The world’s most famous altarpiece, the Adoration of the Lamb in St Bavo, Ghent, is according to old but partly unsure sources the work of the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, commenced at unknown date by the first-mentioned, completed by the supposed younger artist and inaugurated on 6 May 1432. No unquestionable documentary evidence for anything of that exists.

The exceptionally big polyptych, folded out in full measuring 375 x 520 cm, has at several occations been damaged and - not always very professionally - restored, which makes stylistic analyses unsure. The comparison with a number of signed and dated paintings by Jan van Eyck seems to prove this artist’s hand visible in dominating parts, leaving the possibility open that the old tradition may be right also as regards Hubert. Scholars have, however, tried in vain to find a single decisive evidence for the participation of a supposed elder brother, whose existence occasionally has even been doubted. Most confusing is it that so little should have been preserved by a once famous Hubert. Tentatively ascribed to him are except different parts of the altarpiece only very few other works, and most of these with more or less severe doubts.

Still during late medieval times also outstanding artists were counted only as unusually skilled craftsmen and often rapidly forgotten. This might reasonably explain, why for decades the written sources praise only Jan as a remarkable master. So did also the learned and pedantic Albrecht Dürer, who visited Ghent in 1521. The comment he wrote in his diary is of special interest (Danach sahe ich des Iohannes taffel …), as he had extraordently good possibility to be correctly informed about what the local artists in Ghent at this time thought of the altarpiece, because already at his arrival he was received with great honour by the most prominent members of the Guild, and during his short stay he had all his meals in their company.

A few years earlier, in 1517, another very reliable witness, Cardinal Louis of Aragon, paid a visit to Ghent and took the altarpiece into consideration. According to the diary of Antonio de Beatis, the cardinal’s secretary, the canons of the church had told the visitor, that the altarpiece had been painted by a master of German extraction, called Robertus (decto Roberto), but as this artist had died before finishing it, the work had been completed by his brother, who also had been a great painter. This is the first undisputed source that mentions a cooperation of two brothers Van Eyck.

Both Dürer and Louis of Aragon were famous enough to have been received with equal great attention by the canons. The difference between their reports may depend on the fact that Dürer at this time knew the art of Jan van Eyck rather well. Recognizing him in the altarpiece he may have considered the one who had once planned but never fulfilled the work as less important. He may even have been well-informed enough to know or presume that most of it had been painted by Jan. It is also possible that there was at this time no longer any memory of Hubert among the members of the Guild, as he does not seem to have been a citizen of Ghent or a member of the Guild. Most likely he started and worked on the altarpiece at the place where he lived, as very sought-after artists normally did when they got commissions from other places, often very long away.

The opinion of the canons in 1517 is the earliest and most direct undisputable statement that exists about the polyptych. For them the one who invented it and painted the first parts of it may have been the one they remembered best and the only one they mentioned by name. When therefore the experienced secretary Antonio de Beatis calls the artist Robertus, and does not use any of the variants of Hubert that we find in other written sources, it has to be considered extremely important. Maybe it is even the key to the solution of the so long discussed Hubert van Eyck problem.

Carried forth in the memories of several generations of the canons during all the long time since the 1430s - a very agitated time disturbed by wars and opressions - was of course primarily the most essential details, e g that the altarpiece had been painted by two brothers and that the first artist’s work had been interrupted and left unfinished. Less important details may easily have been confused, e g that it should have been the death of the first artist that had caused the interruption. A more likely reason would indeed have been the death of the original commissioner of this very expensive polyptych, as lack of money definitely would have stopped the work, while an artist’s work reasonably might have been fulfilled by some of the assistants in a big atelier, especially as a design for the whole altarpiece hardly can have been missing.

