Jan van Eyck
Early Life, Family and Training Born around 1390, Jan van Eyck entered a world where the brush was a family inheritance. He was not a solitary talent emerging from nothing, but a son of a lineage of painters. He grew up alongside his brothers, Hubert and Lambert, within a household where the secrets of pigment and preparation were likely shared at the communal table. This familial bond meant that his early understanding of color and form was shaped by the collective knowledge of the van Eyck name. Before he would ever command the attention of dukes or diplomats, Jan van Eyck and his brother…
The Subject Atlas
A chart of Jan van Eyck's corpus mapped not by date but by subject. Spokes are what they painted; rings are when; and the threads between stars reveal the patrons and places that secretly connect them.
Spokes — Subject
Each arm of the atlas gathers works by what they depict: portraits, sacred scenes, mythologies, and the scientific studies. Click a spoke to swing that cluster to the top.
Rings — Career Period
Distance from the center marks time. The innermost ring is the earliest period; the outermost, the final years. Style matures as you move outward.
Threads — Shared Context
Coloured lines link works bound by the same patron, commission, or theme. Trace a context to watch related clusters light up across subjects.