The Mysterious Tale of the Van Eyvk Family (Art History Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] jan van ike left behind a remarkable legacy of works including the spectacular ghent altarpiece but very little evidence of who he exactly was it's one of the great mysteries of the history of art he's an interesting person who's come out of that tradition of looking at stained glass and the whole sort of gothic uplift [Music] van ike was a key figure in the early northern renaissance that would produce further great masters such as hans holbein and albrecht dura after he died his reputation would only grow and grow and his paintings would become highly sought after by buyers and thieves alike and in the process the mysterious tale of the van ick family would slowly be revealed he's one of the most skilled artists who ever painted and i think he epitomizes the reason that northern oil painting was admired all over europe he also got much more texture and more depth to his work there's a real technical achievement by van ick what we can be absolutely certain of is that van ike was an extraordinary skillful [Music] painter [Music] the story of jan van ick begins in the era of the burgundian netherlands where the low countries came under the rule of the powerful dukes of burgundy we don't know a lot about van nuyk's early life and that's fairly standard for renaissance artists we have a few archival documents that suggest that he lived in the area of rouge that's where he made his home he came to bruges in the low countries which was a really important trading center and a center for the dukes of burgundy by the mid 1420s he probably began as an apprentice painting miniatures or painting illuminated manuscripts we know that he had other members of his family who were also artists the person particularly notable is is hubert who is mentioned on the inscription of the ghent altarpiece it's presumed that jan van ike was born in the early 1390s likely in the town of masaic in present-day belgium as for his elder brother hubert he remains the biggest enigma of all a lot of people guess that from his name van ike gives us a big clue that he was from mass ike um which was an area in illiege and his daughter actually ended up in a nunnery there after he died which is kind of another clue that perhaps he was from there and we also have some notes written by him about a painting written in the local dialect from there so things would suggest that's why he grew up but we don't know for sure there's a big question mark about the mysterious older brother of john van ike was hubert van ike in fact a great artist the reason that it's tricky to answer is there's not a single extant work that we know was by hubert but in the 19th century during a cleaning of the ghent altarpiece a mysterious inscription was uncovered and this inscription suggested that hubert van ike was actually the great artist and jan was second in art imagine that um larry michelangelo's brother was suddenly revealed as the author or co-author of the sistine chapel ceiling it was that big a deal hubert would die in 1426 most likely only still in his thirties his younger brother would be the one who would establish the vanite legacy forever but in order to do that he would need a powerful patron early in his career that came in the form of the authoritarian john iii of bavaria who was known as john the pitiless because of his cruelty pitiless john would be poisoned though whereas jan van ike would see his status rise considerably when he was appointed to the court of philip the good the powerful duke of burgundy [Music] philip the good was the duke of burgundy during the central part of jan van impe's life they seem to have been friends as well as collaborators van nike worked for philip the good for 16 years so that was a long time to work for somebody so and to be in court that amount of time jan enjoyed a close proximity in his entourage as a courtierson was active in the social and political aspects of court life he was the official court painter he was in charge of portraits for posterity of the family of the duke of burgundy he became almost a diplomatic aide as well as an artist and it seems had quite a central role within that court and that's really where his career flourished whilst in the employment of philip the good jan van ike painted his earliest known portrait but this work would only be attributed to him in the 19th century and in the intervening years had even had the monogram of albrecht jura and a date of 1492 added to it somewhere along the way this particular work may have been lost in the shuffle but during his lifetime van ike did become highly sought after for the quality of his portraits he may have even made one of himself well we think it's very likely to to be a self-portrait it's referred to as a self-portrait and it looks like a self-portrait it's the glance in his eyes that's very similar to other self-portraits but i think the thing that makes it seem most likely is the very clever inscription on the frame at the top jan van ike was clearly very pleased with his own ability as he should be in fact in the frame for the portrait of a man in a red turban which everyone thinks is a self-portrait the frame says ice ich kong which translates roughly as it's as well as i can do and everybody knows it's perfectly miraculous portraits so it's false humility it's also ike a pun on van ike's name that headdress that people often call a turban wasn't really a turban it was actually a style of headgear called a chaperone and it had a long piece of fabric that was often wound around the head and then the whole thing was placed on a sort of fabric role later in his career van ike would paint a portrait of his wife margarita in a work that may have been intended as a pair to his own self-portrait he was credited with inventing oil painting which is not true really because that had all been around beforehand but if we look at that fantastic self-portrait one can see how cleverly he paints he's also somebody who's come out of that tradition of looking at stained glass and also is using a sort of a white background to the laying layering of his paints and is obviously really really smart on using glazes and overlays and letting paint dry in layers [Music] unfortunately the most important portrait that van ike