Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈɛjk]; before c. 1395 – before July 9, 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century.
There is a common misconception, which dates back to the sixteenth-century Vite of the Tuscan artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, that Jan van Eyck invented oil painting. Oil painting as a technique for painting wood sta...
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Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈɛjk]; before c. 1395 – before July 9, 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century.
There is a common misconception, which dates back to the sixteenth-century Vite of the Tuscan artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, that Jan van Eyck invented oil painting. Oil painting as a technique for painting wood statues and other objects is much older, and Theophilus (Roger of Helmarshausen?) clearly gives instructions for oil-based painting in his treatise, On Divers Arts, written in 1125. It is however true that the van Eyck brothers were among the earliest Early Netherlandish painters to use it for very detailed panel paintings, and that they achieved new and remarkable effects through the use of glazes, wet-on-wet and other techniques. Thus, because of his early mastery of the technique, he was traditionally known as the "father of oil painting."
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