Work
Jan van Eyck produced paintings for private clients in addition to his work at the court. Foremost among these is the Ghent Altarpiece painted for Jodocus Vijdts and his wife Elisabeth Borluut. Started sometime before 1426 and completed, at least partially, by 1432, this polyptych has been seen to represent "the final conquest of reality in the North", differing from the great works of the Early Renaissance in Italy by virtue of its willingness to forgo classical idealization in favor of the faithful observation of nature.
Exceptionally for his time, van Eyck often signed and dated his frames, then considered an integral part of the work (the two were often painted together, and while the frames were constructed by a body of craftsmen separate to the master's workshop, their work was often considered as equal in skill to that of the painters). His signature "ALS IK KAN" ("AS I CAN") is taken from the Flemish saying "As I can, not as I would". It is because of his habit of signing his work that his reputation has survived and that attribution has not been as difficult and uncertain as with other first generation artists of the early Netherlandish school.
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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“How marvellous it all is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men’s hands; cemented with men’s honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human—for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine.”
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