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Jan van Eyck Maaseick, c. 1390 (?)-Bruges, 1441 Nothing is known about Van Eyck's training. The first information concerning the artist dates to 1422 when he entered the service of Duke John of Bavaria, Count of Holland. On the Count's death in 1425, Van Eyck is documented as painter and gentleman in waiting to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The artist also took part in a series of diplomatic missions which brought him to Valencia in 1427, perhaps with the aim of arranging the Duke's marriage to Isabel de Urgel, the niece of King Alfonso V of Aragon. In 1428 he took part in a similar but more successful mission, travelling to Portugal to arrange the marriage of the Duke to Doña Isabel, daughter of King John I. In 1430 Van Eyck is documented in Bruges where he married, bought a house in 1432 and died in 1441. Between 1432 and 1439 the artist signed and dated the majority of his surviving works. His first known signed painting is his great masterpice, the Ghent Altarpiece (The Adoration of the Holy Lamb) of 1432. The polyptych, commissioned by Joos Vijd and his wife Isabel Borluut, bears an inscription by the painter in praise of his brother Hubert; this inscription and Hubert van Eyck himself (who for many years was thought to have painted part of the altarpiece) have been the subject of extensive study and speculation. Among Van Eyck's most notable works are The Virgin of Lucca (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt), The Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (Louvre), and The Madonna of Canon Van der Paele (Groeningemuseum, Bruges). Equally interesting are his portraits such as the Arnolfini Marriage of 1434 in which the artist deploys what has been called Symbolic Realism, and A Man in a Turban (both National Gallery, London). In his study of the Flemish Primitives, Panofsky said of Van Eyck that "his sight was simultaneously a microscope and a telescope." COEKELBERGHS, D.: "Les Grisailles et le trompe-l'oeil dans l'oeuvre de Van Eyck et de Van der Weyden" in Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art offerts au professeur Jacques Lavalleye. Lovaina, 1970, pp. 21-34. EISLER, C.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Early Netherlandish Painting. London, 1989. FRIEDLÄNDER, J. M.: Ein bisher unbekanntes Werk von Jan van Eyck. Private edition, 1934. PANOFSKY, E.: Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge (MA), 1953.