The young Johannes, here supposed to be Jan van Eyck, was obviously connected for a long time to the royal courts in Paris, those of Queen Isabeau and Dauphin Louis, maybe also that of the since 1392 often mentally sick King Charles VI. It is interesting to note that Charles VI died on 21 October 1422, the same year as Jan van Eyck from August is documented as a court painter in The Hague. Duke Jean of Berry would normally have been interested in Johannes’s services, at least during the years that preceded his death in 1416. The German-speaking Queen Isabeau was as we have seen a very early commissioner, indicating that the artist for some time may have had the possibility to work in the castle of Melun south-east of Paris, where she often resided together with the royal children.

Unfortunately there seems to have been left for posterity only a few documents that may relate to Jan van Eyck’s earliest activities. To the few already mentioned can be added that Charles of Orléans in 1409, when he spent most of his time in Blois, made a payment to Jehan Haincelain, enlumineur demeurant à Paris. In 1412 a magister Iohannes de … normanus is mentioned as living in Paris in the house of Jean of Berry’s librarian Pierre de Vérone. The unreadable word in this document maybe is Eyck. It has been guessed that the Iohannes Companiosus nationis Normaniae, who is mentioned together with Jacques Coene as one of the three experts called to Milan in 1399, may be the same man. Some years later, in 1415, this Johannes normanus offered a steel mirror to English visitors in Paris.

As many of the best artists Jan van Eyck may originally have been educated in the highest esteemed profession, that as a goldsmith, which at this time often included most kinds of artistic work, sometimes even architecture. At the extravagant royal courts there was of course a big need for the design of pieces of gold, for elegant dresses and for many other kinds of precious objects, surely also for book illuminations. In the Très riches heures he painted probably not only the four courtly Calendar pages. The same high quality has e g the famous miniature Temptation and the Fall, up to now always interpreted as a masterpiece by one of the Limbourgs. It is interesting to see that one of these rather conventional brothers seems to have copied the face of the supposed Cardinal Louis of Bar from the January miniature when painting the Martyrdom of St Marcus, if it should not be the question of an addition by the young Van Eyck.

One may even seriously consider the possibility, that it may have been the old Jan van Eyck himself, who in one of the years before his death in 1441 completed the Calendar series with some of the at this time added miniatures, e g February, June and maybe parts of a couple more, masterly miniatures of a character that is deeply different from what we see in the Limbourgs’s colouristically beautiful but rather naively apprehended religious scenes. For these additions to the Très riches heures it is hardly possible to find another artist qualified enough than the now probably nearly 60-year-old and maybe sick Jan van Eyck himself, ending his long career with some new masterpieces in miniature.

With the court painter Johannes tentatively identified with the young Jan van Eyck and not as earlier with the so-called Bedford Master, the problem with the identifying of the last-mentioned artist remains unsolved. His influence was as great that he must have run a big and very respected atelier with apprentices and journeymen. As mentioned earlier there was also an artist Ymbert Stanier among the three who in 1404 worked on a bible for Philip the Bold of Burgundy, of course also he an artist of first range. It is known that the artist Jacques Daret, who was educated in Robert Campin’s atelier, also painted illuminations and may have got this knowledge as a pupil in Tournai. It seems curious that none has observed that Ymbert is the same name as Hubert and might be combined with Van Eyck. As I will show in another article (Hubert van Eyck, Robert Campin and the Ghent Altarpiece. Misunderstandings and Falsifications), there are very good reasons to believe that the rather well-known Robert Campin in reality is the same person as Hubert van Eyck, who did not die in 1426 but lived and worked as long as until the middle of the 1440s.

If we to the already known facts about Campin add that he also may have executed the best of the illuminations that have been ascribed to the so-called Bedford Master, an artist becomes visible of a dignity corresponding to the reputation of the elder brother of Jan van Eyck, whose artistic career has been unknown to the extent that his very existence sometimes has been doubted. For the conventional supposition that the Bedford Master’s workshop should have been in Paris there is no real proof. The French enclave Tournai in the neighbourhood of the Burgundian centres is probably a better suggestion. It is well documented that several artists were educated and working as assistants in Campin’s atelier, some of them of the highest quality, as e g Rogier van der Weyden. This would explain a big production of books with miniatures of different originality and quality, as the head of a big atelier normally only executed a few of the works himself.

