In this new delightful interest in the world as it is, he reflected the tendency of his day.  The fifty years that had elapsed between the painting of Richard II.’s portrait and the work of the Van Eycks, had seen a great development of trade and industry in Flanders.  Hubert was born, perhaps about 1365, at Maas Eyck, from which he takes his name.  Maas Eyck was a little town on the banks of the river Maas, near the frontier of the present Holland and Belgium.  He may have spent most of his life in Ghent, the town officials of which city paid him a visit in 1425 to see his work, and gave six groats to his apprentices in memory of their visit.  Where he learnt his art, where he worked before he came to Ghent, we do not know for certain, but there is reason to think that he was employed for a while in Holland by the Count.

John, his brother, concerning whom more facts have been gathered, is said to have been twenty years younger than Hubert.  He was a painter too, and worked in the employ of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Flanders, the grandson of Philip the Bold, who was one of those four sons of King John of France mentioned in our last chapter.  Philip the Good continued the traditions of his family and was in his time a great art-patron.  His grandfather had fostered an important school of sculpture in Flanders and Burgundy, which culminated in the superb statues still existing at Dijon.  Like his brother the Duke of Berry, he had given work to a number of miniature painters.  The Count of Holland also employed some wonderful miniature painters to beautify a manuscript for him.  This manuscript and one made for the Duke of Berry were among the finest ever painted so far as the pictures in them are concerned.  The Count of Holland’s book used to be in the library at Turin, where it was burnt a few years ago, so we can see it no more.  But the fortunate ones who did see it thought that the pictures in it were actually painted by the Van Eycks when they were young.  The Duke of Berry’s finest book is at Chantilly and is well known.  Both this and the Turin book contained the loveliest early landscapes, a little earlier in date than this landscape in the ’Three Maries’ picture.  So you see why it is said that the illuminators first invented beautiful landscape painting, and that landscapes were painted in books before they were painted as pictures to hang on walls.

The practical spirit in which Hubert van Eyck worked exactly matched the sensible, matter-of-fact Flemish character.  The Flemings, even in pictures of the Madonna, wanted the Virgin to wear a gown made of the richest stuff that could be woven, truthfully painted, with jewels of the finest Flemish workmanship, and they liked to see a landscape behind her studied from their own native surroundings.