hat he was
a serious-minded man as well as an ardent painter, and belonged to the
religious fraternity of our Lady of Ghent. He died in 1426. John, though
of so much consideration in his profession as to be believed to be 'the
Flemish Painter' sent by Duke Philip the Good of Flanders and Burgundy
with a mission to Portugal to solicit the hand of a princess in
marriage, is reported to have died very poor in 1449, and has the
suspicion attached to him of having been a lover of pleasure and a
spendthrift. Of Lambert, the third brother, almost nothing is known;
indeed, the fact of his existence has only lately come to light.
Margaret lived and died unmarried, and belonged, like her brother
Hubert, to the religious society of our Lady of Ghent. She died about
1432.

The invention of painting in oil, for which the Van Eycks are commonly
known, was not literally that of mixing colours with oil, which was
occasionally done before their day. It was the combining oil with resin,
so as to produce at once a good varnish, and avoid the necessity of
drying pictures in the sun, a bright thought, which may stand in the
same rank with the construction, by James Watt, of that valve which
rendered practicable the application of steam to machinery. The thought,
occasioned by the cracking of a picture in tempera exposed to the sun,
is due to Hubert Van Eyck.

The great picture of the Van Eycks, which was worked at for a number of
years by both Hubert and John, and, as some reckon, touched by the whole
family, is the 'Adoration of the Lamb,' at St Bavon's, Ghent. I should
like to give a faint idea of this extraordinary picture, which was
painted for a burgomaster of Ghent and his wife in order to adorn their
mortuary chapel in the cathedral. It was an altar piece on separate
panels, now broken up and dispersed, only a portion of it being retained
in Ghent.

It may strike some as strange that a picture should be on panels, but
those of the old pictures which were not on plastered walls were
commonly on panels, many of them on the lids and sides of chests and
presses which were used to hold sacred vessels and priestly raiment.

When the wings of the Van Eycks' altar-piece of the 'Adoration of the
Lamb' were opened on festivals, the subjects of the upper central
picture were seen, consisting of the Triune God, a majestic figure, and
at his side in stately calm the Virgin and the Baptist. On the inside of
the wings were angels, at the two e