the light Light suddenly appears in the painting And through light you see material Do you see why something is made of wood why something is made of fabric Before that if something is made of wood it's just a brown flat surface At his place it comes in various shades of brown so that when the light falls on the wood Do you really feel the materiality of that wood or fabric And that is very special Maybe you can see the very best in how he paints gold If you look at the art of van Eyck Gold is simply applied with leaf gold done with real gold This is therefore very delicate it is applied on top He does that almost never anymore because he just paints with yellow and with colors He tries to create the reflection of gold And that is much more convincing than the real gold in those paintings for him And that may be symbolic of van Eyck He can display the entire world with pure pigment Jan van Eyck died in 1441 We do not know how old he was We don't know his birth year Some documents say he died at a young age He was very successful then And it's likely that the studio where probably ten maybe twelve assistants worked He remained for a while after his death And likely under the leadership of his wife Margaretha His style is sweeping the entire world In 1441 the style of van Eyck the Flemish primitive the early Dutch painting art It is generally considered the highest standard you can achieve even in Italy Germany and France