was tasked to work on is now lost and is only known from copies philip the good had been widowed twice and was considering marrying isabella the portuguese infanta or daughter of the king van ike was sent to portugal as part of an envoy to capture isabella's likeness the mission was a success and isabella married philip to become the next duchess of burgundy one of the most important tasks that he had to carry out for philip at burgundy was to go to portugal to paint the portrait of isabella of portugal which was a very important function of a court painter in those times cost days long before photography so philip wanted to see what she looked like he had a sort of dual purpose there doing the portrait and also almost making links with the portuguese royal family that's not just being a painter that's actually being allowed to go and intercede in you know in politics really i think you can't isolate it as you know this is an artist doing this this is this is somebody who could do a lot of other things sadly the portrait of isabella that van ike made as part of the royal wedding process has been lost at some point in time but we do have another remarkable and mysterious painting called the arnolfini portrait that may also have been connected to an important marriage we assume the person who commissioned it is the man represented in the painting with his wife we think he's a member of the arnolfini merchant family called nicola we don't know exactly why this portrait was made whether it commemorates a specific occasion we simply don't know depending on which art historian you ask there are various interpretations of that painting what i had always learned and which sounds reasonable to me is that painting actually meant to stand in for a wedding contract rather than having a piece of paper that is signed by eyewitnesses the painting itself shows the couple getting married and back at that time you needed two eyewitnesses in order to have a marriage be legitimate and inside a convex mirror that's painted at the back of the room there are two people who you can dimly see reflected in that convex mirror one man in a red turban who is almost certainly on their nike and a second witness in a blue turban the mirror itself has a frame which is full of really tiny representations of the passion of christ each one under what seems to be a tiny piece of glass and you get the reflections i think one of the things that vanite really wants to show off in this painting is his skill of representing objects textures lighting reflections van ike would die on the 9th of july 1441 at an age of roughly 50 years old he'd had a very successful career working under the duke of burgundy but we still have little information on the precise details of his life we do know his reputation had sent him to foreign lands and he may even have visited jerusalem judging by his accurate depiction of the city and the painting the three mary's of the tomb but after his death his name would not endure in the same way as the masters of the italian renaissance and it would take many centuries for his true legacy to be pieced together and in that time his greatest work of all the ghent altarpiece would become the most stolen work of art in history jan van ike died in 1441 leaving behind many unfinished projects that were completed by his workshop over the centuries some of his paintings went missing including his portrait of isabella of portugal now only known from the copies and a painting of a woman bathing which can be seen in a 17th century work by william van heykt but while some of his works are now lost his legacy and his influence on the northern renaissance remained van ike is often presented in histories as the inventor of oil painting well we don't actually think that's the case now but what we can be absolutely certain of is that van ike was an extraordinary skillful painter with oil paint he really showed the possibilities of oil paint particularly in the depiction of light and reflections what's important is this real rendition of naturalism and realism real characters you're looking at real people that almost have a interaction with the viewer they're sort of stepping out of the the flat picture plane and this realism really is the most important thing in the northern renaissance it's not the kind of classical element that comes in in the italian renaissance yonver nike is the symbol of the northern renaissance and we tend to forget about the northern renaissance because we in the anglophone world have an obsession with the italian renaissance and florence in particular but running in parallel with it and in many ways more advanced than the italian renaissance was the renaissance in northern europe and van ick was the center of it jan van ike had become known during his career for his remarkable and innovative portraits and his paintings of the virgin mary but his most enduring work was the ghent altarpiece which had initially been commissioned by his most elusive brother hubert van ijk a couple juice fished and his wife elizabeth borland commissioned hubert initially and then jan really is the one who finished it off so it's a sort of collective piece it's very easy as an art historian to argue that the ghent altarpiece is the single most important painting ever made for a number of different reasons the primary one is it was the first monumental oil painting it was the first one on a grand scale the first internationally famous oil painting a real landmark in its naturalism in its realism i think people were completely taken aback by if you look at the figures of adam and eve they are so real they are presenting someone that could be standing right in front of you they always pop out of the panels it was in a chapel in what's now the cathedral of saint barvo but was then the church of saint john which was he was the protector of ghent so an important place to be based an important place for it to be hung there are thoughts that perhaps it was we even mechanized so parts of it would move doors would open the back panels would maybe be shown and then the front and even perhaps set to music so it was potentially this all singing all dancing completely different artistic rendition of this very mystical catholic story of the lamb of christ the ghent altarpiece quickly garnered an outstanding reputation that helped