The donator of the altarpiece, Jodocus Vijd, who is portrayed together with his wife on the shutters in the style of Jan van Eyck, is by some scholars thought to have replaced an earlier important commissioner. Already in 1912 W H J Weale suggested that this commissioner might have been Wilhelm VI, the ruler of Holland, Hainault and Zeeland, and that the polyptych perhaps was not originally intended for Ghent. Count Wilhelm’s sudden death in May 1417 would then have caused an interruption, which might reasonably explain some differences between older and younger parts of the altarpiece. A possible dating of the beginning of the work to the years 1415-17 would also open for a better understanding of some important steps in the creation of Netherlandish oil painting, with several more pieces of the puzzle falling into proper places.

From what was written by De Beatis, Dürer and all other onlookers during more than a century it seems nearly undisputable, that originally there cannot have been any text about two artists painted on it, and that for a long time there did not exist any such Hubert’s gravestone with a textplate, that is later mentioned. Knowledge about the life and work of Hubert, and to a great part also Jan, seem to have been almost forgotten, when details about them started to be needed as a result of an increasing number of visitors to the more and more famous work.

Normally the polyptych seems to have been visible only during the mass and after that kept behind a drapery, with the entrance to the chapel prohibited by a locked iron gate. It was therefore not possible to see the wonderous work without being assisted by someone, who opened the gate and with the help of some means moved the very high situated upper parts. For this demonstration the clergy early started to claim entrance fees, somewhat differing in height depending on who the visitors were. The business was perhaps greatly stimulated by the tenth, that those who arranged the visits had to receive. In a world that at this time was full of falsificated ´relics´ with the help of which different religious centres competed, it was then a rather natural thing that the canons allowed the production of some substantial memories of the creators of the admired masterpiece. And those who arranged for that seem to have been rather inventive.

Already in 1495 the travelling visitor Hieronymus Münzer was told the impossible lie, that ´the master of the altarpiece´ - not mentioning any name - should have been buried in front of it, that is in a chapel created for another person, the rich and important donator of the work, Jodocus Vijd. But Münzer does not mention, that there should have been any gravestone in the chapel, an invention that seems to have become needed later in order to confirm that Hubert should really have been honoured in such an exceptional way.

E Dhanens points out that in 1556/57 special high entrance fees were claimed, that is at the time when Michiel Coxie worked with a copy of the altarpiece commissioned by Philip II of Spain for the twenty-third feast of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1559. This may also have given occasion for the poet Lucas d´Heere to write in 1559 an ode in praise of the painter of the polyptych beginning Hi leit hier begraven (He is buried here) and place it in the chapel near the altarpiece. He may also have produced the text for the brass plate on a white gravestone, which at least existed in 1568, when M van Vaernewyck mentions it and refers in full some Flemish verses that tell about a once ´known and highly honoured´ Hubrecht van Eyck, deceased on 18 September 1426.

For the now appearing deathdate no written contemporary source is known. A Ghent document, however, records the death in the latter part of 1426 of a poor and unmarried Lubrecht van Heyke, whos profession is not mentioned. This document may have been observed by those who looked for information about the brother of Jan van Eyck, who had not been able to fulfil the painting of the altarpiece. One may reasonably guess that the date was chosen free in order to coincide with a commemorating feast decided now for the first time on that day.

The gravestone no longer exists, but in 1892 a brass plate was brought to light which in the habits of the time was presented as the one M van Vaernewyck had seen, although there is no readable text on it confirming its possible authenticity, even as a falsificate. It can still be seen in St Bavo’s Abbey Museum in Ghent. It is a reasonable guess, however, that this might be what is left of the gravestone for the couple Vijd.

It is not probable that the altarpiece originally had any signature. If it had, it most likely only mentioned Jan van Eyck, as P Ampe has tried to prove. Supposedly it was around 1559 that the later so famous quadruple was painted on the shutters, in which Hubert is commemorated as a more important master than Jan, and the last line is a chronogram, in which some of the letters give the year 1432 if read as Roman numerals, in this way pretending that the inauguration should have been on 6 May this year.

