Some people have thought that perhaps Hubert van Eyck, and his brother John, actually went to the East.  Many men made pilgrimages in those days, and almost every year parties of Christian pilgrims went to Jerusalem.  It was a rough and even a dangerous journey, but not at all impossible for a patient traveller.  Dr. Hulin, who has made wonderful discoveries about the early Flemish painters, found a mention, in an old sixteenth-century list, of a ’Portrait of a Moorish King or Prince’ by Van Eyck, painted in 1414 or perhaps 1418.  If he painted a portrait of an oriental prince, he may have visited one oriental country at least, or at any rate the south of Spain.  Probably enough during that journey he made studies of the cypress, stone-pine, date-palm, olive, orange, and palmetto, which occur in his pictures.  They grow in the south of Spain and other Mediterranean regions, but not in the cold north where Hubert spent most of his days.

It is difficult at first to realize what an innovation it was for Hubert van Eyck to paint such a landscape.  In the Richard II. diptych there is just a suggestion of brown earth for the saints to stand upon, but the rest of the background is of gold, as was the common practice at the time.  The great innovator, Giotto, in some of his pictures had attempted to paint landscape backgrounds.  In his fresco of St. Francis preaching to the birds there is a tree for them to perch on, but it seems more like a garden vegetable than a tree.  Even his buildings look as though they might fall together any moment like a pack of cards.  Hubert not only gives landscape a larger place than it ever had in any great picture before, but he paints it with such skill and apparent confidence that we should never dream he was doing it almost for the first time.

St. Matthew says:  ’As it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the Sepulchre.’  Even in this point Hubert wished to be accurate.  The rising sun is hidden behind the rocks on the left side of the picture, for it was not until years later that any painter ventured to paint the sun in the heavens.  But the rays from the hidden orb strike the castles on the hills with shafts of light.  The town remains in shadow, while the sky is lit up with floods of glory.  An effect such as this must have been very carefully studied from nature.  Hubert was evidently one who looked at the world with observant eyes and found it beautiful.  When he had flowers to paint, he painted the whole plant accurately, not the blossoms individually, like the painter of Richard II.  He liked fine stuffs, embroideries, jewels, and glittering armour.  He was no visionary trying to free himself from the earth and live in contemplation of the angels and saints in Paradise, like so many of the thirteenth and fourteenth century artists.