The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (162 page)

(Latin: ‘from a vow’). A painting or other work of art made as an offering to God in gratitude for a personal favour or blessing or in the hope of receiving some miraculous benefit. There is a famous example by Philippe de
Champaigne
in the Louvre.

 
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(d. 1441).
The most celebrated painter of the Early Netherlandish School. Within a short time of his death he had a reputation on both sides of the Alps as a painter of great stature and importance, and although he is no longer credited with being the ‘inventor’ of
oil painting
, as was long maintained, his fame has continued undimmed to the present day. Nothing is known of his training and he is first recorded in 1422, entering the service of the Count of Holland, John of Bavaria, in The Hague. In 1425 John died and later in the same year van Eyck moved to Lille when he was appointed court painter and ‘varlet de chambre’ (equerry) to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, a post he held until his death. Evidently he was highly esteemed by the Duke and he travelled on secret diplomatic missions to Spain and Portugal for him. About 1430 Jan moved from Lille to Bruges, where he lived until his death. In spite of the documentation on his life, which for a painter of his period is fairly rich, his
œuvre
presents many problems, especially in the reconstruction of his early career, for all his dated paintings come from the last 10 years of his life. The central problem of his career—and one of the most discussed in the history of art—concerns the work that has always been the basis of his resounding fame, the great altarpiece of the
Adoration of the Lamb
(completed 1432) in Ghent Cathedral. An inscription on the frame states that it was begun by ‘the painter Hubert van Eyck , than whom none was greater’, and completed by ‘Jan, second in art’. Jan's brother
Hubert
(died 1426?) is such an obscure figure that some scholars have even denied his existence, and there is certainly no obvious division into the work of two hands in the altarpiece. Thus, Jan's contribution to the central masterpiece of Early Netherlandish painting is uncertain.
Dürer
called the Ghent Altarpiece ‘a stupendous painting’ and the comment is appropriate both to the majesty and
iconographical
richness of the huge
polyptych
, and also to its breathaking technical mastery. Jan brought the new technique of oil painting to a sudden peak and his ability to depict minute detail and to create glowing effects of colour has never been surpassed. Apart from the Ghent Altarpiece, about two dozen other paintings are reasonably attributed to him. They are all either religious works or portraits, although he is known to have painted pictures of other subjects (including a nude woman at her bath), which are now lost. Outstanding among the surviving works are the famous double portrait
Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife
(NG, London, 1434) and two paintings of the Virgin and Child with
donors
—
The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin
(Louvre , Paris,
c.
1435) and
The Madonna with Canon van der Paele
(Groeningemuseum , Bruges, 1436). The Louvre painting, with large figures in the foregound set against a distant panoramic landscape, shows Jan's all-embracing vision of the natural world and his mastery of light and space, as well as detail and texture—in Erwin
Panofsky's
words, ‘his eye was at one and the same time a microscope and a telescope’. The
Man in a Red Turban
(NG, London, 1433) is generally considered to be a self-portrait. As a portrait painter Jan was preoccupied with the realities and textures of the human face, and in this as in his inanimate interiors he recorded the subtleties of appearances rather than commenting on them as did his great contemporary Rogier van der
Weyden
. His portraits do, however, convey a sense of inner life and are not simply coldly objective records. Jan stands with the
Master of Flémalle
as the founder of the Early Netherlandish School and his technique became the accepted model for his successors. His closest follower and chief successor in Bruges was Petrus
Christus
, but his influence was wide (it is seen, for example, in the work of Luis
Dalmau
in Spain) and profound. In the Netherlands itself, however, the more emotional work of Rogier van der Weyden came to have even more influence and the very perfection of Jan's work must have made him the most daunting of models.

 
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(1622–54).
Dutch painter. He was
Rembrandt's
most gifted pupil and a painter of outstanding originality and distinction, but he died tragically young in the explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine, leaving only a tiny body of work (much may have perished in the disaster). In his youth he worked as a carpenter (the name Fabritius was once thought to have derived from this profession, but it is now known that his father had used it) and he was probably in Rembrandt's studio in the early 1640s. He settled in Delft in about 1650. Although only about a dozen paintings by him are known, they show great variety. His earliest surviving works (
The Raising of Lazarus
, National Mus., Warsaw,
c.
1645) are strongly influenced by Rembrandt , but he broke free from his master and developed a personal style marked by an exquisite feeling for cool colour harmonies and (even though he often worked on a small scale) unerring handling of a loaded brush (
The Goldfinch
, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1654). These qualities, together with an interest in
perspective
, occur in the work of
Vermeer
, the greatest of Delft painters, and Fabritius certainly influenced him, although it is not likely (as is sometimes maintained) that he was his master, this distinction perhaps belonging to
Bramer
. Carel's brother
Barent
(1624–73) was also a painter, but of much lesser quality. He also may have studied with Rembrandt ; he mainly painted portraits and religious works.

 
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(1616–91).
English engraver. He fought as a Royalist in the Civil War and later spent some time in exile in France, where he worked with
Nanteuil
; but by 1650 he was established in London and became the most distinguished of English 17th-cent. engravers, especially of portrait heads. He engraved the work of painters (van
Dyck
,
Dobson , William
,
Lely
) and also made engravings of his own drawings from the life, many published as frontispieces to books. He also drew very sensitive portrait heads as independent works (
John Aubrey
, Ashmolean, Oxford, 1666). In 1662 he published
The Art of Graving and Etching
. His son William (1656–1710) was also an engraver.

 
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