We have now reached the most important period in our painter's career, coinciding from end to end with his residence in the Flemish capital, where he died on the 9th of July 1441--a period of over ten years, in which he produced the ten dated masterpieces we are about to review, besides a large unfinished triptych and a number of other paintings to which no exact date can be affixed. Hardly had he taken up his quarters in Bruges than the Duke summoned him to Hesdin to receive instructions with regard to the work on which he was to be employed. Meanwhile, no doubt, Jodoc Vyt had secured his services for the completion of the Ghent Polyptych: probably it had been an understood thing all along that John was to finish the work at the first opportunity. From the account of his movements during the five years that had elapsed since his brother's death it is obvious that he could have spared but very brief intervals of leisure for what must, after all, have been to him a labour of love; the conclusion being that whatever proportion of the sixteen months immediately following his return from Portugal he was able to devote to the picture must stand for his share in the monumental altar-piece that at Hubert's death had already been ten years in the making.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PORTRAIT OF MARGARET VAN EYCK THE PAINTER'S WIFE
The daughter of the subject of Plate IV. and probably the sister of Joan Cenani in Plate V., with both of which it should be compared. In the Town Gallery, Bruges. See page 66.]
In the early days of December 1431 Cardinal Albergati, special ambassador from Pope Martin V. to the Courts of France, Burgundy, and England with a view to bringing about a general peace, spent three days at the Charterhouse in Bruges as the honoured guest of the Duke, from whom Van Eyck received urgent instructions to paint the portrait that is now the property of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. The time being all too short for the purpose, John had to be content with the exquisite drawing in silver-point on a white ground which is still preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Prints at Dresden, and which is particularly interesting because of the marginal memoranda in pencil embodying the most minute observations in the artist's own handwriting for his guidance in the execution of the painting. A remarkable portrait of a most remarkable man: for this prince of the Church, a humble son of the austere Order of the Carthusians, though raised to the Cardinalate and time after time called upon to serve the Holy See on important embassies requiring consummate prudence in regard to matters of temporal policy, discarding his family arms for a simple cross, persevered to the end in such austerities of the cloister as the wearing of a hair shirt, total abstinence from flesh-meat, and the use of bare straw for his rude pallet: a type that must have appealed to Van Eyck, for the picture is a valuable index of the painter's genius for portraiture. In or about August of the following year the Burgomasters and Town Council honoured John with a visit to his workshop, to inspect the various pictures he was then engaged on. Among these, probably, was the portrait of "Tymotheos," bearing date October 10, 1432, acquired by the National Gallery in 1857 for the modest sum of £189, 11s. (Plate III.), and the "Our Lady and Child" in the collection at Ince Hall, Ince Blundell, Liverpool, although it was not completed till 1433. The latter is a delightful instance of the singular love of domesticity which Van Eyck exemplifies with supreme confidence and success in the Arnolfini tableau, of which more anon. In the former we have a man verging on middle age, with dark complexion, blue eyes, angular features, heavy jaw, thick lips, prominent cheekbones and uplifted nose; presumably a Greek humanist and a friend of the painter, from the man's Christian name on the parapet being in Greek character and the manuscript roll he holds in his hand, and from the inscription "Léal Souvenir": by no means a handsome type, but true to nature, and presented with all the charm that Van Eyck was able to endow his least promising subjects with, the modelling being excellent, and the harmonious colouring aptly relieved by a dark background.