The mysterious name Stanier may be one of the many misreadings and miswritings of which the history of medieval art is rich. Not all of those who have tried to read medieval texts, often abbreviated, have understood that this is a task best suited for a few very experienced specialists. If we look at what is known about Robert Campin, we find that he is mentioned as married to Ysabiel de Stoquain. The latter part of this name is near enough to have been misunderstood as Stanier. Such a supposition is strengthened by the possibility that the place from which Ysabiel had her name was Stockhem (Stokkum) just south of Maaseik, the place from which Jan is thought to have his name. One may guess that Campin took over an earlier atelier Stockhem by marriage to the widow and for that reason in young years was recognized in France as Ymbert Stoquain. Campin’s own choice of name is easy to understand, because he - as M van Vaernewyck wrote in 1568 - was van nativiteyt uut dat ruydt Kempenlandt (was a native of the rustic Campine).

There may be a meaning in the fact that the name of Haincelin in the above-mentioned document of 1404 follows directly after the name Jacques Coene. It may indicate that the young Jan van Eyck at this time was associated with the older artist’s atelier, maybe as a journeyman, after a first education around the years nearest before and after 1400. This would explain Jan van Eyck’s mastership in oil painting as a perfection of knowledge at first obtained from Coene, who as an expert in this field is known for giving instructions in 1398 on the production of colours used in J Alcherius’s treatise of 1411. Although no sure work by Coene has been identified, he has often been supposed to be the anonymous Boucicaut Master, a miniature painter who often worked for the same books as the Bedford Master during the two first decades of the fifteenth century.

In the Boucicaut miniatures we see an early master in the painting of light and perspective. The impact of this artist’s style was strong enough to inspire a big and not very distinct group named as workshop, followers and associates. Although several circumstances point at Jacques Coene as a probable name for him, this suggestion may still be doubted. The Netherlandish artist Jean Malouel (Johann Maelwael), a nephew of the Limbourg brothers, is in the same period documented as an important master in the service of the courts of France and Burgundy. He was the son of Wilhelm Maelwael from a probably old artist family in Nijmegen, maybe the goldsmith in whose atelier the Limbourgs got their first education.

Malouel is first mentioned as a painter in 1382. On 20 September 1396 he designed several decorations for textiles commissioned by Queen Isabeau in Paris (paid for six months later on 27 March 1397). Most likely he got this commission in connection with the feast on the day before, when Princess Jeanne of France was married to Duke John of Bretagne. Maybe some of the guests at this occasion were dressed in clothes designed by Malouel. Shortly later Philip the Bold of Burgundy chooses him on 5 August 1397 as his highly paid court painter and valet de chambre. He worked then for many years for Duke Philip and his successor John the Fearless in Paris, Dijon and other places until his death in Paris in 1419.

No painting is surely identified as by Malouel. It is known, however, that he performed different kinds of artistic work from portraits, e g of John the Fearless, big altar paintings, e g for the Charterhouse of Champmol near Dijon, and at repeated occasions decorations on harnesses for Duke John and his staff, e g for a joust in Compiègne in connection with the double marriage in 1406 between the young Prince Jean of Touraine and Jacoba of Bavaria, and between Princess Isabelle - the young widow of King Richard II of England - and Duke Charles of Orléans.

Remembering the many decorative details in the Boucicaut miniatures one may consider if Malouel is not a more likely identity of this anonymous master than the mostly suggested Jacques Coene, about whom so little has been known up to now. Also Malouel seems to have had the possibility to study for some time in Italy, after - as already suggested - a probably first education at his birthplace Nijmegen for the there mentioned Wilhelm, who maybe was his father. In 1396-97 Malouel worked for six months with designs for brocade textiles for the extravagant Queen Isabeau. A few years later the young Haincelin, here tentatively identified with Jan van Eyck, painted decorations for Isabeau.

Accepting the identification of the Boucicaut Master with Malouel, and Jan van Eyck as the painter of the realistic courtly scenes in the Calendar of the Très riches heures, it seems as if there may have been a connection between these two highly qualified specialists in the designing of clothes. F Gorissen has published investigations showing that Jan cannot have been one of Malouel’s children. The nearest personal connection I have arrived at is that the Limbourgs’s uncle Arnold van Limbourg had a son, a goldsmith of the same name, who in 1417 started to learn in the atelier of the goldsmith Adam van Stockum, that is as the pupil of a man who obviously was from the same Stockhem to which Jan van Eyck’s brother Hubert seems to have had a connection.

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