The lines are earliest mentioned to have existed in a text by C van Huerne from about 1616-21, but were probably overpainted already then, as C van Mander does not mention any text in his Het Schilder-boeck (Haarlem 1604). Some critically observant person among the officials of the church may in the latter part of the sixteenth century have arranged for the concealing of the not quite correct text and the removal of the pretended gravestone. When the frames of the altarpiece were restored in Berlin in 1823, the four lines were uncovered, but now some of the words were no longer readable. It is mostly thought that the lines, translated from Latin into English, should read as follows:

The painter Hubert van Eyck, greater than whom none is known,
commenced this picture. His brother Jan, as artist the second,
completed it. At the request and expense of Jodocus Vijd,
who today May 6 with this verse invites you to admire it.

Many scholars have unreasonably claimed, that this text should have been visible on the altarpiece already on 6 May 1432, which was the day when a newborn child of Philip the Good and Isabella of Portugal was baptized in the church, a ceremony that had to be performed without the presence of Duke Philip the Good, who had not yet returned from Dijon. It is, however, most unlikely that the court should have accepted to let the inauguration of an altarpiece in a private chapel to compete with the highly important princely family ceremony, so the pretended date for the inauguration seems to be a confusion with the very memorable day for the baptism of the new heir of Burgundy, very longed-for since the newly death on 5 February of his brother Anthony.

The consensus that has ruled about the coincidence of the two ceremonies is difficult to understand, because it is only documented that the child, born on 24 April, was baptized on 6 May by Cardinal Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. The old mistake that the child should have got the name Josse (sometimes written Joseph), and that this was after the donator of the altarpiece Jodocus (Joos) Vijd, was probably the reason for a confusion, which then never seems to have been doubted. This princely child can, however, never have been christened Josse. According to unwritten but strong rules a child, even more a prince and especially a princely heir, ought to have his name after one of his nearest ancesters, normally two generations back, quite as when the first prince was baptized Anthony. For the new Burgundian prince of the Valois dynasty the possible names were therefore limited to Jean, Anthony, Philip, Charles and Louis, of which Jean (Jehan) is the right according to custom. Of course the newborn prince also got this name, after his grandfather.

The reason why the after a handwritten source wrongly interpreted name never seems to have been corrected in Burgundian pedigrees may have been that none cared, as this prince died already on 21 August and soon was forgotten. The day for the baptism may have been chosen because May 6 was the day of the newborn prince’s namesake John the Evangelist, and that the ceremony was to take place in a church inaugurated in honour of John the Baptist.

The big polyptych is for the first time documented to have existed only as late as on 20 November 1433, when a visit is mentioned to both the altarpice and to the donators. The mentioned year for an inauguration, 1432, may yet in a way be confirmed by the same circumstances that make the date, May 6, unlikely. Jan van Eyck with assistents must have worked for a rather long time on the giant polyptych, surely for years, and when nearing completion the inauguration ought to have been planned long in advance in order to coincide with the religious feast on the day of John the Baptist for which the subject of the Adoration of the Lamb was chosen, that is the celebration of Easter, symbolizing the redemption for mankind through Christ’s death on the cross.

In 1432 Easter Sunday was on 20 April, and the inauguration of the altarpiece might therefore have been planned to be on 13 April, the Sunday on which the Passion week commenced. It is of course possible that it took place on this day, but there is reason to guess that if the altarpiece really was completed already this year, the inauguration of it ought to have been postphoned, because the Passion week happened to coincide with the days when a prince or princess was awaited to be born and christened.

The planning of the baptism of this child, including decorations in the church, probably at least partially designed by Jan van Eyck, must in these days have been almost completed. After the child’s birth on 24 April and the baptism on 6 May the church would have been free for the private inauguration of the Adoration of the Lamb in the chapel erected for Jodocus Vijd. This inauguration may have taken place on May 13 in one of the years 1432-35, because the donating couple Vijd chose this day for the foundation in 1435 of an eternal daily mass in the chapel. Philip the Good was, however, not present in Ghent on May 13 in any of these years.

Copyright © 2001-2007 Knut Andersson. All rights reserved.