Jan van Eyck · 1432
Portrait of a Man (Jan van Eyck)
Jan van Eyck
Portrait of a Man (Jan van Eyck)
1432
Jan van Eyck's 'Portrait of a Man in a Red Turban' (1433) is a founding work of early Netherlandish oil painting and widely argued to be a self-portrait. Every eyelash, skin pore, and filament of beard is built from glaze-thin layers of oil in a technique Van Eyck himself had perfected, while the lower edge of the original frame bears, in mock-Greek letters, his personal motto 'ALS IXH XAN' ('As I Can'). Acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1851, the panel has remained a cornerstone of scholarship on 15th-century portraiture and the Netherlandish invention of the modern portrait in oils.
Exhibition Venue
Image source: Wikimedia Commons