Crucifixion and Last Judgment in the Hermitage, the silver-point drawing The Betrayal of Christ in the British Museum, the Portrait of John the Fearless in Antwerp, a Crucifixion at the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, and The Holy Women at the Sepulchre from the Cook Collection in Richmond, England, among others. These works were attributed to Hubert, with a prominent question mark, based on the fallible and rather unscientific method of stylistic comparison. The comparison, of course, was to The Ghent Altarpiece —none of which may have been painted by Hubert. As the famous art historian Max Friedlander wrote in 1932, “Having read the entire literature on van Eyck . . . only one thing about the Ghent Altar is sure, namely that its famous inscription has caused stylistic criticism greater embarrassments than this discipline, not exactly short on blunders, has ever known before.”
Despite the hunger to provide paintings for this newly discovered master painter, it is not clear that any of Hubert’s paintings are extant. Still,
Hubert van Eyck’s association with The Ghent Altarpiece is further indicated by the fact that he was buried in the Church of Saint John, in the wall of the Vijd Chapel—the church and the chapel for which The Ghent Altarpiece was painted. The grave was later moved and lost when the church’s dedication was changed from Saint John to Saint Bavo. But the epitaph on Hubert’s tomb is recorded in the 1550 notes of a traveler named Marcus van Vaernewyck. This epitaph gives Hubert’s death date as 18 September 1426—perhaps only weeks after The Ghent Altarpiece was begun.
We may infer from this that, if Hubert van Eyck was indeed a painter associated with The Ghent Altarpiece , then his contribution to it included the layout, design, and perhaps a few unfinished figures, but little more. He died long before he could have made a major, or even substantially visible, contribution. Although the exact date of the commission of the altarpiece is unknown, the very fact that Hubert died in 1426 and the painting was not completed until 1432 indicates the extent of work still required as of 1426. In the six years following his brother’s death, it was Jan who did the painting.
Yet travelogues from two other nearly contemporary tourists indicate that very soon after the completion of the altarpiece, Hubert was considered to have been its painter. Hieronymous Münzer, who visited Ghent in 1495, wrote that “the master of the altarpiece is buried before the altar.” Jan van Eyck was buried in Bruges, so Münzer can only be referring to Hubert. The second tourist was Antonio de Beatis, secretary to a visiting ecclesiastical dignitary, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. De Beatis wrote of his 1517 visit that the “canons” of the church had told him that The Ghent Altarpiece had been painted by an artist from “ La Magna Alta” (the old term for Germany, from which is derived the country’s French name, Allemagne ) by the name of Roberto and that Roberto’s brother completed the work. Perhaps the Italian De Beatis Italianized the name he thought he heard, whether it was Hubrechte, Luberecht, or Ubrecht, and transformed it in his memory into Roberto.
But these archival documents suggesting that there was indeed a Hubert van Eyck painting in Ghent in the 1420s were only discovered in
1965. Many still consider that all-important inscription to be a sixteenth-century forgery. If so, it would be the first of thirteen crimes involving this one ill-fated painting.
In 1933, art historian and collector Emile Renders published an article claiming that the inscription was a forgery, perpetrated by Ghent Humanists who were dismayed that their city’s treasure should have been painted by an artist associated with the rival city of Bruges. Renders argues that these forgers invented a brother from Ghent, Hubert, whose hand in the altarpiece could make it seem that Ghent’s greatest treasure had been created by one of its own
Despite the hunger to provide paintings for this newly discovered master painter, it is not clear that any of Hubert’s paintings are extant. Still,
Hubert van Eyck’s association with The Ghent Altarpiece is further indicated by the fact that he was buried in the Church of Saint John, in the wall of the Vijd Chapel—the church and the chapel for which The Ghent Altarpiece was painted. The grave was later moved and lost when the church’s dedication was changed from Saint John to Saint Bavo. But the epitaph on Hubert’s tomb is recorded in the 1550 notes of a traveler named Marcus van Vaernewyck. This epitaph gives Hubert’s death date as 18 September 1426—perhaps only weeks after The Ghent Altarpiece was begun.
We may infer from this that, if Hubert van Eyck was indeed a painter associated with The Ghent Altarpiece , then his contribution to it included the layout, design, and perhaps a few unfinished figures, but little more. He died long before he could have made a major, or even substantially visible, contribution. Although the exact date of the commission of the altarpiece is unknown, the very fact that Hubert died in 1426 and the painting was not completed until 1432 indicates the extent of work still required as of 1426. In the six years following his brother’s death, it was Jan who did the painting.
Yet travelogues from two other nearly contemporary tourists indicate that very soon after the completion of the altarpiece, Hubert was considered to have been its painter. Hieronymous Münzer, who visited Ghent in 1495, wrote that “the master of the altarpiece is buried before the altar.” Jan van Eyck was buried in Bruges, so Münzer can only be referring to Hubert. The second tourist was Antonio de Beatis, secretary to a visiting ecclesiastical dignitary, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. De Beatis wrote of his 1517 visit that the “canons” of the church had told him that The Ghent Altarpiece had been painted by an artist from “ La Magna Alta” (the old term for Germany, from which is derived the country’s French name, Allemagne ) by the name of Roberto and that Roberto’s brother completed the work. Perhaps the Italian De Beatis Italianized the name he thought he heard, whether it was Hubrechte, Luberecht, or Ubrecht, and transformed it in his memory into Roberto.
But these archival documents suggesting that there was indeed a Hubert van Eyck painting in Ghent in the 1420s were only discovered in
1965. Many still consider that all-important inscription to be a sixteenth-century forgery. If so, it would be the first of thirteen crimes involving this one ill-fated painting.
In 1933, art historian and collector Emile Renders published an article claiming that the inscription was a forgery, perpetrated by Ghent Humanists who were dismayed that their city’s treasure should have been painted by an artist associated with the rival city of Bruges. Renders argues that these forgers invented a brother from Ghent, Hubert, whose hand in the altarpiece could make it seem that Ghent’s greatest treasure had been created by one of its own
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