earlier than the fifteenth
century, but they are so vague and uncertain that I shall pass them over,
and begin with the family of Van Eyck, in which there were four
painters--three brothers and a sister. The eldest, HUBERT VAN EYCK
(1366-1426), effected a great change in the art of his time and country.
Very little is known of him as a young man, or indeed of his personal
history at all, except that he passed his middle life at Bruges and his
later years at Ghent. The subjects of his pictures were mostly scriptural.
I do not suppose that the pictures of this master would seem very
beautiful to you if you saw them, but they are of great value. His
greatest work was an altar-piece for Judocus Vyts and his wife Lisabetta;
it was for the decoration of their funeral chapel in the Church of St.
Bavon in Ghent. It was an immense work, with a centre-piece and wings that
could be closed; the inside was divided into twelve different pictures,
and the outside also was painted. We do not know how much of this was
completed when Hubert died and left it to be finished by his brother John.
Philip I. of Spain wished to buy this altar-piece, and when he could not
do so, he employed Michael Coxie to copy it; this artist spent two years
on the work, and was paid four thousand florins. Of the original work, a
large portion remains in the Church of St. Bavon; the wings, consisting of
six beautiful, tall panels, are in the Berlin Museum, and two outer
compartments are in the Brussels Museum. The picture of holy men who have
served God is on one of the wings of this altar-piece (Fig. 53).

But the principal interest attached to Hubert van Eyck comes from the fact
that he made such discoveries in the use of colors as led to what we call
the "Invention of Oil-Painting," and this invention is always attributed
to the Van Eycks, for it is probable that the discoveries of Hubert were
perfected by JAN VAN EYCK (1390-1440), who became a celebrated painter.
Oil-painting had been known, it is true, a long time, but the manner of
preparing the colors and the varnish used before the time of the Van Eycks
was very unsatisfactory, and the improvement of these substances was the
work of these masters.

The pictures of Hubert van Eyck are stronger than those of Jan, who was
really the founder of a school remarkable for delicacy and fine finish
rather than for power. It was after the death of Hubert that the fame of
the new colors spread abroad, and thus it