Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck,
illustration by Edme de Boulonois (1682). The picture shows a reversed figure from the Ghent Altarpiece that supposedly represents Hubert.

Hubert (Huybrecht) van Eyck (* around 1370 ; † September 18, 1426 ) was a Flemish painter .

The assumption that Hubert van Eyck is Jan van Eyck's brother can no longer be upheld according to the latest research findings. Very little is known about Hubert's life; we only know for sure that from 1421–1422 he was registered in Ghent in the religious “Cooperative of Mary with the Rays”.

Hubert van Eyck achieved great fame through the inscription on the frame of the Ghent Altarpiece . It is:

PICTOR HUBERTUS EEYCK. MAIOR QUO NEMO REPERTUS

INCEPIT. PONDUS. QUE JOHANNES ARTE SECUNDUS

(FRATER) PERFECIT. JUDOCI VIJD PRECE FRETUS

VERSV SEXTA MAY. VOS COLLOCAT ACTA TVERI

“The painter Hubert van Eyck, there was no bigger one, started this work and his brother Johann, the second in this art, completed the difficult task on behalf of Judocus Vijd. Through these verses he entrusts to your care what was written on May 6th. "

In the last line there is a chronogram made up of red letters that gives the year date 1432. However, as an X-ray examination in 1950 showed, the inscription was probably only added later. Investigations in the course of the renewed restoration of the altar, which has been ongoing since 2012, have shown that, contrary to previous assumptions, the inscription was written directly on the first version of the frame, so it could possibly be original. Because of this inscription, art historians have long tried to separate the “Hubert” part from the Jan's part in the Ghent Altarpiece. Van Asperen de Boer tackled the Hubert cult in 1979 with infrared reflectography. The signature of the altar unmistakably shows only one handwriting, namely Jan van Eyck. In 1995, Volker Herzner was able to prove in his study of the Ghent Altarpiece that Hubert died completely impoverished, that not a single work by him has survived and that the relationship with Jan is more than questionable.

Nils Büttner sees the motives for adding the inscription in the local Ghent patriotism of the 16th century. Because Jan van Eyck came from Bruges, so he wasn't from Ghent, while Hubert, who happened to be named, was a Ghent painter. Ghent and Bruges have always been in competition. It was popular with humanistic scholars to celebrate one's hometown with a city praise. Of course, it was irrelevant that the city's most famous work of art was created by a foreigner. Because Hubert van Eyck's name was passed down in Ghent, he was quickly made the brother of Jan van Eyck and placed in front of Jan from abroad. The specific occasion was - always according to Büttner's hypothesis - the meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Ghent's St. Bavo Church in 1559, for which the church was decorated. At that time, a poem was installed in the chapel in which the Ghent Altarpiece stood, which Hubert van Eyck praised as the master of the altar.

literature

• Hermann Beenken : Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Bruckmann, Munich 1941; 2nd edition ibid 1943.
• Volker Herzner: Jan van Eyck and the Ghent Altarpiece . Worm 1995, ISBN 3-88462-125-4
• Nils Büttner: Johannes arte secundus? Or: who signed the Ghent Altarpiece? In: Thomas Schilp (Ed.): Dortmund and Conrad von Soest in late medieval Europe. Bielefeld 2004, pp. 179-200. Full text in ART doc from Heidelberg University

Web links

Commons : Hubert van Eyck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files