to establish the van ick legacy but it would have to endure a series of trials that could easily have seen it lost forever it had to survive the protestant reformation in particular the building storm where catholic art was being destroyed across europe but that was just the start of its ordeals the ghent altarpiece is the most frequently stolen artwork in history everything bad that could possibly happen to a work of art has happened to this painting there are 13 criminal incidents in its 600 year history and it's the subject of a whole lot of different mysteries including several that are still enduring napoleon was the first to get his hands on the altarpiece by force during his occupation of flanders napoleon is the first general that had a dedicated art theft unit they had dedicated officers whose job it was to steal art to appropriate art after an armistice and to ship it back to paris to the new louvre museum which was essentially a looted art storehouse for the napoleonic wars nobody knows exactly why but the napoleonic soldiers stole only the central panels not the wing panels de noel who was the first director of the louvre was very upset that they had only taken the central panels this is like taking the mona lisa with her head missing it was only a portion of this great masterpiece the stolen panels would return from the louvre but they were split apart once again being pawned off and sold to a host of different owners from the english art collector edward solly to the king of prussia the altarpiece then fell prey to another major conflict when german forces seized it during world war one in the first world war it took on a very political role within the treaty of versailles i think because it became such a symbol of belgium and of of ghent and so it became this kind of symbolic thing that had to be returned to them and so in the treaty of our site was then returned and it went on a train and people and kind of went mad for it waving flags following the train it had its own special carriage and was taken home and returned as it were the altarpiece was finally back home in ghent but it wouldn't be long before it returned to germany once again it was a prize target for hitler and the nazis during world war ii the ghent altarpiece was the most wanted work of art by the nazis during the second world war it was the number one target of the er which was the nazi art theft unit i think it's important to remember with this work that because it has taken on such an incredible stature in the history of art it's something that everyone wants to get their hands on and that was no different for hitler for him it was the ultimate prize and he wanted it in the hands of the nazis he wanted it for his fuhrer museum and lens the people in ghent thought during the second world war we'd better just send it off to the vatican and it was stopped on route in a place called pool and it was then that hitler took that painting to bavaria it got put in the neuefenstein palace for safety then it got moved to the salt mines in altazee then it got rescued by the monuments men they discovered it there in pretty poor shape having been in a sort of damp salt mine for a long time but then it was taken home and looked after [Music] before the nazis got their hands on the ghent altarpiece though one panel the just judges panel in the bottom left had already been stolen it still hasn't been recovered to this day on an april morning in 1934 ghent was shocked to realize that one of the twelve panels of the ghent altar piece had disappeared in the night well it's thought that there may be self-portraits in there so they may well have been one of jan van ike that may well have been hubert van impe and it's also thought that philip the good was portrayed in it so i guess it's the one where the van ikes were showing themselves taking ownership of the old piece conspiracy theorists say that the righteous judges panel was chosen for removal because it contained some key aspect of this coded treasure map that's built into the ghent altarpiece for more practical reasons it was one of the panels that was most easily accessible to thieves it's the water has been destroyed but there are all sorts of clues and comments that it's still remaining in the cathedral it is implausible that it was intentionally destroyed it's like setting fire to a briefcase full of money it just doesn't make sense they've done huge x-rays of the cathedral walls underneath and still never found anything but the case is still open so who knows it may still be out there every year there are dozens of anonymous tips that come in to the ghent police or to the bishopric of st bavo with a hot tip as to where the lost panel can be found and sometimes they sound totally crazy sometimes they sound plausible enough that the police investigate once an anonymous tip came in that they would find the painting under the floorboards of the ghent house and the floorboards were taken up but nothing was there but the investigations continue and whenever there's a new piece of news it makes big headlines here never say never is what people say but who knows but things do surface things surface in the most unlikely places so it's always possible a replica of the just judges panel was painted in 1945 as a replacement but the original remains tantalizingly out of reach much like the man behind it jan van ike from a biographer's perspective we don't know much the sort of things that last best are usually related to court cases jan van ike managed to never get arrested which is one of the reasons why we don't know quite as much about him as for instance caravaggio he was so frequently in trouble with the law that we have a very accurate summary of his life may never learn much more about the lives of jan van ike and his brother hubert than we know now but we can appreciate the remarkable legacy that they left behind with their art you

Channel: Perspective

Views: 121,734

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, jan van eyck, art history, history of art, ghent altarpiece, van eyck, renaissance (art period/movement), hubert van eyck, lost painting, lost art, famous paintings, famous painters, history documentary, documentary movies - topic, art documentary, documentary history

Id: Ih7rWA2CGl8

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020