fluence, are spared not when
death comes. I was called Hubert Van Eyck; I am now food for worms.
Formerly known and highly honored in painting; this all was shortly
after turned to nothing. It was in the year of the Lord one thousand
four hundred and twenty-six, on the eighteenth day of September, that I
rendered up my soul to God, in sufferings. Pray God for me, ye who love
art, that I may attain to His sight. Flee sin; turn to the best
[objects]: for you must follow me at last."

* * *

John Van Eyck appears by sufficient evidence to have been born between
1390 and 1395; and, as the improved oil-painting was certainly
introduced about 1410, the probability is greater that the system had
been discovered by the elder brother than by the youth of 15. What the
improvement actually was is a far more important question. Vasari's
account, in the Life of Antonello da Messina, is the first piece of
evidence here examined (p. 205); and it is examined at once with more
respect and more advantage than the half-negligent, half-embarrassed
wording of the passage might appear either to deserve or to promise.
Vasari states that "_Giovanni_ of Bruges," having finished a
tempera-picture on panel, and varnished it as usual, placed it in the
sun to dry--that the heat opened the joinings--and that the artist,
provoked at the destruction of his work--

* * *

"began to devise means for preparing a kind of varnish which should dry
in the shade, so as to avoid placing his pictures in the sun. Having
made experiments with many things, both pure and mixed together, he at
last found that linseed-oil and nut-oil, among the many which he had
tested, were more drying than all the rest. These, therefore, boiled
with _other mixtures of his_, made him the varnish which he, nay, which
all the painters of the world, had long desired. Continuing his
experiments with many other things, he saw that the immixture of the
colors with these kinds of oils gave them a very firm consistence,
which, when dry, was proof against wet; and, moreover, that the vehicle
lit up the colors so powerfully, that it gave a gloss of itself without
varnish; and that which appeared to him still more admirable was, that
it allowed of blending [the colors] infinitely better than tempera.
Giovanni, rejoicing in this invention, and being a person of
discernment, began many works."

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117. The reader must observe t